Grits and the Gospel - September 27, 2026

Hello friends and welcome to this week's episode of grits in the gospel. My name is Reverend Katie Griffiths It's good to be with you today. I realized after I'd already recorded and sent My last sermon that I had not told you that I was not gonna be preaching The next week which was last Sunday because of camp meeting here Down here in Dooley County It was a beautiful Two services I got to sit in the pew twice and hear the bishop James Swanson preach Amazing sermons. It was really good to be able to do that So I apologize for not giving you a little warning, but we are back this week with a Message as we continue through the lectionary from Matthew So I hope that you will forgive me for that oversight and I'm glad you're back with me today Let us come together now in a time of worship the Lord be with you and also with you Today's epistle lesson comes from the letter from Paul to the Philippians We will be in the second chapter verses one through eight Hear now the word of the Lord if then there is any comfort in Christ any consolation from love any partnership in the spirit in any tender affection and sympathy Make my joy complete Be of the same mind having the same love being in full accord and of one mind Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility Regard others as better than yourselves Let each of you not look to your own interests, but to the interests of others The same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus who Though he existed in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped But emptied himself taking the form of a slave assuming human likeness and Being found in an appearance as a human He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death even death on a cross Thus ends the first reading Let us come together now and remind ourselves of those things of God and of Christ that we believe in and we humble ourselves to be a part of and We live a life Inspired by Christ friends, what do we believe I Believe in God the Father Almighty Maker of heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ his only son our Lord He was conceived by the Holy Spirit born of the Virgin Mary Suffered under Pontius Pilate was crucified dead and buried The third day he rose from the dead He ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty From this he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit the Holy Catholic Church the communion of saints the forgiveness of sins the Resurrection of the body and the life everlasting Amen Let us pray together dear Lord. We come to you today just humbled That even though we fall short daily even though People who claim to be spiritual leaders are examples of that fall daily We still have you to look to we still have your example of putting yourself last and your children first to follow Hear us now as we pray those words that your son our example in life and our Savior in death taught us to Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name That kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us And lead us not into temptation But deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever men today's New Testament lesson Continues our trek through the book of Matthew where you're in the 21st chapter verses 23 through 32 Hear now the word of the Lord When he entered the temple the chief priests and elders to the people came to him and he was teaching and said By what authority are you doing these things and who gave you this authority? Jesus said to them. I will ask you one question You tell me the answer then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things Did the baptism of John come from heaven or was it of human origin and they argued with one another if we say from heaven He will say to us. Why then? Did you not believe him? But if we say of human origin we are afraid of the crowd for all regard John as a prophet So they answered Jesus we do not know and he said to them neither will I tell you about what authority I am going I'm doing these things What do you think a man who has two sons? He went to the first and said son go work in the vineyard today He answered I will not but later he changed his mind and went The father went to the second and said the same and he answered I go sir But he did not go Which of the two did the will of his father and they said the first Jesus said truly I tell you the tax collectors and Prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him But the tax collectors and prostitutes believed him and even after you saw it You did not change your minds and believe them the Word of God for us the people of God Thanks be to God Would you pray with me? Dear Lord as we come together today, would you please just impart on us wisdom and knowledge and courage? That passes all understanding that we may learn to humble ourselves That we may learn to love others No matter what? No matter if they are different than we are No matter if they are a different class than we are or a different country of origin That we may love all I know that those that are othered Will be ahead of us in line Let the words of my mouth and meditation of all of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight Oh Lord Our strength and our Redeemer Amen love I'm a fan and love the writings of Flannery O'Connor Mainly because she's a great southern author and former real-life and current cemetery neighbor to many of my family members She wrote beautifully of a time and place that is familiar to me It can be problematic at times Language she used is not what we see as kind or appropriate today Even though it was very true to life of the time she was writing about I Think that sometimes being reminded of that is a good thing. I think sometimes we need to be Uncomfortable and remember why we should be Sometimes holding a mirror up to ourselves and our ancestors will help us learn and be better people Just because we are uncomfortable doesn't mean there are not lessons we can learn and hear in these writings One of her stories in particular speaks to me. I will be changing one phrase When I quote it, but the reference is one of my favorite scriptures Like the one we read today It is my hope that you will be inspired to find ways to make scripture come to life and new in different ways Just like she did and to see the lessons that Jesus was trying to his best to teach the disciples in a relevant and timely way in her short story revelation O'Connor tells of mrs. Turpin and her husband Claude on a trip to the doctor's office The waiting room is small and mrs. Turpin is large and so the crowded room becomes uncomfortable pretty quickly and To make herself feel better Mrs. Turpin harshly judges each and every person in the room one by one She describes in detail the flaws that she finds in every person there. I Wish I could say I'd never done this We all have we just like to call it people watching Most of us have sized up people in waiting rooms or in line at the store mrs. Turpin just puts in writing what a lot of people are thinking I Just like to think that even on my worst day. I'm not as harsh as