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Guess Who’s Invited to Dinner!
Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis February 5, 2006, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Isaiah 65:1-12 Luke 13:22-30
When Vivian Paley was a kindergarten teacher, she noticed--on the first day of school every year--the beginnings of a social structure which, with each succeeding year, came to be carved in stone. “Certain children will have the right to limit the social experience of their classmates,” she observes. “Henceforth a ruling class will notify others of their acceptability, [while] the outsiders learn to anticipate the sting of rejection.” So Paley posted a sign with a new rule at the front of her classroom one day, a rule that was met with disbelief: YOU CAN’T SAY YOU CAN’T PLAY. “Only four out of twenty-five of my kindergarten class find the idea appealing,” she reports, “and they are the children most often rejected. The loudest in opposition are those who do the most rejecting…. ‘But then what’s the whole point of playing?’” one little girl wails. The question sends me back to another question asked by an unnamed bystander: “Lord, will only a few be saved?” What we do not know, what Luke deliberately fails to tell us, is whether the one asking the question expected to be assured of his insider status by Jesus’ answer [Will only a few be saved because, if not, what is the point of playing?]; or did the question come from one who had been rejected by the ruling class of the religiously established? If the former he no doubt would be hoping for a “yes” so that he might return to his home justified; if the latter she surely was listening for the slightest hint of equivocation in Jesus’ voice because, having known only judgment from those making the rules in God’s name, she knew only by the mercy of God—God’s making room for the exception—would a sinner be invited to dine in the kingdom. The scene reminds me, as well, of a question invariably asked on the floor of Presbytery in order to ascertain whether a candidate for ordination is a universalist; that is to say, whether she or he believes all will be saved…or only a few. The right answer, according to the preacher obliged to ask, is “only a few”. Such was the answer given by the candidate who was examined before Casey at the January meeting of presbytery: only those who repent and turn to Christ will benefit from Christ’s atoning sacrifice…will be included in the kingdom. Truth be told, our presbytery is more inclined to welcome Arminians than to receive Calvinists onto the rolls of those allowed to play: preachers who believe salvation rests on unequal parts of our repenting and God’s pardoning. In the history of Christian doctrine, Arminians held that salvation—our being included in the club that gets to eat and drink eternally with God--was mostly up to us! What follows from this belief, of course, is a community marked by a concern with who can and cannot play eternally in the kingdom and on what grounds. Now at first glance you may arrive at this understanding of salvation by way of Jesus’ preface to the parable found in Luke’s thirteenth chapter. “Strive to enter through the narrow door,” he says, “for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able.” Why they are not able Jesus does not say, though Christ’s church has willingly filled in the blanks for him throughout the ages! In the end, even with a proper striving and a penitent trying, says a part of the church, it seems that only a precious few—all Christians, of course—will be saved. Concerning Christians who believe this of themselves Karl Barth, in one of his best rhetorical rants, writes “Did the Son of God clothe Himself with humanity, and shed His blood, and go out as the Sower, simply in order the He might create for these people—in free grace, yet why specifically for them?—this indescribably magnificent private good fortune…opening to them the gates of Paradise which are closed to others? It can hardly be denied that the piety, teaching and practice of Christianity in every age and place…have disclosed an almost sinister and irresistible bias in this direction,” says Barth, “as though it were really inevitable that man—in this case the experience and existence of the Christian—should be the measure of all things.” On the other hand and short of admitting to the heresy of universal salvation, an alternative answer given by candidates on the floor of presbytery (and nurtured by one teacher in her kindergarten class) may be ventured. The answer, given as I recall by Casey, begins with the mystery of God’s mercy hid in God’s gracious initiative toward us and revealed in Christ’s birth, death and resurrection. Who knows who will be saved? God alone knows. In the meantime, we ought to act as though we will be together eternally; hence you can’t say you can’t play! Or to put it another way, finally we will all be beggars before the throne of grace, clueless concerning those by our side, but one matter is certain: our small minds are in for a big surprise! This, I think, is the less than satisfying truth awaiting us in Jesus’ parable. No doubt this truth will sound like the gospel to those who from kindergarten have been rejected; even as it will sounds like equivocation or judgment to those who, in God’s name, have called the moral and theological shots thus far. The promise of God, in the