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September 2, 2007
Finding Our Place in Line
Jeremiah 2:4-13; Luke 14:1, 7-14
“Many years ago when I was a pastor of a small church,” writes preacher Larry Linville, 1 “I was also the sports editor of a small weekly newspaper.”
It seems he wasn't paid much, but got free passes to a lot of sporting events in the Kansas City area where he was located.
“I had been in the press box at Arrowhead Stadium, home of Kansas City Chiefs where our paper was assigned its own table in the Press Box with TV, and food and drink during each game.” It was a pretty good racket, so when spring came, he thought he might be able to duplicate that kind of experience at the press box of the Kansas City Royals baseball team.
“I arrived early and there was a small press box with no names. I decided to choose a good place right behind home plate. Soon a sportscaster from one of the TV stations came and sat in one of the other chairs...to the left. Another sportscaster took another chair to the right. The sportscaster for the third station arrived and stood behind me and then left. A little fellow came in a few minutes later and asked who I represented. After I told him the name of our little weekly paper, he disappeared. Shortly, he came back and escorted me to the “auxiliary” press box...above the bleachers over right field...no food, no TV...not even a pair of binoculars.”
Jesus said, “ When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place.”
Sometimes it is just to see what we can get away with - other times it is a matter of honor, or sense of entitlement – Jesus says it is a mistake to set yourself up top because it is going to be an unhappy experience to be asked to move on down the line.
This little parable has been traditionally cited as a lesson on humility....as if it were saying, don't think too highly of yourself – or don't grab the best seat if you are not worthy. It is clear that in press boxes it is probably wise to bear this in mind, because the big media outlets are a potential source of revenue for the team. The part-time reporter in my first example was really just seeing what he could get away with.
Problematic for me is the fact that for generations Christians have heard this parable as one admonishing them not to even try ; to be weary of assuming too much. The voice of self-doubt interprets it as a warning not to assume that there is a place for you in the Kingdom of Heaven. As if God is just waiting for you to assume you are loved only to slap you down and tell you to move over for someone more worthy?
That unfortunate interpretation of Church is sometimes born out in reality. When we look around us on a Sunday morning we don't often see the marginalized and the hurting of our society sitting among us in the pews. It is a double edged sword....tormented by our own individual feelings of inadequacy and wanting reassurance ourselves; we sometimes project our sense of unworthiness onto the next group down the way in the form of being judgmental and critical.
The policy of exclusion was one which Jesus addressed time and again. In this morning's reading, once again, Jesus confronts his host and fellow guests at a rather posh gathering with the opinion that they misjudged God's values about who is most favored according to the reign of God. This happens all the time during Jesus ministry, so that we have to deduce that it is rather a central idea in what he is trying to convey through his teachings and life-style. Scholars think that his persistent choice to eat with “tax-collectors and sinners,” associate with women of the street, and beggars and his lack of fear of defilement from those who are sick, or those who are in some way already marginalized by the majority culture of the 1st Century in Palestine, is a direct confrontation with what was called the Holiness Code of ancient Israel.
Having been besieged and conquered first by Assyrians, then Babylonians, then Greeks and now Romans, those who were guardians of the traditions of Israel, the priests and scribes and other elders and teachers were concerned most about their teachings being diluted, so they wanted the people of Judea to stay separate and distinct. This evolved into the “Holiness Code” by which certain associations were considered unclean, like the gentile world. According to Biblical Scholar, Marcus Borg, Jesus is going about behaving as if outcasts and the like, those who fall outside the code, are those welcomed into the promises of the Kingdom of God. What he is actually doing is distinguishing between those who are falsely called sinners, “who are in fact victims of an oppressive system of exclusion - and true sinners - those who have sinned from the heart.” 2 What Jesus was trying to do and demonstrate was a deliberate contravention of the Pharisaic doctrine of exclusion and “holiness” based on separation. When Jesus says that one should love their enemies - he is talking, among others, about the Romans in the context of his audience. He is pointing to a kindness and compassion which is all-encompassing and unlimited.
