The Reverend Dr. Lillian Daniel
August 29, 2010
First Congregational Church, Glen Ellyn,
Illinois, UCC
www.firstconge.org
630-469-3096
Scripture: Luke 14:1, 7-14
On
one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to
eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.
When he noticed how the guests
chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding
banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more
distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited
both of you may come and say to you, 'Give this person your place', and then in
disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at
the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, 'Friend,
move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the
table with you. For all who exalt
themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Sermon:
It has been a rough summer for Illinois politics, as the entire nation has joined us in watching the trial of former governor Rod Blagojevich, which ended recently with just one guilty verdict out of a possible twenty-four. But that’s hardly the victory he claims it is when we learn that the jurors were split 11 to 1 in favor of convicting Mr. Blagojevich on an accusation that he had infamously tried to sell an appointment to fill the Senate seat once held by President Obama.
Now Blagojevich is absolutely everywhere, Illinois’ ubiquitous and gregarious claim to fame, whether we like it or not. Following a trial where he declined to speak in his own defense, he has made up for that brief silence by being everywhere on the airwaves, from Fox News Sunday, Today, and several Chicago-area radio programs, and even the Daily Show, where Jon Stewart remarked, “There is not a person in the world, I believe, who could get you to pipe down.”
For many people, I think we wanted the trial to end one way or another so that the story and the man would just disappear, but the results mean we are going to see more of him than ever, and our state and city’s reputation for corrupt politics will remain in the national spotlight. After all, it is in the former governor’s best interests to keep trying this in the public eye, in order to avoid being tried again in a courtroom.
Phil Rosenthal, media columnist for the Chicago Tribune, says, “Blagojevich is out to convince the nation, or at least one juror, that the cost of a new trial would be unfair to taxpayers, that he didn’t do anything wrong despite his felony conviction on a charge of lying to federal agents and that the jury’s lack of unanimity on the other 23 corruption charges should be viewed as an absolution.”
It’s enough to make you feel cynical about the political process, and to want to cut off the television whenever the subject comes up. The show biz nature of this particular public servant, his seemingly insatiable desire for publicity, even bad publicity, stands in sharp contrast to the gospel reading we heard this morning.
Apparently Jesus was about to sit down for a meal, for the big special meal of the week, his Sabbath meal, and he noticed a little power play going on. The guests were jostling for position, all wanting to be in the position of honor, which meant right near their host. The guests all wanted that place in the spotlight. And to point out the silliness of that, Jesus said that the next time any of his followers went to fancy dinner they ought to do the opposite. They ought to sit at the low end of the table, and give the host the opportunity to call them forward. After all, that is much better than assuming you deserve the spotlight, and then being told to move out of it. Pick your place at the table carefully and with humility. It is better to be told, we want to see more of you, than to be told “Can you move down a few seats and let someone else sit here?” It is better to leave people wanting to know more about you, than to leave them feeling sick of you and your need for attention.
Does this remind you of anyone you know? Some of us may be feeling that way about our former governor, but others may be feeling that way about some other over-sharing celebrity, or maybe it’s a friend or a family member. You want to say, “Step out of the spotlight. Give us a break. Have you ever heard of being mysterious? Of leaving us wanting to know more?”
Perhaps it is that desire to know more than we know that
made John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s book about the 2008 presidential
campaign, Game Change, such a good seller. The book is about the private lives of the
politicians, Democrats and Republicans, and all the scenes we didn’t see during
the campaign. These two respected reporters had remarkable access to campaign
staff, and they pull away the curtain to show us the human beings behind the
political ads and debates. And I know I was drawn to the book because I
hadn’t heard it all before. After the campaign was over, this was the story
from behind the scenes, the human story behind the political façade.
The book reads like a soap opera script. Hillary Clinton shuts her husband out
of her campaign but defends him when he all but destroys it. John McCain is so
sentimental and superstitious about New Hampshire that he campaigns there even
when it serves no purpose. Sarah Palin gets exposed to world history (which she
declares “awesome”) by flipping through handwritten index cards, while having
her hair done. Barack Obama smokes and uses the “f” word. John Edwards stays on
the road to avoid his unpleasant marriage, feed his rock star ego and flirt
with a New Age sycophant.
