Ally, ally auction, everyone in free!

Where two or three are gathered together ye may expect malicious gossip.  I know – It’s a rather cynical rephrasing of Jesus, “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them,” – Matt 18:20.  And it’s not only church; it’s how things roll at the office, at the gym, in Starbucks, on FaceBook and I bet every family reunion since Jacob and Esau reunited their two humongous families in Canaan.  Olympia Dukakis’ famous line in Steel Magnolias, “If you don’t have anything good to say, come sit by me,” sums it up for me.

But in church it’s particularly off putting, don’t you think?  Whatever happened to “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” –Matt 11:28.  Because if anyone is heavy laden you can bet they’ve got some real stinkers in the closet.  Any faithful churchgoer can tell you that a fresh sinner will stoke the rumor mill through a month of potlucks!  I’m not saying I’m not one of the worst offenders here.  Gossip is just delicious – it is!  But it’s only fun if it’s about ‘them’ not about ‘us’.   This is where the waters get a little murky.  As they say on Project Runway, “One minute you’re in, the next minute you’re out.” 

I was sitting in church just before Thanksgiving and the preacher started preaching about ‘them’ in a way that made it perfectly plain that ‘them’ were obviously not a part of ‘us’.  Not that unusual for church I guess except this time it was my ‘us’ he was talking about.  Blood rushed to my head.  Part of me wanted to jump up and rebuke the ‘sinner’ in the pulpit and the other part of me wanted to march out the door and never come back.  The part of me that merely sunk down in the pew and seethed won out. 

At some point it occurred to me that I’ve been just as guilty of the same pathetic, self-righteous bigotry, probably even from the pulpit.  That little epiphany rocked my world.  I started thinking that I really needed to lay down my heavy burden of expectations about ‘them’ for a while, or at least try.  I needed to declare a personal year of Jubilee; ally, ally auction, everyone in free!   How about that for awhile?

Created to Party

I think of Jesus as a party kind of guy.  Not the party line type of guy; the kind of guy who fit right in with a good time.  I’m not sure most Christians see Jesus as the partying type but if you read the gospels without your pious glasses on you see Jesus at a lot of parties.  In fact the religious leaders of the day complained about it.   “Hey look,” they said, “You think this guy is some sort of holy prophet?  Well I have it on good authority that he parties with corrupt financiers and prostitutes.  Yeah!  And he doesn’t even wash his hands!”  I’m paraphrasing of course but I think it’s a good paraphrase. 

I’m not suggesting that Jesus was a debauched hedonist; I’m just saying he was a fun guy.  And whether you were getting married or just throwing a bash for fifty of your closest friends Jesus made the guest list.  Now why would that be?  I have a few theories:

1.       Jesus was fun to have around.  That’s the obvious answer.  You don’t invite the pious snob to your party. 

2.       Jesus partied openly.  You know the Priests and Pharisees partied too.  They just did it secretly.  That’s when it gets creepy.  Jesus didn’t care who saw him at a party.  He wasn’t pious snob or a religious hypocrite. 

3.       And finally, we were created in the first place because it pleased him.  We were created not as servants or robots but as creatures imbued with an entire array of senses for our pleasure.  We touch, we see, we feel, we sing, we laugh.  We were built to party!

If we were a little more up front and a little less uptight about that fact I think we would be a lot less inclined to self-medicate.  Life really is a party!  It’s OK if we enjoy it.