"The Reign of God and Junior High School" Text: I Kings 6:1, 11-13; Luke 14:1, 7-14 The Reverend Joanna M. Adams Morningside Presbyterian Church Atlanta, GA September 30, 2007

 “The Reign of God and Junior High School”

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“…if you …keep all my commandments by walking in them, then I will establish my promise with you…” I Kings 6:12

Martha Stern is a very fine Episcopal priest. Several years ago she wrote an essay in The Christian Century describing her Junior High School as “the most precisely ordered social order” she’d ever participated in. (1) “The building itself,” Martha wrote, “was a forbidding structure,” (It sounds like Kate Griffin Junior High School, which I attended in Meridian, Mississippi) a huge, gray, concrete thing “with tiny windows”. The kids said it must have been a prison before it was a Junior High School.

There were many new learnings in the seventh grade. You had to learn how to change classes every 55 minutes. You had to figure out which books to take out of your locker and which ones to put back into your locker and when you were going to go to the restroom, all in a four-minute period. You had to adjust to different teachers; you had to figure out what it meant to have a homeroom. All of that was daunting enough, but it was nothing compared to figuring out the unwritten rules about who was cool and who was not, and who the cool people were not going to be caught dead talking to. It all came to a head in the school lunchroom, where you could actually have a nervous breakdown figuring out where to eat your lunch, even though it was better than elementary school, where you had to eat your lunch at 10:20 a.m. At least now you ate at the more sophisticated hour of 11:40. Nevertheless, it was the most anxiety-filled moment of the day. Would there be a place for you at the right table?

The most vivid memory of my own Junior High days has to do with the time the queen of cool in our class, a girl named Margaret Hobson, decreed that every female who was going on the Junior Varsity football bus trip to Hattiesburg had to wear what was called in those days a sack dress. Do you remember sack dresses? No skirts, no belts, no waistband, just a straight sack.  I got the word at lunch. I didn’t have a sack dress, and besides, I was barely hanging on to the edge of Margaret Hobson’s social circle by my fingernails. I called my mother, who was the librarian at the High School. We were a family that lived on a pretty tight budget. My daddy had driven the one family car to the office that day, and it seemed to me that I was in the biggest mess of my entire life. I will always love my mother for figuring out how to get herself and me together in the dress department of a store downtown, where I was able to buy the dress I needed and avoid social ruin.

So much of life, at least in our formative years, is spent struggling to learn the rules and trying to figure out where we fit in. Everybody needs to know where to fit in; it is a basic human need to fit in somewhere. Some people who obtain that high position of social power find it a source of great satisfaction to determine who is going to be “in” and who is going to be “out” for a period of time – who will get to sit with the in-crowd and who will be banished from it, and therefore be the out-crowd. Of course, to have an in-crowd, you must have that banished crowd, the non-cool, the non-acceptable, the non-privileged. This will probably not be a news bulletin to you, but these kinds of dynamics have been known to last past Junior High School. The subterranean rules are real, even though they are not often mentioned. The rules of social status, economic status, all kinds of status lie beneath just about every aspect of life in our contemporary world, whether it is who gets invited to the neighborhood potluck, who’s in the in-crowd at the office, or whom you’re going to sit with at the PTA meeting.

Have you ever visited a church and thought to yourself, “Wow, this is a hard place to break into!” (2) My good friend, Buddy Enniss, a preacher of some renown, says he cannot erase from his memory the words of a young man in one of the first churches he served. The young man told him why he was leaving the church. …”Because,” he explained, “I have found more genuine acceptance at the gay bar on Monroe Street than at First Presbyterian Church in our town.”

