The first week in August the Rev. Steve Gilbert and I spent five days in Santa Fe, New Mexico attending a conference. The theme was "Creativity and Madness." (But that’s another story!) Our travel back home was from the small municipal Santa Fe airport to Denver and then on to BWI. We got to the Santa Fe airport in plenty of time. The terminal is an adobe building in a lovely high desert setting. We were relaxed after an interesting week and sat down to wait in the knowledge that with a three hour layover in Denver, we had nothing to worry about. Our flight out was due in about a half-hour. We then noticed that a fire engine had just appeared at the end of the runway. Then in a moment came a police car. Then an ambulance. All with their lights flashing. I asked someone what was up because word seemed to be spreading quickly. The answer was "A plane is about to crash." Oh? Someone else explained that a small private twin-engine aircraft was unable to extend one of its landing gear and was running low on fuel. Sure enough, a few minutes later the plane referred to eased down on the runway and promptly nosed over, shredding the propellers and smashing in the front end. People got out of the plane and no one seemed injured. Everyone was greatly relieved. Then the process of removing the plane began, but in the meantime, the airport was closed. With a sinking feeling, we looked at the clock as the minutes and hours ground on. Finally, the airport was reopened, and our plane arrived. It was just unclear if we would make our connection or not. Arriving in Denver, I raced from one end of the terminal to the other. We had missed the flight by about two minutes.

We were then directed to the Delta customer service counter. A line awaited us, and a number of other travelers seemed pretty unhappy. Right before us a man was rudely berating a hapless airline representative. He was being very provocative but she kept her cool. Eventually he stalked off, clearly unhappy. Steve and I were next. We were both acutely aware of what she had been subjected to. Our conversation went something like this.

"That guy was pretty unpleasant. Sorry you had to go through that."

"That is the rudest customer I ever had had to deal with. Who does he think he is?"

"Our hearts went out to you. Your job must be pretty tough at times. You kept calm and behaved very professionally."

"Thanks."

"Well, our problem is we missed our connection. Whatever you can do, we’d be grateful."

"Thanks for you consideration. Let me check it for you. Yes. They’ve already put you on a later flight to BWI. That gets you in at 2:10 a.m."

"Thanks so much. You know it is a little late. Any possibility at all for something earlier?" I asked, very politely.

"Actually there is an earlier flight, but coach seems to be all booked. Let’s see if there is anything in first class."

She didn’t say anything for a few moments, continuing to fuss with her computer. Then she handed us our boarding passes.

"Well?" I said meekly. She just pointed at the upper corner of one. "First Class" it read.

To make a long story short, we were boarded first, sat in cushioned adjustable seats, were wined and dined the entire flight, and felt only the briefest pangs of sympathy for those benighted souls back behind us on the other side of the curtain in, what do they call it? Coach?

Well, maybe this isn’t such a dramatic story, and the most obvious lesson is probably that simple courtesy and patience can go a long way. But yet I thought of our little adventure when I read the parable that Jesus tells. Those who feel entitled to first-class may find themselves in coach. And those who are humbly willing to accept coach may find themselves upgraded.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe in being assertive. I believe it is important to know what you want and be clear about it. There are few things more liberating than when someone makes a strong intention statement. But being clear about what you want and expressing it, is different from believing your wants are entitlements and being aggressive about it. When that happens, the attitude is simply one of "Me First!" And it is that attitude of "Me First!" that, it seems to me, accounts for whatever it is we call the breakdown of civility today.

I was chatting with Mable Elliott in the hospital earlier in the week. And she said that she had a growing wonder at how angry people seemed to be these days. "Where does all that rage come from?" she asked.

My first day back, I drove from our home over the beltway to the church. I think I had been hoping that, magically, all that roadwork would be done and the beltway cleared. Wrong. So in the course of that trip, I was tail-gated by a driver who obviously thought I was going too slow; cut off by a semi that had decided to switch lanes at the last minute; and nearly blind-sided by a car with Michigan plates that determined that it really didn’t want to get off at Georgia Ave. after all. But rather than flip into a road-rage attitude, and realizing that I had just ended a week of spiritual formation at the Bon Secours Retreat Center (the beginning of my Shalem Institute program), I had higher hopes for myself, and I tried to reflect on what God might be saying to me in that moment. What I tried to do was to say to myself that it is not necessary to see these other drivers as enemies. I needn’t assume that their sole intention in those moments was my obliteration. I could not, of course, be sure of that, but why not start from the assumption that these other drivers are struggling souls like me? They are just trying to get where they are going and feeling the frustrations I am feeling too. Then I thought, what’s wrong with simply getting out of the way and letting them be first?

Isn’t it the attitude of "Me First!" that underlies road rage. People get very angry in those moments, for example, when you see that the highway is losing a lane and there are those who insist on getting as far as they can before merging, and then they turn on their blinkers expecting you to let them in? It is the attitude of "Me First!" that drives them on. But, the real issue for me is how I respond to that. I can get angry and not let them in. I can get angry and let them in. I can get angry and stifle my rage, indignant and self-righteous. Or, it occurs to me, I can simply say, when I feel the anger rising: "I don’t have to be first." If their "Me First" attitude hooks me into my own "Me First" attitude, then I am caught. But if that attitude isn’t there, then I don’t get caught.

It is the little moments that get us. Early Christian mystics of the desert used to teach that what throws us off balance in life are the little annoyances that we can’t seem to handle. Unhappiness is the accumulation of these cares that begin to weigh us down. Cares are like mosquitoes that buzz around us. If we get attached to the care, then it is like letting the mosquito bite us, and when that happens we end up scratching for awhile. But if you don’t attach to it, then it has no power over you. No bite, no scratch.

Those situations in which road rage ends in tragedy all grow out of situations in which inner rage is kindled by little annoyances and indignities. Underlying the anger of the attitude of "Me First" is fear. It is the fear that if I don’t put myself first, I will be last and that means I will be lost. It is a spiritual problem and the point of Jesus’ story. To be last is not something to be feared. Why? The person who takes the seat of honor out of an attitude of "Me First," lives without grace and appreciation. He believes that what is mine is mine because I fought for it. The person who sits lower down is not driven that way. And when the invitation comes, it is seen for what it is – a gift: an unmerited act of generosity by the host.

Jesus’ parable is really a very worldly story about power and how to get it. And it is a glimpse of what spiritual power is. If power somehow has to do with recognition and status and getting what you need, you have a choice. You can try and grab it aggressively. But in that case you risk getting knocked down. And even if you are not knocked down, you will live with a combination of fear and self-aggrandizement. On the other hand, you can simply let go of any sense of believing that attainment of power depends on your taking it. It really depends on your letting it go. Then if and when the invitation comes, there can be no doubt as to the source of that gift.

I said that in telling a story about earthly power, Jesus is teaching us something about spiritual power. If power is recognition and status and the ability to get what you need, the good news is that we don’t have to strive for that at all. We already have it. Such spiritual power is already there. We have been invited to the table by One who recognizes us and appreciates us and loves us and wants nothing more than to share everything with us. What a gift! What a grace! What power! AMEN.