February 18, 2001
Seventh Sunday After Epiphany

The Skeleton at the Feast

Well, this isn’t a scripture passage that many of us want to dwell on. It is a difficult passage, and it’s an easy one for us to ignore. Our immediate response, if we must have one , will be a superficial response, and that would be to say, “Christians should be nice to everyone.” We know that and try to do that in our lives. How many times have you heard someone say, “I hate that person, but I know that is not a very Christian thing to say, so I’ll try to act differently, because Christians are supposed to be nice to everyone.” We try to ignore this passage or we try to somehow rationalize our way out of the words that Jesus shares. Sometimes we look for “good advice.” Good advice suggesting that, if we would just try a little harder, maybe we can like that person. If we make just a little effort we can reach across the chasm that divides us and take care of all of this ugly hatred, or dislike or irritation. One of my favorite pieces about good advice became the basis for the cover of the bulletin.

I don’t know if you have ever wondered about some of these things, but not all of these images come on the Church 101 Clip Art disk. I don’t know of any clip art disks that have a skeleton at a table, a skeleton at a feast, but Carla was able to put this together when I told her what the sermon title was and what the theme of the worship service was going to be. So she went through her clip art and she found a fine skeleton and then set a table and pulled in food until she figured there was more than enough for our friend.

The image of the skeleton at the feast comes from a definition from Frederick Buechner, a minister, a writer, someone who brings a fresh view to many of the theological terms or everyday terms that we use. In his book call The Theological ABC he writes and defines the word “anger.” He says, “Of the seven deadly sins anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips against grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel, both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back. In many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”

I know that I’ve experienced those times of righteous indignation. Anger that I felt was justified. I was finally tired of holding it all in and I just let it all go out. To kick, to scream, to swear, to slam your hand on the wall. When someone has wronged us, our response if often one of anger, and we feel justified in talking about that idiot and what they did. Buechner says that if you hold on to that hurt, if you nurture it, if you help it to grow even greater, in the end you’ll find out that your not doing anything at all to get back at that person. Instead, you are tearing out your own insides. You enjoy the feast of anger and of hatred, and at the end you find that you’re the skeleton that is left.

Another piece of good advice. A friend of mine accepted a call to a new church and when she got there she found out that there was a structure in place and she had to learn how to deal with it. There was an older woman who had been the chair of the altar guild for about 150 years, and she knew how everything was supposed to be up in the chancel area. Well, my friend, had some ideas about a little change here and a little change there. There were a few special services and she said, “I’d like it to be this way.” Well, the woman who ran the altar guild was very accommodating. She was warm and friendly, and she said, “Pastor, what ever I can do to help you, I’d be happy to do that.” If the Pastor asked for something specific, the woman would say, “Oh, you want it like that?” The minute my friend said , “Yes.” She would say, “Well, alright, I’ll make sure it’s that way.” But if the minister forgot to say something, or didn’t have a particular opinion, then the chair of the altar guild did it the way she wanted it done, clearly the way it was “correctly” done.

My friend got more and more irritated about this situation. She said, “This woman is so passive aggressive. She tells me what ever I want, but at every turn she does what she wants to do, and just frustrates all my attempts.” So I said, “What are you going to do about it? How are you going to deal with this?” She said, “I think I’m going to have to go out to lunch with her.” I talked to her a couple of months later, and asked her, “Did you ever go out to lunch with the chair of the altar guild?” She said, “Oh, sure. I did in fact. We had a great lunch. We talked about all sorts of things. I found out that we had a lot of things in common. We’ve visited some of the same places. We have some of the same hobbies. Every thing is different now. We really get along well now, and as time goes by I’m enjoying her more and more.” That is another good piece of advice for us. If there is an enemy in your life, and you take some steps to reach out, to try to resolve the differences, things can be completely different.

There is another good advice story that I have frequently shared when I have been in my Samuel Greene, circuit rider, garb. It is a story that comes from Billy Sunday, and Evangelist in the early 1900’s. Billy Sunday would travel from town to town and they would erect huge tabernacles for the crowd to gather in. Can you imagine putting up a building for a couple of weeks while the evangelist is in town? When Billy Sunday came in they set up row upon row of chairs in this huge building, Billy would preach to the crowds. He had been a baseball player for awhile He was very athletic, and he would prance back and forth across the stage, throw chairs, and do all sorts of things. He had one story that he told when he was talking about bad habits. He said he had once heard of a man who went to Europe. While the man was in Europe he attended a kind of a circus performance in a theatre. It was a wild animal tamer. There were all sorts of fierce beasts. A Bengal Tiger, a Nimidian Lion, then one of the most sinister looking of all the animals, a Black Panther. This animal tamer set the cats through their routines. He had them sit up and beg like a little kitten, jumping through the hoops of fire, anything he commanded them to do, those cats did. Then he set the cats off to the side, and a screen came up at the front of the stage. Some Oriental music began to play. From one side the trainer walked toward the center. From the other side there slithered a serpent. Once again the trainer gave the commands and the serpent went through various contortions. Then the man stood in the center of the stage, with his arms at his sides. The snake came and twirled and began to wrap around and around. The crowd watched in awe. Then in horror as they saw the man’s tongue come out and his eyes began to pop and he gave a yell that at first they thought was part of the act, then they realized that he was in trouble. They sat frozen as they heard the sound of bone upon bone crack as the snake tightened its hold. This man at first obtained the snake when it was a tiny thing, a baby. He had taken care of it and nursed it, nurtured it, as it grew longer and stronger, until the day came when the snake killed him. Sunday concluded saying, “Are you nursing a bad habit today? Is it drink?”

