There is Always Something Left

Luke 14:7-11

 

        PK’s are never impressed with Church dinners. If you haven’t guessed PK’s are “preacher’s kids”. There are three basic rules associated with being a PK. These rules were passed down from my beloved father and I faithfully passed them down to my children.

        Rule #1 - PK’s will be at church whenever the doors open.

        Rule #2 – A PK is allowed only two responses, “Yes ma’am or No ma’am.”

        Rule #3, and this is the most important rule of all. Never, under any circumstances, go anyplace but the back of the line at a church dinner.

        Once, after missing out on deviled eggs three church dinners in a row, I asked my father why I always had to go to the back of the line. He frowned and said, “Luke 14:11.”

        I knew better than to ask my father what Jesus had said in the 14^th chapter of Luke. He already had me memorizing the names of the books of the Bible and I didn’t want to learn how to spell them. So I looked it up. “All who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

        I knew the meaning of the word humble. When you are PK that is one of the first word you are taught. It lesson comes immediately after uttering  the phrase, “I want.” But I had never heard the word exalted. I was only six and I don’t remember my Second Grade Primer exclaiming, “See Dick run. See Jane be exalted.” To avoid a confrontation I went back to the Book of Luke and read the whole story. 

Jesus and his disciples were invited to a wedding. They evidently arrived early and the place was half full. The disciples picked out what appeared to be the choice seats and sat down. Jesus quickly corrected them. “You might be taking a seat that has been designated for the parents of the bride or groom. Think how embarrassing it would be to be asked to move. Sit in the back. When the host comes and sees us, he can ask us to move forward. Be humble and people will invite you to move forward.”

My initially thought was no one has ever come to the back of the line and offered me a deviled egg. I realized the sayings of Jesus were too complex for my limited in-sights.

Even today, the idea of the first shall be last and the last first seems a bit farfetched. The New York Yankees have won 27 World Championships.  They didn’t accomplish that by being humble. In contrast the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals have not won in 50 years. Isn’t that a long time to wait to be moved up to a better seat? What is Jesus trying to tell us?

In 1949 Howard Thurman wrote Jesus and the Disinherited. It begins, The significance of the religion of Jesus to people who stand with their backs against the wall has always seemed to me to be crucial. Why is it then that Christianity seems impotent to radically deal with injustice?

Thurman offers three truths that haunt the disenfranchised and one solution. The first is fear. Thurman calls it the persistent hound of hell. People in general have their cavalcade of fears. Those at the back of line daily live with fears we never consider. Some folks, just down the road from us, live from one pay check to pay check. That is frightening.  Some folks, just down the road from us, have to decide on spending their pay check on food or medicine. That is frightening. Some folks, just down the road from us, are frightened when they see blinking police lights in their rear view mirror.  That is their reality, not ours.

The second is deception. Thruman claims this is the oldest of all techniques by which the weak protect themselves from the strong. It is a technique used by the Psalmist. The king has done something outrageous. The people are outraged and turn to the poet. If the poet stirs up the people, soldiers will descend on the weak. So the poet prays to God. The Psalm describes the outrage but the words are addressed to a heavenly source. The king can only bow his head. Violence is avoided, but the conditions remain. The strategy is tragic but the weak survive.

The third is hate. Hatred cannot be defined, only described. Some of you remember Pearl Harbor. All of us remember 9/11. As a nation we wanted revenge. We act righteously and in some cases unrighteously. In 1941 Japanese-Americans were interned in prison camps in Arkansas.  In 2001, anyone from the Middle East was eyed suspiciously as an enemy. Even today too often a person is condemned because of the color of their skin. Occasionally preachers like myself will offer sanctimonious words from the pulpit, but those words are forgotten by both the spokesman and the audience before lunch. Hate is so easily justified by righteous indignation because the pronoun in our hateful speech is always “They”.

Jesus was born an outsider. The color of his skin was brown. The Jewish people were dominated by Rome and Rome was to be feared. The Jews used polite deceptions to try to overcome the dominance of this Empire. The Governor of Rome hated his position and he hated the people under his thumb. Jesus was no exception.

Jesus could have grabbed a sword and started a revolt. Some expected it. He could have retreated into the desert and started a prayer group. Many would have eagerly followed. Instead Jesus told stories. Amazingly, so many of those stories revolved around a simple theme. Every person is essentially another person’s neighbor. Jesus said loving that neighbor began by breaking down every barriers. Think of all the stories. The obvious is the Good Samaritan. But it didn’t end there. He told stories about broken relationships, stories about lost sheep, stories about widows, and stories about lepers. No one hung out with the sick, the blind, the gentiles, the Pharisees, the good, the bad the ugly like Jesus.  He sat with friends and enemies, truth tellers and manipulators, rich and poor, good and evil. It didn’t matter. You invite Jesus to lunch, he would show up. He would do anything but go to the head of the table. And why was that? Jesus knew there was always someone there who had been labeled as unworthy, so Jesus offered up his seat to them.

Jesus entered a world which lived by two basic truths. The first was, “An eye for an eye.” The second was similar. “Vengeance is mine.” Jesus rejected both. He claimed the Spirit of God had fallen upon him to preach good news to the poor, the sick, the lame, the broken, the forgotten, and the disinherited.” His motto was, “God loves you, God forgives you, and so do I.” Imagine what the world would be like if fear, deception, and hate could be nullified by love. Maybe the world Jesus longs to see begins when folks like us are willing to head for the back of the line.

To God Be the Glory.   Amen.