Rejoicing Over Lost Sheep

Proper 19C

Jeremiah 4; Ps 14; 1 Timothy1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10

Father Adam Trambley

September 15, 2013, St. John’s,Sharon

Rejoicing Over Lost Sheep

The Pharisees and Scribes are upset with Jesus.  Surprise, right?  Apparently tax collectors and sinners are coming to listen to him, so Jesus is actually talking to them, and speaking about things that must matter to them, and telling them that God loves them, and, lest they think that God might love them but he doesn’t, he eats with them.  He even seems to be friends with them!  We can almost hear the religious leaders saying: It’s one thing Jesus to do your job as Savior of the World and offer sage counsel and advise to these poor lost souls, but at five o’clock turn out the light and go home to have dinner with good, decent folk, at least.

But of course, Jesus doesn’t.  Jesus builds community and eats with everybody.  Sometimes it’s sinners, sometimes it’s just his disciples, sometimes it’s Pharisees.  Jesus doesn’t listen to the Pharisees when they tell him not to eat with tax collectors and sinners, and he doesn’t listen to the tax collectors when they tell him not to eat with scribes and Pharisees.  (Even though we don’t find it in the Bible, you know they sinners were talking to Jesus about hanging out with the Pharisees.  “Why are you going to see those hypocrites?  Don’t they make you do all that hand-washing stuff, and then everybody makes a big deal about who sits where?  You know our parties are more fun, anyway.”)

But Jesus is sent to all the lost, including the religious people who may not look lost, but who can’t find their way out of a paper bag.  So Jesus tells the scribes and Pharisees a couple of parables.

The first is the parable of the lost sheep.  One sheep, out of a hundred, somehow doesn’t make it to the green grass.  So the shepherd leaves the other ninety-nine in the wilderness and goes out searching for the lost sheep.  When he finds it, he brings it home and throws a party. 

Then Jesus adds the parable of the lost coin.  A woman has lost a hundred-dollar bill she had been saving, so she tears the house apart until she finds it.  Then she calls all her girlfriends and tells them how she had lost her money because she had put it in a special place so she wouldn’t forget it.  But then, of course, she forgot, and after being a total wreck most of the day, she finally remembered it was in the box under the thingy next to the doodad on the shelf with all the tchotchkes.  And all her girlfriends are happy to hear it, and so they all go out for frozen yogurt. 

Then Jesus adds the kicker at the end: Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.  The most important lesson for us in these parables is the rejoicing.  The shepherds rejoice; the girlfriends rejoice; the angels rejoice; God rejoices.  The scribes and the Pharisees? Not so much.  So how about us?  Do we rejoice when the lost come home? 

Let’s put this in Western Pennsylvania terms.  Cousin Harvey is supposed to drive back home to see the family, and the night he’s coming in there is a huge snowstorm.  Maybe it’s Christmas Eve or a bad Thanksgiving, or a very cold Fourth of July.  And everyone has gathered, and people are seeing news reports of highways closing and accidents and all sorts of problems.  He was supposed to be home now two hours ago.  People aren’t sure whether to start dinner or not.  They try to make conversation.  Everybody knows each other and they’ve had dozens of great parties without Harvey over the years, but no one knows if he’s OK or in a ditch or stuck in his car behind a tractor-trailer that has slid sideways and blocked the road  His cell phone doesn’t work.  A couple people say a quiet prayer, because they’re all Episcopalians and they know prayer matters but they wouldn’t imagine saying a prayer with everyone listening to them.  And then the doorbell rings.  Harvey is there, with snow covering his hair and eyelashes just from the walk from the car to the door.  He’s looks tired and exhausted.

 

Then the party starts.  Food is set out.  Drinks are poured.  Someone hands Harvey a mug of hot chocolate with lots of little marshmallows floating in it.  The house gets loud as people are talking and laughing and occasionally even singing.  The lost one has made it home.  There is great rejoicing.

The hosts of heaven and the great communion of saints before the throne of God have that same feeling every time someone is brought back among them who has wondered away.   They don’t judge.  They don’t care whose fault it was.  They don’t stand in the corner saying, well, I’m not sure this is true repentance.  None of the angels have side bet on how long it will be before somebody backslides.  They just rejoice because people who were wandering around in the snowstorms of life have somehow made it back home safe and sound and that is worth celebrating.

