Sermon: "No Illegal Alien Posers Allowed"

“No Illegal Alien Posers Allowed”

Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23 / Matt 22: 1-14

Preached on Oct 9, 2011

At St. Thomas Episcopal Church

Stephen D. Palmer

“Hallelujah! Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever!”

I’m honored to be asked to preach today. It had been a while since the last time I was up here and I was beginning to think it was something I said, just kidding.

PSALMS: Prima Facia

This morning I wanted to reflect with you all on the Psalm we just said together. The Psalms don’t get preached on all that often, so I thought I’d give it a try. The Psalms seem kinda like the liturgical underdog of the weekly Scripture readings, so I feel somehow compelled to cheer for them. I’ve never done this before, but am already at the end of my second paragraph, and it seems to be going pretty well so far!  

There are people in the long tradition of the church who absolutely love the Psalms and the Psalter is their favorite book in the whole Bible. I am not one of those lucky people; but I stand in awe of those who do have this relationship with the Psalms. This will probably surprise none of you, but I’m not really into poetry. 

For sure there are certain Psalms, turns of phrase, and a couple of verses in each Psalm that I do appreciate deeply. But there are many verses that I don’t understand, or don’t the catch the ancient references and imagery, and occasionally I’m actually really disturbed by the mean hearted, boarder-line xenophobic character of some Psalms. 

Lucky for us, our Psalm today is actually pretty straight forward with regards to obscure ancient allusions, but it is difficult in a different way. It’s difficult for me to try and figure out how we can pray this Psalm genuinely in the context of the Gospel reading we just heard this morning. 

How can we hear a parable from Jesus where some poor bloke gets bound hand and foot and tossed out in the darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth and then be expected to authentically say: 

“Hallelujah! Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever!

Gospel Parable: Prima Facia

In the Gospel reading, Jesus seems to be having an off day from the whole loving-everybody thing, and instead he tells a chilling parable about the King of Christ’s coming Kingdom. I mean this isn’t stuff you’re likely to hear by tuning into Oprah’s “Life Class.” 

In this parable, Jesus basically says: “Ok look, my Kingdom is like a if the Bishop of Alabama were to throw a big party to celebrate his new Bishop-hood. He invites all his A-list friends, and priests of the Diocese. But all the priests RSVP back saying that they can’t make it: they’re too busy, they’ve got Vestry to go to, sermons to write, Sunday school to teach.

The Bishop apparently doesn’t take rejection very well and decides that in response, he’s going to have them all killed, burn down their churches, and then go into the streets of Birmingham and round up anybody and everybody he can, to fill up the empty seats at his party. 

This parable is already difficult enough at this point, but Jesus continues and goes on to say that in the middle of the party, the host discovers that one of his last minute guests isn’t dressed properly for the occasion and approaches him. He says “hey buster” (in the original Greek), where’s your tuxedo?

The man doesn’t say anything, perhaps because he’s so shocked, embarrassed, or confused why anyone would think he owned anything other than the clothes on his back. In any case, when the man has no defense, the host has him handcuffed and thrown into the back alley to be forgotten about until the end of time.

?“Hallelujah! Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever!”?

Why couldn’t we have a nice uplifting passage from the Gospel of Luke this morning? The lectionary must hate me. Can’t we go to Luke’s church today, or at least find some sophisticated way of dulling down the sharp edges of this Scripture; isn’t that why we send preachers off to seminary? I’ve only been Episcopalian for a couple of years now, but I have noticed that the Episcopal church is often the site of recovery for people who have been battered and bruised by brutal religion. And so it seems that often times when we come across a hard word in the Scriptures, we instinctively dismiss or discard it in a defensive reaction. We shake our finger at Jesus, and tell him not to be so judgmental; we tell the host to get out of our face and continue come week after week to dine at the banquet table. 

Unfortunately we can’t just go to Luke’s church this morning, it’s Matthew’s turn, and while his gospel is hard, and demanding, and easily misunderstood, it still contains the Word of God, and like all Scripture has important truth that we need to hear, experience, and respond to in order to become disciples of Jesus Christ. Even hard to hear passages such as this have life in them; even passage such as this one can call us to declare:

“Hallelujah! Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever!”

Impostor Syndrome #1

Changing gears a bit. In college I had a recurring dream, usually during the sleep deprived days of finals week. In the dream, I discover to my horror, that I have been registered for some awful physics or science class all year long that I didn’t know about. I hadn’t been to any of the lectures, read any of the material, and it was too late to drop the class. So I have to take the final. I try to study, and I tell myself that if I just pull an all-nighter and read the whole text book from cover to cover, starting at the beginning, I should be able to pass. But there’s nothing quite like reading a math text book, and the numbers and symbols keep swimming all over the page like tadpoles. I walk into the exam room the next morning, knowing I’m going to fail, knowing that I don’t belong in this class, wondering how I got here, and just hoping to slip in and out un-noticed when suddenly the professor pulls me aside to chastise me for skipping his class all year long. Just to add insult to injury; worse and worser.

