Someone who visited our church recently was visiting with me after the service and I asked them how they felt about their worship experience.  They didn’t comment on the music or the preaching or anything else.  The first thing they said in response to my inquiry was, “I think I got someone else’s seat.”  Now, I have no idea what gave them that idea.  But, somehow or another, they were a little embarrassed that they might have inadvertently come into what is, to them, a totally new place to them only to sit in someone else’s very old seat.  Of course, I reassured them that no one in this room thinks that any one seat belongs exclusively to them, right?

This weekend I performed a wedding ceremony for the daughter of some dear friends of mine in Abilene.  After the rehearsal Friday night we went to the Country Club, the nicest place in town in Abilene, for the dinner.  As we walked into the room, there was a head table with about a dozen chairs for the bride and groom and a few of their wedding party.  I knew I didn’t belong there.  There were also several other tables in front of the head table, some closer to the head table than others.  There were no name cards on any of the seats; it was first come, first served.  So, there was this silent, uncomfortable moment of maneuvering as everyone tried to figure out where they belonged in the pecking order of seating.  You ever been in a room like that?

Jesus had.  In fact, if we’ll climb back into this moment with him that we’ve just read about in Luke’s gospel, even though Jesus’ actual experience was at what we might call Sunday dinner, we’ll hear some instructions he has for people who find themselves figuring out where to sit at rehearsal dinners, or any dinner, for that matter.  As Jesus entered the room where the silent maneuvering for the best seat in the house had already begun, “they were watching him.”  And, he knew it.  They were watching to see whether or not Jesus was very good at the social-pecking-order-maneuvering-for-the-best-seat-in-the-house-two-step.  How would Jesus handle this moment?

Well, the first thing he did, as he did so often so well, was to make a teachable moment out of it.  A teachable moment is any time someone is watching you to see how you’re going to act.  Especially, like Jesus, if you’ve been the one telling other people how life ought to be lived.  Like, if you’re a parent or a teacher.  Teachable moments are happening all the time.  Sometimes, maybe most times, we aren’t even aware of it.

Like a young lady who was recently shopping for a prom dress with her mom.  Mom spots a beautiful dress and wants to buy it for her very beautiful daughter.  Problem is, it’s one size too small.  So, mom says, “You know, if you’d just lose a few pounds you could fit into this dress.”  The other problem is, the daughter doesn’t need to lose any weight.  She’s just fine.  But, she’s one size too large, not just the dress, but the affirmation every daughter needs from her mom, that’s she’s beautiful just like she is.  For that matter, who doesn’t need affirmation, from the people they look to for love, that they are beautiful just the way they are?  Parents who obsess out loud over their weight or over things like A’s when a B is the best a kid can do may be sending signals to their children they’d rather not send - if they could hear themselves talking.  Anyway, this daughter, who doesn’t even need to lose one pound, goes on a diet anyway and loses twenty.  She got the prom dress.  More than that, she got the message, learned the lesson that her mother taught in a very teachable moment, that her mom would think she is really beautiful, if she’d just lose a few. 

Teachable moments don’t always announce themselves with a bell ringing in the hall saying it’s time for class to start.  They’re all around us.  More often than not, we’re doing most of the teaching we do in times like this one for Jesus, when we are just being watched and overheard in the simple day to day moments of life.   The question is, are we paying attention to the moment and the lesson we’re teaching?  Even for churches, there are two sermons we preach.  One is the most obvious one, from behind the pulpit.  The other is more subtle, yet more powerful.  It’s the sermon we’re preaching by how we live in this community and relate to our fellowman and how we use our resources, that kind of thing.  I saw a church not far from here recently that has put a barbed wire-topped fence all the way around its property.  Do they hear what they are saying?

Jesus knew this moment for what it was.  And, he chose to use it to teach a lesson about what it means, in the truest and most practical sense of the word, to bring the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.  He starts the lesson with just a little practical advice, advice anyone could use even if they’re not interested in Jesus. 

When we’re maneuvering for a place to sit, when the music starts and we’re looking for a chair, leave a little room for someone else to bless you.  It might save you a great deal of humiliation.  “‘When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place.’”

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned to you in my message that trying to fit my middle class lifestyle into the gospel paradigm feels more and more like a square peg in a round hole.  I was raised middle class.  I was also raised going to a middle class Baptist church.  Middle class churches tend to be as much about middle class as they do about church.  It gets to the point where it’s difficult to know whether we’re reading scripture through middle class eyes or examining our middle class lifestyles through the eyes of scripture.  Which is it?  Do you know?  I don’t always know.  All I do know is what I told you.  Here I am nearly fifty, and the older I get the less comfortable I am with so much about my life that is more about middle class than it is about church.  Jesus makes me uncomfortable. 

He makes me uncomfortable because he keeps asking me to live in a way that cuts against the cultural grain.  Everything that is human in me wants to back evil for evil, make sure I get the best seat in the house and take care of myself first, that kind of thing.  And, Jesus keeps saying things like, “‘For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’”  So, again, I don’t know exactly what he means by that.  I believe that he wants me to do the best I can with what he’s given me.  I believe Jesus would have me strive for excellence.  I believe he is also saying that everywhere I turn, whether I know or it not, people are watching to see if this gospel I preach is more about empowering the disenfranchised or buying my franchise in this system.  If I choose to walk with Jesus, then that choice is going to also involve just being a little uncomfortable all the time.

Those who do the right thing, the truly good thing, in the end will not regret whatever it cost them.  God will, in the end, not disappoint those who choose to walk into the middle of this gospel discomfort, and keep walking, until they see where it takes them.

