9/5/04

Beneath Outward Appearances

Psalm 14
1 Timothy 1:12-17
Luke 15:1-10

Have you ever gotten lost? It's happened to me a few times, most often in Boston, when I've tried to find a short cut to one of the hospitals (without using a map of course), and have gotten stuck on some seedy back street, hoping I wouldn't get a flat tire, and hoping I'd find something that looked familiar soon. Has this ever happened to you - somewhere? somehow?

I read about a man who realized when it was almost dark, that he'd been driving in a circle for over an hour on some the back roads of West Virginia - and having driven some of those roads myself, I can vouch this sort of thing could happen. Fortunately, he came across a little gas station/grocery store in the middle of nowhere, and he hopped out of his car and dashed in and said to the clerk, "I'm lost!" The clerk with a smile and in a relaxed southern drawl replied, "Sir, you're not lost, you're here with us. Now where is it you want to go?" (i)

The frontiersman, Daniel Boone, was once asked if he had ever been lost, and he replied, "No, I ain't never got lost, but I got mighty confused a time or two." (ii) Nowadays there are high-tech ways of finding what may be lost: Global Positioning Systems in our cars, "Amber Alerts" for lost children, and even a web site, lostandfound.com, where you can search by country or by category. I understand there's even a small army of employees at Disney World called "the parking cast," who help absent-minded visitors find where they've parked their cars.

Our lesson from Luke today includes two parables of Jesus about the lost and found. To whom does he tell these stories, and why does he tell them? They are told to some grumbling Pharisees and scribes who've observed Jesus hobnobbing with "tax collectors and sinners." The Pharisees in first century Palestine were a lay group of devoutly religious Jews; the scribes were educated interpreters of the Jewish law. They are often mentioned together in the New Testament. Obviously these religious leaders were not happy that Jesus was associating with these other folks.

"Tax collectors" were often Jews employed by Rome to extract exorbitant taxes from the Jewish population. These were usually not the most reputable people, and they engaged in extortion, overcharging, and keeping the difference for themselves. They were despised by their fellow Jews and considered traitors. "Sinners" is a catch-all phrase for those undesirables in society such as poor folks, pickpockets, prostitutes, and others with bad reputations. Bottom line - Jesus is keeping company with people who most proper religious persons of the day would not be caught dead with. Why Jesus is telling these parables to the Pharisees and scribes and what the parables mean are difficult questions to answer, but we'll explore them now.

The parables are similar, each using a lost and found theme. A shepherd loses one of his hundred sheep, and we can assume, after securing the rest of them in a pen out there in the wilderness, he starts searching for the one that's lost until he finds it. When he does, he slings the lamb over his shoulders, and rejoicing, returns and invites his friends and neighbors over for a big celebration. Jesus then concludes with what we might call the moral of the story, that the heavens rejoice even more for one sinner who repents than for ninety-nine who are righteous.

In the parable of the lost coin, a woman, poor we would guess, loses one of ten coins, worth probably about a day's wages - not a huge amount, but significant for her. She turns her house upside down until she finds it, then, like the shepherd, calls her friends and neighbors over for a big party. The moral of the story is similar to the first one - the joy that the heavenly hosts experience when one sinner repents.

Whenever we hear any of the parables of Jesus we have a natural tendency to identify with what we might call "the good guys," the heroes. In the passage for today, on one level we naturally relate to the shepherd, concerned about the lost sheep, and to the persistent woman who finds her lost coin. But on another level, they are difficult to relate to. Who among us would be so enthusiastic as to throw a big party just because we'd found a missing sheep or a lost coin? Let's be honest. Few of us would do this. After all, we're New Englanders, and we'd be embarrassed to even admit to others that we'd suffered such losses, and we'd discreetly keep our successes to ourselves.

On yet another level, how many shepherds do you know? I don't know any. What we do know about first century shepherds is not particularly positive - they fall into that category of "low lifes" that Jesus often associated with. How many of us with our many possessions can easily identify with a poor woman who goes bananas over losing a coin? Interestingly, poor women in the first century were also among the marginalized in society - and Jesus associated with them as well. Shepherds and women were not hero material according to the religious and social norms of Jesus' day. (iii) But you know, and we'll come back to this shortly, in our two parables, these undesirables represent God.

Maybe it would be easier for us to identify with the Pharisees and scribes. Most of us consider ourselves religious, or we're hoping to be more so. We're searching for something spiritual in our lives, something that will give us meaning and direction. The Pharisees and scribes sought doctrinal orthodoxy, instruction in proper piety - the right ways to worship, the correct ways to follow the rules and regulations. Some of us can identify - we also desire to do what the Bible tells us to do, sometimes taking the biblical mandates very literally. But in our pursuit of religious righteousness, like the Pharisees, we may find ourselves with attitudes that are different than what Jesus would like for us to have.

