14th Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 14:1, 7-14
August 29, 2010
A Rude Guest
Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa
In this country, and especially in this part of the country, we are all small “d” democrats. Deep down we are convinced that all of us have pretty much the same the rights and the same responsibilities. Nobody should get a free ride. Nobody should get stuck with anyone else’s load. We may earn different amounts of money, but we still think that we are social equals. As Garrison Keillor puts it, “All the women are strong. All the men are good looking. And all the children are above average.” Or, as Keillor’s mother used to tell him, “Just remember, you’re nobody special.”
Maybe that’s why calling ourselves middle class has little to do with how much money we make. According to an ABC poll taken last March, about 45% of all Americans call themselves middle class. What catches my eye is that 40% of those whose household income is $25,000 or less and 38% of those whose household income is $100,000 or more still call themselves middle class.[1]
Part of our national myth is that we left class behind when we left the “Old World.” The “New World” is supposed to be free of all that baggage.
Maybe that’s why airports really tick me off. When I have to travel by air I get to the airport early, because I have to check in and get through security. I’ll be standing in line schlepping my bags along, maybe commiserating with my fellow detainees, when someone waltzes past all of us, headed to the first class check-in. Of course there is no line there. They get the perky ticket agent and a cheery greeting.
(Just who do they think they are? Do they think they’re someone special? Didn’t they go to kindergarten? Didn’t they learn that it’s wrong to cut in line?)
Anyway, checked in and through security, I’m into the gate area with an hour or more to kill before boarding begins. It would be nice to find some quiet place and relax for a little while. I walk past several of places, all sealed off from hoi polloi like me by opaque doors with signs that say, “Executive Lounge” or “Admiral’s Club” and below the name in smaller print, “members only.”
So I make my way to the gate area and stake out a seat, preferably in a row that doesn’t have someone sleeping on the floor or across three chairs.
Then my plane boards: people in wheelchairs first (well, that’s good) and then people in first class. Hey! When they do finally get around to calling my group I shuffle onto the plane.
Now, it’s not enough that we coach folks have to endure what we have to endure. Our seats are narrower even though our backsides are not. There is more leg room in the back seat of a crew cab pickup truck than there is in coach, while the folks in first class have room to stretch. I pay five dollars for a miniature bag of stale peanuts, while the people in first class are getting a complimentary free meal. I can rent a pillow; it’s free up there. The aisles are wider up there, but I’m not allowed to stroll those aisles. I’m not even allowed to pee up there even if there is no line. There will surely be a line in coach.
It’s not bad enough that there are these enormous differences between two sets of flying experiences, but I have to be paraded through the first class section on the way to my seat. I have to see how the other ten percent lives. They’re already breaking out the complimentary champagne by the time I’m coming through, drinking a toast and thanking God their lives are not like mine. If the Revolution ever happens in this country it will start in an airport.
I’ve indulged in this little rant, not because I need to blow off steam, although I do feel better, but because it’s what popped into my head when I read the first part of this morning’s lesson from Luke. I read about people choosing their places at a banquet and what would happen if someone chose a place at the banquet that didn’t match their place in their social world. Those who picked a place that held more honor than they deserved would be shamed and humiliated. Those who picked a place that held less would be “bumped up.” It would be like somebody’s second cousin whom no one likes who only got invited to the wedding because there was another second cousin who was popular and there was no way to invite the popular second cousin without inviting the other and the unpopular second cousin helped herself to a seat at the bride and groom’s table. Or if the maid of honor sat in back corner with the uncle who picks his nose and the aunt who passes out Bible tracts everywhere she goes after she's had three glasses of champagne.
But then I thought, why is Jesus saying this? Everyone already knows this implicitly. People sort themselves out. In a culture governed by status, everyone does this automatically. They don’t need coaching from Jesus or anyone else.
In fact, all Jesus has succeeded in doing is calling attention to what everyone already knows. He has said out loud what “goes without saying.” He has made the invisible unavoidably visible. He has forced everyone to become conscious of the unconscious rules by which they have been living. He has made explicit what had been implicit.
This is not how you make friends. When someone uncovers a pattern that I have been hiding from myself, I never react by gushing, “Oh, thank you for pointing that out to me!” If I am in therapy and I’m paying a therapist to do this, I will react with something along the lines of “Oh, crap!” Otherwise, I will react with, “How dare they?!”
A dinner table in Jesus’ day, like an airport terminal in ours, is a social map. It charts social reality. It reveals the relationships and the dynamics of society. These social maps work unconsciously and only unconsciously. As soon as we become aware of them they cease to work. The reason for that is simple: once we know a map is a map, we also know that it can be redrawn.
