“Life 101”
29 August
2010
Scriptural Basis: Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16, Luke 14:1, 7-14
A little over
twenty years ago, Robert Fulghum, a Unitarian-Universalist minister, writer,
poet, artist, and singer wrote a book entitled “All I Really Need to Know I
Learned in Kindergarten” In this book, Fulghum offered basic advice on how to
live peacefully with others, summarized in this poem:
Share everything. Play
fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say
you're sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash
your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life - learn some and think
some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch out for
traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup:
The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but
we are all like that. Goldfish and
hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they
all die. So do we. And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and
the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.
On this last Saturday of
August, before school begins and vacations are over it seemed to me that it
would be a good idea to take a refresher course in how to live. I know most of us aren’t heading back to the
classroom right after Labor Day, but our calendars are governed by the school
year and the Scriptures for this week pointed in the direction of a course I
call Life 101.
On the surface, just about everything in the readings from
Hebrews and Luke’s gospel are pretty simple and straightforward. The writer of Hebrews tells us to love one
another, be hospitable, remember those who are going through tough times, be
faithful in marriage, don’t be obsessed with money, remember that God is always
with you, follow the examples of your leaders, and remember that Jesus is the
same yesterday and today and forever. Oh, and don’t forget to praise God. Jesus reminds us to be humble, not to take a seat at the head table
until we’re asked to, and when you throw parties don’t invite only the
“beautiful people” in town, the ones who might be able to return the
favor. Make sure you invite the “regular
folks” as well. That doesn’t sound too hard, does it? So why don’t we do it? . Miss
Manners could have written today’s Scriptures. Every bit of advice given in these readings is the same advice our
parents and grandparents have given us in one form or another at least once in
our lives. It pretty much boils down to being a good person. But if we’re completely honest with ourselves
we’re pretty darned inconsistent in following all this simple advice. Why is that? Let’s break some of this down a bit, and then maybe we’ll have a better
handle on why we don’t get with the program a little more often.
The passage from Hebrews opens with “let mutual love
continue.” We’ve spent a lot of time
this summer talking about love. Love is
at the core of our faith. God is love;
Jesus constantly preached about loving one another, about loving our neighbors
as ourselves yet still we struggle with the idea that all of God’s children are
our neighbors, our brothers and sisters whom we are called to love. We’re not called to always like one another,
mind you, but love one another. And the
first step in establishing a loving relationship is trust. I would suggest to you that this is where we
get off the track, almost before we get started. We prefer to “trust but verify,” which is to
say “prove it.” I won’t trust you until
you prove to me that you’re trustworthy. We live in a world that seems to require this approach, which doesn’t
seem unreasonable in an era of internet predators, kidnappings and random acts
of violence. We tell our children not to
talk to strangers out of fear that they’ll be harmed in some way, and many of
us are hesitant to engage with people we don’t know, especially if they don’t
look too good to our discerning eye, but the scripture tells us that by showing
hospitality to strangers we may well be entertaining messengers from God or
maybe Christ himself. On our recent trip
to the Smoky Mountains, we stopped for gas in Ohio and I found myself helping
an older gentleman who had just had hip replacement surgery put gas in his car
and we had an interesting conversation about politics. At the same gas station, I helped a lady who
was unfamiliar with the card reader on the pump and another pleasant chat
ensued. Were these people angels or just
fellow travelers making their way home? I don’t know, but Christianity would
not have spread throughout the known world had it not been for travelers being
shown hospitality, and it seems to me that it’s still a pretty effective way to
spread the word.
What does it mean to hold marriage in honor? Marriage is a covenant of love and
faithfulness, one that God has ordained and modeled for us throughout the
ages. A covenant is more than a
contract. The dictionary definition of a
covenant is a solemn agreement that is binding on all parties or as the mutual
promises of God and his people. And yet
in our time, this covenant seems to be a matter of convenience for some. The gossip columns are full of stories of
celebrity infidelity and the incredible damage that it does to families. The front pages tell us ugly stories of
political figures who break their marriage vows yet they solicit our votes so
they can remain in office. Remember what
I said about trust being the first step in a loving relationship? How can you trust someone to resolve your
urgent concerns or trust them with your tax dollars when they are unable to
honor a covenant made before God and in the presence of witnesses? If we are to
follow Christ, our covenants must be held as sacred, inviolable trusts and
indeed we must expect that others will honor their covenants as well.
And what of the love of money? I know, I’ve hit this one a couple of times
over the last few months but it’s a big deal! Note that I said, and the Scripture says, love of money, not money
itself. Money is a tool, one that we
need to operate in the twenty-first century, but being free from the love of
money enables us to do good and to share. While I reject the “prosperity gospel” being preached by Joel Osteen and
others, I also reject the idea that true faithfulness can be found only in
abject poverty. There is a wide middle
ground here where our needs can be met and a few of our desires can be
satisfied and we are still able to share with those who have little. It’s a question of balance, a question of
trust. Trusting that God will provide
what we need, when we need it, a trust that makes obsessing over money
pointless. That’s why we’re changing the
way we’re going to approach the church’s budget for next year from a
traditional business model where the various committees identify what they need
to fulfill their mission and then present that sum to the congregation to a
faith-based model where you in the congregation will be asked “how thankful are
you to God for what you’ve been given” and you’ll then prayerfully consider
what your gift to the church will be. The
Session will work with what you pledge to meet our fixed obligations like
salaries and utilities and whatever is left over will be used to fund programs
and mission giving. It’s very different
and kind of scary, but it’s also a great opportunity for Belleville
Presbyterian Church to practice what I’m preaching, which is trust in God, for
“the Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?”
As we turn to the gospel, we find Jesus attending a
banquet in the home of a powerful Pharisee. In the Hellenistic world, for banquets to be the setting for
philosophers and teachers to offer their wisdom but for Luke, the image of
Jesus at table was that of one who accepted and received all kinds of people. At a banquet in ancient Palestine, men would
have been reclining on couches with the couch in the center of the room being
the place of honor, those couches closest to the center having been reserved
for the most prominent guests. Should
someone of greater importance arrive late, which would not have been uncommon,
all guests of lesser import would have been invited to rearrange themselves in
order to accommodate the influential latecomer. The word banquet as used in the New Testament is a symbol of the reign
of God, the kingdom of heaven. Jesus
uses this event to highlight the ways in which the realm of God establishes its
own social and spiritual order; trying to presume a place in that order is
unwise and perhaps even unfaithful. How
does God choose his guests in heaven? Jesus
gives us a clue about who should be on our short list when he cautions his host
to not invite friends or brothers or rich neighbors so that you can in turn be
invited to their homes, but instead to invite the poor, the crippled, the lame
and the blind for the host will be blessed because they cannot reciprocate, and
the host will further be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. It would be grossly unfaithful to store up
our blessings and then flaunt them. It
would also be wrong to collect the ways we have blessed others like they are
brownie points that point to our goodness. Jesus wants us to understand that while we all enjoy having the “best
seat in the house,” we might be better off taking a lower seat, in other words
behaving with at least a touch of humility, so that we may be pleasantly
surprised to find that our host, God, will find us worthy and invite us to move
up in the sight of all.
The Lord calls the community of God’s people to bear
witness to the fellowship between God and humanity by establishing fellowship
between human beings. The instructions
given to us in the Scripture readings today are the means by which fellowship
is established and maintained. Love,
hospitality, honor, trust, humility and reaching to the less fortunate brings
us closer to fulfilling the covenant God wishes to enter into with us. It won’t always be easy to fulfill our end of
the bargain, but God is both infinitely faithful and infinitely patient. He’ll be waiting for us at the table.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Spirit. Amen.
