Preached on November 4, 2007, All Saints Day, at the First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC.
Dedicated to my Uncle Tom Harper, and all the saints who have gone before us; and always to the glory of God.
Luke 19:1-10
A man was starving. In desperation, he stole some food, for which he was arrested, convicted, and jailed. After a failed escape, his sentence was lengthened, and he spent decades in prison doing hard labor. Finally released, he had no money or friends, and no one would hire a convicted criminal. This is the story of Jean Valjean, from Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables, and known to many by the musical we call Les Mis. If you know the story, you know that the only person who will take him in for the night is a humble country priest. The priest has converted his rectory into a hospital, and reserves only a small collection of rooms for his own lodging. He has no possessions to speak of, except for the silverware for his table, and two silver candlesticks, inherited from his great-aunt.
Jean Valjean is desperate once more. He doesn’t know any other way of survival. So, he steals the silver from the cupboard and runs off into the night, only to be arrested once again and brought back to the priest so that he can be charged and sent back to prison. But the priest doesn’t press charges. In fact, he tells the officers that the silver in Valjean’s possession was a his gift to him, that in fact Valjean had forgotten to take the two candlesticks, which were also gifts. When the officers have left, the priest says “Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good.” This act changes Jean Valjean from a thief into a man who will spend his entire life in generosity to those who need his help, even to those who do not deserve it. There is a power in goodness.
In another part of the novel, the priest teaches that “If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.” And the narrator observes: “he had a strange and peculiar way of judging things. I suspect that he acquired it from the Gospel.”[1]
Here’s a story that goes the other way. This is the story of Robert Hanssen, who spent his career in the FBI, specializing in intelligence, but meanwhile he was selling classified documents to the Russians. He was arrested in 2001 and pled guilty to acts of espionage over twenty-two years. His story is interpreted in the recent movie Breach, which shows us a man of great intelligence who works hard in the FBI but is overlooked for accolades and promotion, and is derided and ostracized by his colleagues for his grim demeanor. Although he handles high priority secrets, he is made to feel like a meaningless cog in the bureaucratic machine. He doesn’t sell secrets just for the money. He sells them in order to feel that he means something. He betrays his country and those whose lives depend on him because in a twisted way it proves that he is important. You might say that he lived in darkness.
We don’t know why Zacchaeus turned on his fellow Jews, but that’s what he did. When Israel was ruled by Rome, Zacchaeus collaborated with the Roman empire, collecting Caesar’s taxes from his poor and beleaguered neighbors. Tax collectors of that time would often travel with a team of Roman soldiers. Try telling them you didn’t have the money Rome demanded. And what’s more, his salary was made by what he collected above the Roman tax. The more he got from people, the richer he became. Corruption was built into the system. Tax collector became a synonym for sinner. Read through the gospels and see how often they refer to any group of undesirables as “tax collectors and sinners.”
We don’t know why Zacchaeus chose is path. Maybe it was because he was so short. When he shows up in the gospel, he can’t get a look at Jesus because he can’t see over the people in front of him, and what’s more, they all shove him out the way. He’s short, Luke tells us. Maybe he had a Napoleonic complex. Or maybe we should say that Napoleon had a Zaccheus complex. Maybe his power grab with the Roman guards was a reaction to all the times he had been abused and taken advantage of in his life. I don’t know. I’m not sure it matters.
What does matters is that he is a traitor and a cheat, a sinner, and now he’s up in a tree above the crowd, because that’s the only way he can get a look at the famous rabbi Jesus. But when Jesus walks through this crowd of people, and we can imagine that many of them are very nice, upstanding folks, it’s Zacchaeus that Jesus calls to. It’s Zacchaeus that Jesus wants to spend time with. Perhaps for the first time in his life, Zacchaeus is not laughed at, or reviled, but befriended. And wouldn’t you know that this simple act is the only thing that can change him, and in changing him, makes this village a more just and peaceful place for everyone.