she is in Fact I had a hard time choosing a passage that I was comfortable reading out loud I settled on this one mrs. Turpin says this Next to the child's mother was a redheaded youngish woman Reading one of the magazines and working a piece of chewing gum hell for leather as Claude would say mrs. Turpin could not see the woman's feet She was not white trash just common Sometimes mrs. Turpin occupied herself at night naming the classes of people On the bottom of the heat were most colored people not the kind she would have been if she had been one but most of them Then next to them not above just away from where the white trash then above them were the homeowners and above them the home and land owners to which she and Claude belonged Above she and Claude Were people with a lot of money and much bigger houses and much more land Well now mrs. Turpin I don't believe I would have said any of that out loud or in my heart, but here we are and Now we're all judging her It makes me wonder what everyone else in the room thought when she walked into that waiting room with the slight sheepish unassuming and probably long-suffering Claude this passage from Matthew is very convicting But we have to look at the full chapter to understand exactly what is happening and why his authority is being questioned The early part of the chapter is the Palm Sunday passage when Jesus rides triumphantly into Jerusalem and stirs up the leaders You can almost hear the government and religious leaders saying amongst themselves. Who does this guy think he is? Like the mrs. Turpin's of the world they were sizing Jesus up and Then to anger them even further Jesus goes into the temple and starts flipping tables and calling the church leaders robbers and thieves The passage in today's lectionary text is the next day when he goes back to the temple And you know that the Pharisees had been plotting overnight about how they could counter Jesus's actions from the day before So they questioned his authority thinking that he would either trip up and reveal himself as a heretic or not be able to answer Goodness did they underestimate who they were dealing with? Jesus gives them an answer his authority comes from heaven but it is what he says to them for even questioning him at all and It is the last two verses that we read today That really punched them in the gut Jesus said to them truly, I tell you the tax collectors and the Prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed in and Even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe John the Baptist tried to tell them and they didn't believe They saw the miracles and heard the teachings and they still didn't believe the tax collectors and prostitutes Saw and believed why don't you? The white trash and the common and the lowly and the less than believed in the power of God And that Jesus is the Messiah And that Jesus is the Messiah they can see it they believe it why don't you Jesus uses several parables over those few days in the Jerusalem temple The chapter ends this way Verse 45 says when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus's parables They knew he was talking about them They looked for a way to arrest him But they were afraid for the crowd because of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet Notice it never says that these men of supposed faith these men of the church ever actually believed They were afraid of the people who thought Jesus was a prophet Jesus was a prophet they refused to see it themselves They refused to believe that the prostitutes and the tax collectors could actually be right about something to do with faith These people who were beneath them Surely had to be wrong and they had to be right They of course knew better Than the common folk How many times have we seen people? How many times have we seen God at work and chosen to ignore that it was God Trying to show us the right thing to do how many times have we ignored the lessons right in front of us? How many times? Have we judged the common people? And the poor and the others? Because we didn't want to fix our own hearts This passage is very convicting indeed We have to wait until the last two paragraphs of the story for mrs. Turpin to have her revelation It took a long tirade of hate and judgment and bad behavior for God to finally have enough And show her what God's kingdom really looks like And God shows it to her in vivid words It shows the What those last two verses of our passage today say about the church leaders of Jesus at the time it shows The verse that paul wrote in his letter to the philippians that reminds them and us Do nothing From selfish ambition or empty conceit but in humility Regard others as better than yourselves When you see mrs. Turpin back at home at the hog pen at the end of her day Flannery says this A visionary light settled in her eyes. She saw the streak As a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire Upon it a vast horde of souls were tumbling toward heaven There were whole companies of white trash cleaned for the first time in their lives And bands of people of color in white robes and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people And she recognized at once as those who like herself and called Had always had a little of everything and the given wit to use it right She leaned forward to observe them closer They were marching behind the others with great dignity Accountable as they had always been for good order common sense And respectable behavior They alone were on key Yet she could see by their Shocked and altered faces even their virtues were being burned away She lowered her hands and gripped the rail of the hog pen her eyes Small but fixed unblinkingly on what lay ahead In a moment the vision faded but she remained where she was At length she got down and turned off the faucet and in her slow way on the darkening path to the house In woods around her the invisible cricket choruses had struck up But what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upward into the starry field And shouting hallelujah I wonder if the chief priests and the Pharisees ever had their shocked and altered faces burned away Today I wonder if they ever saw the value and people who were not from their lineage or their class or their status in the community I wonder if they ever realized that the back of the line is the most inspiring place to be Because you get to see and hear the chorus of beautiful souls that the world says is other but god says are his children I hope I always do I hope the world realizes that the people who do not fit into a cookie cutter version of humanity Help us broaden our horizons and give color and life and joy to the world I hope I get to bust out of the end of the line and join the leap frogs of joy And sing hallelujah Amen I hope this week as you go throughout your days that you Will find those that the world says is or other the tax collectors and the prostitutes the freaks And the leap frogs of joy And see what you can learn about faith in god from them Because in life In death and life beyond death god is with us We are never alone Thanks be to god Amen