Well, it may not be drink for us, but we have our bad habits. Anger and hatred are among the bad habits we have. It starts out with a little bit of irritation, a disagreement, a personality conflict, and we throw a few more pieces of paper on the fire. Another stick or two of disagreement. We start watching for reasons to dislike this person. Eventually we are pouring cupfuls of gasoline on the fire and saying, “Oh, I cannot stand that person!”

Now Jesus has his own bit of good advice. If you read this passage from the gospel from Luke, Jesus is not talking about figuring out how to feel more love for someone. Jesus said, “If you have an enemy, go out and do.” Do good for those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you, turn the other cheek, If anyone takes away your coat, give up your shirt too. If anyone begs fro anything from you, give it, don’t ask for it back again. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Now we recognize those words as the “Golden Rule”, and you probably know that we are not the only ones that have the Golden Rule. It has been part of civilization and part of world religions for a long long time. The Buddhists say that, “One should seek for others the happiness one desires for himself.” In Hindu scripture the true rule of life is, “To guard and to do by the things of others as one would do to his own.” In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, “He sought for others the good he desired for himself. Let him pass.” Confucius, “What you would not want done to your self, do not do to others.” Seneca, from the Roman Senate, “In your dealings with others, harm not that you be not harmed.” Aristotle, the Greek Philosopher, “We should behave toward friends as we would wish friends to behave toward us.”

Somehow we have some sense of what it means to act correctly, what it means for us to live our life in a civilized kind of a way. But it is interesting to note that after Jesus shares the good advice about doing and treating others as we want to be treated, he doesn’t make any promises. He doesn’t say that if you do these things that everything is going to be alright. He does not say that if you will go and treat someone respectfully that you are going to change their behavior. He doesn’t promise that just because you are considerate the relationship is going to be different. He doesn’t even promise that if you do the right thing that you are even going to feel differently at all. For a moment he takes a side track and says, well, let’s look at it another way. Sometimes, when there is a disagreement, remember your parents saying, “If you fight with him all the time, don’t play with him anymore. Just ignore him, and go play with someone else.” Have you said those words before? Go and find the people that you get along with and spend your time with them, don’t worry about that other person. Well, Jesus says, “If you only love the people that love you, do you think you should get credit for that? Doesn’t everybody like the people that like them? It is easy to get along well with someone you enjoy.”

What about lending something to someone. Do you only lend something to someone who will give it back to you? Only lend something to somebody who will also lend something to you? What’s the big deal in that? Anybody will enter into a relationship if they think that it’s going to be fair and that the exchange will be even. Jesus said, “I’m not talking about “even”, I’m not talking about “fair”. What I am talking about is God.” So now we move from that line that I like to draw between “good advice” and “good news”. A lot of people want good advice, we want to know how to change our lives, how to make them better, how to lose weight, how to look younger, how to have better memory, how to make our living room more attractive, we want good advice, we want some suggestions, a little bet of help. But what we really need in our lives is good news. The good news that Jesus offers is that, even though it’s impossible for us to really love our enemy; what is impossible for us as humans is very possible for God. God loves everyone. Not just the ones that love God back. Not just the ones that play fair. God loves everyone. Each and every person. Loves the just and the unjust. Loves the good and the bad. This is good news because we don’t always wear the white hat. Sometimes we are the bad guy. When we are the bad guy, we usually know it. Much as we enjoy it, it eats away at us. The longer it goes on, the harder it is for us to get ourselves out of it. Until we find ourselves the skeleton at the feast.

Jesus says that God loves everyone, just as they are. God loves me. God loves each of you, and that makes it possible for us to let go just a little bit. It makes it possible for us to open up more than we were able to before we knew that truth. For if God loves us just as we are, what reason can we give for hating somebody? What reason can we give for having no patience with an obnoxious individual. If we realize the completeness of God’s love for us, how can we do anything else but try to live out that love? God’s love is not just good advice, but it is Good News. Amen.