Sermon for Proper 17, Year C

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When I was a kid, growing up in the 80s and 90s, Nintendo was a big part of my life. I spent a lot of time perfecting my fine motor skills with games like Super Mario Brothers and Street Fighter II. The only problem was that I developed a bad habit of losing my temper at the TV screen whenever things weren’t going my way in the game. When my poor mother would hear me screaming from the next room, she knew it was time to come in and tell me to turn off the game and go play outside.

Now that I have teenagers of my own, I’ve noticed that their generation has coined a new phrase to deal with this exact situation. When someone is showing signs of having become too wrapped up in drama on the internet, their friends will say to them, “Go touch grass.”

In previous generations, parents might have worried that the mention of “grass” indicated that their kids were engaging in, shall we say, a bit of “recreational chemistry.” But, in present day terms, “touch grass” means temporarily unplugging from the virtual world in order to get back in touch with actual reality. If you’ve been online too long, you need to go touch grass. It’s the same thing that my mother was trying to tell me, back in 1992.

In a way, “touch grass” is also the same point that Jesus is trying to make in today’s gospel. When people are getting too wrapped up in “playing the game” of social hierarchies, they sometimes need to turn it off, reengage with reality, and maybe even go outside and literally “touch grass.”

Whether or not we happen to be of the online generation, we all have a tendency to get wrapped up in silly games that sometimes stress us out. The technology is new, but human nature remains just the same as it ever was. At school, there is a pecking order that dictates who gets to sit at the “cool kids’ table.” At work, certain voices are more likely to be listened to in a meeting. In our neighborhoods, people scramble to “keep up with the Joneses,” while forgetting that everyone is a “Jones” to someone else. The game of social hierarchies is crazy-making. That’s why all of us need to periodically turn it off, go outside, and touch grass.

That’s how we remember that the essence of the good life is not about competition, but communion. It’s not about beating each other, but being together.

In today’s gospel, Jesus is enjoying a meal at someone’s house on the Sabbath day. This is an important detail. In the gospel according to St. Luke, the Jewish concept of Sabbath, the day of rest, comes up repeatedly. For Jesus, the day of rest was not a day of religion, rules, and rituals, but a weekly reminder of the way life is meant to be. Many of Jesus’ healing miracles took place on the Sabbath. People were restored on this day, not only to physical health, but also to their rightful place as equal partners in their community.

A significant part of the Sabbath, for our Jewish neighbors today as well as back then, is the common meal. In Jesus’ time, the seating chart at these meals was very important. The right kind of people had to have the right seat at the right supper in the right house. The whole thing was a game about reinforcing social hierarchies (much like the “cool kids’ table” in every school cafeteria).

At first glance, it seems like Jesus is teaching strategic etiquette for getting the right place at the right table, but what he’s actually doing is subverting the social order by encouraging people not to play the game of social hierarchies. For Jesus, the big Sabbath meal is a symbol of reality, as seen from a spiritual point of view. The most honorable guests, in God’s eyes, are those who willingly take a lower position in order to make space for others at the table.

From the point of view of the Christian spiritual tradition, this parallels nicely with the mystery of the Incarnation, where the Divine Source of all Being “became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14) in the person of Jesus the Christ.

In Christ, according to the Christian tradition, God’s own self took the lowest place by being born to an impoverished refugee couple, in an occupied country, in the feeding trough of a stable outside of an overfull inn. In today’s terms, it would happen in the parking lot of a run-down motel, somewhere in the West Bank of Palestine.

From the point-of-view of the powers-that-be, such a baby would be nothing more than another mouth to feed, a nameless statistic in the latest news about the latest airstrikes, and a drain on national resources. But, from the Divine point of view, such a birth marks the coming of salvation and liberation into the world. This is the truth that Christians proclaim every time we celebrate Christmas.

Kindred in Christ, this is what it means to “take the lowest place.” It means becoming vulnerable and standing with the most disenfranchised people on earth. In Christian terms, this is what it means to save the world. Jesus the Christ didn’t do it by climbing the social ladder, but by intentionally taking the “lowest place” among humanity. We who claim to be the people of Jesus must follow suit, as the Scriptures say in 1 John 2:6, “whoever says, ‘I abide in him,’ ought to walk just as he walked.”

Dear kindred in Christ, our Lord invites us to “touch grass” because that is exactly what God did in the mystery of the Incarnation. Jesus the Christ took the lowest place among humanity in order to exalt humanity to the “right hand” of God, “in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come” (Ephesians 1:20-21).

Friends, our Lord asks this of us because he knows that real life is not about beating each other, but being together.

When I think about this way of being together, what comes to mind is Crescent Comics and Games, which sits just a few yards from our church’s front door, on Chicago Street. This establishment is a prime example of a “third place,” as described by Ray Oldenburg in his 1989 book, The Great Good Place.

A “third place,” according to Oldenburg, is different from a “first place” (the home), and a “second place” (the workplace), because it is a place where people can come and be human, without the expectation of monetary participation. Third places are important because they provide space for people to hang out, converse, and figure out who they are, without having to make a purchase or prove their monetary worth.

Other examples of third places include places of worship, public libraries, community centers, and internet chat rooms. They are absolutely essential for functional democracies, but they are becoming increasingly rare in our consumer-oriented society.

Crescent Comics and Games is a for-profit business, but it also functions as a third place because people come there to play games, even if they don’t buy anything from the shop. Logan and Colleen, the owners of this shop, have intentionally made their business a place of welcome for everyone in Coldwater. Those who play games in their store are welcome to make a purchase, but it is not required for participation in the games that take place there. That is why I ultimately consider their shop to be a third place in our beautiful town.

The kinds of games that people play there are manifold. Most significant to me are the role-playing games, one of which is run by our own parishioner and cameraman, Chris Russell.

Here’s the thing to understand about role-playing games: They aren’t about winning or losing. In role-playing games, the players work together to overcome a common challenge and tell a story that is greater than any one of the individual players present. The story is the thing that matters most, and the players either succeed or fail together. I can think of no greater parallel to the Church than this. We, the people of faith, are called together by Christ, not to compete with one another, but to work together in service to a Grand Story that is greater than any one of us.

Kindred in Christ, I believe that the Church is called to be a third place, like Crescent Games and Comics, in our community today. We ought to be a place where people from every walk of life can come and know that they will find a friendly face and a safe shelter from the storms of life.

This is what Jesus the Christ meant when he encouraged his followers to “take the lowest place” in the social hierarchy of Sabbath suppers in his day.

I pray that our church might be a “third place” where every person in our city can come to touch grass, find safety, hospitality, and love in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, who taught his followers that real life is not about beating each other, but being together.

Amen.