Jesus loves community. He enjoys welcoming people. But not the normal “Hello and how are you” kind of greeting; more like a warm hug kind of reception. Jesus also enjoyed sitting down with people over a good meal, the setting for two of Jesus’ parables from Luke 15. As usual, context is everything, so Luke sets us up to hear the stories in this way:
“One day when many tax collectors and other outcasts came to listen to Jesus, the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law started grumbling, ‘This man welcomes outcasts and even eats with them!’”There are two kinds of people listening to Jesus. One group is listening while enjoying a meal with Jesus. The other group is listening but grumbling that Jesus actually enjoys the company of people like tax collectors and outcasts. So Jesus tells both groups three stories – stories about a lost sheep, a lost coin and a lost son. We are going to focus primarily on the first two stories this morning.
Hear the stories again in The Message Bible:
“Suppose one of you had a hundred sheep and lost one. Wouldn’t you leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the lost one until you found it? When found, you can be sure you would put it across your shoulders, rejoicing, and when you got home call in your friends and neighbors, saying: ‘Celebrate with me! I’ve found my lost sheep!’ Count on it -- there’s more joy in heaven over one sinner’s rescued life than over ninety-nine good people in no need of rescue.
Or imagine a woman who has ten coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and scour the house, looking in every nook and cranny until she finds it? And when she finds it you can be sure she’ll call her friends and neighbors: ‘Celebrate with me! I found my lost coin!’ Count on it -- that’s the kind of party God’s angels throw every time one lost soul turns to God.”These two stories of the lost sheep and the lost coin present the same truth but from two different viewpoints. The truth common to both stories is the loving attentiveness and the searching care God has for lost people. The difference is that, in the first story about the shepherd and the sheep, God’s attentiveness and care arise from the compassion God feels about the distress of people, no matter how it is caused. In the second story, God’s attentiveness and searching care arise from the value and worth of the people who are lost. That coin the woman lost – worth about a day’s wages – would probably be understood then as part of her dowry or part of her savings for her old age. It was valuable to her.
Consider this: In what group listening to Jesus do you place yourself? In the group of outcasts enjoying the meal with Jesus? In the group of religious leaders on the outside looking in and grumbling because Jesus shouldn’t be enjoying the company of the outcasts? Or are you in some other group? We will hear these stories differently depending on where we place ourselves.
If we place ourselves in the group composed of tax collectors and other outcasts of the time, I suspect these feel like great stories. If we believe we fit into someone else’s category of a “lost cause” but then hear Jesus tell stories about how God is the champion of the lost, well, talk about “Good News” for sure! And to hear there was even more joy in heaven with God over one rescued life than over ninety-nine good people in no need of rescue, well, let’s just call it joy heaped upon joy heaped upon joy. Because, as one person noted: “It turns out then there is no such thing as lost causes -- just lost and wandering people waiting to be found by God’s grace.”
Dr. Paul Wilson, professor of preaching at Emmanuel, quoted the following story [in Setting Words on Fire: Putting God at the Center of the Sermon (Abingdon, 2008, pp. 159-60)] from a sermon by Rev. Hugh Reid:
Allan (not his real name) came to me at my previous church in Hamilton, Ontario, wanting to be baptized. He was a child (or victim) of “the me decade” and felt compelled to leave home and family to find himself. And, of course, he lost himself, becoming a stranger to himself and to the world, wandering the streets of Vancouver trapped in a world of drugs.
One night he managed to get off the street for a night in one of the shelters. He crashed into the bunk, stared up at the ceiling, listened to the groans of others and tried not to be overcome by the odours of the strangers in the bunks around him. He didn’t know where he was and he didn’t know who he was but he wanted it to be over with. He even considered how he might take his own life.
He was shaken out of these thoughts when someone entered the room and called out a name from another world.
“Is Allan Roberts here?”
That had been his name once but he hadn’t heard it for some time. He hardly knew Allan Roberts anymore. It couldn’t be him being called.
The caller persisted, “Is there anybody named Allan Roberts here?”
No one else answered so Allan took a risk: “I’m Allan Roberts -- or used to be.”
“Your mother’s on the phone.”
“My mother? No, you’ve made a mistake. I don’t even know where I am. How could my mother know where I am?”
“If you’re Allan Roberts, your mother’s on the phone.”
Unsure what to expect, he went to the desk in the hall and took the receiver.
“Allan?” (It was his mother!) “It’s time for you to come home.”
“Mom, I don’t know where I am. I have no money. You don’t know what I’m like anymore. I can’t go home.”
“It’s time for you to come home,” she said again. “There’s a Salvation Army officer who’s coming to you with a plane ticket. He’s going to take you to the airport to get you home.”
She had not known where he was. She had just called every shelter and hostel for months until she found him.
Allan went home and, supported and loved by his mother who had never ceased to know him even though he had forgotten himself, and influenced and inspired by the faith that had sustained his mother’s hope and love, he began attending church services. Then one day he came to my office seeking to be baptized.