Sometimes I imagine the story going the other way. I imagine that Jesus stopped in the road and said “I want to have a special meal with all of you who have been so faithful all these years and have come here early to get a good spot right on the road to see me. You’re all invited. Well, except you, Zacchaeus. You’re not on my list. But if you get your act together, maybe next time I’ll invite you too.” I wonder about that. But I don’t think that Zacchaeus would have changed at all.
I can’t name to you one time in my life that I became a better person as the result of someone telling me how bad I was. I become better when I am inspired by the light of goodness that I receive by the grace of God. Is that your experience? I think that the church has done much better for God and for the world when we have invited people to “come and see” with no strings attached. “Come and see” was what Jesus said to his first disciples in the gospel of John, and it has always been the best way to spread the gospel. When we have gotten it wrong in the church is when we start to fix the world by pointing out its flaws, become aggressive in our condemnation, and even trying to enact laws to enforce moral behavior. That didn’t work for the Puritans, or the Spanish Inquisition, and it will never work for us.
A church research team called The Barna Group recently completed a survey of young Americans, in which high school and college students were asked about their perceptions of Christians and the Christian church. What they found was the primary perception of this generation is that Christians are hypocritical and judgmental, and they are not interested in the church. I read that, and what I hear is people crying out to us: don’t tell us how awful we are, how badly we are spending our time, how we are hurting ourselves, other people, and the earth itself. Show us instead how we can mean something, how we can make a difference. Show us how we can find a sense of peace deep down that always eludes us. I think that’s a call that we can answer, as the body of Christ.
But here’s the catch. Every time Jesus shared his time and food with sinners, just to be with them and with no strings attached, people started to grumble and criticize from the sideline. Read through the gospel of Luke, and notice how many times Jesus heals someone, or associates with a tax collector, and gets blamed for being ‘soft on sin.’ The complaint is always the same. It’s the complaint of the older brother when the prodigal son comes home. He comes in from the field and sees the party in full swing. When he learns that it’s for his younger brother, who wasted half the family fortune, who broke his parents’ hearts, was gone for years and never even wrote, he refuses to even come inside.
When the father comes out to get him, the son complains that it’s not fair, probably just the same way the crowd felt when Jesus singled Zacchaeus out for some one on one time. “It isn’t fair,” he says. “I’ve been with you faithfully all this time and you’ve never thrown me a happy hour, and now this son of yours returns and it’s like New Year’s Eve! What kind of consequences are those? Don’t you realize that the party, the gifts, and the welcome home are all really just so much permission for people to go out and sin all they want?” To all of which the father says “cut that out.”
We have spent centuries trying to overcome the false theology that God is fair, that God punishes sinners and rewards the righteous. Grace isn’t about being fair; grace is about finding the lost, healing the sick, mending the broken. The priest who gave his silver to Jean Valjean knew it. The father of the prodigal son knew it. Jesus knew it.
I wonder where we find ourselves in this snapshot of Jesus, Zacchaeus, and the crowd gathered around..
Maybe we find ourselves in Jesus. I wonder if we are the ones who have an opportunity to show generosity to someone with no strings attached, but with trust in the power of goodness to transform.
Maybe we find ourselves in the crowd. Maybe we are sick of being unthanked while someone else is smiled upon. I wonder if we are holding so tightly to keeping score and bookkeeping that we can’t appreciate the grace of God for those who don’t measure up.
Maybe we are Zacchaues: closed out by others, driven into darkness. Doing things we don’t want to do. I wonder what might inspire us to come closer to Christ, just to get a better look? I wonder what trees we could climb to put ourselves in touch with the sacred? I wonder how God might call our name, might befriend us with no strings attached, and in so doing, might invite us to a new way of being fully human, more gracious, more loving, and more at peace?
I wonder.
