Day 1357 - No shirt, no shoes, no meal

A sermon shared with Northside Presbyterian Church, August 28, 2016, Chattanooga, TN

OT reading:  Proverbs 25: 6-7

NT reading: Luke 14:1, 7-14

Why would I choose such a title for a reflection upon a scripture passage concerning the fellowship of the common table? As I recall that sign became widespread on the door or front window of diners, restaurants, drug stores and other places of business in the 60’s and 70’s. It was a response to the informal ways of many youth of the time. Besides offending their sensibilities, many people assumed a shirtless and/or shoeless youth who also perhaps had long hair was a trouble maker or worse, a hippie that did not merit a welcome. Quite simply, the title captures our passage in Luke by counter-example.

These verses really are connected to last Sunday’s reading, Luke 13:10-17. As you may recall, that passage was about a leader of the synagogue who accused Jesus of violating the Law by healing a woman suffering an 18 year-long crippling illness, an illness at the time considered caused by an evil spirit or sin. On its face it was about working on the sabbath, but Jesus said it was about freeing someone from illness or sin. The essence of that teaching is to read scripture not literally but with discernment, prayer and humility to listen for the Holy Spirit to guide our decisions about doing the right thing.

Today we find ourselves with Jesus on the Sabbath at the home of the chief Pharisee, who may be the one who challenged Jesus about working on the sabbath last week. (see verses 2-6). The Pharisee invites Jesus to a common meal, maybe for an illicit purpose. Verse 1 says, “On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.”

You’ve all read the new testament and know that meals are a very common and central event – the Lord’s Supper and feeding the 5,000 are two examples. Reviewing the nature of the common meal in Jewish life in Ancient Palestine helps us here.

When Job lamented his unmerited woes in Job 31:16-17, he asked, “(Have) I have withheld anything that the poor desired, or have caused the eyes of the widow to fail, or have eaten my morsel alone” - in other words, has he shirked his obligation to provide the common meal.

People often believed guests were sent by God. Do you recall the occasion when Sari laughed in reaction to the words of the three divine visitors to Abraham (Gen. 18). Hospitality and the common meal can be a sacred duty as well as the social event that holds together the fabric of religious and family life.

The attitude towards meals is not limited to Jews but was and is widespread in Palestine.  Etiquette requires the hospitality of eating the common meal.

Eating alone was disliked and even wrong as Job noted. After a meal has been prepared an Arab has been heard to call out an invitation to all three times from a high spot in the neighborhood to come and partake of the meal.

You might be surprised at how this value of the common table persists in Palestinian life today. A modern Palestinian described the value of the ancient practice of the common table this way, quite closely reflecting the circumstances of Jesus’ time.

“The Palestinians' political experience and reality have served to further strengthen family ties. With no real government-sponsored social safety-net, and with the lack of a functioning economy or enough independent government institutions or even enough banks to provide home or student loans, Palestinians have to rely on family and neighbors to fill the gaps. The family serves as the primary source of identity and extended families live together in compounds or villas divided into apartments for all male sons and their families. Palestinians place a high premium on generosity and hospitality, as does Arab culture in general. Palestinian homes are always ready to receive an unannounced guest with food, sweets and Arabic or Turkish coffee. Visits with family and neighbors are commonplace, often occurring once or twice a week.”

The invitation to a meal is an honor in itself. It is a bonding experience of collegiality in the face of the oppression of the world. The shared meal strengthens the fabric of social structure of religious communities, even if in this case it may have been intended to strengthen the Pharisee’s social group and weaken that of Jesus.

In this common meal Jesus observes the invited guests prideful jockeying for the better seat. Jesus is moved to share a parable dealing first with the guests, then the host.

He says when you are invited to a common meal, say a wedding feast (today, a business luncheon or party for a friend) don’t angle for the seats near the guest speaker or distinguished guest because you may end up having your pride injured by being asked to move to the end of the line. If you go to the end of the line first, you may experience the host honoring you by asking you to move up to a seat beside the principal guest.

