October 27th, 2013
Isaiah 2:2-5
Luke 18:9-14
First Baptist Church
I once
heard it said that the Kingdom of God is the human experience as it is meant to
be. Will you pray with me?
God of heaven and earth, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing in your sight oh God our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
Two weeks ago, Stephanie and I
joined with Mark, Kelly, and Mallory Vannoy in attending Appalachian’s
homecoming. Homecoming, the time when people come back, various campus
organizations and clubs have events to commemorate this coming home of alumni
and remind the students of the beauty of the place they called home. This
culminates in the football game held on Saturday when Appalachian squared off
against Samford University. While Michael is the only one on this side of
Georgia who was happy that Samford won, the rest of us were pretty bummed when
Appalachian lost 34-10 to a school any other year we could have beaten.
Homecoming didn’t turn out the way we wanted it to.
The Gospel
text doesn’t turn out the way we wanted to either, now, does it? Two men decide
to go to church, a Pharisee and a tax collector. They are about as opposite as
one could get on the sociological spectrum in 1st century Palestine.
The Pharisee begins to pray and boy, what a prayer. ‘I thank you that I’m not
like them, the other, the downcast, the scum of the earth, I fast give a tenth
of my income.’ I wonder if the tax collector heard this as he said beating his
chest, ‘God have mercy on me, a sinner.’ It doesn’t seem right, does it, that a
no good IRS agent would go home more justified than the preacher.
But that is
precisely what Jesus says in this parable. This story, this way of life Jesus
is offering is a homecoming of a different kind. Will you go home justified?
Will you at the end of the course of your life be able to say that you were
bound for the kingdom of God and managed to fumble your way there? You see for
us the question of homecoming is will we get there justifiably?
For God,
the heart of the Gospel is that things are beginning to look up for the people
who are looking down. God is all about taking those who think they know
everything and flipping that knowledge on its side. The possibilities are
endless in the Kingdom of God, but ultimately for us to get up there we’re
going to have to get down here and get dirty in the messiness of grace and love
that become incarnate by our actions.
This text
in the Gospel is dangerous when we think about it in a kingdom mindset, isn’t
is? You see we know the endgame of the story, we know who was right in the eyes
of God, but how many times have we been the Pharisee? How many times have we
become so consumed with ourselves that we thank God we’re not like them? For us
we shouldn’t be quick to condemn the Pharisee because if we look in the mirror
we all at times have been the Pharisee. But God has an awesome return policy.
We don’t have to stay the Pharisee forever we can in fact become tax
collectors.
My former
senior minister, colleague and friend Rob Rollins tells the story of Murphy
High School in the town he is serving in the Western part of the state. It was
homecoming for that school and as tradition, the homecoming court was lined up
on the football field. My friend couldn’t help but notice the accolades that
had been named for these young ladies. All of them were going on to bright
futures full of hope and dignity and deserving of respect. Morgan was among
them, and she is what we call here in North Carolina an Exceptional Child. She
had some sort of developmental disability that required a label as such, but
amidst the accolades and college plans of all the others, Morgan was crowned
homecoming queen of Murphy High School, and from what my pastor said all the
other contestants and students at that high school couldn’t contain their
sheer, unbridled joy for Morgan.
Friends if
that’s not the kingdom of God looks like I don’t know what is. God took what
was often something confined to a popularity contest much like our Gospel
lesson and made it in to a moment of interjected grace. That’s what the
Pharisee didn’t get, the Kingdom of God isn’t a popularity contest with winners
and losers. The kingdom of God is a journey in which we journey together, as
sinners in need of mercy, as a flock of sheep who need redeeming.
How we go
home matters. We have the opportunity to go home justified but for that to
happen the swords must be beaten into plowshares and the spears into pruning hooks.
For that to happen we must be willing to accommodate the Spirit in our own
life.
The 1996
film the Hunchback of Notre Dame is one of Disney’s classics that captivates
audiences with its rendition of an old book by Victor Hugo. As Esmeralda sings
a song in one of the scenes, you begin to catch another glimpse of the kingdom
of God. It goes like this, “God help
the outcasts hungry from birth, show them the mercy they don't find on earth. God help my people we look to you still, God help the outcasts or nobody will. I ask for nothing I can
get by, but I know so many
less lucky than I. Please help my people the poor and downtrod, I thought we all were the children of God. God help the outcasts Children of God.”