If we’re into immediate gratification, we’re on our own.  Get while the getting’s good.  If we’ve been listening to the lesson Jesus has been teaching in this teachable moment we call life, then we’re living for the long haul.  This is the lesson Jesus teaches.  If our primary concern in life is self-preservation and self-promotion, we will lose.  Eventually, everyone who makes it their priority to make certain that everyone else knows how important they are, eventually, somewhere, sometime, somehow, will be humbled by being reminded of just how important they are not.  I’m not sure exactly what Jesus means about being humbled.  I don’t think I want to know.

You see, the gospel, the good news, is about how God came to empower those who were powerless.  While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  To all who receive him, he gives power to become children of God.  You hear it over and over in the lessons of the gospel.  But, this is the very important thing to remember.  This is not just empowerment for a journey we will take into eternity after we die.  This is empowerment for the journey we are on right now.  God’s kingdom is not hidden behind the walls of some mystical heavenly castle on the other side of a metaphysical mote.  God’s kingdom is anywhere and everywhere God’s power rules in the heart of women and men, girls and boys. 

It’s a power to say no to temptation, for sure.  But, it is more than just a power to say no.  It is a power to give ourselves away in order to empower others.  It is a power to say yes to others who have never heard anything but no.  It is a power that comes from within, from where God rules our hearts, and empowers us not just to live in eternity future die but to live in eternity present, by taking whatever power we have and turning to others who aren’t in our class, whether we’re middle or upper or upper-middle and saying, as Jesus mentioned in his parable, “Friend, move up higher!” 

Did you watch the Olympics this week?  Especially the men’s 400 meter race?  Did you see Baylor finally prove it has some athletic prowess?  How in the world do people run like that?  I couldn’t run that fast if I was running for my life!  Where does that kind of strength and flexibility and just pure speed come from?

It all made me think of Eric Liddle, the 1924 Olympian who eventually became a missionary and died in China.  His life was portrayed in the early 1980’s movie, Chariots of Fire.  Liddle’s sister knew that Eric had been called to missions.  Eric was delaying his move to the mission field to run in the Olympics.  Eric’s sister didn’t understand and kept pushing him to follow God’s call on his life.  Eric kept trying to explain to her why running was so important.  That God had called him to missions, for sure, but that he had almost made him fast!  “When I run,” Eric told her, “I feel his pleasure.” 

Where does the joy of sacrificing for Christ come from?  On the other side of sacrifice, on the other side of obedience to his words, while we’re actually running the race he’s called us to run in serving others.  When I run, as I’m running, Eric told his sister, as he was actually using the gift God had given him, that’s when he felt God’s pleasure.  “‘When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.  And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous,’” Jesus said.  You can believe that, or not.  We’ll see what happens, all of us will.

The first time I toured these beautiful facilities of the Salesmanship Club across the street, I was overwhelmed at the incredible investment those folks have made, especially in the Jonnson School.  The Jonnson School is, without any question, one of the finest elementary schools to be found anywhere in the nation.  They spared no expense.  Pristine facilities, computer labs, all of it dedicated to giving children below the poverty line a shot at an education that will help them move up higher, like none they get anywhere else.  I remember asking Kent Skipper, the Executive Director, “Don’t the very people you intend to help in this community, those who live below the poverty line, don’t they feel a little intimidated about walking into this building?”  Skipper said, “No, it’s just the opposite.  Every time they come into this building, especially when they send their children to school here, they realize just how valuable we believe they are, because we spared no expense.” 

They may not have used these words, but the Salesmanship Club has made taken the poverty that so many live in, combined it with their own incredible resources and turned this into a teachable moment.  People are watching.  And, this is what they have, if you will, seen the Salesmanship Club say to them, “Friend, move up higher!”

Every time we open the doors of this church to the children of this community and invite them in to be safe in the afternoons after school, to be fed, to be educated, to be cared for, every time Mission:  Oak Cliff invites people in off of the street, this is what we are saying to the people in this community, “Friend, move up higher!”

Jerry Spivey was telling me that the first day the Charter School opened in Mead Hall a couple of weeks ago, the children didn’t have any tables or chairs in the basement.  He went down there and found them sitting on the floor, doing their lessons.  He said he couldn’t stand the thought of children sitting on cold concrete all day.  So, he went upstairs and found some of our tables and chairs and had them moved down to the basement and said to those teachers and students, “Friend, move up higher.”  The children wrote him thank you notes that read, “We had no chairs and we were sad.  Now we do and we are glad.”

I’m so glad that, when I die, I’m going to go to heaven.  I really can’t wait.  I remember the first time I saw Telluride, Colorado, driving in from the valley floor between mountains that surely rival anything the Swiss Alps have to offer.  I remember thinking, “This must be something like what heaven will be!”  Truth is, it’s going to be better.  And, I can’t wait.  I’ve finally come to the place where I’m actually at peace that, when I die, I’m going to heaven.  I’m thrilled to know that. 

Most often, preachers preach sermons intended to tell people about how to get to heaven or about being careful if they’re not living in heavenly ways.  You might have expected some version of that this morning.  But, I just had to stop this morning and say that, as nice as it is to think about heaven, I am so very thrilled to be a part of a church that is more about church than class and so very committed to participating with God in bringing his kingdom to be on earth as it is in heaven.

Our neighbors are watching, just like people once watched Jesus.  Our children are watching, too.  This is a very teachable moment.  And, I like what they must be seeing and hearing as we say over and over, “Friend, move up higher!”  I’m so very glad to be a part of a church like this.

Aren’t you?