Neill Morgan
Sermon Delivered September 16, 2007
15Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” 3So he told them this parable: 4“Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? 5When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ 7Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. 8“Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ 10Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
11Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. 12The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. 13A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. 14When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. 15So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. 16He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. 17But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ 20So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; 24for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate. 25“Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. 26He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. 27He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ 28Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. 29But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ 31Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”
Hunting Down the Lost
Jesus does some shocking things in the gospel according to Luke. And when the religious authorities express their shock and dismay, grumbling, “He welcomes (embraces) sinners, and EATS with them!” then Jesus tells this trio of shocking stories.
I know, the stories of the lost and found sheep, the lost and found coin, and the lost and found sons are not so shocking to us; in fact, for many of us, they’ve become comforting stories that reflect our own experience of grace. It is comforting to know that when we have gone astray, God comes after us like the shepherd of the lost sheep, God lights a lamp and comes to find us like the woman who lost one piece of her set of ten silver coins.
And, what a great image these stories give of the grand parties God throws in heaven every time a lost soul is brought back into the fold! When we see ourselves, like the sheep, the coin, or the younger son, are a reason for God’s celebration, these stories just warm our hearts.
But, according to Luke, the lost who have been embraced by Jesus, the tax collectors and various sinners of all sorts, are not the people to whom these stories were told. There may have been some who overheard them, but Jesus told these stories to the grumblers. He told them directly to the righteous religious authorities who had been counting Jesus’s offenses against him – his healing on the Sabbath, his claims that God loves Syrians and Samaritans and all kinds of outsiders, his claim, “Your sins are forgiven” to people who have not run through the gauntlet of shame and penitence the law required for restoration into the community.
To the righteous religious people to whom Jesus addressed these stories, a shepherd was part of the underside of society. He could not live a righteous life while constantly having to trespass on other people’s property in order to recover his sheep, work on the Sabbath to keep them cared for no matter what, and handle the unclean things one must handle in order to keep sheep healthy.
And women, like this woman who searched diligently until she found her silver coin, were second-class citizens at best, considered property of men. Women were not used in Jesus’s day as examples of God’s presence and action.
Just the characters of these first two parables are shocking enough to get the attention of the law-abiding religious leaders, those who grumbled at Jesus’ odd behavior.
Now, we can set up the grumblers to be silly old fuddy-duddies who are caricatures of the type we see on a television show or a movie, the Church Lady on Saturday Night Live, the anxious keeper of order in the movie Chocolat who is worried that somewhere during Lent somebody is experiencing joy and happiness, or a crooked TV evangelist in any number of movies and novels.
But, that’s not exactly the people to whom Jesus tells this parable. He’s telling it to people who love God, to religious people who want their community to reflect God’s justice through moral law-abiding behavior. All they want is what is good.
It is shocking when Jesus tells these stories that declare God’s passionate attention and joyful celebration directed toward the finding of the one lost MORE THAN the ninety-nine good folks who have done their best to live honorable lives since their youth.
It is that MORE THAN that really gets them. Joy? Sure. Celebration? Well, O.K., for a truly penitent sinner who has demonstrated his complete reformation from former ways, spent ten years sober and cut off all ties to his old lowlife friends – that would be reason for celebration.
But these stories tell us something else. These stories tell us of a party in heaven not for the proven or newfound righteousness of a sheep or a coin, or even of a son – but for the restoration of the lost into relationship with the community. The party is not for the sheep, the coin, or the younger son, even though the older son thinks that it is. The party is for the joy of the shepherd, the woman, the father of the two sons. It is God who is whoopin’ it up out of the sheer joy of having back what belongs to God.
Nancy and I have some friends, Bob and Barbara, who were in Pueblo, Colorado the same time we were. Bob was a ministry colleague who served a neighboring church and Barbara was the director of the preschool. They have three sons. Bob and Barbara are just a few years older than we are and have been good friends to share with us their trials, tribulations, and lessons of both ministry and childrearing.
