Sirach 10.7-18
Psalm 112
Hebrews 13.1-8
Luke 14.1,7-14
 
 

When Karen and I were in Texas this summer visiting my parents, my father gave us a copy of a history of the Wacome family, recently written by a distant cousin. I was somewhat disconcerted by the very first words: “The nuts that have fallen from our tree have been scattered by the winds. This is an attempt to see how big of a forest we have become.” But Karen thinks it’s an accurate characterization.

The story begins with my great-grandparents, Mary and Silas Wacome of Pugwash, Nova Scotia. The history includes the account, based largely on my grandfather’s recollections, of the event that led to the family leaving Canada and coming to the United States. He relates that in 1888 a Scotch-Irish preacher arrived in Pugwash, rented a schoolhouse, and began to preach the gospel. My great-grandmother Mary, an active member of the Presbyterian Church, decided to go hear him.  She walked the mile from her house to the schoolhouse, with an infant in her arms.  When she arrived at the school house the elders of her church were standing at the door, blocking her way. They said “Mrs. Wacome, you’re not going in to hear that man, are you? They have the seats painted red on one side for the blood washed ones and on the other side they have them painted black for sinners. Don’t you go in to hear him!” She answered “I have come a long way and I want to hear what he has to say.” Mary went in, sat down in the back – the seats were not painted as the elders had said – and listened to McEwen preach on “the ruin of man and God’s remedy.” At the close of the meeting, Mr. McEwen stood at the door saying good night and asking each one if they were saved. He shook hands with Mrs. Wacome and asked, “Are you a Christian?” She answered, “Oh, I think so. I’ve joined the Church, I read the Bible, teach a Sunday school class, and give to the good cause. I guess I’m all right.” The only thing he said was “Be sure you haven’t missed Christ” and she left the schoolhouse with these words burning in her soul.

Mary didn’t go back; the persecution was too great. But those words “Be sure you haven’t missed Christ” drove her to the Bible and she came to the place where it said “All our righteousness is filthy rags” She found that she was only a religious sinner without Christ, and became in deep soul trouble but could find no one to tell her how to be saved. One day coming up from the field with a basket of potatoes the scripture came to her mind: “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” She said “What can a little child do? It can’t pray, it can’t teach a Sunday school class, it can’t give to the good cause,” and then that scripture in Isaiah 45 came to her so clearly:  “Look unto me and be saved.”  She said, “A little child can look!” And right there, standing with the basket of potatoes at her feet, she looked away by faith and saw that the Lord Jesus had died for her sins and finished the work and there was nothing for her to do but accept him. And she did.

Eventually, John Knox McEwen returned to Pugwash and my great grandmother was baptized. They went down to the river and cut a hole in the ice. The water looked black and cold but she was so happy that neither one gave her a thought.  My great grandfather Silas was not happy; he was adamantly opposed to Mary’s conversion. According to my grandfather, the day Mary was to be baptized Silas came after her in a rage with a stick of wood and , “as Saul would have slain David to the ground,” so he would have done. But she closed the door just in time to save herself, and the door was split from top to bottom. Eventually, she left Silas, taking the younger children, including my grandfather, and moved to Boston. (This why I am neither Canadian nor, more likely, non-existent.)

The world of my great grandmother, or for that matter of my grandfather, in whose words I have told the story, is foreign to me. That talk of being a sinner and being saved, heard across a century of revivalism, fundamentalism, and evangelicalism, makes me uncomfortable; it sounds either fanatical or insincere. It’s the language of a form of Christian faith and experience that has never been meaningful for me.  And yet, that tale of the church elders blocking the door, trying to save my religious and respectable great grandmother from herself, and the sound of those words “Be sure you haven’t missed Christ!” still speak. They are the same words we can hear in today’s gospel from Luke.

Let’s begin by recognizing that Jesus was not a very good dinner guest. In fact he was rude and annoying. First, he criticizes the other guests. He watches them coming in and finding their places.  Naturally they want the good seats; at least they want their rightful places. Making sure you’re not cheated or put down, that you get what’s coming to you: what could be more natural? Yet Jesus warns that it may well turn out that what you really deserve is drastically less than what you expect.  To pay attention to getting what you deserve is a ticket to humiliation and loss. When you go to the party, Jesus advises, leave at home any thought of getting your just desserts.

