"Bring A +1!" sermon on golden calves and banquet feasts

On October 12, we had two compelling texts that on the surface one might not think relate to one another. Perhaps after reading this sermon, you will think otherwise. Or not. But, anyway, the important thing here is that in the parable of the wedding feast we have some folks who say "no" to the invitation to join in, and others who say "Yes" to the invitation. An invitation to God's great party. An invitation that is always addressed to "You and a +1". Even a "+ everyone else". Meaning that we are invited to God's amazing and uber-feasty banquet - but let us also extend that invitation to those around us, and not keep it to ourselves. Or perhaps another way, let us remind our neighbors that they also have received an invitation already, so maybe they'd like to open it up and respond? And tell them that you'll drive and pick them up. 

What do you think? How do you respond to these texts? Or how do you think they apply to your life, if at all?

Read the sermon below, or listen to it.

“Bring A +1!”

Sermon, Year A, Proper 23, October 12, 2014

Plymouth United Church of Christ, Eau Claire, WI

© Rev. David J. Huber

Focus Scripture: Exodus 32:1-14 (the golden calf) and Matthew 22:1-14 (Parable of theWedding Banquet) 

[NOTE: It would be helpful to read the two scripture passages first; or if you don't want to read, the recording includes a reading of both of the passages]

Golden calves, golden calves, golden calves.... everywhere, golden calves. What are you gonna do?

What are you gonna do?

Well, we could stop making them. Could stop building them.

They are not of much value. You can’t cook ‘em. Can’t eat ‘em. Can’t milk ‘em. They don’t make babies. You can’t put ‘em in front of a plow, these golden calves. There is no reason on God’s green earth to have them, but oh Lordy, they fill our shopping malls, and our cities, and our churches, our homes, our lives. They clutter our space, our mental and spiritual space, until we can scarcely move around them for fear of knocking one loose or being crushed by one, even as we admire them and adorn them with the hopes of our prayers and a tithe of our spirit, these golden calves.

What, ray tell, are your golden calves? What are the ones that you have made in your life? Maybe some that you’ve let go of. Maybe some that you hide in the closet thinking they are hidden, but you know they’re there. Or the ones that you think were gone, but are still lurking in the shadows.

What are your golden calves?

And what are the golden calves of the church?

And we do have them. We all have our golden calves. You are not evil or a bad person, apostate, irredeemable for having a golden calf. I’m sure we all have one, if not more. Organizations have them. Countries have them.

Especially if we think of our golden calves as a reversion back to comfortable ways. Or an escape from reality, whether those ways worked or not. Or taking an easy path instead of a difficult one, even if the easy path isn’t healthy or good for us and the difficult one is the one that leads to thriving and growth. Or in the face of strangeness or anxiety, to say “No” and go after something else that isn’t good for us. The golden calves are often the place of comfort. The place of avoiding what is really going on.

The Hebrew people are having that kind of experience as they make their golden calf. They have been slaves in Egypt. Everyone who is out there with Moses and Aaron had been a slave. Generations before them had been slaves, hundreds of years. They have a history of slavery, and now God and Moses have led them to freedom from slavery. That is a wonderful and a good thing to be free, but that freedom is new. It’s scary. Plus, their freedom out of slavery has brought them literally into a desert, into the wilderness. It has also brought them metaphorically into a wilderness of anxiety and newness. So they are free, but they are literally in a desert and wilderness. They lack food and water. Their routine has been disrupted. The old systems they could rely on are no longer there. They don’t know what is going on, they are afraid, they are anxious. However bad their slavery might have been, at least as slaves in Egypt they had homes. They had beds to sleep in, they had food, they had a daily routine. They will lament a number of times in the process through the wilderness saying things like, “At least in Egypt we had leeks and onions and meat.” So they are free, but they are afraid. So this need for comfort. Their need to reduce their anxiety is overwhelming their trust in the God that just rescued them, and their trust in Moses. It is overwhelming their trust in the promise that God had made to Abraham their ancestor hundreds of years before. Their fear is overwhelming that faith, that trust. It is understandable. Stress, anxiety, change – these can make us all forget who we are and revert to bad habits or take up new ones, or do other unhelpful things.

So they are calming their anxiety by creating this visible, tangible god: the golden calf. It was something they new. They would have seen these in Egypt. They were around, and would have been part of their life experience to see icons of gods, including statues of calves and bulls. They probably had even prayed to some of the idols and icons in Egypt. It is hard to imagine that in 400 years in Egypt they hadn’t adopted and adapted to some of the Egyptian religious practices. They certainly would have seen them.

