Proper 19C
September 15, 2019
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28 Skilled in doing evil but do not know how to do good.
1 Timothy 1:12-17 But I received mercy.
Luke 15:1-10 This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.
O God of mercy, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.
Oh I have so much I want to say to you this morning about the ancient scriptures we’ve heard just now: Jeremiah, Psalm 14, 1 Timothy, the Gospel of Luke, and we haven’t even heard Psalm 42 yet – that will come after communion. Our oldest reading today is about 3000 years old, and the newest is about 1900 years old, give or take. Old. They tell us that in ancient times there were foolish people who said in their hearts, “There is no God.” By the way, this is not a critique of individual philosophical or theoretical atheism; this is an ethical critique of a people who did not think it mattered how the most vulnerable in society were treated: widows, orphans, and aliens. In ancient times people thought that prosperity and power and security and status were all that mattered; they were corrupt and committed abominable acts. In ancient times, there were people who profaned what was sacred, who pursued others in order to oppress them, who engaged in violence, who cheated and mistreated people, who were serving wealth instead of fidelity to love. In ancient times, people who believed that doing justice and loving kindness and walking with humility were not the ones in power very often. Maybe not ever. The staying power that these ancient texts have, the wisdom that they contain, is staggering to me.
I am always hoping that (sooner or later), these teasers of scripture will cultivate a thirst in you to learn more, to wonder more, to read more. Part of my preaching vocation is to help you (and myself) get in touch with our hunger and thirst for righteousness, and then to show you where I’ve found some bread and wine and water. Biblical righteousness is doing justice and loving kindness and walking humbly with Love (aka God). For me, there are many twists and turns in the Bible, but the through line or the arc of what we call holy scripture is Love enacted. For me, there is a feast in this community that draws friends and strangers through architecture and prayer and music and lessons to the welcome table where even a little piece of bread and a few drops of the fruit of the vine mixed with water can nourish our souls.
The lead into today’s portion of the Gospel of Luke is Jesus’ words that “none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” He adds this sort of Zen koan: “Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is fit neither for the soil nor for manure pile; they throw it away. Let anyone with ears to hear listen!” Then, Luke writes, “And yet, all the tax collectors and sinners were crowding around to listen to him.” Jesus was teaching about the letting go that will have to be done in order to learn from him about restoring the well-being of the kin-dom, and yet, the tax collectors and sinners (think cheaters and criminals), people who have been actively threatening the well-being of the common good by their dangerously deviant behavior are coming to listen.
In spite of what you might have been told, Pharisees and scribes are not the bad guys in this story, in my opinion. They are the good guys who have been coming from every village in the Galilee, according to Luke, to hear Jesus from the earliest days of his public ministry. They are well-educated; they work hard; they care about the well-being of the community and they are leaders in the reform of first century Jewish practice along with Jesus, during the oppressive Roman occupation. As a group, they were probably more centrist than Jesus, but they were on the same team. Jesus’ teachings were certainly in line with the Pharisaic movement. These Pharisees and scribes were grumbling or murmuring that Jesus’ standards for table fellowship were dangerously low. They were concerned about good order and safety. Jesus thinks that inviting cheaters and criminals to eat with him might facilitate turning their lives around.
Jesus responded to his colleagues’ grumbling with three illustrations of restoration to community. (Oddly, only two of them are in our portion for today.) The three stories are of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. First, one in one hundred gets lost and found, and then one in ten gets lost and found, and then one in two gets lost and found. They were told not to the lost tax collectors and sinners, and not to the disciples. Jesus told these stories to the grumblers – the grouchy mutterers, the ones with a well-developed sense of responsibility, with a keen moral compass who were living respectable lives, the ones who appreciated order and safety.
I get why these Pharisees and scribes were grumpy. According to Luke, they were traveling with Jesus. According to Luke, Jesus ate with scribes and Pharisees on a regular basis and they were friends. It’s apparently frustrating to them when Jesus is also inviting (and whooping it up with) people like cheaters and criminals who are not taking responsibility for their lives and who don’t seem to care about the lives of people they are hurting in the process. I imagine that the first two stories made the Pharisees and scribes wonder where Jesus was going with this, and that the third story brought them up short. It always does for me.
