From most accounts,
the kids and the teachers and the parents survived the first week of school. Like
many of you, being responsible parents and grandparents we had to touch base.
Part of touching base for me leads to the inevitable twenty questions.
In our family I have a
severe reputation for asking a lot of questions and I especially love the first
week of school. It tees the questions up so easily.
What is your teacher’s
name? Are they nice? How are the other kids? Any homework yet? What about
recess? What about the lunchroom? Think you’ll go back next week? You know, the
usual inquisition.
Typically my chance
for the quiz comes around a meal. Meal gatherings offer the perfect setting for
a good talk. The audience is captured because they are hungry and want to eat.
It is actually a grand tradition in many families’ or gathering of friends. To
be together is fun and, as a parent, or grandparent, or interested party, or
even for a nosey neighbor, the table is an ideal place to find out about stuff.
In Luke’s gospel,
Jesus gathered for a meal at the house of a leader of the Pharisees. What
struck me about the goings on there was the telling behavior of the guests.
They wanted to find out about Jesus and they were watching him very closely.
Almost too closely.
Jesus had gone there
for a social time, a gathering on the Sabbath to break bread, and the others were
riveted by his presence and could not keep their eyes off him. He too had a
severe reputation. Perhaps they had twenty questions to ask but lacked the
nerve to ask even one. So they stole glances, keeping one eye in his direction
as they ate and listened.
We also know there was
more at stake. People were talking about Jesus and the leaders felt threatened
by his popularity and his larger threat to their power. So they invited him to
dinner to check him out, to watch him closely. Of course, getting too close can
be a dangerous game. One which two can
play.
You may remember a
post I read on Facebook from a newly married pastor. She confessed to the
world, which is what you do when you make a post on Facebook, “Apparently I
snore. Badly.” The discovery created a response from her new spouse that she
reported went something like, “Alice, please turn over, you are going to make
me deaf.”
Our course, you can
imagine the helpful advice she received from other Facebook friends. My
favorite was from one who was enjoying this nuptial blockbuster entirely too
much. She offered, “A sweet husband would say, sweet heart, yours is a
rhinoceros-like purring.” A rhinoceros-like purring. Funny, but the gloves are
off at this point. Being close is a dangerous game.
Jesus is not immune
to this game. There are off the chart responses when folks watch his life too
closely. Throughout scripture, Jesus was watched very closely and some folks
screamed and shouted for his life when he performed miracles, healed the sick,
raised the dead, or broke the sacred law.
This morning the
leading Pharisees are watching Jesus so they might discover grounds for a
charge against him. For his part, Jesus is not intimidated. Certainly he knew
what they were up to. He knew it when he accepted the dinner invitation for he
knew their true motivation. Ever confident, Jesus waited for his chance, “Oh,
you want to watch me do you? Well, I’m watching you just as intently.”
What Jesus saw was how
guests were positioning themselves for the places of honor at the tables. They
must have been falling all over one another to get that place up front, to sit
as close to the leader of the Pharisees as possible. To find out about Jesus
and what the bosses would do about him.
Jesus also knows they
want more. They are shamelessly seeking to be noticed. To be noticed as someone
of importance.
Just as shamelessly, they
knew the game they played. They knew they would have to pay back their host for
their preferential seating. This is how the politics worked. You scratch my
back and I will scratch yours. You recognize me with a place of honor at your house
and I will repay you by recognizing you with a similar place of honor at my
house.
So, there was high
drama and there was a new player to contend with. Who is this Jesus and what is
he up to? How can I sit closest to the action. Whose political back do I have
to scratch to play? They were adept at the repeated payment and repayment
scheme in that hall of power and at the head of any table in the region.
Jesus, for his part,
has all the evidence he needs to turn the tables and find fault with them. They
are boldly transparent as they compromise again and again their own righteous
indignation. They expose themselves undeniably as being on the wrong side of
God and God’s grace and even God’s law. To be righteous is to be on the right
side of God’s kingdom and they were anything but righteous.
As these musical chairs
game players exalt themselves they doom themselves to entrapment into their own
vicious cycle of repayment. One that traps them in this world’s power games and
loses for them any hope for God’s righteous salvation.
I wonder if we too are
trapping ourselves in some self-righteous way. We know Jesus is watching. What
will he discover about us? What will his accusation be against us? Are we
seeking honors, or attention for our deeds? Are we inviting the in-crowd into
our lives so we will be seen with the popular kids?
Jesus will have none
of this. He has a completely different way for us to consider being righteous.
Being righteous in his eyes that is. For him, we should be inviting into our
lives the poor. The poor in fact and in spirit. The homeless. Homeless in
station and place. Those down and out who have lost their way. Those with no
political status. Folks not like us, in color or creed, gender or gender
orientation, age or agelessness. Folks with a need for a safe place, like those
living out their sense of ministry on our campus
Are these the groups
Jesus would have us be involved with? Are these the sort of people who are to
become our friendship groups? Well, apparently so!
If we insist on living
the banquet life, we lose any real gain. If on the other hand we live in
humility, living a life of service to others without thoughts of personal gain
or comfort or possible return on our investment, then we will be rewarded as a
righteous one.
Humility seems so
counterintuitive to our modern life. It is certainly the opposite of pride.
Augustine considered pride the most basic sin, which he felt stood at the root
of the fall.
Many theologians see
pride as the root of all sin. By pride they mean a defiant rejection of
limitations and humanities proper place and, thus, our self-elevation into the
divine.
In the theology of
Saint Paul, pride is the opposite of faith, since faith is the acknowledgment
that one’s own life is a fragile gift. There is, therefore, no basis for
boasting before God.
We easily stand
convicted, like those guests at dinner, based upon how we live our lives. For
how we live our lives is what God finally sees. If our faith lies in something
or someone, if our trust is grounded in something or someone, if our life is
evident in something or someone, and that something or someone is not God, we
may be asked to make room and move to the lowest place.
Christianity is a faith that, inspired by the
example of Jesus Christ, cultivates dependency and admission of need for a
higher place. The Christian life is training in the art of dependency. Dependency
on God’s grace. Dependency on that grace that brought a human, Jesus, so we
might understand how we are to live as children of God.
This is the faithful
nature, our dependency on him, that Jesus wants to see from us when he watches
us. This is the way a child of God is that first day of school. For then we can
answer God’s twenty questions in a way that is pleasing to God. In a way that
glorifies God.
It is true, we are all
beginners as followers of Jesus Christ. Every day we begin anew with our faith,
learning with the newest newcomer, being led like the youngest child, being
surprised every time by God’s grace, begging for God’s mercy and receiving it.
Martin Luther was
right to say, “We are all beggars.” He was right because standing in the dark
we are all begging for the light of Jesus Christ.
Before that light will
shine, we must step out of our dark world and embrace those whom God has sent
for us to serve. We must reveal our true self to the holy one who has cast his
eye in our direction as we think of others before we think of self.
Where seeing our
humble faithfulness Jesus will gift us with his eternal love saying, “Well done
my faithful servant, well done. Please, move up higher. Here, sit right here,
next to me.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit, one God, now and forever, Amen. 090113.gpc
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