Maybe some of you have had a similar dream, or recently heard a similar story where our impostor-hood was challenged, and the real you is threatened to be exposed. 

Regardless of whether we like the sharp edges of Matthew’s parable, we can all appreciate the truth that hypocrisy really is deadly. The whole matrix of cover-ups and lies it takes to maintain two personas, the private you and the public you, the you you say you are, and the you you really are. Maintaining this split-life is not only exhausting, not only untruthful, not only does it isolate you from genuine loving relationships, but it is also life-draining. 

Perhaps that why preaching on hypocrisy is so easy; it’s really low hanging fruit for a preacher:  We say we care about the environment, but use energy like a Hum-V with 18 wheels; we tell people to “have a blessed day” and drive like a demon from hell; we say we care about all the injustice in the world, yet when confronted with it we simply change the channel and distract ourselves with more pleasant thoughts; we say that we have dedicated our very lives to Christ (or the lives of our children (that’s just the youth worker in my speaking)), yet we cannot be the least bit inconvenienced to participate in the life of Christ’s Church. 


Teenagers have a great term for this: “posers”. Basically, posers say they are better than they really are; they present ourselves as happy attendees of the banquet; but in the presence of the Host, our illegal, undocumented alien impostor-status is discovered, revealed, unveiled, and exposed. 

Impostor Syndrome #2

This is one form of the impostor syndrome, making yourself out to be better than your are; but because I work with teenagers I know that this story also cuts the other way too. This other form of impostor-hood has less to do with presenting a pristine and pretentious persona, and more to do with the terrible fear that you are really worth nothing at all. 

This other form, this other hypocrisy is just as deadly. A teen may seem like she has it all pulled together and seem to be living the idyllic adolescence years, but emotionally she is so afraid of fitting in that she’s almost completely stopped eating. A boy may be an Eagle Scout and seem to be full of all the potential of a budding young man, but is hallow on the inside from the growing estrangement he has from his demanding father. Another teen may be a Randolph student with a 4.0, an acceptance letter to Yale, and all the doors of the world’s possibilities open to him, but in the private recesses of his mind he fears even minor failure so badly that he secretly makes plans to end his own life just to avoid the academic and social pressures the world has strapped to him just for being successful. 

It’s a funny thing that God has designed us in such a way that the keys to our own prisons are often found in the pockets of other people. When a teenager’s prison doors are open and their life is changed in a youth ministry program, it is usually because one of the Church’s saints (a parent, a priest, a honest friend, a fellow church member) gets close enough to tell them what they can’t see for themselves: that they are in deeper water than they think and there a shark circling them; or that they are lovelier than they ever could have imagined; or that things do not have to turn out the same way every time.

“Hallelujah! Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever!”

The Encounter

In this life we all wear masks. But what is even worse than wearing a mask, is the waiting, and anticipating that someone, at any moment, is going to yank your mask off. There can be real terror in that moment, but there is also relief too. Finally, someone has noticed the real you, someone took the time and cared enough to get to know who you truly are; someone had the regal nerve to walk right up to you and say “take off the mask" friend.

It’s a scary moment, but at least you don’t have to pretend anymore. Someone has reached through your disguise to tap you on the shoulder, or grab you by the scruff of the neck, and even if they call you “buster,” at least the jig is up, you can exhale again, and real wholeness finally becomes possible. 

When the two you’s are brought into the light, one must give way, death must occur, one persona must die, it must be bound hand and foot and thrown-out where no one will hear it’s screams, and it’s thrashings and attempts to become alive again and suppress your new life to it’s spiritual hegemony. The encounter painful, terrifying, and scary, but repentance, the cross, and death are always on the path to wholeness, resurrection, and new life. To be encountered with the living God, the Host of the party, is to be changed, to have the old you ripped off and cast into the darkness, and to be offered a new way, a new life, a life of authenticity, wholeness, of genuine-ness, and love. 

In Christ there are no impostors (or posers) allowed, only whole people can live in His mansion with many rooms. Regardless of what Woody Allen might say, 80% of life is NOT about just showing up; for the doors of salvation and new life to open, a relationship must start, a relationship that starts with a terrifying and emancipating encounter, an encounter that calls us to become whole. 

Maybe Psalm 139 is on to something when it bids us to join its prayer: 

“O Lord, you have searched me and know me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up...Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?...Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting... 

Hallelujah! Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever!” Amen.