Notice in the parables how the sheep and the coin come back.  You remember how the sheep left a trail of breadcrumbs so the shepherd could find him, right?  And how the coin made sure it caught the sunlight just right so it could reflect in the woman’s eyes and she’d see it, right?  Of course not!  The sheep did nothing but get lost, and then probably got cold and tired and scared so that it made even worse choices that got it more lost that it already was.  The coin didn’t do anything – it’s a coin.  The shepherd searches high and low until he finds the sheep and picks it up, and sets it on his shoulders, and carries it all the way home until it is safe and the party starts around it.  Whoever Jesus gets to us, however they come, whoever they are, our first call is to rejoice over them.

The easiest part of this call should be rejoicing when people we don’t know show up here Sunday morning.  When people walk through the door, the angels in heaven are rejoicing, and so should we.  We may not throw streamers at them or blow horns or surround them and make them shake so many hands that their eyes start to glaze.  But we could get them a cup of coffee or a donut.  We’ll watch to make sure they know what they need to know to feel comfortable in the worship service.  If they look lost or alone, we can go up and introduce ourselves and ask them some simple questions like how they found us this morning, or where they live, or where they grew up or any kind of ice breaker questions.  We can walk with them into coffee hour and show them where things are.  We can invite them to join us for lunch, and offer them a ride if they need it.  We can also pray for them, quietly but intently, that whatever God is doing in their lives that brought them here would be completed; and that they would feel God’s love and joy and peace surrounding them; and that they could make whatever connections they need to here at St. John’s to be able to feel part of a loving church family, and believe they are beloved children of God, and find their purpose in life and how God is going to use them to make a difference in other people’s lives.  Most of all, we can actually rejoice in our hearts that they are here in a way that will deepen the quality of our worship together, help us care for people more fully, and bring the growth in our lives as Christians that God wants for us.

All of those components of rejoicing on Sunday morning are our opportunity to practice them for the other areas of our lives.  The next step is bringing those same components to our ministries.  We rejoice in some of those same ways as people come to our food pantry or our community lunch or our youth ministries or our Episcopal Church Women dinners or choir rehearsals.  We undertake these ministries with the intention of creating opportunities to throw parties for people Jesus is bringing home to St. John’s. 

But the real goal is to have that same rejoicing in all aspects of our lives.  Some of our best opportunities to rejoice with people are going to come out there, instead of in here.  Maybe with the people who seem to just be in the way in the grocery store.  Maybe with those we feel are taking too much of our time at work or at school.  Maybe with the people around us who aren’t living up to social expectations in ways that might invite snide comments or dismissive judgments.  Guess what?  Those people are in our lives for a reason.  The reason is so that we can rejoice that they are there.  Imagine rejoicing at the presence of anyone we come in contact with, even those we are just driving down the street with.  Imagine having an attitude of joy and hospitality and even love for everyone we encounter.  Imagine being so open to God’s redeeming work in the world that we would be expecting, or even praying, that all those we encounter would be either lost folks or those helping us host the parties for them.  Imagine the power of our lives if we welcomed everyone we met as if God wanted us to show them the joy that he had in creating them.  That’s what we are called to do – to go out of this place carrying the love and joy of Jesus so powerfully that everyone we meet experiences it.  Because when that starts happening, then God can send not just trickles of people, but whole floods of people to us, as fast as that Good Shepherd can bring them in, and the whole world begins to look more and more like the universal, never-ending party that is the Kingdom of God.

Here’s a great example of what I mean.  Tony Campolo, a sociologist and Christian pastor and speaker, talks about being in Hawaii.  Hawaii is such a different time zone, that he said he was awake at three am, and hungry.  When he couldn’t get back to sleep, he wandered around looking for a restaurant, but most things are closed at three am.  He finally found a little diner with a row of stools along a counter, so he went in, sat down and ordered coffee and a donut.  As he’s sitting there eating is donut and drinking his coffee, a group of prostitutes came in and, because there was only one row of seats along the counter, they sat down on both sides of him.  The woman on his right said to one of her companions, “You know, tomorrow is my thirty-ninth birthday.”  The other woman said, “What do you want?  You want me to sing happy birthday or bring you a cake?”  She said, “Why do you always put me down.  I have never had a birthday party in my life.  I don’t expect one now.”

