Sermons by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
October 14, 2000
Sermon at Share the Bread
Jesus Had Friends in Low Places
When he shared bread with them, things happened
By Bishop Paul V. MarshallWelcome to the first Holy Communion at the First Union Arena. Canon Bill Lewellis played for me the Sinead O’Connor song that Bishop Roskam used at the end of her talk today. So I came up with a song, too. However, Bill wouldn’t let me play it here today. I’m disappointed, but can at least tell you that it is a Garth Brooks number called “Friends in Low Places.” Bill said something about there being an extra verse they don’t play on the radio. I’ll just take his word for it.
I’m teasing, of course, but I still think that if any few words would characterize the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, they could easily be “friends in low places.”
Jesus came from an occupational background that brought in less money than it took to support the average household slave. He knew about low places.
Odder still, people whose jobs forced them to live outside the covenant — he ate and drank with them. People who were for one reason or another living outside of acceptable society — he ate and drank with them.
He crossed lines and partied with stooges of the Roman occupation. He spoke with women and allowed himself to be touched by women in a culture where men, especially Rabbis, just did not do that.
He crossed the most basic lines of his time and brought peace, forgiveness and healing to non-Jews. From dinner with that little rascal, Zacchaeus, to liberating the woman at the well who had five husbands, Jesus said he was seeking God’s lost sheep, the people who haunted low places.
When Jesus shared bread with them, things happened.
The lessons for this Eucharist visit a variety of low places. First we meet an unnamed widow in Zerapath. [1Kings 17:8-16]
About the worst thing you could be in the ancient world was a widow trying to support a family.
She had not done anything to anybody, but was facing starvation nonetheless. It is to such a widow, a Gentile widow, an outsider, that the prophet Elijah is sent. She gives him shelter from the wrath of the royal family back home. She and her household are miraculously fed during a famine.
Why? We don’t know. We do know that there are dozens of stories like this in the Old Testament.
Many are about women — and they are all stories about people who are not part of the chosen people. Their stories reflect God’s desire that everyone return to the creator, that everyone is loved and called to life.
As Matthew tells it, some of Jesus’ ancestors were not only outsiders, but outsiders from very low places. Just when our widow is prepared to share her last bread with her son and then sit down to starve to death, she is fed.
Her story was important enough for Jesus to preach about it and her exceptional hospitality and faith, reminding his listeners that if all God needed was a widow, Israel had plenty of them. Luke tells us that when Jesus publicly pointed out God’s interest in the inhabitants of low places, and their interest in God, there were people who wanted to kill him.
In the Gospel’s story of the prodigal son, his elder brother and their waiting Father [Luke 15:11-32] Jesus shows an interest in the down and dirty low places into which the younger son sank.
He is even more interested in the invisible low places of a heart that tortures itself trying to be good, the heart of the older brother.
It has never been — and never will be — easy to be a young person.
The younger son in this story tries to carve out a life for himself, but gets into a financial, social, religious, and sexual mess instead. When he is in the lowest of low places he remembers that home is where, when you go there, they have to take you in, or hopes that they do.
Imagine his uncomprehending mind and topsy-turvy emotions when his need for a spanking and a good talking to, his need to be grounded until he is forty — when all of that need for groveling and punishment is shoved aside by his father’s overwhelming joy at having him back.
The much-needed bath, the ring, the robe, and the feast courtesy of the fatted calf — well, that young man learned that there was no place low enough for him to be without the Father’s love.
But Jesus told that story of the prodigal just to set up his real point.
Jesus told the story because people who really were trying to be good, well, some of them, lived in such a tightly wrapped world of rules and regulations and religious scorecards with hundreds of check-off boxes, that they could not rejoice when sinners heard Jesus and came to God. They could not rejoice, period.
They did not, Jesus assures us, they did not even know — that, as the Psalms say over and over — God calls us to rejoice in the light that is God, to delight in the wonders of the world and its maker. The angels rejoice, and so can we, when we see God’s love at work among those in low places.
Another way to put it is this: if your religion makes your life a burden, if you cannot feel the light of God’s smile, if you are more aware of your failings than you are of God’s delight in you, well, you’re like me, at least on bad days.
You may be like me and quite a few biblical and historical characters, and like millions of people whose religious upbringing maybe talked about the love of God, but was in practice an exercise in crushing the spirit.
When Garrison Keillor calls one of the churches in Lake Wobegon “Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility,” I know those are my people, it’s my church! I could fit in there, fit in, settle down, and never have to smile again — but for the grace of God that sisters and brothers have shared with me in the Body of Christ.
Some people in the Episcopal Church reached out to me in one of my lowest places. They showed me by example that life is, after all, a gift and not a task. They taught me to rejoice in the Lord.
Don’t misunderstand me: Jesus is not opposed to morality or responsibility, and certainly the first word out of his mouth in St. Mark’s gospel is “Repent.”
Jesus gets us to the issues of responsible living by a route all of his own, by sharing bread and drink with a very motley crew of friends in low places.
Jesus went to the lowest place of them all, Peter says in our second reading, death on the Cross [1Peter 2:1-5, 9-10]. He and you and I now know there is no hungry soul that cannot be fed. Deliberately using the words Moses spoke to Israel after they had escaped from Egypt, Peter writes to the newly baptized, “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people.” He understands the overwhelming love of God giving our lives such purpose that we can imagine ourselves as part of a building, part of a massive structure that functions to show the world God’s love and its power to change our lives. Moral realignment and virtuous living come in response to God’s love.
Jesus invited himself over for dinner at Zacchaeus’ house one night. Zacchaeus responded to the experience of Jesus’ company by giving back all he had stolen, with interest, without a word needing to be said about it.
Those of us who constantly measure our performance — more aware of our faults than our virtues — we need to remember that Christ meets us in places light years beyond questions of behavior. He forgives, embraces, washes, and shares holy bread with us. Only then are we sent back into the world of behavior, of behavior with a purpose.
Every Sunday’s worship is a time to withdraw from the world, to be united with our brothers and sisters in Christ, to be met by Christ, fed by Christ, and then (rather abruptly) told, “Go in peace — but go to love and serve the Lord.”
The second lesson was written to people at the time of their baptism. It is said that Martin Luther kept a sign on his desk that he looked at when he was feeling like a failure. It said in Latin, “I have been baptized.” That’s all. That’s enough to remind us that God thinks we are worth dying and living for.
We are about to renew the promises of baptism. The questions and answers in that renewal are built like the second lesson and like the passage in Exodus that it copies. We begin with our belief in what God has done and is doing for us in creation, redemption, and life in the Holy Spirit.
We then make promises about keeping connected with that in church, and then talk about how we will feed those in low places, whether they are lonely, guilt-ridden, poor, unjustly treated or living without a clue as to how much God loves and values them.
Today we have arranged for some young people to splash you — gently, I hope — splash you with a little water as we remember what God has done in Christ and renew our promise to respond.
If you get a little wet, or a lot wet, let that water be a time to know again God’s love and God’s desire that you and I touch all the low places in the world with love like that of Jesus Christ.
You can reach out to low places on any level. Bishop Manasseh has reminded us of the suffering of his people in Kajo-Keji. The news from the Middle East is very bad this week. Children in many places in Pennsylvania do not get a decent education. There are people on your street who are lonely, frightened, hungry or overwhelmed by life or feelings of meaninglessness.
You may have a child who needs to know that your love is stronger than their mistakes or their mediocrity. You may be that child, even though your hair is gray. There are more than enough low places to go around. We who have been fed at this holy table by Jesus may find that touching people in low places with the transforming friendship of Christ may be the most important thing we ever do.
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