And redrawing the social map is precisely what Jesus proceeds to do next. The seating chart at a banquet is about social status. The practice of hosting dinners is about an economy of social status; it’s about the circulation of social status. I invite you to dinner and I gain a little status. You invite me in return and you get it back. We invite each other back and forth and status circulates. Of course, we’re not the only ones doing this and we’re not just trading it back and forth. Lots of people are doing this with lots of other people and status is moving here and there and all over the place and, as it does, it tends to accumulate. There are long-term winners and long-term losers in the status game. After a while there will be people at the top, like the Padres and the Yankees, and people at the bottom, like the Orioles, the Pirates and, of course, my team, the Cubs.
Jesus proposes to put an end to the status game, an end to the status economy. When you give a dinner, give it for people who can’t play the game. Status stops circulating. Game over.
Status that stops circulating is something else. I’m not sure just what, but it isn’t status any more. You can’t have status if you’re not playing the game, you kind of step outside it.
So, here’s a summary of what Jesus did. First, he told people that the game that they were playing is a game. Second, he reminded his hearers that people were getting hurt. There is a loser for every winner. Any game in which someone has to get hurt for the game to go on is a stupid game and people shouldn’t play it. And then he invited people to bring the game to a halt by refusing to follow the rules. You know, this is sort of thing that can get a person killed.
That’s part one of the sermon. Now for part two. Don’t worry—part two is shorter!
Part of what it means to be a pastor is to tell you what I see. It’s part of what I ask from you, too: tell me what you see. But it has to start with me.
Saying what I see will always be a work in progress. My seeing and my saying are never final, finished or complete; they are always provisional, incomplete, a work in progress. I know myself well enough to know that I have a tendency to sound more certain than I am. In fact, you can almost take it as a rule about me that, the louder I am, the less sure I am.
So please know that if I venture to say something about what I see, it is in the spirit of humility.
(Good grief, pastor, quit beating around the bush and just tell us, for goodness’ sake!)
So what am I seeing? I see a lot of good things in Decorah. I see a vibrant main street, well, Water Street, but you know what I mean. I see a vital civic life. I see a relationship between the college and the community that is largely—if not entirely—mutually beneficial. We’re enjoying being here. I see lots of good stuff that tells me that we’re going to enjoy living here for a long time to come.
I don’t have Decorah “figured out.” The Norwegian “thing” is clearly important, but I’m not sure of its function in the life of the community. I haven’t figured out what our town might be hiding from itself, nor what its pains and suffering really are.
About First United Methodist Church I can be a little clearer. I see a congregation with a lot of life in it. I see a lot of good people who are doing many really good things. I see a congregation that is at least tolerant and often even welcoming of a great deal theological, political, cultural and other sorts of diversity.
What I don’t see yet is a common sense of who we are, a compelling sense of why we’re here, or a shared passion. Maybe I don’t see it because I’m not looking in the right places or looking hard enough. If that’s the case, then please set me straighten and put me on to it. Maybe I don’t see it because it’s not there, at least like it needs to be to draw us forward in shared life and ministry.
It would be nice if we could just get that from somewhere, read it in a book or order it from Cokesbury. The United Methodist Church tells us that the purpose of the church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. That sounds good, but all that does is push our questions back one step. We are still left with a lot of questions: What is a disciple of Jesus Christ? What should a transformed world look like? How do we go about moving this one in that direction? I’m not sure that there are simple answers to those questions, but at least we have to ask them, ponder them, ruminate on them, let them sink down into our minds and hearts and bones, let those questions shape us.
Who are the people of God and what is their purpose? The Bible doesn’t tell us either. Rather than a systematic answer, what we have here is a portrait gallery. There are a number of pictures of the people of God.
What I’m going to do—deliberately in the next few weeks and less obviously for however long I am allowed to stay here—is to hold these portraits up in front of you and see if you recognize yourself in any of them, if any of them strikes a chord, tugs on your hearts, compels your attention.
This week, for example, we have Jesus as the one who holds up a mirror before his community and shows them things they didn’t necessarily want to see. They are playing hurtful status games. Status makes no difference to him. He calls his followers to live lives that break up the status game and in this way come to live more fully into God’s love.
The portrait that this text offers for us is of a congregation that, while it appreciates the good things that life in Decorah has to offer, is willing to be honest about the hurtful games that people are playing and to strive to live out its life without those games. In this portrait we see ourselves offering God’s good news to all our neighbors who long to experience genuine community. In this portrait we see ourselves throwing out the old seating chart that gives status and takes it away in favor of a very wide circle in which no one has to be hurt for all to gain. In this portrait we see ourselves privileged to taste just a little of God’s dream for all the created order, to dream that dream ourselves and to share it with all the world’s dreamers.
©2010, John M. Caldwell. Permission is given by the author to reproduce and distribute the unaltered text of this sermon provided this notice is reproduced in full and provided that this sermon shall not be offered for sale, nor included in any collection or publication that is offered for sale, without the express written permission of the author.
[1] "Poll: America's Middle Class and Economic Concerns - ABC World News - ABC News," http://abcnews.go.com/WN/abc-world-news-poll-us-middle-class-concerns/story?id=10088470.
