The gospel is not a tablet of ink, but a table of food around which everyone is invited to sit down together and eat, drink and dream for tomorrow we act.
A few weeks ago we marked the fiftieth anniversary (1963-2013) of Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I Have A Dream” speech. The power of that proclamation, the timely words of one man spoken at the one right moment before the enormous crowd gathered before the Lincoln Memorial, provided the “tipping point” for the civil rights movement and for decades of legal and social changes to come. The power of one man at one moment, the potency of that one speech, was a beacon of change and hope for the nation and the entire world.
But it almost didn’t happen. King was determined to keep his remarks brief that day. Toward that end he had a carefully written out speech that was to go no more than ten minutes. At the end of nine minutes King was done with his script and the crowd was still waiting for . . . something.
Then from behind him came a stage-whispering voice. It was the magnificent, soul-stirring voice of the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. Like a kid tugging on a parent’s coattails, Jackson leaned forward and urged Dr. King to “go on,” to keep talking. “Tell them about your dream, Martin,” her voice insisted. “Tell them about your dream.”
So King did. He cut away from his text, went off-script and climbed into history as he spoke from his heart and soul. King’s “dream” became the dream and desire of generations to come. Mahalia’s one voice told Martin to “change his plan.” Martin’s one voice then told the people to “change the world.” One speech changed the world. One person changed the world.
The Power of One. Sir Arthur Keith (1866-1955), of the Royal College of Surgeons, claimed that if 300 individuals were taken out of history, we would still be living in the Stone Age. But it is also true that if you add to history a handful of people and let them rule unimpeded, like Hitler, or Stalin, or Osama bin Laden, we would find ourselves back living in the Stone Age.
The Power of One has never been greater than today. It is true that before the Protestant Reformation and Luther’s “Here I Stand” there was a very limited concept of the “I” or the “individual.” Traditionally personal identity was drawn strictly from one’s parental loins and tribal lands and laws. The significance of singularity was not recognized. Whether it was the Church, the King, or the local community, the dictating force of behavior, the sway of power, was found among the many, not the one.
With the Protestant Reformation, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment, there developed a new sense of individual choice, individual responsibility, individual particularity, individualism. Individual ideas and the lives of individuals began to “count.” By the mid-twentieth century the tide of individualism had surged to a tsunami — so much so that it submerged much of the force and focus of community. The “me” overwhelmed the “we.” The needs and wants of the individual outweighed any communal demands or designs. And we went from individualism to rugged individualism to narcissism and from narcissism to the step beyond narcissism: solipsism (think Charlie Sheen). At least a narcissist knows that other people exist. A solipsist lives in a self-absorbed Youniverse of One around which everyone else orbits, if they exist at all.
Ironically the technological advances of the last few years that have made it possible for any one person with “google-ability” to give their “one voice,” their stand-alone status more of a reality than ever before, also has re-opened the door to community. The “Me” is now rediscovering the “We.” And the power of One to do good or evil has never been greater.
Of course now we call “WE” by something different: “Social Networking.” Think about it. Still highly individualized, every new device, every new app (there are now millions of them), or every new download all have a communal connection. E-mails, tweets, texts, skyping, they all keep us more closely in community with people we know well and with people we don’t know at all.
We might romanticize about the “olden days” when rural neighbors would gather for a barn raising or a big church pot-luck celebration, but we forget that except for those few special gathering times people lived in relative isolation, cut off by space and time from the rest of their “community for days or weeks on end. Bridging the gap of space and time social media is the new back-fence for community gossip and the new front-line for community activism and social betterment.
Biblical faith insists on living on a two-way street, a ME/WE highway: faith is communal, but faith is individual. Following Jesus requires team play. Or as our ancestors put it, unus christianus, mullus christianus‑-the lone Christian is no Christian. Yet the Bible’s endless lists of everlasting begats reminds us of the power of the person: each genealogy, each list of names is a protest against all totalitarian attempts to efface individuality.
How the “We” and “Me” come together in the Scriptures is that people are different, they have different gifts and different functions, but all are exercised to build up the body of Christ. The community of faith does not subordinate the person to the community nor the community to the individual. Rather, WE is composed of uniquely important ME’s. The body is composed of uniquely important parts.
Elizabeth Chapin likens the We/Me relationships to an accordion -‑ if we are always together or always apart, there is no music. It is the moving in and out of separateness and togetherness that makes the music. Brother John of the Taize community says that “The clearest sign of Christ’s ongoing presence in human history is a community of believers, the quality of whose life together shows that divine love can, in fact, transform the world and turn it into God’s family.” Friends of Christ (Orbis Books, 2012).
I began with the ME/WE back story to Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have A Dream” speech. Let me end this morning with another ME/WE back story to the biggest one-time gift in the history of US philanthropy: the 1.7 billion gift of Joan Kroc (1928-2003), the wife of the founder of McDonald’s, Ray Kroc, to the Salvation Army.
When Joan was a small child, her father abandoned the family and left her mother to figure out how to feed the family. In Joan’s memory, these were difficult, dark days. But she remembers one beacon of light in the midst of those difficult times. Every Friday night an officer from the downtown Salvation Army would visit their inner-city home, carrying in his arms two bags of groceries. Sometimes he would come in and play with the kids, giving them a father figure to relate to as well. Without that one Salvation Army officer showing up with those groceries, she doesn’t know how they would have made it each week.