But don’t you think Jesus is offering common sense? Who wants to go into a crowd and be embarrassed by being asked to move down a seat or two or more, so someone can be seated in your place and reflect a higher esteem than you are held?

Remember parables use a common sense to make a point beyond common sense understanding. Jesus is talk about something more important than seating arrangements. He appeals not to the common sense of the invited guests to avoid pride and an injured ego, but to deny pride and embrace humility. Jesus concludes, “ ¹¹ For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” The meal is a vehicle for a message about pride and humility.

Jesus emphasized this by continuing to address the behavior and attitude of the host. He takes the host to task for inviting the rich and famous who may offer the host a benefit either financially or by raising personal stature. “Don’t invite the people who might repay you in kind or otherwise, rather invite those who have no chance of paying you.  Why?  Because your compassion will be repaid in the resurrection of the righteous. They will be exalted.

Reflection:

 Think about what Jesus has done. He has taken a situation where people are using the common meal not to build the social fabric but to gain personal reward, the attendees by rubbing shoulders with the rich and powerful, the host by encumbering the guests with an obligation to respond in kind.

The force of this parable about the common meal would not be lost in the times of this story.  What about the common meal strengthens social and religious cohesion?  I suggest it is the humility required in both invited attendees and host to acknowledge the solidarity and grace that comes from the attitude, “These are the people with whom I share a common value.” When Jesus says “the people” he means everyone.

This gives me pause. Have we lost something of great value by letting go of the old “pot luck” dinners at church and at homes of relatives? I long for the old family get-togethers at Easter and Christmas when I caught up with the stories of cousins, aunts and uncles, great aunts and great uncles. Those meals cemented our place in the family life. Taking the time to cook and bring a favorite dish to a congregational dinner shares hospitality that makes you and the partakers part of the whole congregation. Perhaps we ought to revive this lost practice?  I can hear the thoughts why it won’t work; however, as next week’s lesson from Luke tells us we have to give up something to get something.

As usual, Jesus turns an ordinary event, a meal, into a lesson not about rules for conduct at meals and who to invite, but about ways of living the humble life as a follower of Jesus. Jesus reminds us of his earlier teachings on pride and humility. Do you remember the one about drinking from his cup, of having to serve to be served?

But maybe focusing on the common meal is a good place to put humility into practice. Often we go to a reception looking for the table with a place card holding our name, or the name of the group we represent. The usual reason for the place card is our normal action to look for the best seat. Do we try to arrive at important social gatherings early, looking for a good seat? Maybe not all the time, but I’m willing to think sometimes we take more pride in the invitation and being counted among friends of the host.

Remember Jesus does not let the host off the hook. Who do we invite to our get-togethers?...Friends, people who might give us an edge in business or relationships either as customers or employees or is it collegiality? Do we invite people we like to cement our social group, rather than people of the broader community for whom the good news was sent?

Jesus is pretty clear about embracing an two-way attitude of humility towards the world. It applies to those who are invited and to the ones who invite.

But it still seems easier to keep the focus on the concrete meal than the implications of his declaration in John’s gospel, “I am the bread of life…” Or, the caution to his disciples of the narrow road and need for intentional humility when we feel the urge to let pride prevail. We don’t think about him chiding James and John wanting to celebrate sitting next to the King, but asking, “Are you prepared to drink from my cup?” (Mk 10)

Perhaps a more concrete example captures the parable. How often do we exercise the pride of self-centered thinking when we pull into a parking lot taking the closest space to the entrance of the store? What happens when an elderly person comes in that doesn’t have handicap plates but has great difficulty walking from the back of the lot to the entry of the store? How often on the road do we speed up when someone tries to pass us to slip into the lane ahead of us? Do we shake our fist, utter an expletive, or wave them in?

Among a crowd of strangers do we look for and move towards people we know rather than strike up a conversation with someone we don’t know?  

I know in these days we all worry about threats to our personal safety and I don’t advise discarding common sense.  But how often do we walk down the street and pass by someone who looks poor or homeless and worry they may panhandle us so we just walk on by avoiding eye-contact?  Even when we feel safe and comfortable how often do we ignore and avoid acknowledging the people who make us uncomfortable because we instantly judge they are less important than us, or a bother.