[1] Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, trans. Carles E. Wilbur, Everyman’s Library edition, page 21.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Hope for Health Care for All
In the early days of Tallmadge, before the church was built on the north end of the circle in the center of town, there stood an Academy building, where the children and youth of the town came for education. The Academy was built and run with the resources of our church’s founders, notably Elizur Wright, Sr., Salmon Sackett, and Rev. Simon Woodruff, who, in addition to being the first minister to serve this church, was the first instructor when the Academy was built in 1815. The Academy building was destroyed in a fire, but was rebuilt in a different location, with classes held at the Wright house in the interim.
The high value of education is great tradition in our congregation, and in the United Church of Christ as a whole. It has always been important to us to provide for the education of the next generations. In many cases, education was provided by those in the community who had the time and resources available to support it, as it was here in Tallmadge. Eventually, our nation decided that the education of our children was of such importance both as a moral value to itself, and in the national interest to have an educated citizenry, that we couldn’t depend on the ability of individuals to provide for it. Once again, it was our Christian ancestors who made public education, then called common school, available to everyone. We recognized that we could do this together, and that it was worth doing for our country’s general welfare, which is what our Constitution says that the government was created to promote.
I want to remember this story, because I believe that the Christian church has a similar calling in our time. Churches have always worked for the health of others. Many hospitals have religious roots, and today our church hosts blood drives and health screening services. But just as education was once limited to those of fortunate geography or means, so is adequate health care limited today. I believe health care should be for all our neighbors. Everyone should be able to afford the outstanding treatment and care that is available in this country. As I remember our heritage in this church, I am inspired that good people of this generation can see this come to pass. I have great hope.
The high value of education is great tradition in our congregation, and in the United Church of Christ as a whole. It has always been important to us to provide for the education of the next generations. In many cases, education was provided by those in the community who had the time and resources available to support it, as it was here in Tallmadge. Eventually, our nation decided that the education of our children was of such importance both as a moral value to itself, and in the national interest to have an educated citizenry, that we couldn’t depend on the ability of individuals to provide for it. Once again, it was our Christian ancestors who made public education, then called common school, available to everyone. We recognized that we could do this together, and that it was worth doing for our country’s general welfare, which is what our Constitution says that the government was created to promote.
I want to remember this story, because I believe that the Christian church has a similar calling in our time. Churches have always worked for the health of others. Many hospitals have religious roots, and today our church hosts blood drives and health screening services. But just as education was once limited to those of fortunate geography or means, so is adequate health care limited today. I believe health care should be for all our neighbors. Everyone should be able to afford the outstanding treatment and care that is available in this country. As I remember our heritage in this church, I am inspired that good people of this generation can see this come to pass. I have great hope.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Sermon - The Longing For Home
Preached on October 14, 2007 at The First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC
Dedicated to Finley Marie O’Neal, on the day of her baptism; and always to the glory of God.
Psalm 137
Mark 1:1-3
Listen to the things that we say about home.
- Home sweet home.
- Home is where the heart is.
- “Homeward bound. I wish I was homeward bound.”
- Or, as Dorothy Gale said, clicking her ruby slippers: “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”
These words are a part of our cultural language, and tell us what we already know, that we there is within each of us the longing for home. We long for a home where everything is just right; is just as we always dreamed. I can remember what it felt like when I was away at college in December, studying for exams in the dorm lounge with Christmas decorations on the wall which were only dismal echoes of the way Christmas felt at home. I ached to be on my way to the familiar sights and smells of home. We all know the homesickness that comes when we are far away and long to be back home again.
But there is another kind of longing that we need to talk about, the kind that we feel not when we are far from home, but when the place where we live doesn’t feel like home, or at least not like the home we want. We are often homesick in this way, and the symptoms are disappointment, fear, and anger, because what we long for is a Norman Rockwell painting of a family meal, perhaps Thanksgiving, with the food glowing on it’s platters and bowls, and the children and adults beaming with clean faces and fine clothes. We long for home where everything is just right. The problem is that we are longing for the wrong home.
