| This Week's Lesson |
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| God has a sense of humor. I like to look the text over a few weeks in advance and let it sit in my brain and see what happens. I pray and meditate on it and usually find a voice calling me to one facet or another of the story. Sometimes the voice is quiet. Sometimes it is loud. Every once in a while it is a bit mischievous. The day I first looked over today’s Lectionary text for this sermon I was drawn to all the references to knocking and thought: “Okay, but what am I going to do with that?” That evening a very dear clergy friend, Chuck Currie, posted a note on facebook about his children telling endless silly knock knock jokes. We went through the same thing with all four of our children. At around the age of five or six kids discover knock knock jokes. The trouble is that knock knock jokes are about really bad puns. But at five or six the pun part tends to elude them and they just love the knock knock part and getting you to laugh, the result is little ones tend to tell nonsense knock knock jokes. Like, knock knock. Who’s there. A cloud. A cloud who. A cloud that’s green. Their jokes don’t make a pun or sense (at least not to adults), but, the kids laugh and laugh and won’t stop telling them. So you get knock knock jokes for seemingly hours on end. And what can you do but play along answering the knock and the saying “Who’s there?” It ends up being not about the standard knock knock pun, but about your children’s fun. You answer the “Knock knock” out of love. Since Chuck’s post on facebook came the day I was thinking about the knocking in today’s Lectionary text, I decide to explore that sign. I googled “knock knock jokes” and was surprised that one of the first hits credited Shakespeare with inventing knock knock jokes. I thought “WOW! that’s kinda cool. We are immersed in Shakespeare with the play and here’s a connection to where I am being called to with this text.” In Shakespeare’s Macbeth a clown character really does tell some knock jokes, –I don’t know if they are the first ever– but they are the earliest recorded and they do closely follow the knock knock joke pattern. The clown in a hung over state hears loud knocking early in the morning off stage and he pretends he is the porter to hell welcoming sinners. The first is a farmer who bet on the price of crops and lost and is told how hot it is in hell: (Knock, knock, knock!) Who's there, i' th' name of Beelzebub? Here's a farmer that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty. Come in time, have napkins enough about you, here you'll sweat for 't.” Another one is about the trial of Jesuits for using legalisitc double talk: (Knock, knock!) Who's there, in th' other devil's name? Faith, here's an equivocator that could swear in both the scales against either scale, who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven. O, come in, equivocator. Still another is about a tailor who steals cloth and how he can heat his iron, called a goose, in hell: (Knock, knock, knock!) Who's there? Faith, here's an English tailor come hither for stealing out of a French hose. Come in, tailor. Here you may roast your goose. So in keeping with the knocking and Shakespeare theme we got going here, please help me just do three, maybe four, knock - knock jokes. I know puns are not everyone’s favorite thing, but, humor me, tomorrow is my 35th birthday! These first two jokes – in honor of the play– are kinda Shakespearean: Knock-knock (WHO’S THERE). Desdamona. (DESDAMONA WHO?) Desdamona I owe you. All $200. Knock-knock (WHO’S THERE). Wench. (WENCH WHO?) Gesundheit! This is the only church knock knock joke that I could find and it happens to use the name of one the stars in the play: Knock Knock (WHO’S THERE?) Kristin ! (KRISTIN WHO?) Kristin the baby in church! . . . One more . . . Knock-knock (WHO’S THERE). Atch. (ATCH WHO?) Gesundheit! Sorry you all seem to have caught a cold. Okay. Okay. I can see some of you are getting ready to leave. Today’s reading has Jesus telling us about some knocking, doesn’t it? I’d be fun to be able to tell you that Jesus’s story is actually a knock knock joke but isn’t. Listen again to the portion of the reading when knocking first appears: [Jesus] said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.' And he answers from within, 'Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.' I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs. Jesus Scholars think that Jesus very likely told this story, meaning that with the use of modern methodology the words can be traced back to Jesus himself. I love that. The words are likely Jesus’! They echo through time to us from our Lord. BUT historians don’t think Jesus told this story to make a point about being persistent in prayer. Scholars think Luke took the story and used it that way. 1 Luke’s point about prayer is a good one: “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. While Jesus’ story of “The Knock at Midnight” may sound like it fits this persistence prayer theme it’s actually an awkward fit in the context of Jesus’ time. See in the Mediterranean hospitality culture of Jesus’ day people were expected to give to a traveler. “[I]nns were disreputable... Travelers had to depend on friends and friends of friends for lodging along the way.” 2 People were expected to take care of these travelers. Kinda like we are expected to take care of an in-law when they drop by. Only there’s no telephone or even mail forewarnings that they are coming, They just arrive; and maybe worse, there is no 7/11 to run out to and get food and drink for them at midnight. Your neighbor is your 7/11 and they help with what you have. That way when it is their turn they get helped. No one hearing this story from Jesus would have known anyone who would not get up and get the bread, even at midnight, even if it would wake the kids. They would have been shamed to death – literally – if they did not help. The word translated as “persistence” is the Greek word “anaideia” it actually has to