Have you ever felt as if you weren’t dressed right when you entered the room? That you didn’t look right? As if you were not possessed of the right credentials to fit in? I can’t imagine the personal character it must take to endure categorical exclusion throughout one’s life. A few years ago I traveled in the Middle East with a group of 15 people, three of whom were African-American. In every single airport, at every single border crossing, the non-white members of our group were searched, interrogated, and in one instance, thoroughly humiliated. I will never know what that would feel like. I could never know what it must have been like to have been one of those nine dark-skinned school children who had to be escorted to school in Little Rock, Arkansas, by soldiers with fixed bayonets to protect them from the screaming crowds of light-skinned people who did not want their kind to have to sit beside that other kind in the schoolroom or the lunchroom. I will not ever know what that must have felt like, but what I do know is that the world often operates according to a set of values that closes people down rather than opening them up. I do know that the world often operates according to a set of values that are exclusive. It can seem like the most normal thing in the world, that one group of people is “in” and the other group of people is not. We tend to privilege the privileged and to forget about the under-privileged.

“But there is another way,” another way to look at things, another set of values that lie beneath the false values, and those are the values of the kingdom of God. (3)  In today’s gospel, Jesus has gone to the home of a wealthy Pharisee, sort of a first century equivalent of Margaret Hobson’s table in the lunchroom. Everybody who was anybody was at the dinner party, and all the everybodies who were anybodies were watching Jesus very closely, because they had not figured out what to do with him, what to make of him. Was he one of them or not? Did he know the rules; which fork to use; whom to sit by; how to make polite conversation in a social setting? They had heard him talking about things he ought not to be talking about in public: God and politics! But maybe he would behave himself at the dinner table, abide by the Sabbath rules of etiquette.

As they watched him closely, Jesus was watching them, and he noticed how the guests, even as they watched him, were choosing their own places at the table, and they were choosing the places of honor, so he told them a parable about how if you grab for the best seat, something bad might happen to you. Someone more distinguished than you are might come in, and the host will say, “Will you please move back and let this more distinguished person sit in your seat?” – and that will disgrace you in front of everybody. So, “the better thing to do is to begin by sitting at the lowest place at the table, so when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Come on up, come close to me.’ That way you will be honored in front of everyone, for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Hmmm, they think. Does that make sense? The humble will be exalted? We have heard that HE will eat with just about anybody anywhere, sinners, outcasts, tax-collectors, prostitutes; you name it, he’ll be passing them the bread and butter. As they scratch their heads trying to figure out the parable, Jesus leaves them with it, turns to his host and says, “Listen, next time you have a dinner party, or a luncheon, don’t even invite your friends. Not your neighbors, not your relatives, don’t invite anybody who’ll say, ‘Okay, now it’s my turn to have him over.’ No, instead, fill your table with the crippled, the poor, the lame and the blind, because they can’t pay you back, and you’ll be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” But repayment is not really the main reason Jesus wants the host to put the invitation list together in a different way. He does not want the host to miss out on having the party of a lifetime. The dinner party that Jesus puts together, whenever he invites people, turns out to be a joyful feast, where all the rules about who matters and who doesn’t are thrown out the window. The wine flows; the laughter rings from the rafters. Somebody usually breaks out a banjo. The young people start dancing; the lame tap their toes. The deaf tell the blind about the bright colors everybody is wearing. And the poor – they are treated like queens and kings. And when the evening is over and Jesus gets up to leave, everybody else gets up and leaves with him. They never want to live another day without his joy. Never want to step outside the circle ever again, of his all-inclusive, gracious love. (4)

If the gospel has anything to teach us, it is that favoritism and partiality are not a part of the plan of God. We can theologize and intellectualize all we want, about what it means to be the body of Christ in the world today. But I believe it finally and always comes down to this: who is actually welcomed and honored here? Reinhold Neibuhr one said, “One would hope at the very least that Christians would be as kind as other people are,” but sadly, that is not always the case.