Often the home we long for is the home of our past. We remember how we used to sing Grandma’s favorite carol at Christmastime, but in the years since she has died, that song has too many painful memories. I remember a friend of mine, a minister in another church, who was in worship one Sunday morning when she stood to sing the closing hymn of the service. She had chosen the hymn for that day, but when she opened the hymnal, found the page, and tried to start singing, tears came to her eyes and her throat closed shut. She couldn’t sing the hymn because the last time she had sung it had been at her father’s funeral. How can we sing the old songs when that home is gone?
It’s not just our own homes and families that have changed. The world that we called home has changed. The Biblical teacher Walter Brueggemann writes that we live at a time when “Our society is marked by a deep dislocation that touches every aspect of our lives. The old certitudes seem less certain; the old privileges are under powerful challenge; the old dominations are increasingly ineffective and fragile.”[1]
That rings true to me. Our nation, once so certain to protect its citizens, now seems vulnerable to a new kind of threat. Our workforce, once proud, is caught between cheap labor overseas and unaffordable health costs at home. Even the church might long for the past, when we had almost universal influence: keeping stores closed on Sundays and even Wednesday nights free of community events. Now it is no longer the norm to attend church on Sunday; no longer is it the norm to offer Christian prayers at public events because the public is no longer uniformly Christian as it was mid-century, in the boom years after the war. Those of you who have watched generations grow up must feel as though this church, this country, is a very different place.
We long for a home as it used to be, for home as we dream of it. And we are not the first.
In the year 578 B.C., six centuries before Jesus was baptized in the Jordan river, the nation of Israel was attacked by the large and powerful empire of Babylon, which lay to the east. Jerusalem was destroyed and the temple razed. The king and much of the population, including all the leading merchants, owners, priests and politicians were taken into exile far away in Babylon, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They lost their home. They were conquered. This great exile is the subject of much of the old testament prophets and psalms, although it is a story we seldom tell, which is too bad, because it is a story we need. We are a people in exile. We feel that we have lost our home, even those of you who have lived in the same place all your lives may feel that the place has changed around you, and the home you had is gone.
Brueggemann makes the connection: “For ancient Israel, it was the end of privilege, certitude, domination, viable public institutions and a sustaining social fabric. It was the end of life with God, which Israel had taken for granted. In that wrenching time, ancient Israel faced the temptation of despair—the inability to see any way out.”
Despair is the inability to see a way out. Or as my friend, the Rev. Craig Barnes puts it, the danger when you are lost in a dark wood is not that you will become more lost trying to get to the right place, but that you will grow accustomed to the darkness.[2] The Israelites in Babylon were full of despair. Here they were by the rivers of Babylon, and they wept, the psalm tells us. Some of the Babylonians, the nation that had taken them captive, wanted to hear their songs. They wanted some culture, apparently, from across the desert. They said “sing us those songs of Zion. Give us the flavor of old Jerusalem.” But the Israelites hung their harps on the trees. They said “how can we sing the Lord’s song when we are far away in a foreign land?”
So it is with us. We cannot sing the old songs, acting as if nothing has changed. The old songs are too painful, or they have simply lost their meaning. Maybe we have stopped believing that they can be true.
It was two generations later that the exile in Babylon ended. The prophet Isaiah records the words of their return home: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight a path in the wilderness.” God prepares a way for us to go home. In the wilderness God makes a way. Think of their joy, their relief, to be going home, and keep that story in mind as we turn to the gospels with new ears. This morning we heard the first words from the gospel according to Mark, and he begins with those lines from Isaiah about preparing a way in the wilderness for God. All the gospels begin with old words that are about going home, and what they mean by this is that the way home is the way of Jesus Christ.