So when everyone left, Tony asked the owner if they came in every night.  He said, “Yes.”  Tony explained what he heard and said he wanted to throw a party for her.  The owner thought it was a great idea and said he’d take care of the cake.  So the next night, Tony came in at 2:30 in the morning with decorations and the owner got the word out so that by 3:15 every prostitute in Honolulu was crammed into this greasy spoon.  Then at 3:30, Agnes, whose birthday it was, came in and everybody sang and they brought the cake for her to blow out the candles and she started to break down.  The owner told her to cut the cake and she asked if she could take the cake two doors down to show her mother first.  It was her cake, so they let her, and she left and the room was silent.  An awkward silent.  So Tony says, “Let’s say a prayer”, and he prays for her, in the middle of the night in this diner filled with prostitutes.  Then, when he’s done praying, the owner gets in his face and says: “Hey, you’re not a sociologist like you told me.  You’re a preacher.  Just what kind of church do you belong to?”  Tony said, “I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for whores at 3:30 in the morning.”  “No, you don’t.  No, you don’t,” the owner said, “I would join a church like that.” 

Brothers and Sisters, we are in exactly that kind of church that throws birthday parties for whores at 3:30 in the morning.  Jesus started it.  We may not all be called to host that exact party, but we are called to be rejoicing somewhere, with somebody, in some circumstance that only God could bring about.  Look for the opportunities, because I guarantee God is sending them to you.  If people raise their eyebrows, or if you start raising your own eyebrow, just remember the scribes and the Pharisees, and decide instead to be like Jesus who ate with tax collectors and sinners and rejoiced with anybody that would party with him.

  

Special thanks to Steve Pankey at Draughting Theology for sharing Tony Campolo's video, "Party with Prostitutes":

 

Philemon, Modern-Day Slavery, and Just War

Proper 18C 2013

Jeremiah 18:1-11; Ps 139; Philemon1-21; Luke 14:25-33

Father Adam Trambley

September 8, 2013, St. John’sSharon

Philemon, Modern-Day Slavery, and Just War

Probably not how Paul, Philemon and Onesimus dressed.

This morning’s reading from Philemon is an interesting one, both for what it says and how it has been used.  Paul is writing a letter to someone who has become a Christian through his efforts, a man named Philemon.  Philemon owns a slave named Onesimus who ran away and somehow has ended up helping Paul in prison. While serving Paul, Onesimus has also come to Christ.  So Paul sends the slave back to his owner with this short letters saying, in effect, your slave is now a Christian, so treat him like a beloved brother, not a slave, and, by the way, I really need his help so I’m going to ask you to send him back to me now.  Paul’s rhetoric is actually sort of humorous.  He makes a pun on Onesimus’s name, which means useful, and he basically tells Philemon that he has every right to order him to send Onesimus back, but he’d rather ask and let Philemon send him back voluntarily.  And we don’t have much more, except for a tradition that Onesimus later went on to become an early Bishop of Ephesus.

At various times, this letter has been used to argue for two contrasting positions.  The first position is that Saint Paul supported slavery since he clearly recognizes Philemon as Onesimus’s rightful master.  Maybe he wanted masters to be nicer to their Christian slaves, but he’s still OK with the institution.  On the other side, nothing Paul says really supports slavery, and when he says Philemon has Onesimus back no longer as a slave, but as a beloved brother, maybe he means he really is no longer a slave ethically, but cannot legally free him.  We can see how both sides might want to use this passage instead of hearing what the Bible is really saying here, which is that Philemon needs to act like a Christian, even when dealing with slaves.  Christian ethics has much to say against slavery, but discerning it requires more in depth work than a few scripture quotes in support of an already made up mind, however noble that mind’s decisions may be.