I’ve never much cared for the prodigal son story. I am, of course, the oldest child in my family – responsible, obedient, careful (most of the time), and probably self-righteous in spite of my attempts to appear otherwise. I do make mistakes, sure, but I atone for them. I repay my debts. I return what I borrow. I rarely break things. I trespass, (but only when I’m justified). Here’s how the story of the prodigal son always sounds to me.
At the audacious request of the younger son, the father divides and distributes the inheritance before he dies rather than afterwards. A few days later, the younger one takes off to live it up and the older one is in the awkward position of having his inheritance and having to use it to care for his still-living father – who continues to act like the boss of the place, while his brother isn’t sharing in the care of his father at all. Later, when the younger son returns, all his money long gone, willing to work like a hired hand for his keep, the ecstatic father says, “no, no, no – you’re not a servant – you’re the guest of honor” and throws a great big party at the older brother’s expense – without even asking him! He’s coming back from a hard day’s work wondering what all the commotion is! And to add insult to injury, the way the story gets told, the old brother just looks bad. And we don’t know how it turns out – does the older brother get over it and join the party or does the older brother get lost? Does the younger son stay for a while and then head off again to pawn his new robe and sandals and ring?
Back to the first two stories – did we miss something? “Which one of you, if he has 100 sheep, and one strays from the flock, will not leave the 99 in the wilderness — vulnerable to wolves, wandering off, and other all manner of mischief — and go out and beat the bushes until you find your one lost sheep? This shepherd has risked everything to find a missing sheep. Now which one of you would not do that? And which one of you, like a woman who has lost one-tenth of her money, will not work incredibly hard to find the 10 percent missing rather than being grateful for the 90% you still have? And when you find the missing 10 percent, run outside, calling to everybody up and down the street, “Come party with me! I found my coin!” Now which one of you would not do that?
Or at Emmanuel, I like to ask which music teacher among you, if you have a student who is having difficulty with intonation, will you not leave all of your other students, cancel all of your appointments and projects for the coming semester and go, search out the student in the dormitory, and spend every evening, late into the night, working with that student until she can match pitch? And when that student does it, will you not run to all of your departmental colleagues and say, “Come party with me! The one who was completely tone-deaf is now ready for an elite ensemble!” [1] Now which one of you would not do that? Hmmmm. Actually maybe no one would do that.
The answer to Jesus’ question, which of you would do this, is no one in their right mind would do that. That’s the clue that Jesus isn’t talking about people at all – Jesus is talking about the Holy One. God, or Love, Jesus says, would do that. The Holy One, or God, or Love does do that. Jesus is teaching something about Love to remind the religious folks who think they have a pretty good handle on what God is all about and what’s required to be a part of God’s realm – to remind them that in the end, it’s about love.
You know, I wanted to start my sermon prayer this morning like this: “O God of extremely low standards” but I thought you might not hear the rest of the prayer over the laughter. Jesus is teaching people with a well-developed sense of responsibility, with a keen moral compass that God Who is Love, seeks to redeem what no sensible person would search for – either because we consider it not that valuable, or not worth risking our other assets – whatever the reason. Jesus is teaching people that in Love, nothing and no-one is lost forever.
What if we were to think of ourselves – of our community – as a flock of sheep or a cache of coins, or as members of the same family. Jesus is saying that parts get lost and rather than considering those parts not worth the effort of seeking them out and finding them, God or Love considers those parts every bit as valuable and the angels (or messengers of God) rejoice when Love finds whomever is lost. Love is like that foolish passionate shepherd. Love is like the hardworking woman. Love is like the relieved and grateful father, welcoming back what has been lost. It’s all very risky.
I hear Jesus teaching that Love’s mercy has room for the worst instances of our inaction or our action, for anything good or bad we have done, and Love sits on the edge of her chair preparing to forgive our failures [2], whether those failures have to do with shame or pride, inattentiveness or smothering attention, too little or too much. And not just yours and mine – but what is least and lost and last in the whole world. Nothing and nobody is too far lost for steadfast love to find. That is a given, Jesus tells us. We don’t earn it – we can’t do anything to ensure it. Our faithful, grateful, and joyful response is what Love longs for and looks for, perhaps most of all. Rejoice with the angels and come to the party!