The Humble Seat, by Jan Richardson. Used by permission.
They were watching him closely.
I am sure they were.
He was attending a dinner – a Sabbath dinner, which means there were additional customs in place that everyone is expected to follow. He was a leader, a teacher, a person with a notable reputation. And he was controversial: we’re in chapter fourteen now, in Luke’s Gospel, ten chapters after his own townspeople were so enraged by what he was saying that they tried to throw him over a cliff. By now, Jesus is known up and down the countryside. And he’s making his way to Jerusalem, where he will face his ultimate confrontation, his rejection, and his execution.
So yes, they were watching him closely.
Do you know that you and I are also being watched? We surely are.
I don’t mean to spook you, or be melodramatic. And I am not the paranoid type. When I was in seventh grade I was worried about being judged by my peers. I was sure they would laugh at my clothes or my haircut. I didn’t like how I looked. But then my dad sat me down and said, “You don’t need to worry about what others think, because they’re too busy worrying about how they are being seen and judged. People are too concerned about themselves to be watching you.” This was good advice, offered by a sensible member of the Silent Generation. Don’t fret, he seemed to be saying, and I felt his authentic love for me. And – there may have also been a subtle (and kindly meant) rebuke behind his words: don’t think so much about yourself.
And yet, you and I — all of us here at church — we are being watched!
Newcomers watch us to find out how things work around here, who’s more or less important, who’s really in charge, who might be friendly or unfriendly, what we really believe, what Grace Church is all about. I’ve met newcomers who have been delighted by the community here and how warmly they were welcomed, but I also met one newcomer at coffee hour one Sunday who said, “I’ve been sitting here for ten minutes and no one has even approached me to say hello.” That may not be the norm here — we truly are fairly good with newcomers — but it happens sometimes. And the newcomers will notice that.
Children watch us, too. They learn all the same things that newcomers learn, and perhaps children are the best at noticing the differences between what we tell them and how we behave — what we say vs. what we do.
People look through our website and make decisions about us. Is this place a good community for LGBTQ persons? How do they feel about women, or gender, or race? And what’s missing? When I look at church websites, I’ll notice what’s there but also what’s not there.
Longtime members of Grace also watch us. Watching us closely is not just for outsiders. Grace members watch me and other staff; they count heads in the room; they pay close attention to how this church they’ve loved for years is doing, where it seems to be going, what’s changing.
All of you are watching all of us — and you’re watching us closely. I am watching, too. Again this isn’t paranoia. It’s just how faith communities behave.
The Pharisees watching Jesus, then, is an ordinary thing that happens at many dinners and other gatherings. And yet this is not just curiosity on their part. They are watching Jesus to catch him making a mistake: their gaze is hostile.
And that brings us to another category of people who watch us here at Grace Church. They have seen churches and people of faith say and do terrible things, and they expect the same from us. Like the Pharisees, their gaze is hostile. Sometimes I walk into a grocery store with my clerical collar and I get wary glances from people. We should expect that some of the people who come here – along with many who would never dream of coming here – are watching us with the expectation that we are going to screw up.
And then there are those who watch us not with hostility, but with curiosity, wonder, or fascination. When I was a hospital chaplain a few years ago, the hospital instructed chaplains to wear business clothes and a lab coat, but one week I decided to wear my clerical shirt and collar under the lab coat, just to see what would happen. Instead of a colorful tie and a nice Nordstrom shirt, I was in the black-and-white uniform of a priest. I watched people closely, including myself. Sure enough, everyone was different, including me.
Many assumed I was a Roman Catholic, for good and for ill. Some of the patients seemed to ‘stand at attention’ when I walked into their rooms, which was both intriguing and awkward. Many on the hospital staff seemed oblivious to the change (again, my dad was right: all eyes are not on me!), but some shared with the patients a kind of old-school respect for the – what’s the word? – the ‘churchman’ as he walked into the room. For some people, the change was helpful: it silently created a vibe of solemnity for them, as they asked for prayers and talked about their issues.
But I was different, too. I was a little more formal, and a little more self-conscious. “Be careful,” I remember thinking to myself. “You’re representing.” I thought about how, with me in a collar, my behavior both good and bad will reflect on my larger spiritual community. It reminded me of the times when I’d be in the car with Andrew after church on a Sunday, and I would yell something at a driver on the road – something not fit for print – and Andrew would say, “Collar!”
Now, I don’t want to over-interpret one week of experiences in a hospital, and again, I don’t want to be melodramatic about how people are watching us, but I have to wonder whether we would all do well to have a uniform that marks us as members of a church. Many – probably most – of you would rather walk naked through T&C than wear a clerical collar and look like a priest! And this isn’t about clergy and laity, or the complicated politics of clericalism. No, here’s what I mean: what if we all got “Grace Happens” shirts, which we used to have here, and wore big buttons on them like the one our Membership minister Liz wears, buttons that say “Ask me about Grace Church.” If we dressed like that – here and outside of here – what would change?
I suspect that we ourselves would change the most.
We might carry ourselves differently: we’re representing now, you see, so we might act a little differently. My hope is that we would follow Jesus’s lead, and make what we do in our “Grace Happens” outfits not just a shift in our mannerisms, but bolder actions that concern things of great importance. For Jesus, when he knew he was being watched closely, he critiqued the fraught politics around dinner tables: he pointed out that even at a Sabbath dinner – a ritual honoring the dignity God gives equally to all human beings – there is a pecking order, with some people more important than others. Jesus instructed his listeners to approach the table with humility, with a basic recognition that all people are equal in God’s sight, and that any one of us is not better than anyone else. If I take the lowest seat at the table, I save myself from the embarrassment of being asked to move down. But on a deeper level, I am behaving in a “Kingdom-of-God” kind of way: in God’s dominion, each person is equally valuable, and each person focuses first on someone else, not on themselves. In God’s dominion – at table together in the way Jesus envisions – I take the low seat because I am not the first person on my own priority list. You are.
So: Jesus decided to make an excellent point – a politically provocative point, at that – when he was wearing his “Grace Happens” shirt and attracting the hostile attention of other faith leaders. And he made his point at their expense: he was watching them closely too, and he had just seen them doing the thing he was criticizing. That’s pretty courageous. We don’t need to stick our necks out in just that way every time, whenever we’re being watched as members of a faith community. But this is about much more than table manners, or about us simply being warm and welcoming, as valuable and necessary as that is.
When we are members of a faith community, every single thing we do – and everything we choose not to do – will be noticed by someone else. We are being watched.
Now that you know that, what do you want to do?
***
Preached on the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 17C), August 28, 2022, at Grace Episcopal Church, Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Jeremiah 2:4-13
Psalm 81:1, 10-16
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Luke 14:1, 7-14