Now I’m not really interested in preaching about slavery this morning, even though it is always easier for the preacher to rail against sins everyone in the congregation is against, as well.  No plantation owners or slave ship captains here this morning, I trust.  Before moving on too quickly, thought, I should note that human trafficking is still a huge problem today, with the United Nations crime-fighting office reporting conservatively that at least 2.4 million people were enslaved worldwide in 2012, and 80% of those are exploited as sexual slaves.  The I-80 trucking corridor not far from here is one of the places in the United States where such slavery remains a problem, and anyone who has solicited a prostitute or who regularly views internet pornography is almost certainly supporting this modern slave trade.  

What I want to turn to today, though, is the question of how we decide as Christians to take military action.  The airwaves have been dominated recently about the right response for the US to make in response to Syria’s likely use of chemical weapons.  I’m not going to give you an answer to that question today, but I want to walk through the steps that the Christian ethical tradition has given to us to make that decision.  Part of the strength of the Episcopal Church is that we expect people to learn what they need to know to inform their consciences so they can make the best ethical decisions in their own lives and in the lives of their communities.  Right now, the media is filled with talking heads, including Christian ones, that provide all sorts of reasons for their opinions, but few who are actually evaluating what is happening based on the best Christian ethical teaching. 

I want to start with two easy, Christian-sounding ways of addressing the question that are ultimately inadequate.  The first method is using isolated Bible passages that are interpreted to speak directly to the current situation.  Often this involves reading Biblical histories and prophecies addressed to specific people about a specific situation in the past as referring directly to our present time.  Babylon or Assyria may be interpreted to mean any current enemy.  Modern Israel or the United States may be seen as the recipient of Biblical passages intended to give direction to Davidic kings or to Jewish exiles returning from Babylon or to the early church suffering from Roman persecutions.  Certainly scripture is meant to continue speaking to us and it does speak into our present situations.  But the modern secular state of Israel is not the same as its Biblical forbearer, and the United States, while certainly having a particular mission, is not synonymous with God’s people.  We also always need to be cautious that no one simply makes a decision then finds the scripture to back it up – especially when finding scriptures speaking of the defeat of some Middle-Eastern enemy that once attacked ancient Israel are fairly easy to find.

On the other side of the coin, some Christians hold a pacifist ethic saying that war can never be used in any situation.  This position is one of the oldest in Christianity, deriving from Jesus own words about loving our enemies and turning the other cheek.  Those Christians whose consciences direct them to such sacrificial love are to be commended, and, if consistently lived out, this conviction may be considered the height of Christian virtue.  But while pacifism may be one valid Christian response, it is not the only valid Christian response to injustice.  John the Baptist’s instruction to the Roman soldiers who came to him allowed them to continue as soldiers, and the Ten Commandments require us “not to murder,” as opposed to forbidding all killing, even if the circumstances in which killing is permitted should be incredibly rare.

Yet between the two poles of total pacifism and a sense of divinely-ordained military actions stands a fifteen-hundred year old Christian tradition of just war that admits the utter horror and tragedy of war, while recognizing that sometimes no better options exist.  Saint Augustine described the need for tragic yet just wars on some occasions, and his insights were taken up later by Thomas Aquinas and other theologians and moral thinkers.  At the core of the just war tradition is the overwhelming understanding that war is always a last resort when all other options have been exhausted.  Even then, military force may only be used when circumstances meet certain conditions and then the military conflict itself must be undertaken according to strict guidelines.

For military action to be justifiably undertaken, the following criteria should first be met.  (This summary comes from the current Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 2307-2317, which represents the just war tradition well. Direct quotations are in italics.)

First, the damage inflicted by the aggressor on a nation or a community of nations must be lasting, grave and certain.  There is no room here for war based on purely economic interest or political calculation.  A real threat to innocent lives must be imminent.

Second, all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective. Diplomacy, sanctions and all other steps short of war must be attempted or considered.  Serious prayer and fasting for peace, which are perhaps are most effective weapons, must also be undertaken.  In this vein,

Pope Francis and other church leaders have committed to prayer and fasting this weekend for peace in Syria.