My point is pride victimizes us all even when humility ought to carry the day. It is a hard road not do that. It takes a lot of work and practice instinctively to walk half-way across the parking lot of Publix in the rain so someone who needs a closer space gets it. It might mean saying “Hello” to the person we pass on the street knowing we might be asked for money and have to decide how the best way to answer. Making humble acts one’s normal, unthinking action is a hard job that takes a lot of practice.

The real test for all of us succumbing to the Christ-like humility in this parable is do we hang signs that say, “No shirt, no shoes, no meal meaning we don’t want your type around here, go back where you came from?” In other words, the true proof of a humble person is whether we work every day to be sure humility is written in our heart.

Amen.

Day 1350 - We Don't Do That Around Here

It's been quite the hiatus with vacation and a lot of sudden demands on me, but here we are again. This is an edited version of a two-part sermon given at Northside Presbyterian Church, Chattanooga, TN, August 21, 2016. Part 2 will appear next week.

This passage is not about breaking the rules, it is about the question, “What is the right thing to do?” Is it to read scripture and say, “We don’t do that around here” or say, “This is my act of praise and worship of God?”

The leader of the synagogue takes issue with Jesus doing this work of healing. “Jesus, you have six days of the week to cure this woman. You should respect the sanctity of the Sabbath.” Isn’t he saying, “We don’t do that around here.”

But biblical experts are puzzled by this story.  Some see symbolism in the woman, the daughter of Abraham, who had been crippled for 18 years. Is she a stand-in for the people of Israel, or does she symbolize the Church opposed to the religious leader who is a stand-in for the “fig tree” or the Jerusalem Temple? Experts don’t seem to see the forest for the trees.

Luke gives us a straightforward story which means something is probably hidden. Jesus is “minding his own business” worshipping in the synagogue on a Sabbath when a woman burdened by sin appears. (In those times Illness and affliction were thought marks of an evil spirit or sin.) She did not ask for relief, there was no “Please heal me.” Jesus just decided to release her from the bondage of her affliction. “Woman you are set free of this ailment,” a simple, yet dramatic act of grace by Jesus.

All of the pundits agree this is a story about the healing grace of God for a woman who was ill for a long time. They recognize the conflict between Jesus and the leader of the synagogue overlook the deeper and important matter about the Law that the conflict between religious leader and Jesus in this story touches.

Jesus characteristically turned events with obviously plain meaning into something quite contradictory to reveal a deeper truth. Jesus used riddles, parables, and everyday encounters of life to reverse our common-sense way of thinking. After all, he said following him requires living a life contradictory to the world’s expectation.

Jesus said, “If you want to lead you must be a servant.” The sayings of the Sermon on the Mount are reversals of ordinary thinking. And we have the greatest reversal: “If you want to live you must die…” He died to achieve that reversal, the defeat of death in his resurrection.

Jesus said he did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. But on almost every occasion where the religious establishment interpreted the Law, Jesus turned that interpretation on its head, our present case being a good example.

Jesus followed the tradition of Isaiah and Jeremiah that the Law is not found in a scroll or stone tablets, but in one’s heart. It is revealed not by words, but by one’s action towards one’s brothers and sisters.

Look deeper into this story. Put aside all the issues of plots by the authorities against Jesus, and our tendency to view Jews in a lesser light. We, especially those among us who put the Ten commandments in their front yard today, have to admit that the Law given in Deuteronomy 5:13, says, “Six days you shall labor and do all your work.”  This justifies the upbraiding of Jesus by the religious leader, “We don’t do that around here,” that is, “work on the Sabbath” because the Scriptures tell us we shouldn’t. The Sabbath is the day set aside for honoring the Lord our creator. 

Can we fault this priest for defending the law? Would this woman who by the way, never asked for help, begrudge Jesus waiting one day to be healed after 18 years of suffering, in order to follow the Law?

How many times have you heard someone say, “We don’t do that around here?” I don’t know about you but I heard it a lot growing up. My guess is most of you, even our little children whom we just talked to, have heard the statement at home or at school.