Forget the Norman Rockwell painting. If you want to picture home, you’d be better off with Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper. You know the painting, with the long table, and everyone sitting on the same side. On the edges you can see in the disciples images of grief, confusion, and betrayal, but in the center is the savior who bears all burdens.[3] Home is not the place where every pain is eased and everything is calm. Home is found in the midst of pain and discomfort when we find ourselves at home in God who can hold all things together. That is what we long for, even as we try all kinds of substitutions: a home with God in the midst of our loss and confusion.
We need to listen more to the Hebrews who were in exile. Their story is our story. We understand them when they say that they can’t sing the old songs in a foreign land because we feel that way too; we know that sense of loss. But they didn’t stay lost. Listen to what the prophet Jeremiah says to them about their time in exile, in the 29th chapter, he first tells them not to listen to false prophets who were telling them that God would fix it any moment and make everything just the way it was. It never works to wait for an instant return to the way things were. We do not worship a God of the quick fix. Jeremiah tells them this instead: “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
This is a new theology! When you have lost your home, make home where you are, because God is not left behind in that other place or in that other time, God is in the midst of the confusion and fear where you are right now. Home can be found here, with Christ in the midst of us. Prepare a way for the Lord. Instead of anger or bitterness about the place we are stuck in, when we seek the welfare of this place and time, it will work for our welfare.
Isn’t that interesting about the spiritual life: that it always leads us to work and give for the good of others, and this always results in deep good for ourselves, but whenever we seek good things simply for ourselves, it brings shallow results.
We long for home but we too often search for the wrong home. Home will not take away the complexity or difficulty of our lives, but will give us a strength and purpose, will give us God’s spirit to be home right where we are. And we will be able to sing God’s songs again. Amen.
[1] From “Conversations Among Exiles.” The Christian Century, July 2-9, 1997, pp. 630-632
[2] Craig Barnes, Searching for Home, 2003, Brazos Press, page 21.
[3] Craig Barnes, Searching For Home, 2003, Brazos Press, page 29.
Dedicated to Finley Marie O’Neal, on the day of her baptism; and always to the glory of God.
Psalm 137
Mark 1:1-3
Listen to the things that we say about home.
- Home sweet home.
- Home is where the heart is.
- “Homeward bound. I wish I was homeward bound.”
- Or, as Dorothy Gale said, clicking her ruby slippers: “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”
These words are a part of our cultural language, and tell us what we already know, that we there is within each of us the longing for home. We long for a home where everything is just right; is just as we always dreamed. I can remember what it felt like when I was away at college in December, studying for exams in the dorm lounge with Christmas decorations on the wall which were only dismal echoes of the way Christmas felt at home. I ached to be on my way to the familiar sights and smells of home. We all know the homesickness that comes when we are far away and long to be back home again.
But there is another kind of longing that we need to talk about, the kind that we feel not when we are far from home, but when the place where we live doesn’t feel like home, or at least not like the home we want. We are often homesick in this way, and the symptoms are disappointment, fear, and anger, because what we long for is a Norman Rockwell painting of a family meal, perhaps Thanksgiving, with the food glowing on it’s platters and bowls, and the children and adults beaming with clean faces and fine clothes. We long for home where everything is just right. The problem is that we are longing for the wrong home.
Often the home we long for is the home of our past. We remember how we used to sing Grandma’s favorite carol at Christmastime, but in the years since she has died, that song has too many painful memories. I remember a friend of mine, a minister in another church, who was in worship one Sunday morning when she stood to sing the closing hymn of the service. She had chosen the hymn for that day, but when she opened the hymnal, found the page, and tried to start singing, tears came to her eyes and her throat closed shut. She couldn’t sing the hymn because the last time she had sung it had been at her father’s funeral. How can we sing the old songs when that home is gone?