Cultures seem to naturally develop holiness codes. Our own Scots Presbyterian forbearers and our cousins the Puritans in Massachusetts Bay colony had their own Holiness Code for a generation or two as the new teachings of Calvin and John Knox and other leaders from the English, Scots and Dutch Reformed movement were embodied in a new kind of community. In their day, Pilgrims were called, “Separatists” because they advocated a complete break from the Church of England and because, defacto , they also operated as a closed community for the first few generations of existence in the new world.
When a cultural group begins to feel threatened by changing times and attitudes it is common to develop “holiness codes” as a way of fighting off what is perceived as a deterioration of values. We are in the midst of an era when in fact such groups are common and gaining ascendancy in some ways into the mainstream of thought. Fundamentalist expressions of religion are nothing more than reassertion of “holiness codes” - a checklist of proper behavior which will determine who is in and who is out.
Flannery O'Conner was one who studied the idea of “worthiness” throughout her literary career as she wrote about the old South in transition. She is noted for her short stories which embody the culture of the southeastern part of the United States. Roman Catholic herself, she most often featured people in her stories that were more representative of the traditional Protestant culture of the region.
One story, “Revelation,” is about a Mrs. Turpin, who is bound and determined to occupy her proper place in her stratified, southern society. Mrs. Turpin is the wife of an “up–and–coming” hog farmer and is quick to point out to anyone who will listen, that the animals live in a pig parlor which is very clean and doesn't smell at all.
As we get to know Mrs. Turpin in this story, we discover that her prejudices dictate very distinct ideas about who is good and who is not. On a visit to the doctor's office we witness her being treated very rudely by the daughter of a well educated, polite southern woman of the old school. The affront sends her home reeling from the insult. She might have expected such from “poor white trash” she is given to thinking, but from the daughter of an upstanding citizen it is more than she can take.
Waking up from a nap with a bad headache and a very damaged ego, she makes her way to the pig parlor to wash down the pigs for the night and to give them their feed...and in the process has a revelation for which the story is named. Staring up into clouds, part of a storm front moving through on a summer evening, she has a vision of the road to heaven...a path to paradise in the golden evening sky.
But on that road as she sees it in her revelation, she is shocked to see who is leading the way into the Kingdom. “There were whole companies of white-trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black folks in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claude, had always had “a little of everything and the God given whit to use it right.” She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others with great dignity....Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their [well nurtured pretentions and] virtues were being burned away...” 3
The secret of God's love is that it is not based on rules, not attained by perfection - or holiness, but ours by virtue of God's grace. “Don't look for rewards based on performance,” says Jesus and echoes the ancient words of the prophet Jeremiah who wondered aloud at the people of Israel who continually chased after idols, forsaking the fountain of living water which is God's grace, by looking to drink from cracked cisterns of human design. Anxiously we draw the lines and develop rules not believing that God's love is sufficient to include even us.
A woman named Joan Webb has written a book called Meditations for Christians Who Try to be Perfect . She writes, “Years ago, after I asked God to fill my cup, it seemed, instead, that he ate my lunch. As I saw my dreams fade away, I worked harder to hold on and eventually burned out. I wondered where God was and why he let it happen.
Now as I reflect back, I wonder if he could not fill my cup because I already had it full with my own personal agenda. I wanted to accomplish great things for God, but I had my own ideas. Perhaps he was waiting for me to empty the unusable contents so he could pour in his plan.
When we admit our need and ask God for help, it is like emptying our life cups. Emptiness, though uncomfortable, is a necessary prerequisite to filling.
Our overflowing cups yield anxiety. God's portion produces security.” 4
The guest list is long...and there is no bouncer at the door. Inviting you now, for who you are, and what he knows you can become, is our host, Jesus Christ, who holds out a cup for you…from a fountain of living water. So, find your place in line. Amen.
1 Larry Linville, from a comment on this passage posted on the Internet.
2 Marcus Borg, quoted by Walter P. Wink, Engaging the Powers... , Fortress Press, Minneapolis 1992, pages 115-116.
3 Flannery O'Conner, “Revelation”, in short story collection called, Everything That Rises Must Converge , Signet Books, New American Library, New York, 1967, Pages 167 - 186
4 Joan C. Webb, Meditations for Christians Who Try to Be Perfect (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1993), page 83
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First Presbyterian
Church of Cedar Rapids
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Phone: 319-364-6148
E-mail: church@fpccr.org
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