I heard about a sophisticated middle class church where one day a woman attended worship dressed quite inappropriately, according to the standards of that church. Her behavior during worship revealed that she was also totally unaware of proper church decorum. She just didn't seem to fit in. In the fellowship time following worship, no one spoke to her, no one shared a cup of coffee with her. She came back to church a few more times, dressed similarly, behaving in the same ways, and received no welcome. She sat in church alone; she drank her coffee alone. And then she didn't come back any more. The church folks were probably relieved, though no one would say so. Obviously the woman was looking for something - and whatever it was, it wasn't available at that church. Hopefully she found another one more welcoming - or maybe she just gave up and never darkened the door of a church again. No one ever knew.

Sadly, this scene is repeated in many churches; but there are exceptions in many others - hopefully we would be numbered among the latter. We know for sure that Jesus would have sought her out, and sat with her in the pew, and shared a cup of coffee with her; he would have welcomed her into the community with concern and love, in spite of her inappropriate attire and behavior. As in our lesson today, being seen with the "wrong" people was always a big irritant about Jesus for those who were in positions of power. (iv)

We tend to take after the Pharisees and scribes when we admit that people who are more like us are acceptable, and people who are different from us are more difficult to welcome. People who dress as we do, who speak as we do, who act as we do, are easier for us to welcome than those who dress or speak or act differently. Sadly, the homeless, the ex-convict, the economically deprived, the mentally challenged, the prostitute, someone of another race or culture, the gay, lesbian, or transgendered person, the addict, the motorcycle rider, the hippie, etc., in many churches do not find a hearty welcome. (v) What about here? And what would Jesus do?

Today's parables are not about shepherds or poor women or scribes or Pharisees, nor are they directly about us. But they are about God and about the relentless, seeking nature of God. Admit it or not, we do get lost. Each of us at times lose our way and need to be found. We get mixed up and turned around from the directions in which we know we should be heading; we despair; we make mistakes, some big, some small; we occasionally do bad, hurtful things to each other. For sure, we deserve the wrath of God, as the Pharisees said. But thankfully, Jesus understood the divine nature better. He knew God as a shepherd in search of one lost sheep. He knew God as a woman searching for a lost coin. And thankfully, it was Jesus' understanding about God, not that of the Pharisees, that prevailed in Christianity. (vi)

My late beloved professor, Fr. Henri Nouwen, told a parable about an old man who while meditating by the Ganges River in India one day, spotted a scorpion floating on the water. Reaching out to rescue it, he was stung by the scorpion. He tried again, and was stung a second time, the bites causing his hand to swell painfully. Another man passing by witnessed the scene and yelled out, "Hey, stupid old man, what's wrong with you? Only a fool would risk his life for the sake of an ugly, evil creature." The old man calmly replied, "My friend, just because it is in the scorpion's nature to sting, does not change my nature to save." It is in God's nature to save, because it is in God's nature to love. God seeks out and finds the lost, heals the wounded, forgives the sinner, and gives hope to the despairing. (vii)

The problem with the Pharisees and scribes is that they sought mercy for themselves, but justice for everyone else. Rather than rejoicing and celebrating what God was doing through Jesus, they grumbled about him. The deeper question the parables pose for us is not whether or not we'll repent, which of course we should, but whether or not we'll join in the celebration. Will we come to God's party? To do so, we must also share in God's mercy. We must want mercy not only for ourselves, but also for those different from us, for those who we may think are unworthy of God's mercy by our standards. (viii)

We sang "Amazing Grace" a few minutes ago. One of the amazing things about God's grace is that when we offer it to others, we receive it back ourselves in abundance. The lost have been found in God's great mercy and grace. We have been invited to celebrate, to come to the party. Let us do so, joyfully! Amen.

The Pilgrim Church of Duxbury
Rev. Kenneth C. Landall

iNancy Bauer-King, Aha!, 9/12/04.
ii LectionAid, Vol. 12, No. 4, 9/12/04.
iii Homiletics, Vol. 16, No. 5, Commentary, 9/12/04.
iv Emma Justes, Lectionary Homiletics, Vol. XV, No. 5, 9/12/04.
v Ibid.
vi Brett Blair and Richard J. Fairchild, Aha!, op. cit.
vii Tom Miller, Aha!, op. cit.
viii R. Alan Culpepper, Lectionary Homiletics, op. cit.