“Saying Grace”
Luke 7:39-50
June 13, 2010
Do you know this man?
He’s Armando Galarraga, a 28-yr. old pitcher for the Detroit Tigers. On Wednesday, June 2nd, he silenced the bats of 26 Cleveland Indians in a row. No one reached first base, 26 batters up, 26 batters down. He didn’t walk anybody; he didn’t hit anybody with a wild pitch…he threw about 80 pitches and with errorless defense by his teammates, including a phenomenal catch in center field by Austin Jackson…. He managed to send every batter back to the dugout with nothing but goose eggs in the score book.
Then the 27th batter – a rookie name Jason Donald who became a major leaguer on May 18th, hit a ground ball between first and second base. If you do the math, you can figure out that the 27th batter is the ninth batter in the line-up. You have to know that everyone in Comerica Park was thinking – this guy is batting ninth – he’s the least likely guy in the lineup today, to get on base..ground ball to the infield. This is a sure thing! History in the making – the first Perfect Game for the Detroit Tigers – ever! Tiger first baseman Miguel Cabrerra moved to his right and fielded it cleanly, turned and threw the ball perfectly to Galarraga who was covering first base. Galarraga caught the ball, stepped on first with his right foot, just before Donald’s left foot touched the base. The umpire, veteran Jim Joyce was in perfect position to make the call. “He’s out!” (picture of play at first base)
No, Joyce called him safe. Watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fStZ2sDPDeg
As is typical when there is a bad call in sports, most fans reacted with emotion. And all of that emotion this time was aggression; and it was directed toward Jim Joyce; I mean thousands of Twitter comments and blog posts flooding cyberspace, often expressing frustration with all manner of vulgarities. The next few hours were a powder keg of reaction, so much so that some raised questions about safety for umpire Jim Joyce.
But then, almost as quickly as it started, the pandemonium began to subside. What we later learned is that the umpire had gone quickly to his quarters beneath the stands at Comerica Park, watched the replay of his call, and realized how very wrong he was. He called for Galarraga to come to the umpire’s dressing room. Think about this…if you were Armando Galarraga, how would you have responded to the guy who had just ripped your name out of the history books? Well, he went. Galarraga went to see Jim Joyce, and there something happened.
Act of Grace #1: The one who blew it, asked for forgiveness from his victim. He said he was sorry.
Act of Grace #2: Galarraga accepted his apology. Despite the disappointment, he simply said he was very proud of his work at Comerica Park on that Wednesday evening, and that everyone, umpires included, make mistakes, and nobody’s perfect. Tiger Manager Jim Leyland also needs to be credited with stemming the tide against the umpire, because the next day, with Jim Joyce now behind the plate, when it was time to present the starting lineup cards to the home plate umpire, when Leyland could have taken the card himself, instead he sent – guess who – that’s right – Armando Galarraga to hand the lineup card to Joyce. [picture of Galarraga and Jim Joyce at home plate]
Act of Grace #3: Leyland wanted everyone in the stands, and everyone watching on TV, that Major League Baseball, in spite of all the bad press from steroids, gambling, astronomical salaries and other forms of hedonism…Leyland wanted us to know that some who make their living in professional sports have character. Some of them know about grace.
As I looked at the bible story for this week, I thought about this incident, because there are some places where the New Testament story and this current event do intersect.
Listen to this story told by Luke and paraphrased by Eugene Peterson in The Message, and then we’ll draw some contrasts:
[Luke 36-50, The Message]
Now let’s look at the places where these two stories intersect – a mistaken call by an umpire, and the story of a Pharisee’s dinner party.
Jesus is approached by a man of wealth and power – a Pharisee named Simon – with an invitation to dinner at his home. On the surface it sounds like an opportunity for Jesus to share the Good News with some powerful, influential people; a rare opportunity to rub elbows with movers and shakers. Think of the good that might come of this?
