Matthew 3:  16,17 ; Acts 10: 34-38, 47,48

Shattering the pecking order

We all live with pecking orders in our lives.  The idea of “favorite” is something no culture has been able to get rid of.  As much as we try to, it rears its head.  People are hardwired it seems to want to be the favorite, the one that people notice.  It begins in families where children spar over parents’ attention and approval.  And it never stops after that.  Parents do their best to remind children no one is favorite, that they have nothing to worry about.   We talked about James, most likely the brother of Jesus who is only mentioned a few times in the Bible and has a small letter toward the end of the New Testament (not everyone agrees that he wrote it) which the great Reformer Martin Luther criticized as a “little straw of a book.” He didn’t think it amounted too much!  Can you imagine competing with Jesus as a brother?  Oh come on, that’s just torture. And you could say that James lived longer and was not crucified, but let’s face it, he was stoned for his faith! Not exactly pleasant either.  He later on held a powerful position in the early church, but even though James was well respected, his point of view most likely lost out to that of Paul. It was about the whole issue of favorites believe it or not. Peter, in Acts 10:34 says:” I know that God has no favorites.”  This was about the whole issue of the participation of non-Jews in the Church. There is reason to believe that James saw it as a Jewish movement above all, even though he did not exclude non-Jews.   The decision made by the young Church as described in Acts made sure that the Christian Church would spread around the world, but also left Jewish people wondering if they belonged.

Friends, the world is crazy about Downtown Abbey, a period piece set between 1912 and 1925 in an enormous country manor in England.  It is in its fourth season and the whole world is watching what will happen to Lady Mary.  For those of you who missed the whole thing so far, it is a PBS series about a Lord who marries a rich American to save his estate and they have three daughters. Daughters cannot inherit the estate so much time was spent on who would be the heir.  World War I intervenes and things get complicated.  But at its heart the whole series is about pecking order.  In last week’s episode the man who runs the downstairs comes to Mary to give her advice about her life and she blasts him for crossing class lines to tell her what to do. Later on she comes to his office, apologizes and cries on his shoulder.  It exposes the relationships between the upper class and the lower class, between the upstairs and the downstairs, between master and servant.  Critics have been wondering why this program is so popular, is it because everyone longs for the British monarchy or is something deeper?  It is perhaps partly because people want to take a look at what the aristocrats were thinking and doing and how they could be just as petty as anyone else.  They were in fact the favorites in that society and maybe then people were thinking those rich were God’s favorites.

William Willimon when he became Mehodist Bishop in Alabama asked an Alabama historian to orient him to the people there.  So the historian told him a story:” This ole boy drove down from Birmingham to buy firewood. He stopped at a rundown house in the country that had a sign out front: “Firewood 4 Sale.” “Friend, I would like to order a load of firewood,” the man said to the patriarch who was dozing in a rocker on the front porch. The old man roused himself and sneered back, “You can’t order me to do nothin’. (Christian Century, January 2014) “  Friends, like the Alabama country man none of us like pecking orders when we think we’re at the bottom of the heap.  But I bet Alabamans are watching Downton Abbey also. So what is about Downton Abbey?  Maureen Dowd, the Irish American opinion writer who is not fond of the English aristocracy had an insight.  She said that in a way when the man who runs the downstairs approaches the Lady, he has power. The people that run the house have power.  Their decisions impact the masters who are often a lot more naïve about life than the people who work for them.  The show makes the view realize that the lives of all the people in that house are tied together and that the pecking order is not quite as simple as it seems.

Friends, our passages today remind us that God has no favorites and that pecking orders are a result of human insecurity and selfishness. Pecking orders appear when people’s worst instincts take over.  In Baptism we are all equal.  It is when we truly accept that we are all equal before God, that God has no favorites, that we are transformed.   We can walk with our head held high, but at the same time we become  truly aware that others are never below us, that with God there are no pecking orders. Thanks be to God. Amen.