It’s not just our own homes and families that have changed. The world that we called home has changed. The Biblical teacher Walter Brueggemann writes that we live at a time when “Our society is marked by a deep dislocation that touches every aspect of our lives. The old certitudes seem less certain; the old privileges are under powerful challenge; the old dominations are increasingly ineffective and fragile.”[1]
That rings true to me. Our nation, once so certain to protect its citizens, now seems vulnerable to a new kind of threat. Our workforce, once proud, is caught between cheap labor overseas and unaffordable health costs at home. Even the church might long for the past, when we had almost universal influence: keeping stores closed on Sundays and even Wednesday nights free of community events. Now it is no longer the norm to attend church on Sunday; no longer is it the norm to offer Christian prayers at public events because the public is no longer uniformly Christian as it was mid-century, in the boom years after the war. Those of you who have watched generations grow up must feel as though this church, this country, is a very different place.
We long for a home as it used to be, for home as we dream of it. And we are not the first.
In the year 578 B.C., six centuries before Jesus was baptized in the Jordan river, the nation of Israel was attacked by the large and powerful empire of Babylon, which lay to the east. Jerusalem was destroyed and the temple razed. The king and much of the population, including all the leading merchants, owners, priests and politicians were taken into exile far away in Babylon, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They lost their home. They were conquered. This great exile is the subject of much of the old testament prophets and psalms, although it is a story we seldom tell, which is too bad, because it is a story we need. We are a people in exile. We feel that we have lost our home, even those of you who have lived in the same place all your lives may feel that the place has changed around you, and the home you had is gone.
Brueggemann makes the connection: “For ancient Israel, it was the end of privilege, certitude, domination, viable public institutions and a sustaining social fabric. It was the end of life with God, which Israel had taken for granted. In that wrenching time, ancient Israel faced the temptation of despair—the inability to see any way out.”
Despair is the inability to see a way out. Or as my friend, the Rev. Craig Barnes puts it, the danger when you are lost in a dark wood is not that you will become more lost trying to get to the right place, but that you will grow accustomed to the darkness.[2] The Israelites in Babylon were full of despair. Here they were by the rivers of Babylon, and they wept, the psalm tells us. Some of the Babylonians, the nation that had taken them captive, wanted to hear their songs. They wanted some culture, apparently, from across the desert. They said “sing us those songs of Zion. Give us the flavor of old Jerusalem.” But the Israelites hung their harps on the trees. They said “how can we sing the Lord’s song when we are far away in a foreign land?”
So it is with us. We cannot sing the old songs, acting as if nothing has changed. The old songs are too painful, or they have simply lost their meaning. Maybe we have stopped believing that they can be true.
It was two generations later that the exile in Babylon ended. The prophet Isaiah records the words of their return home: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight a path in the wilderness.” God prepares a way for us to go home. In the wilderness God makes a way. Think of their joy, their relief, to be going home, and keep that story in mind as we turn to the gospels with new ears. This morning we heard the first words from the gospel according to Mark, and he begins with those lines from Isaiah about preparing a way in the wilderness for God. All the gospels begin with old words that are about going home, and what they mean by this is that the way home is the way of Jesus Christ.
Forget the Norman Rockwell painting. If you want to picture home, you’d be better off with Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper. You know the painting, with the long table, and everyone sitting on the same side. On the edges you can see in the disciples images of grief, confusion, and betrayal, but in the center is the savior who bears all burdens.[3] Home is not the place where every pain is eased and everything is calm. Home is found in the midst of pain and discomfort when we find ourselves at home in God who can hold all things together. That is what we long for, even as we try all kinds of substitutions: a home with God in the midst of our loss and confusion.
We need to listen more to the Hebrews who were in exile. Their story is our story. We understand them when they say that they can’t sing the old songs in a foreign land because we feel that way too; we know that sense of loss. But they didn’t stay lost. Listen to what the prophet Jeremiah says to them about their time in exile, in the 29th chapter, he first tells them not to listen to false prophets who were telling them that God would fix it any moment and make everything just the way it was. It never works to wait for an instant return to the way things were. We do not worship a God of the quick fix. Jeremiah tells them this instead: “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
This is a new theology! When you have lost your home, make home where you are, because God is not left behind in that other place or in that other time, God is in the midst of the confusion and fear where you are right now. Home can be found here, with Christ in the midst of us. Prepare a way for the Lord. Instead of anger or bitterness about the place we are stuck in, when we seek the welfare of this place and time, it will work for our welfare.