You see this is ultimately what this
text is about. Those people, the outcast the downtrodden the broken are the
people the Pharisee rails against and are the exact people that God brings the
keys to the kingdom to. Jesus was notorious for hanging out with the
likes of these tax collectors, adulterers, and criminals because ultimately
they received the message of the kingdom far better than the church folk ever
could.
This week
is one of memories. I would classify it as one of the hardest anniversaries of
anything I have to face on a yearly basis. Four years ago this Thursday one of
my dear friends was killed in a car accident. I remember very vividly the call
I received that day and the ensuing visit with Abbey’s family that evening when
I was asked to preach at the funeral. I sat across from Abbey’s mother and I
confessed in that moment and said I had no earthly idea what I could ever say
that would be of any meaning. Ellen looked at me and with a tax collector
simplicity said this, “Offer them Jesus, that’s what worked for Abbey. Just
offer them Jesus.” In those moments I felt lest justified, I felt more like a
Pharisee. This woman who I was supposed to be consoling ultimately taught me
more about the justification that Jesus offers than I could ever hope to offer
You see
both the Pharisee and the tax collector were offered the life-changing
magnificent grace we are all offered today. The way they received it was very
different. But you see in the economy of God’s grace all are equal, there is no
richer or poorer when it comes to grace. The only indicator of that grace is
our acceptance of it and our willingness to wrestle with it in this transient
life.
As you go
forth from this place take with you the hope that you have been offered grace.
You can stand tall and thank God you’re not like those people or you can accept
it with a kingdom mindset that presents humility and a gratefulness we all need
to have. We all have the potential to go home justified.
Deeper than
that this grace wipes away our silly notions and comparisons of who is greater
in the kingdom of God. In the kingdom of God the labels we create to divide are
celebrated rather than divisive. The notion we have about who is greater are
turned upside down for the trivial realities that they ultimately are. For this
passage and the one in Isaiah is about singing the song in the heart of God.
And the song in the heart of God presses us forward, closer, together, bound
for the kingdom.
I want to tell you about a
colleague I met this week at the Fund for Theological Education’s Leadership
Discernment Conference. Trevor and I met as we rode from LaGuardia Airport to
our community. Trevor had an opportunity to play with the kids at the
community by making piles of leaves for them to jump in. He was teaching these
city folk how to jump into leaves.
I have
images of what the kingdom of God might look like, and in my head that image
has been added to the vocabulary of heaven. We learned about the beauty of play
and love and grace. We learned that Jesus was talking about this in the Gospel
text, and Isaiah gave voice to it in the Old Testament lesson today. But
I left out
one detail about my friend that I would consider rather important. You see
Trevor lives in South Chicago. Last week, Trevor’s family was robbed at
gunpoint, his possessions taken and his reality shaken. Trevor played with such
joy with those children I couldn’t help but ask him about his story. I was
curious as to how such pain could turn into such laughter in medicinal leaf
piles. He mentioned how in Chicago where he lived that playgrounds had become
battlefields and no longer places of play. He had never had the opportunity to
jump in leaf piles like he was able to do here in this community.
He said
something remarkable in those moments of conversation. He said to me, “I figure
that if I can play here, I can go home and play there too.” In those moments in
which I would give anything for Isaiah’s prophecy about beating swords into
plowshares and spears into pruning hooks to come true for the city of Chicago, and I
realized very truly that Trevor was one of those people who was bringing about
the kingdom of God. For if he can go home justified, why can’t we? If he can jump in the leaves, why can't we? The kingdom
of God is partly an invitation into a divine dance that has been going along
time and space and for centuries before we joined in. Now that we’re apart of
it can we stand in the face of the violence in Chicago or in our own backyard
and find justification to play in grace? What if that is the ultimate point for
us? Life is a war between fear and grace, between violence and playing in
leaf piles. And yes we cover it up with lofty prayers like a Pharisee of old,
but in the end I have a secret that shatters hell and death and lofty pious
prayers and violence in Chicago and everything with it. The secret is this: Grace wins. Grace comes and it justifies us so that we can go home with a song in our
heart and leaves in our backyard. Grace wins my friends, Lord have mercy on us sinners because ultimately…
Grace wins. Amen.
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