What is amazing about Game Change is that well-known and
respected people say all kinds of outrageous things throughout the book. You
wonder what they could have been thinking, speaking the way they do to
reporters. While some have complained at how they were described, remarkably
few have denied saying what was recorded.
What allowed the unknown Obama to rise to such heights in such a short time? The authors describe a perfect storm of events—“game changers”—that left a young Chicago resident of preternatural confidence and gifts in the right place at the right time, while Clinton stumbled. Clinton had her enemies in the Democratic camp, and Obama was always aware that the presidency was within reach—long before others saw it, including his own wife.
Game Change is the story of a radical reversal of the seating arrangements at the Democratic party table. The presumed person who expected the seat of honor, sat in briefly, only to have the host, in this case the voters, ask her to move down and a younger less experienced politician to move forward. Later the whole electorate becomes the host and in a great upset, the great game change, Obama ends up in the seat of honor.
History will decide whether or not any of this was a good or
a bad thing, and rest assured I will not be offering my own opinions on
anything political. But this book, which is pretty evenhanded, reminds us that
politicians are human beings. They have real lives and are obviously fallible.
They don’t have to be brought up on corruption charges to be human and to make
mistakes.
Marriages get a lot of attention in Game Change—so much so that the
reader feels a bit like a kid caught at the bedroom door keyhole. We are
undeniably curious about what goes on behind other people’s locked doors. It's
not that we think our marriages are better than others. Often we are just
looking for reassurance that we’re not the only couple carrying around a big
bucket of crazy. If you’re looking for that kind of reassurance, Game
Change delivers.
Among this crowd, the Clintons are one of the more stable couples. Their
marriage is complicated, of course, but mostly for campaign reasons. The
authors seem to believe that Hillary could have won had she drawn more on Bill’s
political instincts. But she was determined to go it alone, fearing that his
charisma would leave her in the shadows. She put together a campaign staff that
never gelled as a team, and she herself didn’t have her husband’s magnetism or
his appetite for eating donuts with the common man.
By the time Hillary let Bill share in the decision making, her campaign was
beyond salvaging. She had lost the spot of honor at the American table. At that
point, his bulldog behavior in defense of his wife (like his accusations that
Obama’s campaign cheated in Iowa) hurt more than helped. Only after the
campaign did Hillary acknowledge any of that damage, and then, remarkably, she
did it in a late-night phone conversation with Obama. But more on that later.
The peek at Palin’s life on the campaign trail shows her making phone calls to
her pregnant teenage daughter, her sadness about being away from the new baby,
and her constant worries as to what people were saying about her, back in
Wasilla. She was worried like all these folks about her seat at the table not
just nationally but back home.
More disturbing is the portrayal of the instant superstar’s
mood after a few rounds of public criticism. She became so depressed and
unfocused that some of her staffers thought she was having a mental breakdown.
She refused to prepare for interviews, and when her exchange with Katie Couric
exposed her thin grasp of the issues, her team confesses in the book that they
were mainly surprised that it hadn’t happened sooner. According to Game
Change, many Republicans, including some on Palin’s staff, came to feel
guilty for nominating her to be the person a heartbeat away from the
presidency. Vice President Cheney saw her from the beginning as a reckless
choice. In other words, they were saying that she had taken the place of
honor at the table that was meant for someone else.
Probably no one comes off worse in the book than John Edwards. The authors
believe that Edwards lost his ballast long before the 2008 campaign and had
drifted out to sea on waves of vanity. Rielle Hunter, who had an affair with
Edwards and gave birth to his child (Edwards denied the child was his until
January of this year), entered his inner circle to film a documentary, in other
words, her primary role was to shower him with attention, and to preserve his
every thought and action forever. She had no real experience in filmmaking, but
she did have an appealing resemblance to the singer Stevie Nicks and an
insatiable interest in the candidate’s every move. Presumably, she was a
constant reminder that he deserved the seat of honor at the table.
On the basis of Game Change, the “Most Functional Family” award
goes to the current First Family. Apparently, Obama brightens up whenever his
wife appears. Michelle Obama comes off as level-headed and realistic, an anchor
at home for her ascending star of a husband. When she made her politically
damaging comment about “finally” being proud of her country, she was
devastated, and so was Barack—on her behalf. Her speech at the Democratic
Convention seemed to be the highlight of the event for Barack, who was just
waiting for America to fall in love with her as he did.
