The Park Road Pulpit

It was Easter Sunday afternoon. I had just come from two standing-room-only services at church. The girls were in their new dresses. The boys tugged at stiff, new, collared shirts. Adults re-introduced themselves to other members whom they had not seen since Christmas. The forsythia colored every picture, and spring-time bloomed fresh in the air. When I opened the door, if all the other signs had not been enough, it was clear now that I was deep in the heart of the south. I could smell hospitality in the air. Not a hint wafting by, mind you. This was southern hospitality, full-bore. Every single one of the 5,000 “heapin’, helpin’”[2] calories I was about to enjoy, served up on a plate of fine-china, greeted me with a warm, rich, artery-slamming, “Ya’ll come on in!” Amy and Jackson were in South Carolina for the weekend and the poor, new Associate Pastor, who was “bach’ing” it for the weekend, had been invited to lunch.

I was only one of several honored guests, but as the new preacher to this gathered group of church-members, I was ushered into the dining room first. After the giving of grace,[3] which the hostess had instructed her husband to offer, she pointed me to the table (as if I needed any directions). As I looked at that dining room spread, a table covered stem to stern with platters and serving dishes of every shape and size, I scarcely knew where to begin. There were homemade yeast-rolls with real butter and jam. Four different vegetable offerings, none of which had been prepared with even a hint of dietary moderation, much less a concern for anyone’s physical well-being. (I am talking about southern hospitality, ya’ll! And, besides, the son of the family was a practicing doctor, so our dining company included one physician and one clergyman. I suppose if anyone’s heart had simply mired to a stop, laden with heavy cream and Crisco, one way or the other, we were prepared to deal with the situation!)

In addition to all of this, I found three meat platters on the table: a baked ham with some sinfully delicious homemade glaze, a full roast of beef, and what looked like a forty-pound turkey breast. Between the bird and the beasts were an assortment of pickled relishes, pepper jams, and an amazing mango and jalepeno chutney that was, as we say in the south, “to die for.”[4]

After three only slightly coerced “second helpings” from the main table, the hostess led me to the sideboard where I found four homemade desserts, including a chess-pie and a coconut cake, and coffee, of course (complete with heavy cream and lump sugar).

According to my good friend, the doctor of the family, his mother cooks like this with regularity. I’m hoping before I die to find myself in her dining room again. (Perhaps it will be why I die!)

For all of our mangled history, our cultural and personal dysfunction, there is no place like the south for hospitality is there? And hospitality is not just rich food and lots of it. Hospitality is the rich fellowship, the warmth of welcome, the genuine reception of unconditional acceptance that I also found in that home.

At a recent choir party Barry Burke expressed his dissatisfaction that my recent sermons have lacked any etymological word studies. So, especially for Barry’s sake, let me share with you an interesting insight. In the Indo-European language, which is the very distant ancestor of our native English tongue, there was a word which referred to “someone with whom one has reciprocal duties.” [5] From this root came the Latin word “Host,” and its cognates, including “hostel,” “hotel,” “hospital,” and “hospitality.” From the same root the Germanic language derived its word, “Guest.” “Host” and “Guest” share the same source.

This root implies that to the Indo-Europeans… the host/guest relationship was semisacred. We know from history that in ancient Greece an important institution was “guest friendship”: (that is,) a host’s obligation to shelter the guest within his walls, and the guest’s obligation to offer reciprocal hospitality in the future. The resulting network of mutual obligations helped bind society together beyond the bounds of the individual extended family.[6]

The word, hospitality, therefore, implies an involved action on the part of both the host and the guest. Hospitality is my reaching out to you in friendship and welcome. That welcome, by the very history and definition of the word, implies a future and reciprocal offer of your friendship to me. That is southern hospitality at its best, isn’t it?

But there is more than just an interesting linguistic connection between the action of the host and the guest. I believe there is a very deeply theological relationship as well.

In today’s parable Jesus startles us, as he did his original hearers, with a message about the nature and character of his God. It is a message that has never been welcome. In a time when our ears are bombarded, daily, with calls and cries and claims for “justice,”[8] if we dare to listen, his word will be just as offensive. Just as challenging. Just as revolutionary as it was two millennia ago. And, if we can really hear the message, it can become just as life-giving.

At 6:00 a.m., the vineyard owner hired workers for an agreed upon daily wage. Amy told you last week that this accepted wage was one denarius. No great sum -- enough for a family to subsist, but no more. But the landowner offered, and the workers, apparently readily, agreed. According to Jesus’ story, the landowner came back into the market throughout this day, hiring workers again at 9:00 a.m. and Noon, at three and five in the afternoon. Each time he hired more workers and promised to pay them, “whatever is right.” Would you go to work simply for “whatever is right?” (How many of you have been told, like I once was told by an employer, “We’ll take care of you…”? And how many of you, like I, have been disappointed by that trust?)

But in this story, when it came to pay time, only those who had been promised the daily wage were disappointed. To those hired first and to those hired last, the landowner paid the full denarius. He had promised at least what was just, and this is what he had paid.

Of course, by intent the parable raises the obvious question, which is, still, “So who determines what is ‘just’?”

