Scripture: Luke 14:1, 7-14
Given on 9/1/2019
I love soccer. I played a little bit growing up and while my team never really got past the strategy of someone kicking the ball and everyone on both teams (including the goalies) chasing after it wherever it went, it at least taught me the basics of the sport. As a parent, I have tried to instill this same love to my children. In fact, somewhere there is grainy cell phone video of me trying to teach the sport to Jameson while living on a British Island and assuming that such knowledge would take him further than would, say, the ability to throw a tight spiral. And like I said, while I got the mechanics of the sport ok, it wasn't until one day a friend in graduate school showed me how to watch the whole field to see plays developing and read formations that my real love for the sport began. Because much in the way that one can look at a football game and recognize that a defense is in a 4-3 with pressed man coverage, one deep safety and an extra man in the box for run support, as it turns out, soccer teams play with formations and strategies, set runs and crosses, and called plays on corner kicks. So it was, during the 2010 World Cup, played in South Africa, that I began to watch matches with great passion and devotion. My family was living on Grand Cayman and because of the time-zone difference, in some stroke of perfect luck, matches would start in the morning, right after Lesley had gone to work, leaving 3- year old Jameson and I at the house for the day, and end right before she got home at the end of the work day. Y'all, Jameson and I watched more soccer in that month than I think I had watched in the entirety of my life up to that point. It was also at that time that my father had invited me to go on a mission trip to the African country of Malawi--a trip that would coincide with the final match of the World Cup. And so a couple days before the final match my father, myself, and a third member of our team boarded a flight from JFK to Johannesburg where we would spend a night and then catch a flight the next day from Johannesburg to Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. Arriving in South Africa, it was clear that the whole of the country had been subsumed by the arrival of this global event that happens every four years. The airport was packed both with fans from every country in the 64-team field and everywhere you looked there were World Cup souvenirs for sale.
The next day, when we arrived in Lilongwe, we were met by the ambulance driver (and his ambulance) from the hospital where we would be starting our mission trip. And on the hour or so trip that we took from the capital to Nkoma, the driver and I really hit it off and started talking soccer and by the end, he had invited us to come to World Cup watch party that his brother was hosting the next evening. I really wanted to watch this match and so, though my dad had to do rounds the following morning at 4:00, I convinced him and the third member of our team to go with me to watch the game. On the night of the game, as we stood outside our little bungalow waiting for the ambulance to come and pick us up, dad warned me that he had one a previous trip seen folks all gathered to watch a soccer match and that what was about to happen was we were going to gather with 100 other folks around a small black and white TV and we wouldn't be able to see anything. I, for my part, was not deterred and I convinced them that if nothing else, it would be an experience that we could tell about later. So, when the ambulance pulled up and we pressed in with like 12 other folks to go watch this game, my dad gave me one of his patented "see, I told you" looks. It's possible that he might tell this story a little differently. But we rode for an hour or so squeezed into this ambulance back to the capital and as we got into the city, all of a sudden, the traffic began to bunch up and on both sides of the road were lines of people all heading in the same way, the way I imagine Bryant Drive does in Tuscaloosa when the Tide has a home game. But we pressed on until sometime later, we crested a hill and turned a corner and found ourselves pulling up to an amphitheater with two gigantic projection screens on either side of a stage where a rock band was playing and people were going nuts. I am pretty terrible at estimating crowd size but our combined efforts landed on somewhere around 30,000 people all standing, watching this rock band play, while two screens showed the Netherlands and Spain warming up for the match on either side. We got out in the very back, happy just to be able to see the screens. At this point, my dad located this piece of construction debris in the back of the place, sort of a piece of twisted rebar and concrete, and decided that that was where he was sitting for the duration of the match. We had not been there long, myself and the third member of our team standing and my dad awkwardly balanced on this cast off piece of detritus, when an African gentleman wearing a tailored three-piece suit and penny loafers, carrying a glass of chardonnay like so, comes up to my dad and says, "You must be Dr. McLeod," to which dad promptly replies, "yes, I must." The gentleman in the three-piece suit continues, that he sees that dad is playing the part of the man in the parable of Jesus, in which he takes the place of the least honor so that his host might come to him and move him to the place of greatest honor. To which dad replied, "that is exactly what I am doing." The gentleman breaks out into this huge grin and says, "Come with me" at which point we are led to a dais that is sitting in the middle of this huge crowd of people rising 7 or 8 feet above everything and we are seated next to the chardonnay drinking man who happened to be the ambulance driver's brother who, the driver had failed to mention, was the owner of the largest radio station in Malawi, and so us along with several CEOs, and, I swear, the President of Malawi sat and watched Spain win the world cup in overtime. We were served drinks and food the entire night, watched a great match with perfect seats, and got home at 3:00 in the morning all ready for dad to start rounds at 4:00--an event he, quite unsurprisingly harangued me into attending with him.