Did the authors go easy on the president’s family life? If history is written by the winners, sometimes it may be
written for the winners.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that in Game Change, the losers
come off as losers.
The one who got the seat of honor comes off as the most
honorable and the ones who lost out in this radical game changing seating
reassignment come off as inferior. The truth, we, the public, will never know,
nor should we.
Heilemann and Halperin assume that a candidate’s family life
matters. The best campaigner, the one with the coolest head, also seems to have
the steadiest marriage and the most well-adjusted kids. Candidates’ marital and
parenting woes are portrayed almost comically, as if to wink at the reader and
say, “Now you see why it all turned out the way it did.”
But political life doesn’t always follow that pattern. There are great leaders
whose marriages are a disaster, and there are happily married people who couldn’t
get voted in to lead ants to a picnic, but will be all over a reality show. The
Bible is full of that kind of human complexity, even if Game Change isn’t.
While some have complained that the Obamas are treated too
well in Game Change, the authors do dig into the biggest controversy of
Obama’s campaign, his relationship with his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and
Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Obama is presented as a serious
person of faith, reluctant to cut ties to his pastor and his church until
forced to do so by Wright’s comments at the National Press Club. The authors
portray Wright as hurt by Obama’s distancing behavior and by the lack of
communication with him afterward. Back when the controversy was just brewing,
by not inviting his pastor to speak at his announcement in Springfield, did
Obama deny his pastor the presumed seat of honor he had long waited for? It is
a heartbreaking story of a clash between leaders of different generations in
the midst of a media frenzy.
Entirely missing from the book is an analysis of why Obama was drawn to Wright
in the first place. The authors do not mention, nor do they seem to get, how an
intellectual and faithful person could listen to Wright. They see Wright only
in terms of the sound bites everyone else saw on television. They do not
discuss the dynamic and multifaceted ministry of Trinity Church or the
inclusive, justice-oriented message of our denomination. As a United Church of
Christ pastor, I admit I have a dog in this fight. I would have loved to hear
more about what brought Obama to Trinity, and that discussion would have
underscored the poignancy of the eventual split.
Of course, Obama had other relationships to tend to. The account of his
selection of Joe Biden as a running mate is fascinating, in terms of earthly
seating arrangements. Biden managed to play the role of adviser to both Clinton
and Obama during the primary and retain the trust and friendship of both. But
tension grew between Obama and Biden late in the campaign. After telling
reporters that he was more qualified to be president than Obama, in other words
that he deserved the seat of honor, the campaign cut back on Biden’s access to
the press, beginning a huge rift between the two. The irony here is that this
was yet another instance in which the younger man was hurt by off-the-cuff
remarks of an older and more experienced mentor.
Apparently, Biden and Obama now have a strong relationship. That is a relief,
since they are running the country together. The message of the book again
seems to be that these powerful people are no different from you and me—they
get mad, they hold grudges, and they work things out or they don’t. But here
the stakes are a lot higher. Their seat of honor carries a lot more power
and prestige than the seats of honor that you and I might fight over.
It is a bit surprising that the authors describe the relationship between
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as a long and tortured love story. As they
tell it, she was enamored with him from first contact, campaigned for him
enthusiastically and gushed over his gifts. She wanted him at the table,
advocated for him to have a place there, but never thought it would be the place
of honor. The gripping last chapter centers on the president elect’s desire to
get Clinton to join his team as secretary of state, in essence to be willing to
take a lesser seat than the seat of honor, but be willing to sit near the head
of the table any way. Fearing she would turn him down, Obama refused to take
her calls, eventually phoning her near midnight and begging her to take the
position. Despite having already drafted her “no thank you” speech, by the next
morning, Clinton accepts. One can almost hear the romantic music swelling in
the background as one begins the final chapter, titled “Together Again.”
The romance imagery does not work, and it trivializes Clinton. Clinton’s
relationship with Obama is described as a crush that turns into a bitter
contest but ends up with them “together again”—together, a feminist might
argue, with Hillary Clinton in her proper place, next to her man and below him
in status. Perhaps the authors are cleverly using the love-story metaphor to
point to the sexist ways we still view women politicians. Or perhaps they are
just being sexist themselves. Many women voters saw that election as
vindication that their worst fears were right, and that a woman would never get
that honored place at the table, but history will tell that story.
