Love: The Difference Between Repaying and Responding

Luke 14:1-14

Have any of you ever seen Mean Girls? Great movie. Tells the story of a girl named Cady making the transition to public high school after having been homeschooled her entire life. It’s all new to her and she finds herself a bit overwhelmed by what seems to be a set of unwritten rules governing who you do and don’t talk to, what you should or shouldn’t wear, who you can and can’t eat with, and so on. Early on, Cady makes friends with two systemic misfits whose abuse within the system made them wary, and weary, of its ways. They spend most of the first semester schooling Cady in unwritten rules, cynically describing the different groups based on interest, appearance, intellect. During this whirlwind education, Cady is told of the “Plastics.” Quoth her friend:

“The plastics are basically teen royalty. If our high school was US Weekly, they would always be on the cover.”

Out of that group, however, it is Regina George who sits on the throne. “Flawless,” she is described by her classmates. She has all the right looks, things friends, annnd perhaps a bit of fear induced influence on social outcomes.

Well imagine Cady’s surprise when she finds herself invited, by Regina, to join the plastics for lunch. Cady’s misfit friends watch in horror from the periphery as Cady is again schooled, but this time in the very specific rules of the “Plastics”: can’t wear a tank top two days in a row; you can only wear your hear in a ponytail once a week (with the exception of putting your hair up for gym class or working out); gotta consult with the rest of the group before you buy any new article of clothes (for approval, and to make sure none of them already own what you’re interested in); and on Wednesdays we wear pink. This list, too, goes on and on, mostly with rules pertaining to the “dress code.” For the plastics, acceptability is largely based on appearance. “You’re really pretty,” says Regina…in other words: you have the potential to be like us. But there’s also a deeper meaning to this complement.

The movie, Mean Girls is based on a book by Rosalind Wiseman, “Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and the New Realities of Girl World.” The Regina George character is the quintessential Queen Bee, which Wiseman describes thusly: “For the girl whose popularity is based on fear and control, think of a combination of the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland and Barbie. I call her the Queen Bee. Through a combination of charisma, force, money, looks, will, and manipulation, this girl reigns supreme over the other girls and weakens their friendships with others, thereby strengthening her own power and influence.” When Regina tells Cady she’s really pretty, she’s revealing a deeper fear that if Cady doesn’t join them, she’ll threaten the group’s monopoly on “being pretty.” If Cady goes on being independently pretty, with no regard for the rules of the Plastics, then other people are going to get it in their heads that they can be beautiful without succumbing to the power and influence of the Plastics.

Cady’s invitation to eat lunch with the Plastics reminds me a lot of Jesus’ invitation to dine with the Pharisees—a group whose standards of acceptability are largely based on appearance; whose extensive and intricate list of rules give them a great deal of power and influence within the social, cultural, and religious systems. Like the Queen Bee, the Pharisees popularity is also based on fear and control. Jesus shows up, new kid in town. He knows the scriptures inside and out. He’s got the potential to be like them. So they invite him to dinner, to make sure he’s clear on all the rules, to flaunt their own power and importance to advertise what Jesus had to gain by becoming a part of their group. But the invitation they extend seems to be contingent on Jesus’ acceptance of their standards of acceptability. They expect something in return. I doubt the Pharisees presumed Jesus to be the Son of God, but they did see him as influential, inspiring, potentially threatening to their power and influence. Jesus teaching people that God’s love isn’t contingent on the standards of acceptability practiced by the Pharisees. The Pharisees enjoy the power to determine who’s right and who’s wrong, who’s worthy and who’s unworthy, who’s in and who’s out. God’s standards of acceptability make it a whole lot more difficult to tell “who’s out.”

Jesus statement to the host of the dinner party has many layers of meaning. First off he’s saying, “don’t expect me to repay you for this invitation by adopting your interpretation of the rules.” As an extension of the parable, he’s teaching that God doesn’t invite us into the kingdom expecting us to repay God. We’ve already determined that none of us can do that anyway. If the capacity to repay, if a pious and perfect life, isn’t a prerequisite for God’s invitation…how are we supposed to tell who’s in and who’s out? Jesus is teaching those of us who claim to be a part of God’s kingdom movement, that our invitation to others can’t come with strings attached either. We don’t get to invite people to join our “group” based on their capacity to live up to our standards of acceptability.

Deep down, the Pharisees believed they were earning their acceptability, believing that God would repay them for their righteousness. How many of us believe that, too? There’s a fairly popular belief that saying a specific prayer will “get you saved”—that if we invite Jesus into our hearts, we will be repaid with salvation. The popularity of this belief, just like the popularity of the Pharisees, or the Plastics, or the Queen Bee, is based on fear and control--the fear of not being good enough, and the desire to control our worthiness in the eyes of God. We don’t invite God into our lives to be repaid, we invite God into our life because we’ve already been “paid” (or paid for, some might say)…we invite God into our life because we’ve been given life.

Jesus’ understanding of grace demolishes any interpretation of the rules as standards of acceptability. Our participation in the resurrection of the righteous is not based on our behavior. This is not to say that the commandments don’t matter. But the commandments weren’t established to help us earn God’s love, they were established to help us respond to it. For the Pharisees, the commandments were prerequisites of righteousness. For Jesus, the commandments were about love--in fact, when asked, he summed up all the law and the prophets like this: "Love God, and love one another"…no strings attached. See the difference? Pharisees saw the commandments as guidelines for repaying God for the unrighteousness of humankind. Jesus saw the commandments as guidelines for responding to God’s love. There’s a big difference between repaying and responding. Repaying is based on guilt, what we have done, and what we can do. Responding is based on grace, what God has done, and what God continues to do.

This is why, in just a few minutes, we will baptize Addilyn Elizabeth in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as a sign and seal of God’s grace. She didn’t earn the title, “beloved child of God,” none of us have. And after that, we will all be invited to participate in the great feast of our Lord, invited to God’s table. God simply wants us to show up, to be fed, to receive grace. Baptism and Communion are invitations to life, new life, paid for by Christ—that’s the resurrection of the righteous. You can’t repay. But how will you respond?