21 A Matthew 21:28-32 “Revelation”
Sept 27, 2020, St. Mark’s 8. Joanna Seibert
The religious leaders of Jerusalem have heard about Jesus and are seeing him for the first time. They immediately question his authority, especially in their Temple where they are the authority. Jesus is a country boy from the north with no advanced degrees or resume. Jesus has the nerve to tell them they are not practicing what they preach. Their mouths say “yes” to God’s law, but their actions say “no.” Jesus tells a story hoping they will realize what they are doing.
Perhaps if Jesus wanted to tell a story today about authority and our place in God’s kingdom, he might retell Flannery O’Conner’s last short story, “Revelation.”
The story opens in the waiting room of a doctor's office in the South, where a smug Ruby Turpin chats amicably and surveys and assesses others in the room. A gospel hymn plays on the radio, “When I looked up, and He looked down.” A homely girl, Mary Grace, whose face is blue with acne, sits nearby reading a thick blue book. She is home from Wellesley College.
Mrs. Turpin feels a tremendous self-satisfaction regarding her own position in the world and the waiting room. Her caste classification boils down to race and ownership of land. As she and husband Claud own a house and a little land to raise pigs on, she is obviously superior to people who own only a house. Since she is white, she is superior to any blacks, regardless of how much property they own. What she is really thinking is how could anybody be superior to Mrs. Turpin?
Inevitably Ruby Turpin joyfully speaks out, "When I think who all I could have been besides myself and what all I got, I just feel like shouting, 'Thank you, Jesus, for making everything the way it is!' It could have been different!... Thank you, Jesus, thank you!"
Mary Grace no longer tolerates this self-congratulatory blather and hurls her book, Human Development, at Mrs. Turpin, hitting her over the left eye. Mary Grace then lurches across the waiting room and lunges for her throat. Mary Grace is subdued and falls into some kind of fit. Mrs. Turpin leans over Mary Grace and asks, "What have you got to say to me?" Mary Grace answers as she is transported from the waiting room to a psychiatric hospital, "Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog!"
Mrs. Turpin wonders if this may be some message from God. "How," she asks God, "am I both a hog and me? How am I being both saved and from hell?"/
In O'Connor's world-view, both are perfectly consistent. O'Connor believes Mrs. Turpin is indeed a hog, just like the ones she raises. Simultaneously, Mrs. Turpin is saved because all are entitled to God’s saving grace. That Mrs. Turpin is neat, clean, pleasant to the black workers, and volunteers time at her church is nice, but it is not what entitles her to God’s grace; God offers grace freely to all: prostitutes, tax collectors, poor and well-to-do blacks and whites. Note that the name of the harbinger of this message is Mary/ Grace.
At home on her farm, Mrs. Turpin questions God out loud. She sees a vision of the souls of the people from the waiting room walking up to Heaven. “There were entire companies of those who are dirt poor, clean for the first time, and bands of blacks in white robes, and battalions of people she considers freaks and the lowest dregs of society shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the rear of the procession are people like herself and Claud who have had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. They are marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they always have for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone sing on key. Yet she can see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues are being burned away.” And all the souls are shouting Hallelujah.
“Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you… the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.”
There is a difference between Mrs. Turpin and the chief priests. When Ruby Turpin has “the book thrown at her,” she stops to hear the message. The priests do not. They look to destroy the messenger whose words of change are too painful. /
During this pandemic we have experienced change after change after change in our lives. Each of us here has made a decision like Ruby Turpin to listen to the messenger and change to save our lives, wear masks, stay socially distant. It has not been easy. Sometimes we had to have the book of Human Development thrown at us! But we are here celebrating the life of the messenger who constantly sends other messengers, other authorities to save us. Let us celebrate today the life and death and resurrection of the messenger who promises resurrection, new life daily/ and in the life to come.
May we sit close to Mary Grace in the waiting rooms of our lives as she tells us about change, and ask her to tell us a little more about Human Development, because we are a people who so much want to keep singing Hallelujah,/ on/ or off-key.
Flannery O’Connor, “Revelation,” Flannery O’Connor The Complete Stories, pp. 448-509.
Joanna Seibert. joannaseibert.com