Proper 19C
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":
No comments:
Post a Comment