So they go to the familiar. We all do it. To find comfort in one way or another. Have a stressful day, so we go home and have a lot of pie or eat a pile of mac and cheese instead of steamed broccoli or something else healthy. We go shopping to fill the emptiness in our lives with trinkets. Or dink or smoke or whatever to hide the pain with the golden calf of a pretend reality, at least for a moment to be someone else, to pretend to be somewhere else. Or a trauma happens and we cast out our reason and fill that space with the golden calf of terror at Ebola, ISIS, or child refugees coming up from Central America, gay marriage, or whatever it is. Whatever might drive us to an irrational fear.

The wilderness is a strange place. It is a place of anxiety. That’s why it’s called wilderness. It’s not tame. It’s not domesticated. We don’t have control over the wilderness. It can be a scary place to be in because it is new and different and anxiety-causing.

When I think of where the Church is, not just Plymouth or the UCC, but the world over, the Church also is going through a lot of change and is in a kind of wilderness. We are not entirely sure what is going to happen. We are coming into uncharted land, as the whole world itself is going through uncharted land. There have been so many changes in the last few decades, and the last century. The whole world is going through change as though we’ve all been pulled out of Egypt by something and told, “We’re going to some kind of … thing... over there. We’re not sure how we will get there. Not entirely sure where it is, or even what it looks like, or how we will know that we’ve gotten there.” But something has pulled us out and set us in the wilderness. Something is leading us in that direction. I think of the technological changes. What the Internet has done to bring the world together and make it a smaller place. Airline travel has made the world smaller. Business are working globally, and tied together globally. And technological changes, political changes, social changes. The times they are a’changin’. And that change is chaotic and fast. It’s a much faster pace of change than we as a species have ever experienced before. It causes anxiety and fear.

And the church is not immune to that, either.

I’ve talked about that in other sermons before. The Church is changing as the culture changes around it. Trying to figure out how we are to be the church in the 21^st century comes with the temptation to go back to the golden calves, or to build new ones. The golden calf of doing what we’ve been doing and expecting the same results. Or the golden calf of expecting the world to conform to be like we are instead of us going out into the world and seeing what the needs are and being the Church for them. Or going into the world and rebuild into God’s vision. Like Jesus’ has shown us in all these parables of what the realm of God looks like. Or the golden calf of the 1950s, or 40s, or 60s, or 1830s, 1620s, early 1500s.... whatever we might see as the Golden Age of the Church.

Or the Golden Calf of also forgetting one thing: that above else, we are the stewards of God’s story. Of remembering the story that we tell here on Sundays. The story of hope for the future and the vision of God’s realm. We are the stewards of God’s story, or at least in part we are stewards. We don’t have the whole story. Even though maybe we don’t know exactly where we are going, we know in part where we are going: the vision of God’s realm! Where we are going is to the great banquet, the wedding feast, God’s Great Party! The path is unclear. We aren’t sure where the path is, and we will probably have to change our clothes before we get there. Maybe need to change them a few times, and do so without knowing what that clothing is going to look like at at the end.

But we have the vision ahead of us that God invites to join in with.

And I would hate to be the one that says “No” to this invitation. I don’t want to be the person who says, “No”, and I don’t want us to be the church that says “No” to that invitation. Whether it be Plymouth or the Church worldwide. I don’t want to be the one that says, “No”. I want to be the one that says “Yes.” That says, “Yes! Take me out of Egypt! Even if I have to be in the wilderness for a while, let’s go. Let’s go to the party!”

God has invited us to join in, so let’s go. Let’s say “Yes!”

And we have said “Yes” here, at least partly. We have set out on the journey and are treading along, however unsurely as we try to figure this out. But we are moving forward, I think. We’ve made some changes. We are trying to new things. Think of our Street Ministry: we didn’t have that two years ago, but that has been very successful. Not only providing relief for people who are living on the streets, but it’s been really successful and important for those of us who have been serving in it and learned from it. It is causing ripples around town. We’ve had articles in the newspaper, and people are talking about homelessness here in Eau Claire. I think partly because we went downtown and started doing this ministry, and have invited others to come with us. We have made changes of me being more active and vocal in public, in organizations and groups. I’ve had to learn new ways of being a minister and of doing things. Being out there meeting people and networking. I didn’t network before. That word scared me. But it’s actually kind of fun, being out there and meeting people. But that’s meant less time for me in the office, and meant a change in my schedule, and me learning new things. That’s a wilderness for me as well. It’s been a good experience that has also provided some fruit. Some people have been invited in because of that.