world of the parable, is hidden and so revealed both in the astonished silence of the folks who find themselves at table in the kingdom and in the outraged surprise of the ones who are left standing outside the door. “We ate and drank with you,” the presumably saved wail, characters identified now not with Luke’s first audience that was the synagogue, but with Luke’s 21st century audience that is the church. Having never missed a celebration of the Lord’s Supper in our life, how could we be denied a place at table in the kingdom? Furthermore you taught us, cry the best of the Christians with perfect attendance pins on their lapels from years in Sunday school. Yet not only is the door shut in their faces but the householder shouts literally from the other side, “Who the hell are you?” Then to add insult to injury, through the windows can be seen the very people rejected by those who must now do business, eternally, with what it means to have to a door shut in their faces. “What’s the point of playing” they ask, “by the book, according to the rules, within the lines?” The point apparently has to do with the book, the rules, the lines only as they turn us toward him in whom God’s promised kingdom has come near. Hence on the basis of nothing more than God’s grace, people can be seen streaming in from north and south, from east and west—that is to say, from the world God so loved and has redeemed--to eat in the kingdom of God. Who are they and how did they get in? It is, said Casey to the gathered presbyters, a mystery! So if it is a mystery, then why does any of this talk about who is in and who is out matter? It matters because, as I have said so many times from this pulpit, eschatology [where you believe we are headed by way of God’s promises] has everything to do with ethics…a church’s doctrine of salvation has everything to do with her social witness. Believing that 72 virgins will be at your service if you strap explosives to your back and walk into a crowded restaurant is striking confirmation …ripped from the headlines…of this coincidence! But the connection is equally direct for those who believe they will be met not with virgins but the virtuous elite sitting at table in the kingdom on the one hand; and likewise the ethics that follow from a hope and so an eschatology wherein, by God’s grace alone, people will come from every corner of the earth to eat together with God is an ethic that presumes the other to be no less a child of God than I. There can be no denying God’s judgment of us all in the end (who can stand?), but there also is no telling the degree of parabolic havoc God’s mercy and grace will wreak upon our present moral clarity! No doubt the current theological divide among Christians on a multitude of difficult issues facing the church and the world has everything to do with our contrary views of salvation. If indeed our eternal relationship to God is up to us, then the church’s major word to the world must concern what one has to do in order to be saved: the rules to be followed, the manner of life to be embodied, the discipline to be administered by those who decide who can play. The church now and the kingdom eternally is then the community of those who play by the rules. This has warrant in Scripture and in the history of the church. But there is also warrant to believe that human beings—especially those most certain of God’s mind on the matter of salvation—will be surprised at those invited to the table in the end…enough warrant, I believe, to make room in the church for the exception, even as we leave in place the rules about who can play and who cannot so that those who believe ultimately in their take on the rules will hang around too. But here is the rub: those willing to hang around the church only on the condition that others are categorically are not allowed to play can make no moral room for the exception. The matter is black and white—as it was when the issue was race in the church and many left to form the Presbyterian Church in America. Or it is right and wrong theologically—as it was when the issue was the Westminster Confession and some left to form the Orthodox Presbyterian Church whose seminary is just over the way. Or it is men only—as it was when the issue was women’s ordination and many threatened to quit this part of Christ’s now defiled body. Erring only slightly on the side of grace, for Christ’s sake, our church may once again face the loss of those who cannot abide a classroom or a congregation in which even a few people of conscience are given a room in which a sign may be posted to the effect that YOU CAN’T SAY YOU CAN’T PLAY. This side of the kingdom, I am willing to bet my life on the mystery of God’s grace alone and take my chances when the door is shut. For “Behind every door on every ordinary street, in every hut in every ordinary village on this middling planet of a trivial star” writes Vikram Seth in his stunning memoir, are stories “of the joy and suffering we taste or confer, the chance events that cleave us together or apart….Yet seeing through a glass, however darkly, is to be less blind…May we see that we may have been born as each other. May we, in short, believe in humane logic and perhaps, in due course, in love.” “Will only a few be saved?” asked a bystander. With God, Jesus said elsewhere concerning a fat camel and the eye of a needle, all things are possible. Thanks be to God. |