do with shame, so in order to avoid shame the sleeping fellow gets up. And if he didn’t his whole family would have been greatly shamed and shunned. Failure to get up and get bread for a neighbor asking was a huge breach of one’s obligation to the community. So there is no one in Jesus’ community who would not have answered the knock at midnight. Avoidance of shame and shunning – and the threat of no help when they need it – motivated them to get up and get the bread. The fear of shame also required the host to go to the door and knock and ask in the first place. He took in travelers. He had to feed them. He had to not just host them in the house, but be a good host. If he failed, he and his family would also have suffered great shame. So the story of “The Knock at Midnight” – told by Jesus – is about taking care of others, the provision of resources through the motive of shame. So now that we know that, what could the story possibly mean in the context of Jesus’ day? If he did not intend it to be about persistence in prayer why would Jesus tell this story? We can’t really know for sure why Jesus would tell it, because we do not have his explanation. But we can make a good guess. The story has got other’s need and shame at the heart of it. And oddly enough at the heart of Jesus’ teachings and doings in the world is not only tending to the need of others, but the outright rejection of shame. In honor and shame cultures a person assumes a role in the culture, is recognized in that role by others, and then fulfills that role. If any of those things fail shame occurs. If you ignore the shame you are shameless. 3 Jesus was remembered as shameless. To save a sinner, he tells folks, sure punish her if you yourself have no sin. He claims that shame does not come from within, but without. 4. In short, shame is a human cultural construct; and Jesus ministry deconstructs that construct. And even after death – when Jesus was supposed to have been shamed by the crucifixion – he ends up being honored by it. Jesus’ story as a whole can be understood as being focusing in great part on setting shame aside, ignoring it. So what the heck could this story of shame guiding the giving of food to a host and his guest traveler be about? Interestingly enough I think there is a clue in the last part of the reading about how the early Jesus Movement understood the God of Jesus. Luke tells us Jesus asked those he told the story to: “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" This means that if humans give graciously to their children, God who is so much greater than us surely seeks to provide to all God’s children. God wants all to have enough. 5. But how does God do work on earth? By calling humans in every moment to love, getting us to respond to that call, and consequently God is in our loving acts that serve as our response to God’s call. We are supposed to be God’s hands doing the work in the world to see that all get enough. In the story of “The Knock at Midnight” the traveler is tended to by the host and the sleeping neighbor through the cultural motive of shame. They do what they do because if they don’t they will be treated as a horrible person and likely get shunned and ostracized. But, here’s the thing when we do as Jesus taught – as God calls – and act as God’s agent on earth we welcome the traveler not out of honor and shame obligations, but out of love. When we welcome the traveler we do it out of love. When we go to the neighbor for bread to feed our guest we do it out of love. When our neighbor hears the knocking at the door she responds not out of fear of shame, but out of love. The bread she gives passes to the host in love and it passes from the host to the guest in love. The motive is not persistence. The motive is not shame. The motive is to be like Christ, to act out of love. If your child asks for a fish, will you give a snake instead of a fish? No. If your child asks for an egg, will you give a scorpion? No. Even if your child asks you to answer one more endlessly tiring knock knock joke, will you refuse to say “Who’s there?” No. See with our children we act out of love. Love for our children keeps us from giving snakes and scorpions and no answer to crazy jokes. Love has us giving them what they need. Love motivates our responses to our loved ones. The same is true of God. Love motivates God’s responses to God’s loved ones, who consist of absolutely everyone. The difference is that God’s love is not restricted to our children and relatives, those precious in our sight, as ALL are God’s children, ALL are precious in God’s sight. Here is the trick. We all have God in us. In this faith we claim and name that as Christ within. And when we reach inward and turn God – the Christ within us – outward and start acting as God’s very own hands then our motive for helping others becomes exactly the same as our motive for helping our own children, and God’s motive for helping all of God’s children; we do it for love, as God’ calls us to do. The power of this transformation of the motive to help others, to not do it out of shame but out of the Godly reason of love, is incredible. And we could really all do this. We could! It is doable. And if we all did it, then heaven would be on earth, God – Love – would be the motivator. This is at the heart of all Jesus taught. It is so simple. Forget shame, seek love. Do it for love and it will all fall into place. Knock Knock. WHO’S THERE? Love. LOVE WHO? Love everyone. AMEN. ENDNOTES 1. Funk, Robt, ed., The Five Gospels, HarperSanFrancisco, (1993), p 327-328 2. Texts For Preaching, p 444 3. Patterson, Stephen, The God of Jesus, Trinity Press (1998), 74. 4. Ibid., 75-77. 5. I got this phrasing from Marcus Borg’s new book Putting Away Childish Things, Harper One, 2010 COPYRIGHT Scott Elliott © 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED |
| For Love or Shame a sermon based on: Luke:1-13 given at Palm Bay, FL July 25, 2010 by Rev. Scott Elliott |
| © Riviera United Church of Christ |
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