There are reasons why some are prohibited from participating fully in the life of the faith community, even understandable reasons, but I would say that there are no acceptable reasons. The Americans with Disabilities Act became law 17 years ago, in 1990. The Architectural Barriers Act for public buildings in the United States was passed in 1968, 39 years ago. This church building remains to this day inaccessible in many ways to people with disabilities. A family left our church last year. Whenever we would have a luncheon or a reception in the Fellowship Hall, a plate of food would have to be brought upstairs to Lara, the daughter in the family, because she could not get downstairs in her wheelchair.

A friend of mine with a bad knee is embarrassed to come to church here because of having to struggle up the front steps, or the steps on either end of the building.

It is time for us to step up to the vision in the reign of God that we have been given by Christ our Lord. Ironically, if we were a public facility, we would have had to make the changes that are before us now, or be shut down, put out of business. But because we are a faith community, we have been exempt from the law. We are not exempt from the law of love, are we? We are not exempt from the commandment to honor the human dignity of all people, are we? Aren’t we required to provide an equal place at the table for any who want to come and be filled?

In the ninth century before Christ, King Solomon took on a major building project – the building of the Temple in Jerusalem. “And the word of the Lord came to Solomon, ‘Concerning this house you are building, if you will walk in my statues and do what I command you to do, then my promise is good. I will never forsake you.’ In other words, the Lord expected Solomon to walk the walk and not just talk the talk. We have talked a great deal about God’s hand at work and calling this congregation into being and into bringing us to where we are today. Now is the time for us to do the right thing.

I believe that God sent Christ into the world in order to make the world more hospitable for everyone. And I believe that the church exists to be the concrete expression of the hospitable, unconditional love of God, that binds us to the transcendent realm and to one another.

A couple of weeks ago our preschool class of four year-olds went very carefully around the whole church and counted all the steps. When they had finished, they stopped by the church office to tell Ms. Sherrill how many steps they had counted: 176. Sherrill thanked them for their good counting, and then said that we have people here, some of whom have hurt feet and hurting knees, and it’s hard for them to walk up steps. “It is going to take a lot of money to fix it, but we can help those people.”

One little girl’s eyes got big. “You can have my money!” she said. One of the little guys said to Ms. Sherrill, “I just found four coins; I’m going to give them all to you!”

Remember what Jesus said? “Let the little children come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of God.” They get it, don’t they?

Churches are not buildings, but buildings say a great deal about the communities they house and what those communities believe about God, and where and how the presence of God continues to be experienced in the world today.

The story is told of a monastery that had fallen on hard times. There were only five people left at the monastery, the abbot and four monks. They were about to close the place down, really. The abbot was in distress. Near the monastery was a little hut where a rabbi came to have some spiritual time away from the synagogue. One day, the abbot and the rabbi happened to meet outside the hut. The abbot told the rabbi about the shape the monastery was in. The two of them cried together, because it was a sad story, and there was no happy ending in sight. But then, just as the abbot turned and began to walk away to go back to the monastery, the rabbi said, “Just one thing…the only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you.”

How could that be, the abbot wondered? He thought through the unlikely cast of characters, crotchety Brother Eldred, passive Philip, the irritable Joseph. How could it be? He told the others what the rabbi had said. The more they thought about it, though they were puzzled, the more they began to treat each other, even treat themselves, with more respect. After all, you can never be sure! Before long, the neighbors began to sense a new spirit in the place. People began to come and pray again. They worshiped and studied together, and they told their friends how great it was to be there. And those friends brought more friends. Everyone was welcome, everyone, as if he or she might be the Messiah. Within a few years, the whole place was radiant with light and life. (5)

I wish my Junior High School had been more like that, but I am very glad my church is a place where all are honored and where the Messiah might be sitting right next to you. Thanks be to God.

(1) Martha P. Sterne, “Abundant Life,” The Christian Century, August 12-19, 1998, p.747. This sermon was inspired by Martha’s essay, and many of the thoughts were hers before they were mine, especially in the first paragraphs of the sermon and in the idea of the feast.  

(2) P.C. Enniss, “Open House,” Trinity Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, 3/30/03.

(3) Sterne.

(4) Sterne.