conjectural navel gazing; jesus in lint form

sermon: the ladies who lunch

Sermon: Proper 17 (22) Year C 2007
Community Church of Wilmette
September 2, 2007
the readings

The Ladies Who Lunch

How many of you find yourselves being lumped into a stereotype from time to time?

Are you a jock? A punk? A suburbanite? A femi-nazi? Are you too rich? Are you too poor? Old? Young? Is there a certain ethnic stereotype that you find yourself living down?

Is there a certain stereotype that you find yourself trying to live into? Are you a peacenik? A neatnik? Are you that successful North Shore fast company guru? Are you America’s next great post-industrial entrepreneur?

Likely all of us enjoy the burden and benefits of being lumped into a stereotype…and likely more than one at that. We all jockey for position somehow. We all seek to associate with the right people…whoever those people may be.

When I was a boy, probably younger than ten, I remember going shopping with older members of my family, great aunts and uncles, people of my grandfather’s generation. With them, going shopping was an event. This was in the early 1970’s in Richmond, Virginia before the shopping malls had taken over. Before the shopping mall was…the department store! Brothers and sisters, the department store was downtown! And that was something else!

You see, for those of you who don’t know this, once upon a time, going shopping was an event. Going downtown to the local department store was something you prepared for. We would dress up to go shopping. I remember the three-piece suit I wore as a boy. And if my memory serves me rightly, my Aunt Alice would wear gloves…white gloves with little buttons on them. Her husband, Gilbert, has a great hat that he would wear…and just a little off to the side. My grandfather (We called him Pappy.) wore a similar hat. I have it in my closet at home. A gentleman always wore a good hat. Ladies wore gloves.

At least, that’s what I remember.

When we would go downtown to shop, there was one place that we would go to for lunch, The Russian Tea Room. I cannot tell you if the food was any good. I don’t recall. But I remember looking around the fine dining room and seeing other people dressed up and looking just right, everything just so. Almost all of them were my from my grandfather’s generation. Aunt Alice and Uncle Gilbert fit right in. It was glorious.

I had encountered The Ladies Who Lunch. You know, the well-to-do who gather with the right people to discuss…well, being the right people. They talk about the right people and who is one of the right people…and who most decidedly is not. Ah, the stereotypes abound. I don’t know if people like this really exist, but the stereotype does. And I met them that day. And I loved them.

To my young eyes, everyone seemed so fancy, so well-to-do. Everything was so beautiful. I was with the right kind of people in the right kind of restaurant wearing the right kind of clothes…Everything was perfect. And it made me feel good, like I too was special. I was the right type. I was one of those people…the people who dress to go out, the right kind of people.

Fast forward to college. In college my little provincial life was flung open. It wasn’t that I had not encountered cliques, and stereotypes, classism, racism or anything else like that before. Of course I had. But never before in my life had I been more aware of the differences between people and the labels we all bear. Mostly this was because I was given a couple of new ones. Being slapped with a label is an eye-opening experience.

First, I was a Legacy. My step-mother’s father had studied at the same college I went to. There were five members of my family who went to school there…my father, two uncles and an aunt. I was a legacy. Entitled. I did not come to school based on my own merit. I had inherited that merit from another generation. At least this is the stereotype.

Second, I was Landed gentry. My father’s side of the family came to Virginia in the 1600’s. There was a land grant and everything. This was, to some degree, a joke. But this still brought with it all kinds of wonderful assumptions. Old money. Slave owner. Bigot. Sexist. I had inherited all sorts of social ills and I had not even known it.

People from other parts of the country set these stereotypes upon me. Some aspects of them I obviously embraced. Others I rejected. Some of it was true. Some of it was simply insulting. Much was an indictment and embarrassing. Being burdened with such distinctions was surprising…especially the negative connotations…and the anger of others that came with them. I had not encountered this before. I thought I was the right kind of person. “Hey! I’m enlightened! Hey! I am one of the Ladies Who Lunch! Don’t you know?”

Suddenly I was told that I was the wrong kind of person.

I spent a lot of time trying to live these things down. I wanted people to know that I was a good guy, someone you invite to lunch.

