Sermon at First Congregational UCC, Rock Springs, WY 8/29/2010

Looking for Your Place Card
By Rev. Steven R Mitchell
First Congregational UCC, Rock Springs, WY 8/29/2010
Based on Hebrews 13:1-8, 1516 & Luke 14:1, 7-14


This past February, I was invited to attend an “awards banquet” put on by the Governor of Wyoming, to pay honor to four patrons of the Arts, one of them being Louise Wesswick. Granted, I actually had to let Louise know that I would be very interested in attending that special event, so in reality, I invited myself! Nevertheless, I was a guest for this particular function.
Upon my arrival I was informed as to what table I would find my Place Card. I really don’t know how many tables were actually dedicated to Louise, but I was aware of two tables, the table that she was sitting at and the table that had my Place Card. I have to share with you that I have a tendency toward an “A” personality. An example of an “A” personality is when there are three people standing next to one slice of apple pie, the “A” personality, just assumes that the piece of pie was there for them and will place it on their plate and proceed to eat it in front of the other two people, never asking if they might like to have part of it.
Had I been exercising my “A” personality that evening at the banquet, I would have just walked in the room, found Louise and plopped myself down beside her, totally unaware that I might be taking someone else’s seat, as it was, I had arrived not early but not late and found her table filled with members of her family. Even though I was her pastor, I was relegated to a lesser position of importance. This can be quite a personal blow to many pastors, because, of our work, we often fall into the trap of thinking of ourselves with more importance than what we really should have. Much like the Pharisees in Jesus’ time. I would have felt very comfortable had I been seated at the table where Louise was seated, for to tell the truth I was feeling just a little intimidated sitting at the table that contained our Mayor and his wife, our districts State Senator and his wife, and one of our City Council members and his wife. Now depending on what circles one would normally run in, the table that I was seated could be considered by some to have been the table to be sitting at, however, that particular evening was honoring Louise, thereby making her table, the table of honor, of which her family rightly occupied with her. Even when we are not attending a formal dinner but dinning by invitation, be it in a private home or a public restaurant, it is still good etiquette to wait to have the host or hostess direct where at the table you are going to sit.
Although today’s Gospel reading is using dining at a banquet as the story, Jesus is really only using this as the vehicle for a deeper issue; that of one’s self-perception or more specifically one’s attitude of self-importance. We live in a society that is obsessed with “success.” If you take time to walk up and down any bookstore, you will find shelves filled with how to succeed in business, in financial independence, in developing more self-confidence, even how to succeed in romance. I think I forgot to read that particular book, because I had a number of people share with me at Paul’s and my wedding just how many “frogs” I had kissed before finding my Prince! And they would be right.
You will also find on many bookshelves, books that tell us how to relax, find inner peace, wholeness, and wellness. Books that tell us how we can enjoy a more fulfilled, happy life. I have two daughters and a son; one of my daughters and my son tend to have personalities that demonstrate over-achievement and hyper goal-setting. I cannot for the life of me figure out where they got those traits! The other daughter seems to be more docile and lack-a-daisical, which is more like her mother’s nature.
One of yesterday’s Internet Headlines was “Six Signs That You’ve Made It to Middle Class”. It starts off by saying, “Not so long ago, most people viewed the hallmarks of success as something along the lines of a house, a white picket fence, two weeks’ vacation, two children and the ability to send those kids to college.” We tend to measure success by the things that we collect and then think trust our happiness to be found in those things. The interesting thing is that this is not really true. Jesus tells us that the answers to successful living and finding inner peace is not found through the standards that the world lives by, but rather is found in the standards that are written within the books of the Bible.
Today’s story is once again telling us how we can find fulfilled lives. According to Jesus, it is not by climbing the corporate latter, or by amassing great wealth, or by placing ourselves at the head table, but rather by not taking ourselves too seriously, of not thinking of ourselves as the most important thing that has graced this earth since the printing press was invented, but rather, by living in humility. By looking out for the other person instead of always looking out for “number one.”
Talking about self-esteem can be a very dangerous subject, especially for those who have grown up in an environment that has consistently told them that they are not worthy people and that others deserve more out of life than they do. My son, Steven, has severe dyslexia, so as a child, one summer he was enrolled in Sylvan’s Learning Center as a way of giving him a boost. When I was questioning my older daughter about what he was learning there, her response was, “he’s there to build up his self-confidence, but honestly dad, I think he has plenty already.” I understood what she was saying, as my parents use to tell me that there was no conceit in the family, because I possessed it all.
Now when I am talking about living with “humility” I am not talking about a false humility, which we can sometimes portray, because we don’t want to be perceived as being “arrogant”. In my family, my parents mis-understood the difference between “arrogance” and being “confident” in your talents and achievements. When I was a young boy, I wasn’t very good at sport’s, I sang “okay”, I didn’t think of myself as very good looking, I was a mediocre student, and I was painfully shy. By some peoples’ standards I was not going to be very successful in life. In fact, my high school counselor actually thought he was doing me a favor by encouraging me not to attempt to go to college because I would only fail.
I would like to share with you a seven minute clip from the film, “Joy Luck Club”. A story of four Chinese mothers and their interactions with their daughters. We are going to see the climax of the main character, June, and her mother, about June’s self-image and her perception of what she believes her mother thinks of her. I also want you to think about how this clip is a marvelous metaphor between “humanity”, through the daughter’s character and “God” through the character of the mother.
What my high school counselor didn’t know was, I had a belief in what scripture said about “who I was as a child of God and that as a child of God, I was ‘best quality’.” As the mother told her daughter, Waverly, the houseguest, took the best quality crab, that was her reward, but June took the worst quality crab because her heart was “best quality”, a reward that would go beyond that one experience. Jesus is telling us, not to take the best quality, but rather in our hearts, be the “best quality”, for this is where we will find the “success” and the “peace” that the world is wanting to experience.
Jesus also told us not to just invite, or more directly, just hang-out with our friends, because we know that we will continue to receive their friendship and support, but rather, we are to invite, to hang-out from time to time with those people that we do not know. Those people that will just enter into our lives for only a short time and we know that we will probably not receive back from them what we are giving. Because by doing this, we may very well be entertaining angels unaware, but more importantly, we will be sharing the “best quality” that comes from within our hearts with other children of God. If we think of ourselves as too important, then we will be missing the blessings that God is presenting to us through those that we deem less important than ourselves. Amen