Getting Called Up

"And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." Luke 14:14

How do we treat the people who cannot and will not benefit us in any way?  Brenda and I were crossing the street in Nisswa, Minnesota yesterday afternoon.  The street is under construction, and there are no marked crosswalks.  There was not a great deal of traffic, and we are on vacation.  So we weren't sprinting across the street.

Along came a motorist with places to go, people to see and things to do.  A toot of the horn made it clear that we were in the way and should move along for our own good.  If anything, the driver sped up in order to make the point.  You can imagine that we did not have a warm and fuzzy conversation about that stranger once we made it in one piece to the other side.

We were objects, an impediment to progress, a bother, a pair of roadblocks in shorts and flip-flops.  In order to treat another in rude and unfeeling ways, most of us need to reduce the Other to something less than a person.  With that transformation complete, empathy is no longer possible and bad behavior makes good sense.

St. Augustine would be horrified by the culture we Westerners have created.  He urged us to love people and to use things.  Our commercial worldview urges us to do the opposite.  Now, perhaps we are finally experiencing the snap-back against that worldview.  Every management and business book I have read recently describes how critical it is to build a relationship with the client, customer and consumer.  The goal is not merely to know what that person wants.  Rather the goal is to see the world from that person's perspective.  Most of us are done being market targets.

Empathy is the new "hot app" in the business world!

If only that were so in the church world.  Most church visitors have experienced the "meat market congregation."  We show up the first time and all eyes turn upon us with a sort of organizational hunger. New givers!  New Sunday School teachers!  New choir members or ushers or committee members! "We're so glad you are here with us this morning!"  

So glad, indeed.  Glad in the same way that I was glad to see my dinner in the restaurant last evening.

"When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid" (Luke 14:12).  Jesus spent his earthly ministry in what Adam Grant calls a "matching" culture.  You give something in order to get something in return.  All relationships are transactions with honor and shame as the currency.  Dinner parties were given as opportunities to create debts on the part of the guests--markers to be called in later.

Of course, all manner of "networking events" operate in the same way.  Attend any local Chamber of Commerce gathering and be ready to exchange business cards with two dozen people.  And know that the expectation (or at least the fond hope) is that you will call on them for paid services or products in the future.

The Reign of God is a different sort of place.  We gather around the table for love, not for profit.  Other people are ends in themselves, not rungs on the social ladder.  The poor, the lame and the outcast have the same or perhaps more value in the system than the rich, the healthy and the well-connected.  The outsiders have been brought in.  The insiders may be cast out.  There is only giving--no taking, no matching.  

We can always set a few more chairs at the table.  And there is someone who will say to us, "Friend, come up higher."  His name is Jesus.