We are told that Jesus had been invited to the house of a Pharisee to have a meal with him and that they were watching him closely. And part of what's going on here is the historical period that we are in in the Jewish religion. See, at this time in the history of Judaism, there was much chaotic energy around the faith. The faith had, for some time, grown stagnant. The Jewish power structure had largely been corrupted by its proximity and fealty to the Imperial presence in the region. Bribery, nepotism, and usury had infected almost every rung of the Jewish hierarchy and the masses had borne the brunt of the corruption, in the Temple, the prescriptions of proper sacrifice found in the Torah had been brought together with the greed of the merchants and it was the poorest in Jerusalem and throughout first century Palestine upon whom these crooked dealings fell the hardest. And as history has shown us again and again, in movements, be they cultural or religious, when stagnation comes together with graft, this is the ground upon which revolution is the most fertile. And so we arrive at this story today at a time in which many sects of Judaism were vying for control of the faith. And on this night, Jesus must have watched all these leaders of the Jewish religion were trying to obtain the place of the highest seat of honor that all might see the power and might. And maybe it was that Pharisees had been brought together along with Jesus the Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots--all at this meal all wrangling to take the place of the other. And we read that everyone at the meal was watching Jesus closely. And so it is in this moment that we see the older order of the world collide that with the new order that Jesus is ushering in. It is here that we see the desire for earthly power and might met by the faith that enlivensJesus a faith in the power of God and of heavenly might. We see those who wish to control the faith and thus gain favor with the Romans while lining their pockets and we see Jesus, the holy child of God, seeking not to control but to revolutionize, not to demand that people's attention and affection fall on him but rather that they might see the realm of God erupting all around them. And less we miss his point, he tells those who have gathered around him a parable. And what I love about parables is the way in which each of us has the opportunity in our lives to experience the story from every single angle. We each know what it is like to lust for the seat of greatest honor and might, to place ourselves and our own needs ahead of others and their needs, to want to be seen and spoken about in quiet and reverent whispers. And yet, we also know what it is like to find ourselves either placed by choice or by force in the less honorable, less desirable seat in a room. We have, denied our own needs in the hopes that we might lift up others, only to find ourselves seated far away from the action, like the poor uncle or cousin that gets stuck at the kids table and in heated conversation about which Disney princess you would most want to be while those at the grown up table are talking politics. Though, now that I say that out loud...The point is we know what it is like to yearn for places of honor in the midst of lives in which good does now always win over evil nor do the just receive the acclamation of the masses while the unjust are torn down, in which violence does not get the last word against the peacemakers of the world, we want the right people to be advanced and the wrong people held back. We want to arrive at a point in the story of our species in which all who exalt themselves will be humbled while all who humble themselves will be exalted. That's the way that it's supposed to work. But, the only way that is ever going to happen is if we leave behind our earthly wants, our earth needs, our earthly desires. And I know this because, listen to the next part. "Don't," Jesus said, when you are having a dinner party "invite your friends or your brothers or you relatives or your rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid." But, rather, when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind." In other words, don't invite folks you know will be able to repay you, will be able to bring esteem to your gathering, will seek to honor you at their banquet in return, but invite the folks who can offer you nothing but their presence, their gratefulness, their deepest need. Offer to reach out to the folks around you that you know that nobody else cares about, takes care of, loves. Reach out to the addicted and the impoverished and welcome them at your table and treat them as family. Reach out to the broken and the sick and welcome them at your table and treat them as family. Reach out to the widowed and orphaned, the lost and the searching, the one who has no faith left in the world, the one who wants more than anything to belief, the one that no one else wants to see walk into their banquet, their feast, and welcome them at your table and treat them as family. Because, we can never know. We can never know what a single act of kindness in the midst of a cruel life can produce. We can never know what that single word of acceptance can bring about. We can never know what a single hug or cup of coffee or shared look of sympathy or concern can create. The ripples from single moments in time can spread and widen and the seed planted in love may not come to full bloom for 500 years, but I am certain of one thing in this life, those seeds do eventually become flowers, those ripples do grow in size and scope and continue the work of covering the whole of the world in love, those actions, however small or insignificant they might feel at the moment completely and totally alter the whole of the cosmos and cause the cards to be reshuffled again and again and again until we finally get it right and all are welcomed to be in this space just as they are welcomed in the presence of God.
We do something radical in this place once a month. Once a month we throw open our doors as we gather around table and we say come. Come with come alone, come with fear, come with love, come however you are, just come. Come, come along with us, come with sorrow and with song, come however you are, just come. Come to the table that is God's table. Come to the table where Jesus is the host. Come to the table where there is always just enough and there's always room for more. Come to the table where no one is forgotten and no one is alone. Just come because God is always and ever calling us to this table, calling us to see the light, calling us to come home and in our home we shall find rest, acceptance, grace and love. May we each be fed bread for the journey, may we each drink the very essence of the Christ. May we each find that which has been missing from our lives right here. Alleluia, amen!
Image taken from: https://time.com/2803966/match-rigging-world-cup/