24 October 2010

Jeremiah 14:7-10, 19-22
Psalm 84:1-7
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
Luke 18:9-14

A story – a true story – and in this case, one that actually happened as well. I was still a young pastor – or at least a younger pastor – in a small, mid-western town, a college town, a Lutheran College town, and I was teaching confirmation. And one early winter afternoon, darkness having already descended, I asked the twenty-or-so ninth-graders in my charge a question. “How many of you here want God to be fair?” The looked at me, they looked at each other, then back at me, and their faces registered – as only the adolescent face is able – their utter disdain for the incredibly stupid question that had just come out of my mouth. “No, I mean it,” I repeated, “How many of you here want God to be fair?” And at last the hands went up, a few with indignant huffiness, while other arms were propped up alongside faces whose eyes rolled to the heavens, their owners’ mighty efforts accompanied by sharp snaps of fruity-smelling bubble gum, and an a cappella chorus intoning lyrics of  “whatever,” “lame,” and “is this guy for real?”

Of course these kids wanted God to be fair. They were, after all, good kids from good homes. Most of these kids had at least one parent who was a professor or an administrator at the college, and these, their children, were, like their parents, already accomplished strivers and achievers. Like their parents, they were already properly progressive, proudly unprejudiced, and each week each of them remembered their duty to bring a can of Green Giant corn or Del Monte green beans as part of their confirmation class project to collect food for the local food bank. And they belonged to the BIG Lutheran Church, the one with fourteen ordained clergy as members, not counting the two who were their pastors; the one looking down upon the river valley and town; the one with the mighty three manual, mechanical action organ and great acoustics; next to the college; and so unlike the little Lutheran church downtown whose upstairs even smelled like a church basement. So of course these good, nice kids wanted God to be fair. And they all raised their clean hands. Except for one.

The one who didn’t raise his hand – we’ll call him Buddy. Buddy didn’t live in the same neighborhood as the rest of these kids. He lived in the flood-prone valley in a trailer park, and his mother was not a professor, not even a dishwasher at the college. Nobody actually knew what she did, and of course there was no father, leastways not that anyone knew of. And in this congregation of really good Lutherans who knew you were supposed to sit up front in worship, Buddy and his mom always sat in the back, on the side, slipping in and out as quietly as possible. And in confirmation class, every Wednesday afternoon, it was the same. Buddy sat as far away from the rest of the kids as he could. “So, Buddy,” I said to him, “you didn’t raise your hand. Does that mean you don’t want God to be fair?” Buddy’s swarthy face, already in need of a razor, took on a deep blush as the rest of the class turned his way, and he slouched even further down in his chair, and I asked quietly, “Buddy, do you want God to be fair or not?” And doodling in his notebook and without raising his long-lashed eye lids he muttered, “The way I got it figured, if God is fair – then I’m toast.”

Every semester for the last half-dozen or so years, groups of students from comparative religion courses at area high schools have come here to St. Paul to hear a bit about the Lutheran way of listening to God. And each time to each group of students, I ask,  “Who here wants God to be fair?” And of course, almost every person raises a hand. Then I ask – Buddy not physically here to teach – he is the first one of us from that confirmation class to die and too young – but with Buddy all the same fully present, I ask these fair-minded kids, “How many of you here have committed murder?” Some eyes roll, some faces assume the look, and of course, no hands are raised at this quesion. “Great. Good to know,” I say. “Now, how many of you here have, just to yourself, in the quiet of your own head – how many of you here have thought of somebody else ‘oh, that person is such an idiot, such a moron, such a loser, such a bozo, such a tool, such a jerk’?” The kids again look at each other, look at me, and then without a whole lot of enthusiasm, this time every hand goes up. They’ve all done it and some I am sure are even doing it that very second. “Congratulations,” I say. “According to Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, all of you, in the eyes of God are murders. All of you deserve the very same punishment as the worst mass-murder you can think of.” The students eyes, mostly, go wide. “In God,” I tell them, “there is no moral hierarchy. Everyone’s on the same plane. There’s no better, there’s no worse. We’re all toast.” Then after a bit of discussion I say, “Now, how many of you here are going to try to do better?” And you know what happens – every hand is up in the air. “Great!” I say, “Now, how long do you think you’ll be able to keep on doing better?” And because in every class there are a few, who, like Buddy, know that the only constant of the human moral compass is that it continually spins crazily out-of-control, the answers come. First, one kid says, “Oh, we’ll be able to do better for about a day.” Then, in a show of one-up-manship, another shouts, “How about an hour, or even a half-hour.” And the girl in the front hollers back, “Try a whole minute.” Until finally and inevitably, the class jester, the class clown cries out, “Try two seconds . . . . what an diot.” And we all crack up. “So,” I interrupt the laughter, “who wants God to be fair now?” And not a hand goes up. No one wants God to be fair. At least not for the present moment or two.

Regardless, all of us go down to our houses justified, whether we want to be or don’t or don’t even care. All of us as lovely in God’s eyes as Christ – even if we don’t give a rip-roaring-rat’s-rear. And everyone gets in to the Feast. As we shall all find out sooner or later – when the light of God explodes out of nowhere and throws us each off our high moral horses and lying in the dust of the earth and the ashes of our virtues, blinded we see – the Pharisee from Jesus’ parable, and all those we have thanked God we are not like, along with every hypocrite that ever lived – they come to us in their glorified bodies, and they lift us up, and they lead us to the celestial banquet hall, and they bid us gently all, “Come in. Be seated.” And wishing always to sit in the right and proper place, we ask, “Where is the head of the table? And where is the foot?” “Ah, look,” they say. “No head, no foot. The tables are round. No beginning, no end. No first, no last.” Then looking around the vast hall for God we say, “Where though is the head table?” And a voice says, “There is none.” And finally seated, perhaps a bit disappointed, and looking over a shoulder, we ask the waitress, “Can you tell me, where is God, that I may catch a glimpse?” But all the waitress does is smile back at us, her face, perhaps from the heat of the kitchen, glowing. And Buddy, across the table, winks, leans back in his chair, and grins up at her like some everlasting fool.