So when it came to decide how best to invest the billions left her by her husband, she remembered that Salvation Army officer and his faithfulness to a needy family. And before she died she handed a billion dollar check to Salvation Army General Linda Bond. Today you are seeing in the poorest parts of town beautiful “Kroc Centers” going up to bring health and happiness to needy kids because of one person who was faithful to his mission.
By the way, when that Salvation Army officer died, he had no idea what he had done. When that Salvation Army officer died, he thought he had just had an ordinary ministry and been an ordinary officer. He didn’t think he had done anything special as a Salvation Army officer.
Sometimes the greatest blessings of your life you will never know about. Sometimes the greatest impact of your life will not be revealed in your lifetime. Sometimes your faithfulness will bear fruit long after you and I are gone.
It’s not about recognition and reward. It’s only about serving Jesus as an individual ME in the context of a communal WE.
COMMENTARY
It’s not just a cultural coincidence that throughout the ages, all over the world, people gather together at a meal in order to get to know others. If we really want to connect with someone, sitting down at the table, breaking bread together, is the best way to start. First dates almost always involve a meal. As many business deals are sealed over dessert as over desktops. As we sit and eat together we don’t just pass food around, fellow diners pass bits of themselves back and forth as well, exchanges insights as well as condiments.
While John the Baptist found his mission in the austerity of the wilderness, Jesus gladly admitted that he came “eating and drinking” in order to proclaim his mission and message to the world. The religious authorities of the day felt uneasy about Jesus’ “party” attitude from the beginning, and as his dining companions grew ever sketchier the “Pharisees and the scribes” began to publically complain about Jesus’ apparent failure to follow proper dietary observances.
In this week’s gospel text Jesus addresses the “grumbling” (“diagonguzo”) the specific public complaint these Pharisees and scribes had registered against him: “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them” (v.2). The term “prodechetai” (“welcomes”) suggests Jesus did not just “receive” these sinners, but that he had genuine “goodwill,” even an eager expectation, about the arrival of these “tax collectors and sinners” to his table. He was excited to see them, and looked forward to his time with them.
The laws of ritual purity kept Torah observant Jews from dining with Gentiles. But it also kept Jews whose Torah observance was questionable or negligible at more than arm’s length. Tax collectors did business with the Roman government every day and so necessarily interacted physically and socially with Gentile culture and traditions. “Sinners” would define any and all who failed to live a life of Torah-based righteousness — i.e. maintaining dietary observances, attending daily prayers, offering Temple sacrifices, or associating with outsiders of the “unclean.”
Jesus’ response to this charge takes the form of three parables. Each one focuses on the lost being found. Although a form of the first of these parables, the “lost sheep,” is also found in Matthew (18:12-14), the other two, the “lost coin,” and the “prodigal son,” are unique to Luke’s text.
Luke’s masterful compilation of these parables puts them into an increasing order of calamitous loss and joyous recovery. Luke also alternates a male-friendly story with a female as the main character.
In the parable of the lost sheep the loss is one sheep out of one hundred. While the loss of even one sheep in a flock is significant, the shepherd still had ninety-nine percent of his animals. The woman in the lost coin parable loses considerably more. The loss of one coin out of ten — or ten percent of all she had is disastrous. Her “life savings” of ten drachmas (approximately ten day’s wages) is all that stands between her and complete poverty. But the loss of the father in the prodigal son parable is greatest of all. He has but two sons and he “loses” one of them.
The two parables read in this week’s text — the sheep and the coin — are presented with parallel structures and vocabularies. In both there is the introduction of the main character, the shepherd, the woman. And there is the record of a loss: a sheep, a coin. There is then definitive action taken by the main character to recover that which has been lost.
In each case Luke’s text provides details that reveal how intentional the search for this lost thing is. The shepherd leaves ninety-nine sheep to look for the one who is lost. The woman burns precious lamp oil and literally “sweeps” the area in her frantic search. Luke includes the additional, and poignant action of the shepherd laying the newly found sheep across his shoulders in order to return the animal safely to the waiting flock. However, after her arduous search it doesn’t take much to imagine that the woman’s lost coin was clasped tightly to her chest (maybe even kissed!) when it was recovered.
It is the conclusion of both of these lost-and-found parables that specifically addresses the “grumbling” of Jesus’ critics. Both the shepherd and the woman call together friends and invite them to celebrate the recovery of what had been lost. Although it is not specifically cited in these two parables, one has to ask, “What’s a party without food?” (It is the rejoicing of the father in the prodigal son parable who makes this overlooked detail explicit.) Jesus then connects these earthly celebrations over the recovery of that which had been lost to the heavenly response to the redemption of sinners. He proclaims that there is “more joy (“chairon”) in heaven over one sinner who repents” (v.7), and again that “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (v.10).
It is through the definitive saving action of the shepherd and the woman that their lost ones are found. Recalling Ezekiel 34:1-24, Jesus’ grumbling audience of Pharisees and scribes would certainly know of that prophet’s castigation of Israel’s leaders who had not properly cared for the people, and God’s promise to act as “shepherd” and seek out and rescue “my sheep,” those who had been lost and scattered, and uncared for. Thus it is God’s will, God’s actions, not any accomplishments on the part of the lost, the sinners, which brings about the redemption and brings heavenly rejoicing.
Jesus is doing the work promised in Ezekiel 34;23, that God will “set up one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them.”