Don't Go To Church - Come to the Party!

At this morning's worship service, the theme was the Parable of the Great Dinner from Luke 14 - that beautiful story where the invited guests are too busy to come to the party, so the host sends his servants out into the streets to bring in the poor, the sick, the lame, and the blind.

Every time I read this parable, I imagine the astounded looks on the faces of the "uninvited" guests who get to enjoy this magnificent feast. I picture the overwhelming joy and gratitude they must have felt to have been given this purely unexpected blessing.

So this morning, when I told this story during the children's sermon, I asked them to describe what the best party ever would be like. Then I asked them to imagine how amazing it would feel to actually get to go to that party. My intention was to get them to understand how great it is that the Kingdom of God invites everyone to an awesome party that is even better than the one that they imagined.

But as I sent the children back to their seats, and then proceeded through the routine of the rest of the service, it hit me square between the eyes that what I had just asked the children to do - to respond to God's grace with overwhelming joy and gratitude - is something that very few of us
adults do, at least in traditional mainline churches.

How many of us - clergy or lay person - come to worship feeling the joy, the awe, and the sheer astonishment at being invited to the Lord's Table? How many of us sing songs of praise, confess our sins, accept our forgiveness, and hear the Word of the Lord with as much enjoyment and as much zest as we would feel at a magnificent banquet?

I have known a few who sincerely feel this much joy in worship, but they are the exceptions rather than the rule. If we are realistic, don't we have to admit that the majority of folks in the pews (and in the pulpit) range somewhere between mild interest and sheer boredom? Don't we have to agree that duty and obligation are much more common motivations than overwhelming joy for people to come to worship?

This is not to say that most people in our churches are not people of sincere faith and commitment. I believe that almost all are. But for churches that still rely on the Sunday morning worship service as their central and defining practice, perhaps it is time for us to ask why our central and defining practice is one that so many people find so un-joyful. Perhaps it is time to ask why, even among our most faithful membership, skipping worship is becoming more and more of a common and acceptable thing to do.

Which brings me back to this morning's service. What I realized in asking the children to think of the Kingdom of God as an awesome party is that we as God's people have forgotten how to party. Or more accurately, we have forgotten how to make worship a party. We are like the invited guests in that parable who were overly occupied with their duties and obligations, and we have forgotten how to lay all that aside and just come to the table with open-hearted exultation.

This, I believe, is one of the chief reasons we have lost a generation and a half of young people. It's not that they don't believe in God, or don't desire the spiritual truth of the Bible, or don't hunger for God's grace. It's that the worship we tend to produce (produce, and not proclaim) does not reflect the overwhelming joy and gratitude that we feel for being called to God's table.

So whether we need to create new worship forms, whether we need to recharge the old forms, or whether we need to bring worship out into the world and into mission will be different in each context. But however we respond to the stifling reality of being "The Frozen Chosen," we need to make our worship a party. Indeed, we need to make everything we do a party. We need to make it the best party the world has ever seen.

From The Pulpit: Uninvited

(An excerpt from my sermon preached on July 21, 2013. The text is Luke 14:14-25, The Parable of the Great Dinner.)

... As much as this parable is about God giving a warning to those who are invited not to miss the great dinner, it is more so about God finding a way for the uninvited to get there. The main characters are not the three who miss the banquet because they are too busy, but instead are those who get to come in their place. At its core, this parable is about the inclusion of the excluded: the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame, and those who have nothing better to do than wander aimlessly in the streets.

From their perspective, and from the perspective of those who are excluded in our society, this is not a challenging story at all. It is a beautiful story, a story of hope, a story of promise, and a story of freedom that gives them assurance that the coming of God’s Kingdom will not leave them behind.

If we look through the history of the Bible and the history of our own nation, it is breathtaking to realize just how many times God has made manifest the inclusion of the uninvited - and how much God is doing the same thing today.  If we are willing to look for it, and if we are willing to work for it, we will see similar glimpses of the Kingdom whenever those who are accustomed to being on the outside are invited in and given a seat at the table.  

This parable boldly proclaims this good news of liberation for all of those groups who face prejudice and exclusion. But it’s also good news for those who might feel uninvited on a more individual basis. Some of us might identify with the invited group, but at times - because of difficult circumstances in our lives, or because we find ourselves in a place where we don’t fit in - at times we feel like we have personally been uninvited from the table of God’s blessing. Sometimes, we feel like we are left wandering alone in the street while the party is going on inside without us.

So the good news is that God’s grace invites us all in, and that God’s love is especially given for those who feel separated, for whatever reason, from the glorious Kingdom that is being brought forth in our midst.

So the challenge that this Parable of the Great Dinner gives us is to be watching and to be ready for the unknown times when the Kingdom breaks forth, and to work today to include those who are uninvited. But the good news that lies beyond this challenge is so much greater. For the eternal party that God is throwing invites us all, insider and outsider, rich and poor, healthy and sick, seeing and blind, able-bodied and lame, busy and wandering. What a great party this is going to be!

 

Compassion, Not Judgment

(I am the pastor of a small-town church in southern Virginia, still somewhat of a hotspot for racist tensions. This morning, I felt compelled to address from the pulpit the verdict in the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case. I had already prepared a prophetic sermon about judging the poor based on Matthew 20:1-16, so I decided to insert the following remarks before the Scripture reading:)


A few times from this pulpit, I have spoken about the increasing divisiveness that we are seeing in our nation – divisions that are political, economic, and racial. This summer, every time we turn on the news, it seems like something controversial and polarizing is being announced – whether it comes from the Supreme Court, from Congress, from the White House, from state legislatures, or – as we learned late last night – from a jury.

The announcement of the verdict of the Trayvon Martin case caps off a week that has been particularly polarizing. It seems like we as a nation are so determined to be against one another that we’re just bouncing from story to story continuing the same polarizing fight.

Now I’m not going to pretend that I know whether George Zimmerman is guilty or not. But the case has been a flashpoint for racial tensions, and I stand with my African American friends as I see in them the struggle, the pain, and the fear that is still a reality of their existence. No matter how we feel about this one high-profile case, we can all agree that racial divisions are still strong in this nation. We are far from realizing The Dream that Martin Luther King spoke of, and we are called to work in Christ-like ways to bring peace and justice to our nation at a time when it seems so much of our unity is fracturing.

One of the biggest things we can do to be an agent of peace and justice is to pay attention to the lesson of today’s parable. It is about some workers in a vineyard, and about their quickness to stand in judgment of others. The lesson Jesus is giving is that we are to approach our fellow human beings not with judgment, but with love and compassion.

 

In our divided times, standing in judgment of others is what we see too often. Working to defeat one another and condemn one another seems to be the rule of the day.  So let us now listen to the words of Christ from Matthew 20, where he calls us to a different path.

 

(After the service, I was greeted with many positive reactions to my words. One woman whom I feared would be angry with me told me a story about her grandson and his African American friend being stopped and searched by police. She thanked me for speaking so candidly. I would be grateful for any of your thoughts on these remarks, praise or criticism.)