When my daughters were teenagers, I drove a Volkswagen bug. In fact, I’ve driven a bug for a large proportion of my life. After my daughters had mastered the basics of starting and stopping and steering in a car with an automatic transmission, they did most of their driving practice with me, in the bug. It was the only car with a stick shift in the neighborhood, so I became the driving instructor for most of the teens in the families that lived around us. There were weeks when I seemed to spend most of my waking hours with my head jerking back and forth like one of those little bobbing head dogs that people used to put on the package shelves of their cars. We would go around and around the block, starting in first gear, stopping, starting again, stopping again, until the student driver began to get the hang of the clutch, and we could move on to shifting into higher gears.
During most of these hours in the car, the beginning drivers would usually be very focused on the whole business of manipulating the balance between the clutch and accelerator. I, on the other hand, had the opportunity to watch what happens when someone is learning a new skill. It was fascinating to watch what happened as each young person gained in skill and confidence. There was a lot of variation in the way they progressed in learning, but I noticed that one set of actions was a part of each teen’s driving pattern at some point in their journey toward competency. I noticed the consistency of this manifestation because it was one of the scarier parts of the teaching process for me.
Imagine, if you will, the learner is driving down the street at a sedate 25 mph. We drive by a friend’s house. The learner looks at the house as we drive past to see if there is visible activity of any interest. As the learning driver turns her head to the right, she also turns the wheel to the right. I reach over and correct the steering. The driver says “What?! What are you doing?”
I explain that it’s important to point the car down the middle of the street and suggest that she pay less attention to the houses we’re passing and more to the steering of the car. I also mention that it’s common for new drivers to experience this phenomenon and that time will probably take care of it. Until time fixes the problem, it’s important to be aware of the danger in going where you’re looking.
A lot of years have passed since those days, and I’ve had opportunity to observe a lot of drivers in that time. And I’ve discovered that it’s not just the new drivers who turn the wheel to follow their line of sight. We all do it to some degree. We all tend to go where our attention is focused.
In his letter to the Church at Philippi, Paul teaches: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” He tells them to keep their focus on the good things they see around them, because he knows that we tend to go where our attention is focused.
As I read today’s lessons, the tendency of some church leaders—and other world leaders—to focus on the evil in the world sprang to my mind. These folks spend a lot of time and energy looking for the hand of Satan, the evil one, in the world around us. They spend a lot of time and attention on the forces of evil as they pray and as they teach and preach. That scares me. We tend to go where our attention is focused, and I am concerned when I hear leaders of large faith groups continually pointing to the acts of evil in the world. Evil exists. I know that. You know that. We’ve seen it and we’ve felt it. Evil exists and it’s important to be aware of it, but that’s not what our life in Christ is about.
In Christ, God invites us to a life of abundance. God invites us. As in today’s gospel story, the invitation comes more than once. God invites us, but whether or not we accept the invitation is our choice. And what we do after we accept the invitation is also our choice. We can show up prepared to open our hearts—prepared to step into God’s grace—prepared to rejoice. Or we can pretend to show up. We can pretend we’ve actually come to the banquet. We can pretend to be in the room but unless we prepare ourselves for what might happen if we actually brought our whole being to the celebration—unless we choose to enter fully into the abundance of God’s love—unless we choose to put on the new life that Christ gives us—unless we choose to rejoice in the Lord, we lock ourselves out of the reign of God and nothing can break the locks that keep us out.
God continues to invite us to the feast. We can hear the invitation most easily—we can enter into God’s grace most easily—if we follow Paul’s words, if we focus on whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, whatever is excellent and whatever is worthy of praise. God never forces us to accept the grace we’re given so freely, but the good news is that God continues to invite us in—to seek us out—to welcome us to the celebration.
Let us rejoice in the Lord: Thanks be to God!