Pentecost 14C 2025

THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS

So, anyone else hearing the song “I’ve got friends in low places” after hearing that Gospel lesson? How about now? Earworms can be bothersome, but fun to make happen. 

It was not a choice for our Sequence Hymn for a few reasons. One is that it would violate a few copyright laws. Another is that the remaining lyrics express a very different perspective from Christian service. Then there’s the point that I only pretended to like country music for awhile because it irritated my brother when I asked for it on the car radio. 

George Whitfield, a preacher at the beginning of the Great Awakening, pulled no punches during his sermons, which could go on for hours at a time. A printer by the name of Benjamin Franklin in a town a bit north of here heard him, and offered to print Whitfield’s sermons so folks could buy them to read again. 

Whitfield was born in Gloucester, England early in the 18th century. He was one of those “methodists” whose fiery oratory caused him to be banned from respectable pulpits such as those in any Anglican parish. But he had his supporters, one of whom was known as Lady Huntington. Her peers were not amused. 

The Duchess of Buckingham wrote: “I thank your Ladyship for the information concerning these preachers. Their doctrines are most repulsive and strongly tinctured with impertinence and disrespect toward their superiors in that they are perpetually endeavoring to level all ranks and do away with all distinctions. It is monstrous to be told that you have a heart as sinful as the common lechers that crawl on the earth. This is highly offensive and insulting and I cannot but wonder that your Ladyship should relish any sentiment so much at variance with high rank and good breeding.” Imagine those words spoken by Dame Edith Evans in her role as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest. The good version, not the one made in 2002. 
Just who did he think he was, this Mr. Whitfield, by including the poor and hungry and homeless as those worthy of not only hearing, but benefitting from the Gospel? 

He probably thought he was a follower of another man criticized for doing the same thing. 

That man, Jesus of Nazareth, wasn’t alone. Even a cursory glance at the Hebrew prophets makes it difficult to avoid mention of neglecting the poor, the widows and orphans, the hungry and destitute, as reasons leading to the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the exile of Judah to Babylon. Ezekiel goes back even further, naming those same reasons for the destruction of Sodom just as a man named Abraham was making his journey from his homeland of Ur. That place, by the way, is the same region of that later exile. More about calling God’s people to leave the comfort to which they’ve become accustomed at another time.

Unless, of course, we take today’s Gospel to heart and refuse to leave unchallenged the practices all around us of neglecting the poor and hungry, of harsh treatment of those who look and sound different from us.

It seems that we, like Abraham, are still wandering from the comfort of an accepted and acceptable status quo to the land that we will be shown once we get there. We cling tightly to what is familiar, even accepting biases handed down to us. We work hard to preserve what already is, as if it alone is the kingdom of God we spend a few Sundays each year talking about before we’re distracted by a baby that, according to perceived mythology, never even needed a diaper change. Nevermind that “no crying he makes” mythology itself is more like diaper contents than true belief.

Garth Brooks might not have sung lyrics we would find appropriate for us this morning. But we might let our minds wander back a couple thousand years and somehow hear the soon-to-be incarnate Christ singing the title words as justification for becoming human and joining us in our earthly wanderings to the places we are yet to be shown.

We might hear those words again when we consider the meaning of a sentence in our baptismal creed, “he descended to hell.” It doesn’t get any lower than that. You’ll remember also hearing that early teaching tells us he pulled his friends out of that place as he returned.

So, while I’m at it, I might as well quote another familiar song title. “Love lift us up where we belong.” Anyone remember feeling years younger yet?

While the earworms battle for space inside our skulls, consider that God’s bias is toward those who find themselves helpless, who are told they are unworthy, who have nowhere else to turn, and God’s redeeming love not only joins them in their dark, lost places, but offers transformation through the transcendent presence of God to light their way forward. After all, it is in the dark, dank cellars of life where the Light of the World can shine most brightly.

So if we don’t have friends in low places, we might lose sight of that love that lifts us up to where we all belong as children of God. And to get back to my own preferred genre, let the double fugue of those subjects and their countersubjects be a most interesting counterpoint of the life we hope to find in and spreading from this place God has led us to, at least for the moment. And while you're at it, give thanks to Almighty God for continuing to have friends in low places. You know, like us.