Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons
Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC, September 4, 2016, the sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
Text: Luke 14:1, 7-14
Today’s gospel story teaches us something both about being a guest and about being a host. As a guest, Jesus tells us not to hog the best seat in the house. As a host, we’re taught not to only invite guests who can repay us, but instead to make a point to invite those who can’t. Both of the teachings could be interpreted as little nuggets of worldly wisdom, designed to get you a reward—in the first case, potential public recognition and promotion and in the second, some mystery prize behind resurrection door number one. This interpretation meshes with the worldly economy we all know so well. You know what I mean: quid pro quo, everything has a price, “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” The worldly economy functions according to merit or popularity or material wealth or having insider knowledge or the wielding of brute strength or simply being born into a certain class, race, or caste. It is big on pecking order, seating charts, and keeping score. The questions in this economy are things like: “What do I have to do to get what I want?” “How much will this cost?” “What are the rules?” “Do I have what it takes?” “What have you done for me lately?” “When am I going to get what’s coming to me?” We see echoes of this in conversations about immigrants or the poor—about who pays taxes and who has done what they were supposed to do and who deserves support. We see the worldly economy in this recent business with 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refusing to stand for the national anthem in protest of police brutality and racism—when folks say things like, “he owes this country more respect.” And we can find the deposit of the worldly economy in our own lives when we find ourselves thinking that people owe us—that is, “After all I’ve done… my boss, my spouse, my friend, my child, God owes me…”
We learn the ways of the worldly economy early on and see them playing out on school playgrounds and lunchrooms and in the halls; and we see this worldly economy at work as adults—on the playground of the social scene, inter-office dynamics and in the halls of power. We joust and jockey and dance around these things, trying to figure out how to succeed. We size one another up and measure ourselves against others and weigh our options and our actions and our choices in what can feel like Game of Thrones—you win or you die. As we look around there are all the “stock characters”—the bullies and negotiators, over-achievers and slackers, the shy and the outgoing, the risk-takers and risk-averse, the socially awkward and the poised charmers. But in the end everyone is simply trying to find their way, to sort out how to survive, to live, to connect, be seen to have needs met, to be loved in the messy economy of the world.
Perhaps there are several levels to Jesus’ teaching in today’s Gospel. Perhaps there are some little worldly wisdom nuggets there—about the ways that good manners at a social engagement will end up serving you well, about curbing our entitlement tendencies, about being generous. But it seems there might be something deeper going on here. For me, the place that kept nudging me is the moment when Jesus turns to the host of the dinner party and says “do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid.” Jesus says to invite those who cannot repay you.
Not to expect repayment from people runs counter to pretty much everything in the worldly economy. Jesus is advocating a completely different kind of economy, one that draws us into the realm of God’s Kin-dom. What Jesus suggests is that the Kin-dom of God employs an economy of grace. That is, all is a gift—not a right, not earned, not a hard, cold fact of material being. Everything is a gift from God. You are a child of God; you don’t have to negotiate that, it’s a free gift. You are loved by God; you don’t have to win that prize through skill or wise choice, God’s love is FREE. God’s interest in us is unearned (and whoever heard of unearned interest!?), but no less valuable and powerful. When we open our hearts to receive the gift of God’s love, then we are able to employ the economy of grace, to relate to people and to our lives differently. When we are willing to live as citizens of the Kin-dom, we are freed from the jockeying and the jousting for position. As those who know ourselves already to be loved, we no longer have to live by the rules we learned on the playground. We are freed to simply be ourselves, to respond to an invitation without an expectation that we will be (or should be) the guest of honor or without trying to present ourselves as overly important—but simply to arrive and to share in the gift of the moment. Of course, the world will continue to tug and pull at you, pushing your buttons of self-importance or insecurity (both of which, by the way, tend to make us try to get or keep the best seat in the house); but as you become more aware of and strengthened by God’s love for you, you gain freedom to be and to share yourself and to enjoy others, regardless of where you are on the seating chart. And—I must add—you also gain a sense of your own dignity and self-worth and so are able to recognize when someone is taking advantage or harming you and, therefore, can make a decision to resist.
When we take up residence in the Kin-dom of God and begin to be guided by the economy of grace, we are freed to be generous, we seek to love as God loves and to give as God gives. That means recognizing that the bounty of the feast is not reserved for those who already have enough, those who can sponsor a whole table. Instead, guided by God’s economy of grace, we see that the feast is prepared for all people and there is always enough if we make room for others and share. To love as God loves and to give as God gives means we let go of our tendencies to judge who deserves this and who deserves that. Dorothy Day said, “The Gospel takes away our right forever, to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor.” God doesn’t say to you, “I might give you my love, I might invite you to my banquet table… But…what have you done for me lately?” God invites you and me to this banquet today, just as we are and not because we have done anything to deserve it. God invites those who are trampled and hurt by the worldly economy. God invites those who, in trying to find their way, have gotten lost and fallen into darkness. God invites all those—all of us—to the banquet, to the feast of freely given love, no scorecards kept.
We mistake the ways of God’s Kin-dom when we make it about rules and about keeping score and about earned interest and love averages. Part of the mystery in all this is that, having been saved from these fearful, selfish, life-shrinking, enslaving ways of the worldly economy, the economy of grace brings rewards not only into our lives, but also into the lives of those around us. One of my favorite writers, 14th century Sufi mystic and poet, Hafiz, puts it this way:
Even
After
All this time
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe
Me.”
Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the
Whole
Sky.[i]
As residents with Jesus in the Kin-dom, freely love and give and serve. As residents with Jesus in the Kin-dom, consider the implications of God’s economy of grace on the ways you think about immigration, poverty, taxes, the minimum wage. Do something for someone “just because.” Include the one others leave out. Remember that you are a beloved child of God and therefore free to be yourself without games or apology. Remember that everyone else is a beloved child of God, too. Enter into this great mystery and receive the reward, the joy, of living –really living—in God’s love.
Today as we are invited to the banquet of love, compassion, and mercy, we’re reminded that even after all this time Jesus doesn’t say to us, “You owe me.” Just imagine what happens with a love like that…
[i] Hafiz, “The Sun Never Says,” The Gift: Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master, trans., Daniel Ladinsky, Penguin Compass, 1999, p. 34.
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