Next Jesus turns to his host and informs him that he does not approve of the guest list, the list Jesus himself is on!  What sort of person comes to dinner and sits there telling his host he should have invited an entirely different set of people? And it’s even crazier: don’t invite your friends, your family, people it makes sense to get to know, people that you owe an invite, no, invite people you don’t even know, people that look like pretty unpromising party material. Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. Some party.

The advice Jesus so impolitely offers is especially bad in the eyes of pious first century Jews, and Pharisees like his host especially.  They take very seriously the religious meaning of the shared meal. Eating only with those who are genuine people of God, the righteous, the whole, the clean, wasn’t a mere matter of personal preference. It was a matter of keeping the law with the care those perilous times demanded, and in doing so defending the integrity, and ultimately the existence, of the Israel of God.

In some ways that made sense to the Pharisees, Jesus acts like a prophet; he preaches, works miracles and heals. In other ways he acts the opposite of the way a prophet should act. He doesn’t show intense concern for the Law; he seems to sit quite loose to it. He seems incapable of discriminating among people. He seems oblivious to who’s in and who’s out, to who is the sort of person worthy of socializing with a prophet of God, and who isn’t. Indeed, he seems happy to be with the most despicable people, with tax collectors and prostitutes. He seems to enjoy eating and drinking with these unclean, unrighteous, undeserving people. Instead of fasting, he leads an entourage that’s a moveable feast, an ongoing celebration open to everyone, including those it was most important to keep away from.  He acts as though Israel has already been delivered, as though God has already acted to save his people from the exile of faithlessness and Roman oppression. No wonder the Pharisees are, as Luke says, watching him closely, eager to see if he’s as bad as they’ve heard.

Jesus seizes the opportunity they offer him. It’s as though he tells them. “Yes, you’re right, that’s exactly how I am: I reject the whole idea of some people deserving God’s favor and others not deserving it. You’re right: I eat and drink with sinners. That’s what you should do too. Abandon all that business about you being on the in with God and everybody else being on the outs and rely on nothing but the grace and mercy of God.  Reject the scorekeeping, any keeping track of who deserves what.  Escape your dreary little world of tit for tat, incurring obligations and discharging them, of getting ahead and always being afraid of losing your position. Give up any concern with getting what’s yours. Give upon any concern with giving people what’s theirs.  Let God have what’s his, which is both you and the other guy.  Forget the bookkeeping and just enjoy the party God is throwing. That’s the only way to blessedness, to life, to God’s peace.”

Like the Pharisees whose party Jesus spoiled, my great-grandmother approached that schoolhouse door ready to enumerate her qualifications for God’s favor.  Like them, she heard the good news that those qualifications count for nothing, that nothing counts but the mercy and love of God in Jesus.

Religious folk like those Pharisees, like my great-grandmother, like you and me, must be especially wary of being party poopers, of imagining that we somehow deserve to be invited to the eternal celebration that God has on offer. We need to be just as wary not to be like those Pugwashian Presbyterian elders, convinced we’re doing God’s work when in fact we’re blocking someone’s way to the kingdom of God.
 

When Karen and I were in Berkeley, we sometimes attended St. Gregory’s, a wonderful parish in San Francisco. Recently I read that they have a new communion table there. Instead of the usual  “Do this in remembrance of me,” the new table at St. Gregory’s has inscribed on it the Greek words for the dismissive accusation Jesus’ religious adversaries threw in his face, words that Donald Schell, one of St. Gregory’s priests, translates as “This schmuck welcomes sinners and eats with them.”  On the other side of the table, in English, are these words from Isaac of Nineveh, a 7th-century bishop of the Church in Syria:

To hear these words honestly, and with the seriousness they deserve, is to hear demands for what’s humanly impossible. Think of the horrific murder – five children and two adults – that happened last week in Sioux City. What can it mean to preach and live a gospel of unconditional forgiveness, of complete inclusion, healing and reconciliation in the face of such stunning evil? Nothing that lies within our power or imagining. Truth be told, not even something we much want.  By the measure of this world’s wisdom it is foolishness, sheer impossibility, morally repugnant. But with the God who came eating and drinking with sinners all things are possible. Let us pray that we be sure not to miss Christ; that we will hear his invitation and enter gratefully into the joy of his kingdom.

Amen.
 
 

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