But as Luke unfolds this story, you begin to get the feeling that hospitality toward a young preacher is just not what Simon has in mind; Luke’s audience would see this: the invitation is not really a genuine offer of hospitality. What Simon is doing, in fact, is setting up Jesus for ridicule by his snobby house guests. He wants to display this interesting, quaint rural rabbi Jesus in front of his affluent friends. This could be good entertainment! Who knows what Jesus’ presence might add to this dinner party?
So the banquet begins…
it would have been served in the manner fashionable in the wealthiest homes of the city. There would be couches, with each guest supported on an elbow. His sandals would be removed for him, and the street dust and grime would be washed off.
Behind the couches, hidden in the shadows, would be outsiders permitted to approach the guests for – shall we say – “various “reasons”.
One of the outsiders is a woman who Luke describes as a “sinner.”
Everyone present, including the woman, knows that she is a sinner. In her self-awareness she is drawn to Jesus as one who offers forgiveness and hope. Jesus sees her as a child of God, and their encounter is an occasion for restoration in her life and a new beginning for her. Furthermore, he shames Simon for not doing for him what was the custom – removing his sandals, washing his feet, greeting him with a kiss of hospitality.
All of this is hard on Simon. He sees in the woman not a child of God but a threat to his good standing in the community. She is someone to avoid. Simon is not a bad man. He is anxious to do right, to be right, to be good. Mark Twain once said about someone, “he’s a good man in the worst sense of the word” and that phrase applies to Simon the Pharisee. His righteousness gets in the way. He is oblivious to the fact that he too is a sinner forgiven and healed by grace. He is unaware how he and this woman are connected –they are really a lot more alike than he can imagine. But he does not offer hospitality to Jesus and he judges the woman for who she appears to be. In his moral purity he shuts himself off from the grace Jesus offers, and from ever offering God’s grace to an outsider like this woman. Simon is the loser here, not the woman.
Simon's story is too often the church's story. And people who are like the woman in the story feel it. Do you know that there is a world of people like this woman, drawn to Jesus but who avoid the Church? Phillip Yancey tells the story of a friend of his in Chicago who worked with the poor in the city. His friend was visited once by a prostitute who was in dire straits. In order to support her drug habit she had been renting out her two-year old daughter for sex; she was homeless, sick, and unable to buy food for herself or her daughter. Yancey's friend asked if she had thought about going to a church for help, and the woman seemed horrified. “Church?! Why would I ever go there? I am already feeling terrible about myself. They'd just make me feel worse." She had experienced church as a place of judgment; anything but a place of radical hospitality.
In his commentary on this story Fred Craddock wonders, “Where does one go when told to go in peace as Jesus instructs this woman to do at the end of our story?” “What she needs," Craddock says, "is a community of forgiven and forgiving sinners. The story," he says, "screams the need for a church, one that says you are welcome here." She had such a welcome from Jesus.
What about our church? I wonder if in our lesser moments we have been slow to be generous, like Simon the Pharisee, who needed grace just as much as the woman but didn’t know it. By our silence or our failure to offer Good News to those who most need it, are we letting people outside our walls come to the conclusion that our message is like the thousands of name-calling, umpire bashing “Tweeters” who in their judgmental condemnation of this very human mistake, fail to see their own need for grace?
Or is our message like the one Jesus preached to the woman?
Here is the test: Where and when have we seen examples of extravagant, generous giving in our community? Because wherever we have seen it, we have seen the evidence of God’s grace coming before. There is no other evidence of God’s grace than acts of generosity. And where generosity is missing, folks are just plain failing to see that God is at work in their midst. They are missing the mark.
It is nearly impossible for most of us to comprehend a God who forgives without merit, who loves us anyway, who keeps calling us home to the fullness of life that only God can give. But we have to try, because that’s what people do who want to follow the way of Jesus, and name God’s grace at work. Christ-followers grant forgiveness, provide opportunities to turn that forgiveness into extravagant generosity on our part – or to use the image from a really good motion picture - to Pay it Forward – in order to risk offering great love. This is so much better than standing in judgment.
We can yield the fruits of forgiveness and be messengers of great mercy and grace.
We can be vessels of great mercy and grace.
We can be at least as gracious as a 28-yr-old pitcher named Galarraga.