We’ve made changes to worship.

We have made changes to being more invitational to people and groups using our space. We had the Chippewa Valley LGBT that started their Bingo nights here. We hosted them for a while. They are Pizza Plus now which works better for them. But imagine if we hadn’t said “Yes” to their request to start here, it might not have gotten off the ground. And now it is a good fundraiser for them.

So we have done this, making these changes, with the vision of God’s great party ahead of us. Moving toward it.

We can ask, What does that vision look like? We might not know exactly what it will be, but we certainly can know that the church of the future and the path that we are on is a way of living that is invitational. That is open. That is fun! Let’s have fun in church! There are lots of people out there who think that church is not fun. That’s because they haven’t been here to experience fun and laughter in worship and fellowship. It’s inclusive, oriented toward justice, diverse. It is a way of living that is willing to say, “Yes!” and very hesitant about saying, “No.” Much more willing to say “Yes”. Willing to experiment. Willing to stop doing what doesn’t work and try something else. A way of living that isn’t hidden under a bushel. A way that says, “Here we are. Here is what we are doing. Come join us. Come be part of this.” It’s a way of living, of being out where the people are and mee4ting their needs, being Jesus for them but also letting them be Jesus for us. I think that people who are not in the church have an awful lot to teach us about God. There is much that we can learn from them as well.

And it is not always easy. Wilderness journeys are never easy. But they are doable. Plus, we have God’s promise. God does not call people to do impossible things. God is the God of the possible. God does not ask us to do things that God knows we will fail at. God is the God of the possible, one step at a time.

And one step is the Halloween party we are having in two weeks. That’s a nice easy step. We have a Halloween party to invite people to. So bring yourself, but bring someone with you. It is much less scary to invite someone to a Halloween party (even though it is Halloween...) than to invite them to worship: “Come to the Halloween party, have some food, have fun, play some games, get to know us.” It’s a good safe place for others to get to know us.

We also have this other small step, a challenge that has been offered to us by my coach that I thought was a good one, and that our church growth group that was a good idea, is to have 40 people in worship consistent by the end of the year. That would be a wonderful thing. There is so much more sound and energy once we pass the 35 number. It’s a good number, and a doable number, especially if you invite someone. Bring someone with you. Be invitational.

And if you know someone who you think would appreciate an invitation, who has needs that we could meet or that you think would be wonderful in this congregation but you are timid or unsure about offering that invitation – and trust me, I understand that feeling; I was very timid about offering invitations, and still find it scary – but if you know someone, give me their name and email, Facebook, phone number, whatever contact information, and I will invite them. It is hard for me to believe that I am saying that. A year ago, that scared the heck out of me, to think about inviting someone. Because I didn’t want to be “That Guy”, that evangelist proselytizing guy. That’s way out of my comfort zone. A year ago, that really scared me. Now, I’m only slightly terrified to offer those invitations. But they work, those invitations do. So give me the name and number of someone, and I’ll contact them saying, “So and so from my church offered me your name. They thought you would be a good fit, or find a good home at Plymouth. Let’s have a coffee and talk” and invite them in from there.

Think of the parable that Jesus told here. It has a group of people that I have never heard a sermon about, or that we read about in the commentaries. I think they are the unsung heroes of this parables: the ones who are told to go out and invite people, and who say “yes” to that command and do indeed go out and offer the invitation. Sure, they were being commanded by the king to do that and didn’t really have an option, but still, they agreed to go. And look at this way: how is them being commanded by the king to go invite people any different than Jesus’ command to us to go invite people? Is not Jesus our king, in some sense? Hmmmm......

There is strength in invitation. It is a kind of compliment, too! To be invited to something is to be complimented. It is saying, “I like you enough to invite you to something that I am involved with, and that I find important.”

We who are the Church, we who are the holders of the story and the hosts of God’s great party, we do have a party and a banquet that goes on here. The feast that goes on at Plymouth in the way that we pray for one another, care for each other, the fellowship we have, the meals we share, the ministries that we do together and support each other in. We have a wonderful banquet here that I think many people would love to be a part of. They just have to be invited in. Extending that invitation and going bravely through that wilderness of fear and uncertainty, not falling to the temptations of the golden calves. Eagerly saying, “Yes!” to God’s invitation to join, and as we say “Yes!” to God’s invitation, to also bring a Plus One with us.

It can be done. I know it can be done.

Amen.