It’s the relationships that drive this book and keep readers turning the pages.
We learn that the candidates are just like us after all. They lie awake at
night imagining what they would say to their enemies, and then they blow it in
real life. They curse, they argue and they make hasty, sloppy decisions. Their
family lives are messy and their friendships are fragile. There is no ultimate
salvation in politics. We will have to look elsewhere for a savior.
Last spring, when I described this book to a church member
over lunch, she asked if we might change the subject. “I've decided to give up
back-stabbing and gossipy conversation for Lent,” she politely explained—to her
minister.
But is it really gossip when you are talking about famous people running for
president? Can you back-stab someone who doesn’t know you exist?
I suspect that my friend was wisely worried less about the effect such talk would have on the subjects than the effect it was having on the speaker. As a reader, could I have been playing the same game of jockeying for position, wanting to read about other people’s problems in order to assure myself I was not so bad after all—even superior. If we’re honest, isn’t that why we take such an interest in the personalities of the powerful? We want that reassurance that they are really no better than we are, that, with all their problems, we could be the ones who deserve the best seat at the table, not them.
But Jesus’ point was that nobody deserves it. The real host at the table is God, and getting the best seat is grace, it’s those things that happen to us that we don’t deserve, that we didn’t earn and we shouldn’t presume are ours to begin with.
Back when I was a student in high school, I was actively involved in student government. This was not something I did so I could put it on my college applications. I really loved it. I held offices, attended meetings, went through election campaigns where a team worked at night on posters, handmade with magic markers, and then the next day we would post them all over the school. I was a true believer and felt that by standing up for students, we had changed some important things in the school, although back then the thing we wanted the very most we were told would never happen. “Never, ever, ever,” we were told, “Will any public school in America, ever have a soda machine. That is totally unrealistic.” Well they did decades later, and now we’re trying to get them out.
But at any rate, by the end of my junior year, it made total sense for me to run for student body president, and people told me that I was a natural choice. I made my posters, attended my meetings in my current office, worked on my speech, and then at the last minute, a guy entered the race as a total joke candidate. His speech was hilarious, he basically confessed to having no interest in the job and no agenda, and he won the election. And I was left shocked. I thought that the place of honor at that table was mine. I had worked over the years, people seemed to expect I would be there, but instead I was told to move to the end of the table, so he could sit there instead.
Now, had someone beaten me who really wanted the job and took an interest, I would have been disappointed, but not too much. But this, this was different. By voting the way they did, I realized that all along I had been working for a group of people who did not value anything we did. They voted for a joke candidate, because they saw the student government as a joke. And it made me question the whole enterprise. But it was also humbling, and I learned an important life lesson. I learned that Jesus was right here, you should never assume a spot is yours, and part of the life of faith is getting back up after someone has knocked you off your seat.
I think the majority of politicians in this country are more like me and the folks who participate in student government, than they are like the power-wielding politicos of books like Game Change. Most politicians are working on school boards, or like so many people in our congregation, serving on the village board of trustees, sitting through long planning and zoning meetings late into the night, and perhaps occasionally wondering: Is any of this valued? Or do other people think it’s a joke?
These politicians, who serve at every level and in every party, do not assume the seat of honor but work hard and mostly anonymously at the end of the table. And I imagine nobody grieves more than they do at the latest political corruption scandal, or the latest tell-all book about the lust for power and ambition.
In the end, it’s not about where you sit at the table, but your attitude as you take your place. For Jesus, it was about acknowledging that God is the host at all times, and it is God we need to think about pleasing.
Electorates come and go, your popularity may wax or wane, but the only vote you ultimately need to get is God’s. So approach the tables of life, not with presumption, but with humility.
And let’s deal gently with those public servants, and
remember that most of them labor hard and honestly. When they don’t, it’s just
another reminder that there is no salvation in politics. When times are tough,
and the world seems out of order, it will not be politics that will save the day
or deserve all the blame. Those two are for all to share the burden of our
society, all of us working together. Yes, politics can be glitzy and exciting,
and politics can be sleazy and heartbreaking, but in the end it’s only
politics. We will have to look elsewhere for our savior. Amen.