Here’s the sermon I preached today at St. George’s in West Asheville. Feel free to compare the audio to the original script and commend on the inconsistencies.
New Year’s Day this year was grey and gloomy, always threatening rain. That doesn’t do much to distinguish New Year’s Day from most of the other days this year, with the possible exception of several from this last week. Maybe it is true that New Year’s Day is a harbinger of things to come for the year, but since I was starting the day in a McDonald’s, I hoped that this would not become the Year of the Egg and Cheese Biscuit. There’s just not much to recommend most fast food joints to a vegetarian like me, but McDonald’s was where Anthony wanted to go and he was calling the plays.
Anthony was not celebrating the New Year so much as he was celebrating the fact that his monthly disability payment had been deposited in his bank account. In his words, “his money clicked.” Anthony wanted to eat before he bought some jeans and a new pair of shoes. It had been several days since he had enjoyed a hot meal. It may have been a few days since he enjoyed any meal at all. I was feeling pretty good about myself and my willingness to give a friend a ride.
Then the stuffed animals came out. First there was a little bunny. Then there was a small animal from some species that I could not recognize. Both of them were slick and grey from constant handling. Anthony spoke a few words of comfort to one and then the other. He handled them as gently as new-born chicks, placing them at the head of the table. Then he got up to get another biscuit. I was seated, facing the door, in a McDonald’s, where I do not eat, with two stuffed animals who occupied the place of honor above me. I was not quite sure what I would do if anyone I knew walked in just then.
And let’s be clear, it was not the reality of the situation which concerned me (although I was starting to have my doubts). It was the appearance of my surroundings that made me anxious. I want people to believe that I am the type of person who sits in an independently owned coffee shop with a locally-sourced baked good and shade grown coffee, tweeting witty things on my cell phone. I do not want people to think that I am a fast-food junkie who talks to inanimate objects. I am intent on keeping up appearances, as they say.
As such a person, I can totally relate to the Pharisees in today’s gospel. There’s no doubt that, by the time of this story, Jesus had a bit of a reputation. This would have made an invitation to celebrate the sabbath with him momentous if not prestigious. A dinner hosted by one of the Pharisee’s own leaders was probably a highlight of the social season. I imagine that every person who walked into that room immediately started to compare their popularity and social status with every other person in the room. The politics of who sits where are probably not more complex in the cafeteria of Asheville Middle School.
All of which seems to strike Jesus as quite entertaining. Watching this play out, he makes a suggestion which probably sounds awkward: take the least honored place. In middle school cafeteria language, he’s telling us to go sit with the nerds. And he’s not suggesting that we just do this just, on some random Tuesday. He’s suggesting that we do this on the days when everyone is watching. Anyone who has gotten married — unless you eloped — knows that the wedding day is not really about you. Regardless of what TV shows like “Bridezilla” or “Say Yes to the Dress” might lead you to believe, weddings are about all of us coming together in a gathering of community. Jesus offers us the opportunity to be lifted up in front of all those folks if we take the tremendous risk of humbling ourselves first.
But he doesn’t stop there. Jesus offers us the even more radical opportunity to be free. Free from the anxiety of losing our place at the banquet table. We may view our invitation to the wedding as a right, not a privilege or accident of our birth. Jesus offers us a different view.
There are people outside who might never be received in polite society. The Pharisees who are eating with Jesus may not be aware of their privilege compared to the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame. I’m willing to bet that any of those folks could give the Pharisees a pretty articulate picture of the advantages of being an upper middle class Jew in ancient Jerusalem.
Perhaps Jesus encourages the Pharisees, and us, to share our meals with people who cannot repay us because he knows we will receive something even more valuable: perspective. Perspective on our privileges and the work we put in to protecting those privileges. This perspective is a gift because without it we may never be free of the burden of keeping up appearances. And it is staggering to me to think of how much energy our society consumes in the effort to maintain the veneer of respectability.
At Christ School, there is an old story of a woman who came to visit the campus in the late 1940s or early 50s. As she arrived, she saw a man in a pair of coveralls laying a brick sidewalk. She stopped to ask him, rather curtly, for directions to the Headmaster’s office. The woman darted off before the bricklayer could tell her that “Mr. Dave” as the headmaster was called, was not in his office just then. When she got to the office, the woman was given a seat to wait in. After a minute, the secretary said, “Oh, I see Mr. Dave coming now.” Looking at the man in the doorway, wearing coveralls and wiping mortar from his hands, the visitor snapped, “Yes, I’ve talked to him. I want to see the Headmaster.” David Harris said, “That’s me. Please step into my office.”
The brick pathways and landscaped terraces that beautify Christ School are enduring gifts that Mr. Dave made to that community. Had he seen himself as his visitor expected to see him, set apart in a cavernous office behind some massive oak desk, neither David Harris nor Christ School would have experienced his full range of talents. Both he and the school would have been less for it, because when we can’t give expression to our talents, we can’t experience the person God created us to be.
Is there something keeping you from putting on a pair of coveralls, or dance shoes, or painter’s smock, or carpenter’s belt? Do you have a gift with which you were created? Have you, for whatever reason, taken practicing that talent off the table? Maybe Jesus is calling you to sit at a new table.
This getting up, this changing of perspective, is an act of faith which makes perfect sense to me. New voices, new experiences, and new relationships could, I imagine, lead to new insights. I’m fine with this theory. My problem is putting it into practice. It makes no sense that I would say that all things are created through Christ but still think that because I experienced Christ here, He is not also over there. But I do. Again and again, I have to be reminded that Jesus said, “I will never leave you….”
What would our lives be like if we accepted the whole truth of this statement? What if, instead of striving to define and defend our faith, we did as Catholic theologian James Allison suggests and just relaxed? As I sat in that booth in McDonalds and waited with increasing anxiety for some respectable person to walk through the door, I could have easily disrespected the angels who were entertaining me. I don’t know if angels can take the form of velveteen rabbits, but God’s grace can certainly occupy a man who spends many of his days alone on the streets. You’d think that someone like Anthony, with so little to call his own, might try to hold on to that grace like a squirrel hoarding acorns.
But somehow Anthony got a memo I missed. He knows that, unlike acorns, God’s gifts are not limited commodities. For a person who struggles to form normal, human relationships, a stuffed animal may be just the thing to pour love into. Anthony knows that his experience of love is increased, not diminished, when he shares it. He also knows that talking to a plush bunny definitely makes you look crazy, but the veneer of respectability has long since been stripped from Anthony. What remains is the love of Christ.
That’s the promise in today’s epistle. God’s love is the same today as it was yesterday and will be tomorrow. God’s gifts will continue in abundance. Are you willing to do something crazy with them? Are you willing to take them places where the cool kids fear to tread?
Faith itself is a gift. Not everybody who goes to church has received the gift of faith because there are all other sorts of reasons to go. There are churches that have made big business out of providing for every conceivable social and physical need of the people who attend. There are churches which have such visibility in the community that membership conveys high status. And there are places like St. George’s, where faithfulness is a gift which you bring to this altar each week. In the words of Paul, this sacrifice is pleasing to God. Faith is not diminished by sacrifice. In fact, your faithful witness sends hope and love out into a weary world.
So let mutual love continue. In McDonald’s and in Malaprop’s, let mutual love continue. In coffee hour and in barbecue sale, let mutual love continue. In outreach and in music ministry, let mutual love continue. In the life of this parish and in our lives in the world, let mutual love continue. Amen.