Third, there must be serious prospects of success.  A hopeless effort that results in more killing but no positive resolution is not just.  We also must seriously question military engagements without any definition of what a successful outcome would be.

Fourth, the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.  This criteria means that the weapons used in the war cannot bring more destruction than the evil the war was meant to avoid.  The damage done in winning a war cannot be worse than the damage that would have been done by the aggressor if war was not undertaken.  The more significant the weapons involved, the higher this threshold is.

When the proper legitimate authority, generally a recognized government or collection of nations, determines that a potential military actions falls within this criteria, the armed conflict itself must still be undertaken according to certain ethical guidelines.  All is not fair in war.  Some generally accepted guidelines include the following:

• Military activities are to be undertaken with the minimum destruction of life and property possible.
• Indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is forbidden.  Use of atomic, biological or chemical weapon of mass destruction is forbidden.
• Non-combatants and civilians may not be targeted.
• Wounded soldiers and prisoners must be respected and treated humanely.
• Actions directed toward the extermination of a people, nation or ethnic minority are forbidden.
• Use of tactics considered evil in all circumstances, such as rape, forcing soldiers to fight against their own side, or forcing children to serve as soldiers, is forbidden. 

When all of these criteria both for beginning and for fight a war are met, that military action may be considered justifiable from a Christian perspective.  Obviously these criteria are difficult to meet, and they should be.  War is always the last resort and is always a great tragedy.

Men and women of goodwill can disagree when applying these criteria to specific situations, especially when all the facts may be difficult to obtain.  But we should hope that these criteria would play a considerable role in the final decision-making of our elective leaders when it comes to military decisions, and, to the degree we have an opportunity, we can lift up this Christian ethical approach.  Perhaps most importantly, we can all lower our knees and raise our voices in prayers for peace, especially for peace in those areas where our own nation is involved in or considering becoming involved in military action. 

Let Mutual Love Continue; Do Not Neglect to Show Hospitality

Proper 17C 2013

Jeremiah 2:4-13; Ps 81; Hebrews 13:1-8,15-16; Luke 14:1,7-14

Father Adam Trambley

September 1, 2013, St. John’s Sharon

This morning in the Gospel, Jesus has gone over to a leader of the Pharisees house for Sunday dinner.  Of course, because they were Jewish, Sunday dinner happened on Saturday, but you get the picture.  Last week we heard how he healed somebody, and now this week we hear him scolding the guests for their bad behavior.

Apparently everyone was jockeying for the best seats, and in those days where people lined up at the table was an indication of how important they were.  So Jesus tells them a little story that we might paraphrase like so: 

A seat is open at the children's table.

When you are invited to a wedding reception, don’t go up and sit down at the head table.  Even if you think you are the groom’s best friend.  Even if you handed out the programs. Even if you look mighty sharp in your tuxedo if you do say so yourself.  Because then the groom or the wedding coordinator or, worst of all, the bride’s mother is going to come up and tell you those seats are all taken and usher you to a table in the back next to somebody’s drunk cousin who doesn’t smell so good  No.  Instead, go sit at the kid’s table, so when the bridal party comes in they will see you and say, “We’re sorry.  You don’t have to eat Chicken McNuggets™ with the children.  We’ll get you a filet, and if the other tables are full, pull up a chair on the end of the bridal party table.”  If you make it all about you, somebody is going to slap you down, but if you don’t consider yourself entitled to anything, somebody will pick you up.

Then, in the silent pause while everyone else in the Pharisee’s house looked dumbstruck at Jesus, he

followed up by saying not to invite the people to your parties that society says to invite.  Don’t give a dinner for your friends and family and rich acquaintances and professional contacts because they’ll invite you over the next week.  But instead invite all those who are too poor to ever invite you.  Invite those folks who are God’s people, and God will repay you on their behalf.  

Now this second part of Jesus teaching might sound a little different than the first story, but it really is the same teaching on a larger time scale.  Just like we are told not to angle for the best seat at any one individual party, we are also not supposed to worry about setting ourselves up into the right social circles by planning our guest lists in ways that get us invited to the right places in return.  Instead, be humble enough to live our lives with the people that nobody is paying attention to.  Give them a meal, and a conversation, and a nice day. Spend the time and effort to make people feel special who don’t often get to feel special.   Then, when Jesus comes by, he’ll say, “Good work.  You’re sitting with me.” 

