By Reverend Laurie DeMott

Elizabeth Gaskell pokes fun at the social conventions of her day, suggesting that the desire for proper etiquette often conflicted with the possibility of having a truly enjoyable conversation. We in 21st century America may not have the same strict conventions of 18th century England, but we do have our own unspoken rules of interaction: rules for the proper length of a lunch, rules for what is acceptable to send in an email and what requires a letter, rules for how much personal information can be revealed in a conversation. One of my friends even has an acronym for the violation of that last rule – “TMI” she will say as she rolls her eyes remembering how an acquaintance shared overly intimate details with her. “TMI -- Too Much Information!” Probably women spend more time agonizing over these unspoken rules than men do, yet even the men here recognize their existence. You have some colleagues, for example, that you would be quite comfortable inviting on a fishing expedition, while others you know should always remain on a more formal footing.
The wonder of Jesus’ parables is that even though he spoke them nearly 2000 years ago, they still describe situations that feel very familiar to us today. We still sow seeds and leaven bread. We still debate the prudence of investing our money versus hiding it under a mattress, especially these days. And there will unfortunately always be fathers who must decide whether to forgive that son who went and wasted all of his money on wine and women.
And so it is when we listen to Jesus’ parable of the man whose invitations to dinner were rejected, we don’t really need to get out the commentaries to help us understand the tensions in this story. The area of social interaction that has been the greatest minefield of potential etiquette violation throughout human history is that of the dinner invitation. With our busy schedules, invitations to dinner must often be weighed against the relative importance of children’s sporting events, church meetings, obligations at work, or even other dinner invitations. As we try to decide whether to accept or decline a particular invitation, we must decide what will be a socially acceptable reason for declining against what is not. You would never say to a person, “Oh, thank you for inviting me to your dinner party but “The Biggest Loser” is on that night and I don’t want to miss it.” We know that to reject someone in favor of a television show is a real snub and so, instead we say, “Oh, I would love to come to your party but I promised my elderly mother that I would spend the evening with her. She doesn’t get out anymore, you see, and she has been looking forward to my coming for weeks. It would just break her heart for me to cancel,” and we sigh audibly at our disappointment that such self-sacrifice is necessary when we would obviously much rather go to their wonderful dinner party. And then we go to our mother’s to watch “The Biggest Loser”.
In Jesus’ parable, a man decides to host a dinner party but the people he chooses to invite turn out to be otherwise engaged. And while we might be sympathetic to this man and want to blame the invitees for their refusal to come to dinner, let’s be honest – they had some pretty decent excuses: one is a newlywed and the two others have major business obligations that night. There is no indication that they are trying to weasel out of an undesirable invitation or that they are violating unspoken etiquette. In fact, the culture of Jesus’ time understood the men’s excuses as reasonable and socially acceptable. Any of them would have done the same. If we are to understand Jesus’ point, we must first realize that the original guests did nothing wrong in the eyes of the crowd: their reasons for not attending the party were beyond reproach. And yet, there is still something in their rejection that offends the host, something that Jesus wants us to see and understand.

If we are to assume that this parable is talking about God’s invitation to each of us to participate in fellowship at God’s table – and I think that is a safe assumption – then I think that this is a parable about the danger of being a “Foul weather friend” to God. We’ve all heard the phrase “Fair weather friend”. A fair-weather friend is someone who is right at your side when life is going great, always ready to enjoy your company when your company is at its most enjoyable, but as soon as clouds darken your sky, they are out of there. How many people who have been diagnosed with cancer only to find that some of those they counted among their dearest friends suddenly disappear uncomfortable with the presence of their illness? Robert Frost once called banks “fair weather friends” saying, “A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.” We mock fair-weather friends knowing that a true friend is one who will stick by us even when we are not much fun to be around, even when every conversation is punctuated by tears of frustration or sorrow over life’s low blows, even when we can’t afford to go out to the nicest restaurants or manage an evening of frivolity. A fair-weather friend isn’t much of a friend at all.

But neither is a foul-weather friend. This past week, I was sitting in my office when the phone rang. Our secretary, Carol, took the call and then said, “It’s for you, Laurie. It’s your son.”
Every mother of a 22 year old son knows that we love to hear from our children and to have them catch us up on what is happening in their lives, and that such conversations happen much less frequently than any of us would wish. At the same time, however, when our children do actually pick up the phone to call us, especially when the call comes in at 10:00 in the morning, our first reaction is not, “Oh, how nice of my son to phone.” Our first reaction is, “Uh oh – what’s gone wrong now? And how much is it going to cost?” For the record, John just needed a new inhaler and it only cost $20 -- an unusually cheap conversation. Parents expect that sort of relationship with their children but if we were to have a friend who treated us in the same way, only calling when they had a problem, only dropping by when they need a shoulder to cry on or help out of a sticky situation, and then disappearing from view as soon as their lives are going better again, we wouldn’t maintain that friendship for very long. Foul weather friends are as shallow and as one directional as fair weather friends: both measure our friendship only by what we can give them. The fair weather friend looks to us for amusement and fun and dumps us when we aren’t very amusing or very enjoyable to be around. A foul weather friend looks to us for help and support and ignores us when times are good. Neither is the mark of a deep and meaningful relationship because one can hardly call it a relationship at all.

Jesus calls us into relationship with God, and yet too often we pursue only a foul weather friendship. We come to God in prayer when life is going badly. We rediscover church when we need a respite from the trials of parenthood. When we are weary, we quote scriptures about God raising us up on eagle’s wings, and when we are frightened we suddenly remember the words to the 23rd Psalm. None of that is bad …. unless the prayers dry up when the sickness is cured, or we close our Bibles when the economy perks up, or our spirituality goes into early retirement when the kids leave home. Like the host of Jesus’ parable, we would not blame God for becoming upset if we turn away from God’s table as soon as business picks up and life is good again. A foul weather friend is no friend at all.
Too often, our relationship with God is only as deep as God’s usefulness to us is, and as soon as God stops being useful, faith goes dormant. The relationship that Christ calls us into, however, is not a utilitarian one. God doesn’t want fair weather friends and God doesn’t want foul weather friends. God wants deep and true friends who will come to the table to share in the delight of God’s company. C.S. Lewis defined friendship in this way: “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”

I have spent a lot of my career asking the question, “What good is God?” Some people hope that having faith in God will protect them from suffering and inevitably those people become disillusioned with God when bad things still happen. Other people believe that having faith will lead to a better society – faith, they believe, creates kinder and more generous hearts. And yet, I also know lots of good and generous people who have never stepped foot into a church.
And I’ve come to the conclusion that the question “What good is God?” is an irrelevant question. It is as meaningless as asking, “What good is my best friend? After all, we can get along OK without friends – our friends don’t pay us our income or protect us from harm. As Lewis says, there is no survival value in friends; but they are what give value to survival.”
So too, I continue in my faith not because God is always useful to me nor, in spite of my efforts at service, always because I am particularly useful to God. Some days I’m sure I am particular un-useful to God! But I continue in my faith for the same reason I cherish my dearest friends -- because God gives value to my experience of life. The peace that I experience in the company of God, the beauty of God’s vision that enlightens my world, the joy of the fellowship of being with other people of faith, the depth of meaning and purpose I feel in God’s presence, the unexplainable poignancy of knowing that I am loved and that I can love, is the reason that I come to the God’s table whether life is going well or life is going badly. It’s just where I want to be.