Among the parable’s lessons to us is a subtle but powerful reminder that we need desperately to hear today. Today as our administration tries to push us to the brink of a war for which there is no end, we need to listen carefully to our President’s favorite role model,[9] and we need to hear Jesus, again, challenge our understanding of justice. For human justice will always be motivated by self-interest and a begrudging dissatisfaction with the rights and possessions and good-fortune of the other, be it friend or foe. (To begrudge in Greek means literally, “to look with an evil eye.”[10])

In his commentary on Matthew’s gospel, Eugene Boring reminds us that to hear this parable as Jesus taught it, we must remove the obvious allegory that has been associated with it for so long. We hear the story and side (naturally) with the landowner, who is, obviously, God. With the childlike innocence of a 6-year-old trying to impress her Sunday School teacher, we repeat, “God is just.” “God is good.” “God is always right,” and in hearing this way we lose the stinging edge of the parable, for we too-easily judge against those evil-eyed first-hour workers.[11] (They obviously were wicked and greedy anyway -- this is why they grumbled.)

But put aside your “Sunday-School-answers” mentality for a moment, and hear Jesus’ story as he told it, at face value. Heard in this way, we would certainly identify with those workers who were hired, first. If I had worked in the heat of the sun for twelve long hours, picking grapes until my fingers bled, if I had fought sweat and dehydration and boredom and backaches and the sting of bees and the fear of snakes all day long, and then some good-for-nothing loafer, who had lazed his way around in the shade of the market all day, had come into the vineyard for one lousy hour, when the cool shadows were beginning to stretch across the rows, and had picked one measly basket or two in that time… If this were the case, I would expect more for my day’s work than this loafer. Because that would only be right, wouldn’t it? Surely that would be fair? Any just employer would have to agree.

God is a Southern Hostess like no other. God is she who “prepares a table before us -- in the presence of our enemies. Our cup overflows.”[12]

And the cup of our enemy, overflows, too – and our evil eyes cannot stand it.

The simple point of the parable is this: Yes, only God is just. But even so, God never settles for only what is just. For this world will not survive long on justice alone. Your marriage will not survive on justice alone. (Amy should have left me, long ago!) Your career will not survive on justice alone (whether you are the employer or the employee). Our church will not survive on justice alone. (Who is right, here?) And this great nation of ours will not survive long if we pursue all of our enemies with a begrudging, evil eye of justice alone. There must be more.

So God comes to us again, and again, offering, welcoming, inviting,[13] “Will you come? There is a table... It is full... It is free… It’s for everyone…”

Yesterday at the conclusion of Cathy Blackwell’s funeral I had one of my many, private momentary emotional breakdowns. The so called “gracious hospitality” of “an unjust God” was swirling in my sermonizing head as we sang, “Great is your faithfulness, Great is your faithfulness, morning by morning new mercies I see. Great is your faithfulness, God unto me.”[14] And the skeptic in me, the doubter, the empiricist in me, the realist that I must be, was asking, “How?” “When?” “Where have I seen God’s faithfulness? God’s daily grace?”

I have only seen it in faces and fingers. I have only seen it in you. I can only believe in God’s grace because I am here, (and I am only here) because someone has dared to live, for me, beyond the limiting confines of justice. There must be more…

Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me;

[1] The Old Testament lessons suggested by the lectionary are both appropriate supplements to a lesson on God’s grace, and should correct any notion that there is no grace in an “Old Testament God”: Jonah 3.10-4.11 and Exodus 16.2-15.

[2] From “The Beverly Hillbillies,” see note, below.

[3] Note this hint of foreshadowing for this sermon.

[4] I have actually had to make up some of the details of this menu, but I have not exaggerated in doing so -- it was a mango-and-something-strange-chutney, but, you get the point (it was to die for!) I give full credit to Mrs. Catherine Allen of Mountain Brook, AL for creating one of the most memorable feasts I’ve ever consumed.

[5] Robert Claiborne, The Roots of English: A reader’s handbook of word origins, Times Books, 1989, p.114.

[6] Claiborne, p. 114.

[7] The theme song for the old television show, “The Beverly Hillbillies,” concludes with these words, “…to have a helpin’ heapin’of their hospitality…” and then one of the characters speaks the words, “Ya’ll come back now, ya’ hear?”

[8] The sermon is not intended solely as an attack on the current administration’s aims of war with Iraq, though as I make clear below, I think this is an appropriate use of the text. There are many ways that we see and hear people claiming “justice” (individual rights) in our society, all which make my point that human justice is motivated by “self-interest and a begrudging dissatisfaction…” Our nation affords incredible liberties to its citizens, liberties known perhaps at no other place and in no other time. As we rejoice in these liberties, a Christian ethic should also critique the highly individual nature of these claims, and argue for a shared mutuality of humanity. What rights can I (justly) claim when all of God’s children are not even adequately clothed and fed?

[9] I do not have an exact quote, but then Presidential-candidate Bush referred to Jesus as his favorite role model during his 2000 campaign for the White House.

[10] “Is your eye evil?” Frank Stagg, The Broadman Commentary, “Matthew,” p. 194.

[11] Eugene M. Boring, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Matthew, p.392.

[12] Psalm 23.5

[13] In his book, Peculiar Speech (Eerdman’s 1992), William Willimon’s sermon, “The Invitation” uses the metaphor of God as one who invites. “Here is a kingdom that is not structured on justice, what we deserve, what’s fair, what’s earned. We may structure our kingdoms that way, or at least we attempt to do so. But that’s the way we do business. The way God does business is another matter. Persistent, intrusive invitation, not dispassionate justice, is the way this kingdom is structured. We may think that we’ll get what we’ll get based upon our good efforts, our attempts to be good and to do good. But the story suggests that we’ll get what we’ll get on the basis of invitation” (emphasis added, p. 29).

[14] “Great is Your Faithfulness,” Thomas O. Chisholm.

[15] Psalm 23, NRSV, with the exception of my paraphrase, “Hospitality and Grace” for “goodness and mercy.”