A New Seating Chart

I believe that the world – or at least the good old U S of A – can be divided into two groups: those who loved their high school experience, and those who loathed it.  And I suspect that what made the difference for many of us was not academic or athletic success, or whether one made the cheerleading squad or the drama society. What made the difference was whether you were popular.

            I was one who, looking back on the high school experience, simply loathed it. I did have a small circle of very good friends, but we were most definitely not popular, and back in the day when people actually dated or went out together, I did not have a girlfriend, which I am sure contributed to my unhappiness with the whole situation.

            But then, one evening, late in the game, so late in the game that if it were actually a sporting contest you would have to call it overtime, everything flipped for me.

            Graduation was only a day or so away, and I was attending one of the many graduation parties that were held for us by our parents. It was at Mary McCracken’s house, out back on a field next to the barn – it was a working farm, which was unusual at the time when most of the farmland had been plowed under for the suburbs.  Mary was a friend, but not a good friend, and ranked up there pretty high on the popularity scale – a spunky little athlete, great smile, always a kind word for everybody. At any rate, the time comes to eat, and I wander off to the outer edge of the assembled tables to grab a seat before they are all taken.  A few minutes later there is a tap on my shoulder, and Mrs. McCracken tells me she has been looking all over for me, because Mary had reserved a place for me up at the head table.  It was not prize day, and I was not making that long walk up to the platform to be handed an award as Valedictorian or as Most Well-Rounded Student or some such, but if I were that would have paled in comparison to the joy that filled me as, with everyone watching, I made my way up to sit at the right hand of Mary McCracken.

            Little did I know, way back then, that we were acting out what Jesus advised those Pharisees at dinnertime a couple thousand years ago. (Luke 14:1, 7-14)  Jesus is passing along some sage advice about social etiquette, but Luke makes clear that Jesus is doing more than being an early version of Emily Post or Miss Manners by telling us that Jesus told this as a parable – in other words, Jesus is talking about behavior in the kingdom of God.  The last thing Jesus is interested in doing is starting some sort of new social game whereby everybody at the party rushes to the cheap seats in the hope that they will be seen as humble, and then, when selected to move on up to the table of honor, have their moment in the spotlight. What he is doing is telling us of the importance of genuine humility as we serve others in his kingdom, not mindful of ourselves, as we say in our church covenant, and serving God.

            But Jesus does not stop with telling us what to do when we are invited to the party – he also tells us what to do when we are hosts. He knows that many time people invite others to dinner to put them in the host’s debt – so that they will feel that they owe the host something, often a reciprocal invitation. There is no generosity or giving in this situation, it is all about what I, the host, can get out of it. But look at what God does – God invites us to the party, even though we are unworthy, even though we could never pay back that debt. So too, Jesus tells us, we should invite to the table those who cannot pay us back – the poor, the ill, those on the margins of society.

            The Greek word for hospitality, philoxenia, means “love of the stranger.”  We do not exercise true hospitality, Jesus tells us, when we invite family, friends and close neighbors; true hospitality is all about inviting the stranger and the outcast. This is what the kingdom of God is all about; this is what we participate in and help bring about when we practice true hospitality.

            Like when we open our facilities, at no charge, to a new Alcoholic Anonymous Chapter, which we have done recently.

Like when we make sure that the message gets out that our youth group is not just for long-time members here, but for their friends from the wider community.

Like when we live out our statement of welcome, which says that we welcome to our work and worship all persons, “regardless of race, gender, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability, or economic circumstance.”

Like a friend up in the Boston area, Louise, a member of Trinity Church in Boston, recently did, taking into her home for the night a family of five, strangers to her until that afternoon, whose furnace had broken down. The overnight was capped with a big pancake breakfast enjoyed by the two families.

Like another friend of mine down in Savannah did recently. Born and raised in Guatemala by her American mother and Guatemalan father, living in the States ever since, Catherine overheard an agricultural worker speaking in Spanish outside a florist, and recognized him as Guatemalan. She struck up a conversation with him, and found out that he had been in this country for two years, and was having difficulty collecting his wages, now over three weeks past due from his employer. She agreed to call the employer on his behalf, and to make a long story short, got nothing from the employer but verbal abuse. In the end, she and her husband invited the worker to their home for dinner, and then to stay the night.  They had, she says, a marvelous evening, full of sharing of stories about life in Guatemala, but also full of learning how difficult life could be for people seeking a new and better life in a strange country.

            Jesus says, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, and you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. Of course, what he means by that is not that you have to wait until the end of time to be “repaid.” You will be repaid as you, participating in the kingdom as you help bring it in, rise to new life; as you, like Catherine, share the warm glow of old memories with a new-found countryman on the down and out; as you, like Louise, share laughs around an impromptu pancake feast on a bleak midwinter’s morn with a family needing shelter from the storm; as you, like the youth group, find your life enriched by those with new perspectives, who don’t even know you enough about you to care whether or not your are popular; as you, like an awkward, insecure teen on the brink of leaving high school, suddenly awake as if from a bad dream, and look around, and see a new seating chart, and feel like you have graduated to another world.