He did not find his own way to my office. A path, not of his own making, was made by the love that found him, that knew him better than he knew himself and that invited him, as Jesus said, to “Follow me.”In Jesus’ time, the Pharisees and religious leaders were the group who grumbled about his welcoming people before they were really ready to be received. To them, these outcast should be all cleaned up and abiding by all the hundreds of religious rules first. These leaders would not have liked the stories about the lost sheep and the lost coin at all. They would not have missed how Jesus said there was more joy felt in heaven by God and the angels for the repentance of one of these lost outcasts than for them -- the respectable religious people who followed all the rules so they did not need to repent – or they thought they didn’t have anything to repent about. They also would not have missed the point about the elder brother in the third story of the prodigal or lost son. They knew Jesus meant that they were like the elder brother who refused to enter into the joy of the party God threw for his lost brother who was found.
Luke 15 is Jesus’ spiritual x-ray – for then and still for now -- penetrating and exposing the depth of our hearts. What do we feel when someone like Allan in Hugh Reid’s story responds to the love of God, who sought him through the persistent love of his searching mother? What does our response reveal about our deepest feelings and attitudes toward God and salvation?
One young woman – the daughter of a minister -- expressed her feelings this way: “Help me not to be OK just because everything is OK with me” [Nancy Ortberg, Looking for God (Tyndale, 2008), p. 31]. She was not someone who was an outcast or of doubtful reputation or a notorious sinner as some translations of Luke 15 indicate. She would certainly have described herself as one of the ninety-nine sheep or one of the nine coins safe and secure in the house – in God’s community of the church -- and not lost at all. She is like those of us here this morning who feel we are OK in God’s presence -- as we have felt OK perhaps for many, many years. But did this young woman realize when she heard Jesus’ stories that she had once been lost too? Did she recognize that, in fact, she had once been found by an attentive and searching God too? Did she remember that, when she had been found, there had been joy in heaven for her too? This young did come to understand that, in community -- especially in a church community -- if someone else is not OK, then things are really not OK with her either.
I don’t think the grumbling group Jesus talked to understood this. They looked at themselves and compared themselves to the outcasts and thought they were OK in God’s eyes. They should have compared themselves to God – to God’s holiness, God’s love, God’s goodness, God’s mercy and God’s justice. Then they would have realized they were not OK with God either. Then they would have heard God calling their names and been found too by the love and compassion of God in Jesus Christ. And then, as Jesus said, there would have been a celebration for them in heaven too!
I wonder if the problem with the Pharisees and the religious leaders Jesus spoke to was that they thought they were the only ones who were among the found – those whom God welcomes. But, in reality, their faith was hollow and empty. Those who don’t consider themselves sinners have much to ponder in the light of Jesus’ stories of the lost sheep and the lost coin. If they think only they are among the found of God, they won’t set off any joy in heaven or experience any real joy in themselves. Not like the way someone new to the faith – a newly repentant person – experiences joy and gratitude for God’s goodness.
I wonder also if we will only feel some of God’s joy and celebration that Jesus talked about -- over the gift of new life received by outcasts, by the lost and by wandering people such as Allan -- when we are able to admit we are all really the same. We are sinners too. Life-long church members and newly converted drug addicts, conservative followers of Jesus and more progressive folks whose views may differ from one another – we are all in the same boat really. We are all sinners who need to be found by God. And we all need to accept the same grace from God to hear the tune of sheer joy that is the Gospel – the Good News – of Jesus Christ!
So I wonder if one key to these stories is the recovery of the sense of joy of being welcomed into the love of God. Did the neighbours who were invited by the shepherd and the woman to celebrate do so? Did the elder brother in the prodigal son story ever go into the house and join the party with gusto and happiness? We don’t know. But what we do know is that key to our being able to take joy in the new life of lost sheep, lost coins, and lost sons and daughters is our ability to experience that same joy in our own life with God that we call redemption or salvation. Some might have a dramatic story similar to Allan’s while many others may be more like the young woman who lived a good life. For God’s grace is the same amazing grace extended to each one of us.
One more story about celebrating God’s grace in our lives and in the lives of others. It is a Jewish story that tells of the good fortune of a hard-working farmer. The Lord appeared to the farmer and granted him three wishes, but with the condition that whatever the Lord did for the farmer would be given double to his neighbour. The farmer, scarcely believing his good fortune, wished for a hundred cattle. Immediately he received a hundred cattle! He was overjoyed until he saw that his neighbour had two hundred. So he wished for a hundred acres of land. Again he was filled with joy until he saw that his neighbour had two hundred acres of land. But rather than celebrating God's goodness to him, the farmer could not escape feeling jealous and slighted because his neighbour had received more than he. Finally, he stated his third wish: that God would strike him blind in one eye. And God wept.
My friends, “Only those who can celebrate God's grace to others can experience that mercy themselves.” When we are truly amazed at God’s grace to us, then we will join God’s celebration in heaven and express his unrestrained joy here on Earth along with other lost sheep, lost coins and lost sons and daughters whom God has found!
May this be so for you and for me -- and for OYM too!
Rev. Chris Miller
September 12, 2010
OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto
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