I heard it from parents, pastors, school teachers, and elected leaders until it wore quite thin. When it was used to press for action or inaction in a situation that sounded contradictory to anyone who took Christian action seriously, it sounded like hypocrisy.

Frankly I experienced it most painfully in arguments within the Church about African-Americans and desegregation.  The best examples are the pastors and politicians with vested interest in the status quo who soundly criticized Martin Luther King, Jr. for his non-violent tactics in the civil rights movement. They said he was pushing too hard, too fast, and rocking the boat when it wasn’t the right time to do it. Dr. King wrote a refutation to them called Letter from a Birmingham Jail while he cooled his heels there.

I am not about to use this opportunity to bludgeon us about past mistakes on desegregation or racism, or poke at people for their hypocrisy, though I do suggest these are still serious issues for all of us.

The contradiction in Luke’s story between the religious leader and the act of Jesus is too obvious to miss. It is between “the right thing to do” and “We don’t do that around here.” We ought to consider the story to be a primer on deciding what is the right thing to do when conventional wisdom tells us to do something different.

Because it is so obvious, like a parable, we must be missing the real message.

There are certainly tumultuous and threatening times when the desire to preserve stability (The “we don’t do that around here” position) seems the right thing to do.

My problem with too much reliance on stability is that it easily blinds us to looking carefully for the right answer in times when the status quo has lost its constructive nature or suborns injustice.

What do we do when the contradiction between acting one way or the other isn’t so obvious and clear cut? The message tightly woven into this story is that scripture, or the Law, can only guide you properly when you take the effort to understand its meaning. Remarkably, Jesus is talking about a core principle of Reformed theology, the basis of our Presbyterian perspective called discernment.

This is what I mean. The early Christian believers were mostly illiterate, Dr. Rader says the literacy rate was only about 1%. Being illiterate doesn't mean being ignorant or unfaithful. Most Christians had to rely upon their religious leaders to explain the essence of scripture, knowledge of the life of Jesus and the good news that is the basis of a righteous life doing the right thing.

This early reliance and trust in ruling elders was justified. The elders either knew Jesus first hand, or were the next generation of believers taught by those who heard and were taught by Jesus. These “elders” or “bishops” were the only source for supportive interpretation and became the foundation of the universal Catholic Church.

Over time that reliance and trust in others’ interpretation of scripture encouraged a rigid and authoritative mentality that formed the beginning of schisms in the Church over dogma. What began as a way to choose the right actions based on scripture became an end in its self.

1500 years later the printed word became available and it changed the world. Literacy improved rapidly as texts became more widespread. A natural desire for the literate Christian is to read Scripture and compare what is written to what it is observed in the actions of religious leaders.

That is how Martin Luther launched the Reformation. He read scripture and could not find in it justification for some of the actions of the Church. Action inspired by scripture seemed to contradict the practice of his pastoral leaders. He faced an unwanted predicament. He had to ask, “Why do we do that around here?” and, “What is the right thing to do?”

He concluded that if Scripture alone is authoritative even when life and scripture resist reconciliation to a plain understanding, one must find meaning through prayerful meditation and illumination of other relevant scripture. Today we call this process by the fancy words, “discernment of action guided by conscience and the Holy Spirit.”

Martin Luther had a humble desire to use scripture as a guide to righteous life. What he did was make all Reformed believers today heirs to a troubling and difficult reality. We deny the authority of another human to provide us with absolute interpretation of scripture. We rely instead upon conscience and the Holy Spirit.

This is a profound and unsettling predicament often lost on us. The entire Protestant Reformation rests on the premise that God alone inspires scripture and we alone must interpret its meaning by reading perhaps large sections of related scripture with prayerful and humble discernment guided by the Holy Spirit.

We resist admitting the reality that a Protestant protests literal absolutes of scripture made by other humans.  Protestants read scripture as a relative activity ruled by one’s discernment revealed by the Holy Spirit.

