a place at the table

 

SERMON PREACHED AT St PAUL’S, ARROWTOWN

and St Peter’s, Queenstown

FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT

(March 9^th) 2025

 

 Readings

Philippians 3:17–4:1

Psalm 27: 1, 3-6

Luke 13: 31-35 

 

I find it a little strange, when the Gospel passage includes my favourite verse from the scriptures, to find myself turning to Philippians to preach. Perhaps I might simply say how beautifully and humanly the lament of Jesus over his beloved city captures both his longing for humans to respond to his love, to divine love, and the sacred nature of the strange human hotspot, Jerusalem, in the purposes of God.

But it is to Paul that I find myself turning given the strange times in which we live. Who are those who he addresses as “living as enemies of the cross of Christ,” of whom he speaks, as he puts it, “even with tears”?

I think we find clues in his other writings, perhaps more than any in the letters to Corinth. There he watched with deep sorrow as a gospel of justice and compassion was turned into a convenient orgy of self-aggrandizement. The influencers, to borrow a word from this decade, the influencers of Corinth had cherry picked the gospel to suit their own entertainment. In Corinth Paul addresses the question of greed at the communion, the sight, which we hope is to us abhorrent, of the wealthy believers (so-called) shouldering aside the more vulnerable and uncertain in their desperation to have the best seats at the table, the best entertainment of the evening, the best, sadly, of everything that is not Christ and him crucified.

Before I glance very briefly at the replication of that behaviour in our own Christian world, in our own decade, let me emphasise that it is not so long ago that the very same patterns were deeply entrenched in Anglican Christianity. It is not so long ago that pews were rented by the wealthiest members of the local population, and the less well off were excluded, banished to lesser seats. When I say not so long ago I don't mean yesterday, but I do mean in the comparatively short history of this diocese. And while we may not do the same today the pattern is still deep in our DNA and there are many churches at which poor and timid newcomers are glared at if someone dares to sit in a long established worshipper’s seat.

But the problem that was so troubling Paul at Corinth, and which I think is hinted at in this address to the Christians at Phillipi, was that of turning the gospel of the crucified Jew into a celebration of power, privilege and prestige for a gentile few. Perhaps people of no other standing in society were grasping the opportunity that the new religion was offering them. Or perhaps those of standing in society had grasped the new faith with good intentions but had become quickly seduced by opportunities for entitlement – the exact opposite in fact of the gospel that was so dear to Paul.

And in Philippi he simply uses shorthand to describe this behaviour: “their minds are set on earthly things, their God is the belly, their glory is their shame.” Sadly there are forms of Christianity that replicate that today. The forms of Christianity that claim a privileged status for a particular country, a particular skin colour, a particular race, and do so on the pretence that each particular is in some way chosen by God. When status as “Christian” is used – is abused I should really say – to ensure that others are kept from the table, the struggle ongoing in the Cook Islands at this time, then we are seeing an anti-gospel.

“Kept from the table” literally in the case of the Corinthian Christians, where the powerful claimed the best seats and received the best food at the feast. But figuratively in our own world, where we claim a particular faith and its scriptures, buildings and professional representatives should be given entitlements while others are excluded.

Scurrilous religious leaders have often used the label of Christianity to privilege certain segments of society, turning hatred upon those not able to wear the label: upon Jews, Muslims, representatives of other religions or none. Equally bad, such assumptions of entitlement are often turned against otherness in the forms of sexuality, class, education, and a plethora of unspoken bases for exclusion.

When we adopt that attitude we step into the shoes that Paul describes as those whose god is their belly, whose sense of entitlement ensures they put themselves first and believe themselves to be closest to the heart of God.

The challenge for us is to ensure that no sense of entitlement ever creeps into our understanding of relationship to God, and that we continue to prioritize the needs of the broken and the vulnerable, inviting them to the place of honour at the table, literal or figurative.