And I don’t know why I found any of it so surprising. But I did. I found the entire enterprise consuming at certain times in my life. I was still that little boy trying to figure out how to be one of the right kinds of people in the right dining room with the right clothes, the right attitude, the right family, or the right connections.

It was humbling. The reality check was humbling. I thought that somehow I was not burdened by racism. I thought that somehow, by virtue of being born after Martin Luther King and the Civil Right’s Movement, that I had escaped responsibility for tremendous social ills. Racism. Sexism. Name it. This was another generation’s problem. Not mine.

I was wrong. And I was humbled.

In today’s gospel story we find Jesus once again telling it like it is. Jesus is seated at dinner with the Pharisees. He had been invited. And he takes notice of who is seated where, and who assumes what position in society. It’s a teaching moment. So, he tells a parable.

"When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, 'Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, 'Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."

Don’t jockey for position, he says. Be humble. Don’t be one of the Ladies Who Lunch.

Jay Wilcoxen from Protestants for the Common Good reminds us of one more aspect to this Gospel story. It’s a parable. Jesus says so. And all parables, Jay says, are meant to tell us about the coming Kingdom of God and not simply about our lives here and now. So, Jesus takes it a step further and provides a new social expectation.

"When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

He is speaking to the host now, and not the guests. He reminds those gathered of what is at first a polite social convention and then explodes it. Don’t be one of the Ladies Who Lunch, he says.

Jay Wilcoxen says “Jesus, like the Pharisee, believed in the resurrection, but it is the resurrection of the righteous (in God’s sight) that he anticipates, not the resurrection of the proud and proper!”

Ah…so, maybe heaven does not look like the Russian Tea Room after all…where all the right people are gathered wearing all the right clothes. Perhaps the Ladies Who Lunch are not the paradigm of virtue as I had once believed.

Then what is? What are we supposed to do, we who gather in our lunch rooms and sit with the right kind of people? Surely Jesus is speaking figuratively. This is a metaphor. Surely this is Jesus telling us what it might look like one day…but not now. Not today. He’s talking about heaven and not earth. Right?

Wrong. He’s talking about right now. He’s talking about barriers and boundaries and what we do to separate ourselves from one another. He’s talking about how we always hope that by inviting someone or being invited by someone we’ll get something out of it.

He’s trying to tell us that God abhors the notion that our lives exist so that we might be comfortable and surrounded by what makes us feel safe, by what makes us feel better about ourselves.

No. Jesus is telling us that right now we are to be righteous. We are to invite people to lunch who cannot give us anything in return. We are to invite those people who will make us look bad, who will not help our social standing, our business connections, who will most likely “take us down with them.”

The poor, the crippled, the lame…these people had no social value in Jesus’ time. Who has no social value now? The poor? The minority? Who is the type? We know the type. Maybe they live next door to us. Maybe their son is in jail. Maybe there’s someone with an alcohol or drug problem. Maybe they are poor…or gay, or an immigrant. There is some reason why they have not been invited to lunch.

Invite them anyway, says Jesus. And don’t do it because you’ll get something out of it. No. Jesus says that in this world, we will get nothing out of this exercise. In this world, we will likely be ostracized along with the outcasts.

And this, says Jesus, this is what it can be like to be one of the Ladies Who Lunch.

Yes, the Ladies Who Lunch. Talk about it, says Jesus. Get upset about it, says Jeremiah. Who is at the table having lunch with you? Who is at the banquet? Gossip! Where are the poor? They were invited. Where are the addicts, the immigrants, those who just cannot seem to fit in? Where are the ostracized? They were invited.

The Ladies Who Lunch know who is invited. They come dressed for the occasion. They are keeping tabs. They know.

God wants us to be this type. God wants us to remember the covenant. God brought us to a rich land, flowing with milk and honey. We are the Ladies Who Lunch. And we are to invite all who would come. We invite all who would follow God and proclaim the Kingdom.

Dine with us.
Bring your brokenness.
Bring your burdens.

And here, here you may lay them down…here at this table.

We are The Ladies Who Lunch and you have been invited.

Thanks be to God!

Posted by tripp at September 2, 2007 07:47 AM