Luke 15:1-10
Street Parties & Country Club Problems
James Sledge September
11, 2016
I
don’t know how common it is now, but at one time, big steeple churches often included
a country club membership as one of the perks
for their senior pastor. I suppose they reasoned that because many of them were
country club sorts, they wanted their pastor to be able to join with them.
I’m
not a golfer, and so I’ve not spent that much time around country clubs other
than the occasional wedding reception. The closest I’ve ever come to a country
club membership was joining local pools back when our girls were younger. And I
don’t remember much about that process because my wife handled all that.
The
pools we belonged to weren’t anything exclusive, but you still had to be a
member. There was some sort of application process and once you joined you had
to pay the annual dues to maintain your membership.
My
guess is that joining a country club involves a similar, if a bit more
selective, sort of process. There is an expectation that members will meet
certain standards, and so you may have to be sponsored by an existing member,
provide references, talk with a selection committee, and so on. How much you
get vetted depends on how exclusive the club is.
Church
congregations sometimes get compared to country clubs, for obvious reasons. You
can become members, and once you do there is some expectation that you give
financially, pay annual dues as it were. Some congregations feel exclusive,
even if there is no formal vetting process for prospective members. And like
real country clubs, many congregations once had rules against minorities
joining or women serving in leadership roles.
Typically,
church congregations use informal, often unintentional standards to maintain
whatever level of exclusivity they expect. And so congregations can usually be
labeled by income levels, race, education, and more. Such things may not have
been conscious choices initially, but over time, they become standards that are
enforced to some degree.
Many
years ago, the church I served was discussing ways to reach to the neighborhood
around us. A lot of apartments had sprung up near us – some low income housing –
with residents who didn’t look like our typical, suburban, white member. One
idea that had created a fair amount of excitement among church leaders was the
possibility of starting a second service that would be more contemporary, not
use classical music, have a band instead of a choir, that sort of thing.
One
evening we had a town hall type meeting to talk about this idea with the
congregation. After an elder had given a presentation, a long-time, beloved and
revered member stood up. “Are there other congregations doing these sort of
services?” he asked. Someone said there were, and I assumed he would then ask
about how successful such outreach efforts were. He said, “Well couldn’t those
people in the apartments just go there?”
I don’t know that I’ve ever heard a more
blunt and honest statement about membership standards and boundaries. The way
we did church, the sort of liturgy and music we used, the way we dressed, and
more tended to attract a certain sort and keep away others. And this member
liked it that way.
_______________________________________________________________________________
There’s
a country club problem in our gospel reading today, although it’s not about
styles of worship or race or income levels. Because the Pharisees so often play
the role of villain in gospel stories, it can be too easy to dismiss them as
hypocrites. But you have to give them credit. Their ideas about exclusivity weren’t
about worship or ritual. That was something the priestly folks worried about,
and Pharisees had little use for the priests.
The
Pharisees were all about obeying the Law, the rules God had laid out in
Scripture. Faith for them was not just about going to worship. It was about
meticulously following God’s rules. Who would argue against that?
Jesus
himself speaks often about the need to follow the Law, yet he turns out to be a
terrible country club member. And it doesn’t much matter to him whether your
country club is about money, style, race, and coming from the right sort of
family, or if your club is about being an upstanding rule-keeper and morality
champion. Jesus keeps inviting people that your club doesn’t want.
The
Pharisees, whose own teachings often sound a good deal like those of Jesus, call
him on his unwillingness to maintain the country club boundaries. Jesus
responds with several parables, those we heard today and the parable of the
prodigal, the gospel for next Sunday. The first parable is deeply beloved by
many Christians. There are paintings of Jesus carrying a lamb on his shoulders,
and it is reassuring to think that should we get ourselves lost, Jesus will
drop everything and come looking for us. But if we are the lamb Jesus so
tenderly carries, just where is he taking us?
Both
parables, the lost sheep and the lost coin, end with a party. And it doesn’t
sound like a country club sort of event. It’s not exclusive but more of a
street party. Friends and neighbors get invited. I don’t want to make too
much of that, but unless you live on the golf course, county club parties
aren’t usually friends and neighbors. But street parties tend to be a bit more
open.
With
street parties you send out a group email, put up signs in the neighborhood, post
something on Facebook or the neighborhood website. With street parties, there
isn’t really a guest list. It’s just whoever shows up. That usually means
people you’re friends with and some you don’t really care for. It even includes
that really creepy neighbor nobody likes.
In
fact, about the only way to get excluded from a street party is to decide
you’re not going. Maybe you’re out of town that weekend. Maybe you just don’t
like street parties. Maybe you think the neighborhood has gone downhill, and
you’d rather not associate with the sort of folks who’ve moved in. Regardless
of the reason, if the party turns about to be the event of the century, it’s
nobody’s fault but your own that you missed it.
That’s
actually part of the point Jesus is making to the Pharisees who criticize him
for hanging out with decidedly non-country club sorts. Not only have they
misunderstood how God’s love longs to draw in everyone, but they’re likely to
miss the party because they don’t want to hang out with those who are invited. The
third parable Jesus tells these Pharisees, the story of the Prodigal Son, makes
this clear. It ends with the good, elder brother standing outside the party as his
dad pleads with him to join in.
This
idea of God’s new day, God’s Kingdom, as a party with a very un-country
club-like guest list shows up a good deal in the gospels. And in our denomination’s
constitution, where it lists the six “Great Ends (or purposes) of the Church,” the
last one says, “the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.”[1] That
suggests to me that when we show up for worship here, it ought to feel, at
least a little bit, like a street party.
Regardless,
Jesus is planning a really big one, and all of you, everyone everywhere, are
invited.
[1] The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church
(USA) Part II, Book of Order, 2015-2017, (Louisville: The Office of the
General Assembly, 2015), F-1.0304
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