Now I’m pretty sure that Jesus does not mean that we can’t have a family member over for dinner, or that we can’t get together regularly with friends.  But I think he does want us not to be generous and hospitable only with people in similar situations to us that we know and are comfortable with.  He wants our circles to get bigger, and to expand our circles based on who we can help instead of who we can get something from.

The author of Hebrews puts it well, I think.  “Let mutual love continue.  Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”  We are supposed to keep loving our family.  We are just supposed to love strangers, as well.

Think about the ways we show love for our brothers and sisters and friends.  We invite them to share meals.  We make time to listen to them.  We pay attention to what they are interested in.  We give them gifts that matter to them.  We open up our lives to them in any variety of ways. Now none of these loving actions are easy.  They take energy and intentionality.  To let mutual love continue means that we are going to be putting others ahead of ourselves.  That’s what love does.

Hebrews assumes we know how to love our family and friends and he tells us to continue.  But just loving those folks isn’t enough.  We are challenged also to do the same thing for people who aren’t our family and friends – or at least aren’t our family or friends yet.  All people are part of God’s family, so God wants us to treat all people like part of our family, as well.  And while we can’t have seven billion people over for dinner, even if we decide use paper plates, we can show hospitality to some people that aren’t already close to us. 

To show hospitality to strangers, we approach people with the same time, energy and intentionality we use when we love our family and friends.  We share a meal.  We listen to people.  We open up to them ourselves.  We allow our lives to be changed by them as we offer ourselves in ways that might change their lives.  We count them as people inside our circle of friends so that they can become people who are inside our circle of friends.  We may or may not see them again, but for the time we are together, the love we share is real.

Share a meal with strangers at McDonalds

One of the problems we might have in living this out is finding people to show hospitality to.  We usually aren’t in a position to meet random strangers and have them over for dinner, and, for good or ill, people don’t always appreciate it when you go up to them and ask to sit at their table in McDonalds.  Sometimes the offer is gratefully accepted, but not always.  We at St. John’s, though, have been living into these instructions of Jesus in a powerful way.  While many of activities past and present, including having a cup of coffee with a visitor after church, allow us to learn these qualities, the Saturday lunch really offers us a place to show hospitality to strangers, and probably occasionally to entertain angels unawares.  In addition to those preparing and serving food, Deacon Randy and Katherine and a few others just sit and talk with people.  They listen.  They share.  They pay attention to them.  Now two Saturdays ago, we served 180 people, so we have plenty of opportunities for anyone who is interested to come and share a meal with people that you might not otherwise know.  Not only does such hospitality increase our individual circles of friends, but having lunch and chatting with our guests builds the relationships people have with St. John’s.  The Community Lunch isn’t the only way to do this – our ECS food pantry, Episcopal Church Women events, and our youth and young adult activities can provide such opportunities, and many people are hospitable in their lives outside of church.  We can be show love at our desks at work or in the stands at a sporting event.  Hebrews encourages all of us, though, to find some avenue in our lives not only to allow our mutual love to continue and develop, but also to spread that love to other folks, as well. 

Hospitality at ECS

 

I’d like to close by sharing one of my earliest memories of such hospitality.  It happened on a Christmas morning when I was little.  Some years back, I wrote a song about it, taking the refrain from Psalm 37, verses 26 and 27.     

I don't have a video of the song to post at this time, but here are the lyrics: 

Refrain

In all my days I have never seen the just forsaken.

They share with those in need, and their children are a blessing.

A dazzling light off the cover of snow 

greeted us all on a cold Christmas morn.

Breakfast was sizzling in the cast iron pans

when a stranger with a shovel rang the front door.

My brother and I always shoveled the walks.

"That's why we had kids," my parents would joke.

So I sat surprised, perched on the stairs, 

when my dad thanked him kindly and accepted his help.

When the walk was done and the stairs were cleared,

Dad paid for his work and invited him in.

He sat on the sofa and shared our meal,

and was part of our family for a short time that day.