Who's First? A Sermon for 12th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 17

 

I've tried to vary the way I start my sermons in the hope that people will listen more and respond. Today, I told a story on myself which was the flattering tale of when I did something unusual in an effort to make things in elementary school gym class fairer. 

Texts: Jeremiah 2:4-13; Luke 14: 1, 7-14

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Do y’all remember in elementary school… in gym class… when the activity of the day was some game involving two teams? 

The first thing that would happen is two kids would get picked by the teacher to be the team captains.

Next… the captains would stand in front of their classmates to select their team members.

This was always awkward.

The games were competitive.

They required the players to have skills or some kind of hand-eye co-ordination.

Possibly jump or throw a ball far.  

There were always those kids in the class who were natural jocks.

And then there were the kids who were not.

Of course… the captains wanted to craft a team that could crush the competition.

So the jocks were always the first ones picked… and once they’d been claimed for one team or another… the captains would hem and haw over which of the remaining ones they’d settle to have on their team.

Those last-to-be picked kids were always the same ones… just like the first-to-be picked were always the same ones.

No matter what scheme a teacher might use… such as needing to alternate your picks based on gender or whatever… things always fell out the same way.

The jocks always knew they’d be the first to go. They were so used to the pecking order and it was really just a case of which of them would be picked first.

They’d puff themselves up… look all tough and strong… and high five each other as they sized up the athletes on the opposing team.

They didn’t even bother to look at the weaker ones. They knew they weren’t going to be a problem.

Well…one day… at my school… this script got flipped.

I was selected to be a team captain.

I was one of those athletic kids… and so I was one who never had to worry about when I was going to be picked.

I was a girl who could throw and catch and dribble a basketball… do all the things that made me the first girl selected in one of these scenarios.

I stood in front of my classmates.

I carefully eyed the group.

And I called out the name of one of the other capable players in the class.

My opposing captain selected a similar well-coordinated competitor.

I picked my next capable teammate.

The tension was rising.

Which jock would go next?

My opponent selected a regular ringer from the group.

I looked at the kids still in front of us. The remaining athletic ones struck unconscious poses of cockiness.

The ones who were the always last-to-go’s didn’t make eye contact.

Something came over me.

 I called out a name:

“Wendy!”

Her head jerked up.

The look of shock was like a deer caught in the headlights. There were audible gasps from my teammates.

I smiled at her and she smiled back in disbelief as she excitedly and confidently walked over to my side of the gym.

My opposing captain took advantage of this clear blunder on my part and picked another of the stronger kids.

My teammates were anxiously telling me who to pick next.

There were still a couple of good athletes in the group.

“Scotty”

….a kid in thick glasses who couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn door even if you stood him right there in front of it.

Just like Wendy… when Scotty heard me call his name… he had the biggest grin on his face as he strutted past the athletes still waiting to be picked.

For the first time in their gym class experience… these “last to go” classmates didn’t have to wait until the end to be picked.

They had received the honor normally reserved for the stronger, faster, more coordinated ones.

I don’t remember what the game was or even if my team won or lost.

What I do remember is that for at least one time in my life… I broke the unwritten proper social order of gym class… and followed my deeper sense of what kindness and justice look like. 

And it gave some other kids a chance to feel what it was like to get picked early in the process instead of at the end.

Now… I don’t tell this story to say “Oh, what a good person I am.”

But it does speak to the underpinnings I hear in our Gospel lesson this morning.

As the Rev. Dr. Emilie Townes notes, we shouldn’t look at this story of Jesus at a Sabbath dinner talking about where to sit and who a host should invite to the table as Jesus giving some sort of a Miss Manners lesson.

What Jesus is doing is highlighting the ways in which God establishes the social and spiritual order of things….unlike our own.

Who gets picked first…who gets honored…is out of our control and there’s nothing we can do to influence it.

Dr. Townes says our self-centered desires to presume what our place is in that pecking order “is unwise and perhaps unfaithful.”

In the Gospel… Jesus observes the way that guests at this Sabbath dinner had presumed to know which was their seat at the table.

He uses a parable of a wedding banquet because… in First Century Palestine…at such occasions… there was an established order to the seating.

The male guest of honor… usually a man of great personal wealth…got to recline on the comfortable couch in the middle… and others took their places in accordance to their social status.

But as we’ve seen repeatedly with Jesus… the material wealth of the world means nothing to him.

What matters more to Jesus… our God incarnate… is how people treat one another and how we live and move and have our being in our day-to-day interactions.

We know from our reading from Jeremiah that this self-interest and wanting to be first… or just a little further ahead of somebody else… will trip us up… and can lead us into a ditch of disaster.

Even centuries before Jesus… the people of God keep looking over the fence at the greener grass on the other side.

They wanted to have status… be important… get picked first. They saw what was around them…and wanted to be like someone else.

The prophets such as Jeremiah continuously cautioned against all of this.

“Be yourselves! Be the people of God you’re God what’s you to be!”

But the ego… that fragile little self… can’t stand to not be first… at the front and center of all things.

Our egos tend to pull us away from staying in relationship with God and each other.

I was really struck by the line in the Jeremiah reading, “a nation has changed its gods even though they are no gods.”

There’s such a pull in human nature to seek satisfaction in possessions and power.

The better car… a bigger house… a job promotion.

Sure, they bring us happiness… and give us all the good feels in the moment.

But it’s fleeting.

The car will always need a new muffler… or (worse) the alternator goes bad.

Turns out that house with more square footage…and a  nicer lot… has a leak in the plumbing… or a hole in the roof when a tree limb falls.

The new job comes with more demands… or a supervisor who undermines your efforts.

The bump in pay… sadly… didn’t come with the aspirin needed to endure the new headaches.

The material things are just that: things.

They are the things that don’t endure… which is counter to God’s continual promise to be with us through thick or thin whether we know it… or not.

The pursuit of gaining status… without remaining grounded in Love… thinking that our possessions or our importance is the “true religion” that will somehow earn us some special recognition in the eyes of God… is just foolishness.

Gaining wealth and status at the expense of other people and the planet is not the way of God’s love.

That’s what Jeremiah was railing about on God’s behalf to the people of Israel.

I think that’s what Jesus was getting at in our Gospel story.

I hear Jesus telling us that we shouldn’t worry about keeping up with the Jones’; we should be worried about whether the Jones’ are doing OK today.

This is why something as simple as our monthly collection of non-perishable foods has been such a blessing to watch flourish and grow.

The Rev. Becky Rowell over in Frederica likes to ask the question, “What’s breaking God’s heart in our area and what can we do about it?”

I see these offerings of canned goods… soon to be bundled with other items… as our visible answer to that question.

Again… this community exhibits generosity in a time when the need for that is so great.

This may seem small… but even a little kindness can have a huge impact on the life of another person.

May we never lose sight of that.

In the name of God… F/S/HS.