Upside Down And Backwards 09/02/07 Pastor Olin Sletto Gospel Text: Luke 14:7-14 Dear Sisters and Brothers: Grace to you and peace from God our creator and Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen Somehow appearances are important to us. We all are concerned about that. So I am always a little surprised when I am conducting a wedding and someone shows up in jean shorts and a tee shirt when others are wearing tuxes and gowns. Doesn‟t seem quite like that appearance is appropriate. Or recently I had a funeral and someone showed up in a tank top and shorts at the funeral and I thought, “Well, appearances to us are important and this doesn‟t really send the right message.” You know very well, if you are going for a job interview, you are going to do your very best to give a good appearance. You know also, if you are at a baseball game and you see that somebody is sitting behind home plate, it sort of gives the appearance that these people either are rich or they are important or they have important friends. So appearance is something that we take very seriously. Even here at Holy Trinity we think that the appearance of how our church is in this community is important. That is why we repair falling plaster and uncovered our stained glass windows and put in new covering for that. We replaced old carpet with tile. We are fixing up the outside. We are planting flowers because our appearance is really important. If you want people to say, “Well, I think that is a pretty church,” you have to have a good appearance. I have a story about appearances that happened to me in Africa when we lived there. In Africa when I would go to the capital city, on every block there is a police officer. It is a military dictatorship, you see. So, there is a police officer on every block and they have the right to pull over every car as you go by. Just blow the whistle and you have to stop. They want to see your drivers‟ license and your insurance papers, and your registration papers and see if you have a spare tire and if you have a fire extinguisher and all this kind of stuff. So when you are trying to get to the center of town, you may be stopped five, six, seven times! So I just finally quit doing that and walked because then I wouldn‟t get stopped. Well, when I started the project of building primary schools that we could establish in villages for the government, I went to see the American Ambassador. He said, “This is important. I will call the Minister of Education and tell him what you are going to do and maybe make an appointment.” So he called the Minister of Education, made an appointment and he said to me, “How are you getting around?” I said, “I‟m
walking.” “Well, no,” he said. “Take my car.” The Ambassador‟s car. A great big black car. Flags on the front. You know, you see it in the pictures. The big flags and as you drive down the street, the flags are waving. So, here I am sitting in the back seat. My driver is taking me. And I am sitting in the back seat driving down the street and all these policemen who just hassled me, are all clearing the way so that I can come through. And I‟m just sitting there laughing and having the best time of my life, waving at them. It was because I had the appearance of being important. I drove up to the Ministry of Education and they flew out the door, opened up the car door, and within two minutes I was in the Ministry of Education office—because I had the appearance of being somebody. Two weeks later I came to see the Minister of Education and I walked. Nobody recognized me. Took me hours to get in to see the Minister of Education. It‟s about appearances. It‟s about appearances in this passage of Jesus. Meals, in Luke‟s Gospel, are important because things happen at meals. We wonder why Jesus has been invited to the Pharisee‟s house for a meal. Except there is one clue: They are watching him closely. They hope to catch him at something. But then we wonder why did Jesus even go? Why did he feel he should attend? Remember that Jesus did not exclude the religious people from his grace. He offered them grace as well but they rejected it. Rather, Jesus chooses to include the sinners. Grace was offered but rejected. There are some verses in the actual text that are left out of today‟s reading. They involve Jesus is still trying to make a point from last week about the Sabbath and he says to the Pharisees, “If your ox falls in a well on the Sabbath, don‟t you pull it out?” So he is still digging in to the Pharisees about the Sabbath. But when Jesus comes to dinner, he notices something interesting. The guests who are coming are all trying to sit at the highest spot, the place of honor. The best seats, you know, are closest to the host. The best seats at a wedding reception are closest to the head table. The best seats at a football game are right next to the players. The best seats at the symphony are box seats. Private. We all would like to be in the best seats, wouldn‟t we? But being assertive and walking into a place and taking the seat of honor can also be embarrassing when the host comes and says, “Oh, I‟m sorry. There is somebody more important than you. Please come and sit down at the lower seat.” So assertiveness may be good but it might also be embarrassing. So Jesus tells a parable about a wedding banquet. And he says, “When you come to a wedding banquet, sit at the lowest place so that your host may come and say to you, „oh, please, come and sit at a place of honor‟.” What Jesus is saying is that God‟s kingdom is upside down and backwards. All who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted. That‟s not the way it is in the real world. But God‟s kingdom is upside down and backwards. Take a look at Mary, the mother of Jesus. A simple peasant