Unfortunately, their two older sons developed severe drug problems as teenagers. By the time they realized their oldest son was deep into drug culture, he was eighteen and sitting in a jail cell. The struggle to get him into recovery, restore a relationship with him, get him to open up and share with his parents and accept some help was a difficult process made more difficult by the fact that he was eighteen, an adult, and his parents had no legal right to control him anymore. Persuading someone to act rationally when he is not in his right mind is an uphill battle to say the least. Over the past fourteen years, there have been victories and setbacks, false starts and good stretches, but not until recently have they been able to feel that he’s standing on his own two feet and out of the woods.
Their second son, Yanno, began demonstrating his drug addiction at sixteen years of age, and when he was seventeen, there was no doubt. One day, Bob and Barbara made the decision. They knew what they had to do for Yanno before he turned eighteen. As difficult as it was, they scraped together the money from his college fund and loans from both their parents and they hired a recovery expert to go with them to his school, take him into custody, and put him on an airplane for a year-long recovery plan on the island of Samoa, in the south Pacific.
It seemed like a radical solution at the time. Bob and Barbara looked to the fifteenth chapter of Luke. “When someone precious is lost, God doesn’t sit around waiting. Like the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine in the wilderness to go out and find his lost sheep, like the woman who uses up oil in her lamp and as much time as it takes to search diligently until she finds her lost coin, like the father who watches out for his son and as soon as he sees him runs down the road and embraces him and takes him home and celebrates his restoration to the family – we can’t wait around for him to do it on his own. We have to go out there and spend whatever it takes, money, time, emotional energy, and bring him back to sanity, bring him back to us.”
In the first two parables of chapter fifteen of Luke, it sounds a bit strange – it sounds like the shepherd probably spends more time searching, and more money celebrating with his neighbors, than the sheep is worth. And the woman who loses her silver coin may spend more time searching, more oil from her lamp to light her way, and more money partying with her friends than the silver coin cost. The economy of these parables doesn’t fit with our human concern over scarcity.
But, that’s not God’s economy. The last parable in this chapter asks, “What is your own precious child worth?” How do we put a price on the value of the restoration of a relationship?
When the good religious people of this faith community watched Jesus take the unclean, the sinners and tax collectors into his embrace of hospitality, when they saw him sit down at the table with them, they reeled at the cost. “What is he thinking? How can he give up his good name, the money he’s spending to feed this group of undeserving wretches? The time he spends eating and drinking with lowlifes when he could be in the company of the good people of faith? He could be visiting the sick, giving alms to the deserving poor, and sitting in the company of the righteous, teaching the law to people who want to hear it, want to understand it, and want to live it!”
This economy of abundance and celebration that Jesus lives is a serious challenge to the human nature of us who are older sons or daughters. We are hard-wired to acquire, save, and spend very carefully. It’s hard for us to see the difference between the younger son who goes out and wastes money and months or years of his life on loose living, and the “wasting” of money and a fatted calf on the celebration of this good-fer-nothin’ son of the father coming home. From our perspective, from an economy of scarcity, it all looks like a waste.
But, that’s the challenge of discipleship of Jesus Christ. God calls us to rise above our fallen human nature. God calls us, when we look on Jesus, on God in human flesh, to see the possibilities of living in response to grace, to see the possibilities of living life in the joy of our abundant blessings rather than the fear of the scarcity of our possessions.
God calls us to live in relationship with one another in the same way God lives for us in Jesus Christ.
In your baptism, God says, “You are mine. Whatever it takes, I will stay in relationship with you. No matter what you do or say or feel, I will always love you, and I will search you out in your time of greatest need.”
When we are living our lives in response to what God has done for us in the cross of Jesus Christ, forgiving us, embracing us, holding us close, never giving up on us, then a life of deep and joyful discipleship makes sense. A tithe in this economy of God’s abundant love becomes second nature. Inviting, welcoming, connecting, celebrating and nurturing new disciples becomes a defining practice of the community of disciples.
And spending a significant portion of the church’s resources inviting, welcoming, and celebrating new and returning disciples becomes a natural reflection of God’s grace.
Let us remember who we are as God’s baptized people: Precious sons and daughters; forgiven sinners; blessed and gifted people; worth any price; disciples, followers, those who have been taught in the way of God’s abundant, profligate, and extravagant love.
Thanks be to God. Amen.