We often compromise saying our judgment must be mediated by the judgment of our fellow believers. However, if Martin Luther King, Junior had relied upon the judgment of others, he would have gone straight home when he got out of that Birmingham jail and stopped his work. Ultimately the decision about the right action falls upon us. In the end, we cannot rely upon another human to interpret scripture for us.

I’m not preaching to you with some holier-than-thou attitude. I am as daunted by this predicament as any of you. Do you see the irony in my words, you can’t rely on me?

Jesus in Luke’s story is advocating a Reformed approach to scripture. He tells the people you can’t rely on the priest to tell you the right thing to do. He tells the priests that it is not the words of the Law that matter, it is the spirit of the Law written in one’s heart that matters. He asks, “Is relief of human misery work or an act of worship?” This is the connection to the Hebrews passage, our life should be an experience of worship of God in verse 28: “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe.”

In the early and mid 20^th Century Henry Richard Neibhur, the brother of the more famous Reinhold Neibhur, surveyed the wreckage of hope for the “Christian Century” after WWI, the threat to Christianity and brutality of WWII, the evolution of industrial secular society, and the growing denominationalism in America. (Denominationalism means a preoccupation and worship of a particular dogma or creed, not of the essential tenets of Christianity itself. It means one is more interested in being identified as a Presbyterian, or Methodist, or Baptist, than as a Christian. On page 15 of the previous link, Neibhur calls denominationalism the greatest moral failure of Christianity.) To him every change in the early Twentieth Century presented a personal dilemma over “doing the right thing.”

He realized the contradiction of the Reformation inspired a desire to be faithful but left finding a clear and clean path to faithfulness to each of us. The Reformation freed us from human spiritual leadership and united us in divine leadership guided by revelation of the Holy Spirit.

Henry Neibhur poignantly described Reformed Christianity as a ship sailing on a storm-tossed sea, imperiled at every turn by the winds of spiritual disaster, a storm-tossed world of war, evil, injustice and threat to life and freedom. We sail this ship from port to port in this storm looking for a safe harbor to drop anchor and do the right thing. The tragedy of casting off reliance on other human authority is that we are forever bound to sail upon the stormy sea seeking to find and follow the right path knowing our conscience guided by scripture and the Holy Spirit is the only solid ground. The penitent believer sails into a very tortured, perfect storm where there are no easy answers. Every circumstance is an opportunity to shine with careful thought and prayer. 

In Luke’s story, let’s give the priest the benefit of the doubt. Jesus knew that the religious leader of the synagogue was trying to defend faith in the Law as he read it on the scroll, and unfortunately that his fastidious approach to the letter of the Law blinded him to the obvious reality of scripture and of Jesus.

Perhaps Jesus knew that the religious leaders could not open their eyes to their preoccupation with the literal status quo and see the grace and mercy found in the Law without Jesus pointing out the hypocrisy in being willing to lead his animals to water on the Sabbath while criticizing others for not having a worshipful focus on God.

Again, Jesus achieved quite the reversal by telling this leader that the Law is supreme but it is not the words that matter, it is the spirit that moves one to action. The law is not a concrete and immutable object, rather it is a timeless, dynamic guidepost for the discerning believer to do the right thing.

 “We don’t do that around here.” Can you see that Jesus has reversed this imperative back upon the religious leader. “We don’t do that way anymore” now means “We don’t rely on a rigid, literal interpretation of the Law.”

“We don’t do that around here.” My friends I find it amazing that Jesus defined the heart of Reformed Christianity right here in the Gospel in his last worship in a synagogue. Doing the right thing depends upon personal discernment and the Holy Spirit of the meaning of scripture.

Before we get too proud about that affirmation, what about situations that are shades of grey and not so obvious? Jesus says we walk a hard road and tells us to enter by the narrow gate. If we embrace humility and listen to the Holy Spirit, we will find the path to good decisions well marked. To lead we must serve. That means giving up pride and embracing humility. If the good news tells us anything, it is that only our humility to rely upon scripture and the Holy Spirit can guide our broken human perceptions of the world towards doing the right thing.

We should heed Jesus’ lesson to the religious leader, “We reveal the Law written in our heart.”  Amen.