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girl. A sixteen-year-old peasant girl whom God chooses in her humble position to exalt. She says, when she is told what is going to happen, “He has scattered the proud and the thoughts of their hearts, he has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.” God‟s great reversal is happening again. That God would choose a simple peasant girl to bring Jesus Christ into the world. It is not a back door strategy that says, “Oh, if I just act real humble, I‟ll be exalted.” No. It‟s a call to humble service. I have always been a student of culture. When you go to a foreign country, you realize they do things differently. It is their culture and it is their language and their language is really the eyes into their culture. When you learn the language, you also learn how to enter into the culture and I have always enjoyed studying this. I wrote my Masters‟ Thesis on this. For instance, when we lived in France, we found out that if you are invited to someone‟s home for dinner, you don‟t come with flowers of two, four, six, eight or a dozen. You come with odd numbers. Three, five, seven, nine and you don‟t come on time. (Maybe Elgin is French!) You come five to seven minutes after the hour. That is their culture and you have to learn to understand that. And the same was true in Africa. We had to learn the culture so that we could enter into it and proclaim the gospel within the culture. If you go into a village, you soon learn that the first thing you do is go and greet the chief. That‟s what you do. Culture, then—and I am coming to a point on this—culture deals with everything that is a part of the system people have developed for living. If you stop and think about the things in our culture, for instance, we had a wedding this week. It is our culture and tradition that the father brings the bride down the aisle. The ladies were laughing at eight o‟clock service - since it is Labor Day weekend, you can‟t wear white anymore after Labor Day weekend. That‟s a cultural thing. That‟s a tradition. Culture is involved with a learned process of customs and traditions. We have culture all around us and we have many cultures within our American culture: we have Hispanic, we have other religions—all part of the culture. It‟s a way of life and we often times hear the term that we need to immerse ourselves into a foreign culture and a foreign language in order to learn. Here‟s the point: By God becoming human, God entered into our culture. God left the Kingdom and came into our culture to know us, to understand us, and to speak God‟s language to us. And God, in Jesus Christ, came into our culture to introduce us to God‟s culture and God‟s language. If we want to immerse ourselves, then we want to immerse ourselves in God‟s culture and God‟s language because God‟s culture is upside down and backwards from what we think life is. What does the kingdom culture look like? Love your enemies. In God‟s culture, you love your enemies and you turn the other cheek. Jesus says, “Don‟t
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practice your piety in public where everybody can hear your prayers; go into a quiet place in prayer.” It‟s upside down and backwards because we want to be praised for our piety. “When you are going to give,” Jesus says, “don‟t stand and just make loud noises as you drop your big money into the pot; do it quietly like the widow.” The kingdom has its own language, a language that uses words like love, patience, kindness, mercy, compassion, forgiveness. That‟s God language in God‟s kingdom. And what God does is turn it around and it becomes upside down and backwards from the world. So Jesus wants to give an example of how this great reversal takes place. “When you give a luncheon or dinner,” he says, “don‟t invite your friends or your brothers or your rich neighbors because they can invite you back.” Rather a reversal, “Invite the poor, the lame and the blind.” Do the opposite of what is expected because they can‟t invite you back. That is why we are blessed with our Soup Kettle because the people that we serve cannot invite us back. Jesus said that in order to enter into this kingdom culture, we have to leave some things behind that we are comfortable with. You need to enter into and be immersed in God‟s culture. Leave the place where you feel comfortable. Take the lowest place and let God take care of the rest. God is calling us into this kingdom where values are not the values of the world. We are seeking to praise God, not to be praised by our neighbors. But we know that Jesus is not really talking about a wedding banquet. He is talking about the kingdom. “In the kingdom,” he says, “do not go and sit in the place of honor, but humble yourselves.” Do not exalt yourselves, let God take care of the exalting for you. Learn God‟s language. Immerse yourself in God‟s culture because it is upside down and backwards from what we are use to. Leave the zone of comfort where you are safe. Don‟t just write checks to help the poor. Be involved with them. Say no to the world and say yes to God is what he is asking of us. Seek to speak God‟s language of love, patience, kindness. Seek to enter into God‟s culture because it is different from the world. And if we allow this great reversal to take place in our lives, we are changed. Anxiety turns to peace. Our pain turns to healing. Our grief turns to joy. Our worries turn to comfort. Our death turns to life. The cross—the symbol and appearance of shame—turns to victory. We have received much and we give much. Not because it is a rule but because we have been touched by the love of God and we respond. Jesus came to us to invite us into his culture and his kingdom and in that kingdom we will find richness, the richness of faith. When we come today and receive the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, we receive a richness of faith that the world cannot give but God can. We want to continue to immerse ourselves into God‟s culture and God‟s langue so that we are in that culture and living there all the time and proclaiming Christ‟s love. We enter into that culture to celebrate God‟s great reversal—that God‟s kingdom is upside down and backwards from the world. And because it is, we are saved. If God
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had not done the great reversal, we would not be redeemed. But God said, “I will send Jesus Christ to enter into your world, into your language, into your culture so that you will know how great my love is for you.” Amen
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