Isn’t that interesting about the spiritual life: that it always leads us to work and give for the good of others, and this always results in deep good for ourselves, but whenever we seek good things simply for ourselves, it brings shallow results.
We long for home but we too often search for the wrong home. Home will not take away the complexity or difficulty of our lives, but will give us a strength and purpose, will give us God’s spirit to be home right where we are. And we will be able to sing God’s songs again. Amen.
[1] From “Conversations Among Exiles.” The Christian Century, July 2-9, 1997, pp. 630-632
[2] Craig Barnes, Searching for Home, 2003, Brazos Press, page 21.
[3] Craig Barnes, Searching For Home, 2003, Brazos Press, page 29.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Sermon - Lost and Found
Preached on September 16, 2007 at The First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC
Luke 15:1-10
Dedicated to Betsy; and always to the glory of God.
Last month, when the mine in Utah collapsed on those six miners, I remember following the news day after day about the efforts to find them, about the size of the holes they were drilling deep, deep into the earth to the places where they thought the miners might be trapped, with hope that they find signs of life. As it became ten and eleven days since the collapse, they were drilling yet another hole, and I wondered what hope they could still have? But everyone wanted to keep looking. When people are lost, we want to find them.
When someone is really lost and we know it, we will go to heroic efforts to find them. When there are climbers trapped on a mountain. Maybe they weren’t prepared, maybe they shouldn’t have gone up with a storm coming in, but it doesn’t matter, we will call forth great rescuers and resources. A child missing in a small town will have crowds combing the fields, parks, and woods. We post pictures and send them out in the mail, asking if anyone has seen them.
And we hope that if we are ever lost there will be no limit to the efforts made to find us, wherever we may be. The parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin tell us that when we are lost in a spiritual sense, when we are buried deep and the weight of the world is upon us, God will search and search for us, will find us, will rejoice and bring us back. That is good news, and news that we need to share, because too often the message about God gets twisted, and we hear instead that if we are lost, then we did it to ourselves, and it’s up to us to get back, not God. That’s not the story Jesus told, and not the one we should tell either.
The story Jesus told was about a shepherd who, perhaps, is bringing the sheep from the hills to the village at the end of day, only to realize that one sheep didn’t make it back. In those days, all the sheep owned in the village were herded together, and the owners would take turns to stay with the animals. As the shepherd goes back to the hills, the rest of the town waits and watches in the failing light, not knowing whose sheep is lost, but together hoping for its safe return. Finally, the shepherd’s form can be seen in the moonlight coming over a hill, the lost sheep across his shoulders. He calls out to them with triumph, and everyone rejoices, and brings out the food and drink for a late night celebration. The gospel is told in that kind of story.
Or try this one on: A woman loses one of her ten coins, called a drachma, which is each equal to the wage for one day’s labor. But a single woman in that time and place was not in a position to easily earn such a wage. She was a widow, perhaps, or never married -vulnerable in either case. Those ten coins are all her wealth. It would be like someone on a small fixed income of social security having lost a check. She laments to her neighbor, and soon word spreads. People feel awful for her loss, and what it means to her security.
The story goes that she lit a lamp and swept the house, which in those days would have had a pounded dirt floor covered by thatch. Not an easy place to spot a coin, especially by the limited glow of a lamp. But she is persistent, and does not give up the search until the coin is found. When she spots the dull glint of metal, smudged with dirt, she cries with happiness and relief, and calls to her neighbors, who come with hugs and food and drink to help her to bask in the joy of the lost being found. And so it is with God. The lost is found. God will search, and search, and search. And when we are found, what joy there is. If you finish this chapter in the gospel, you will find that Jesus completes these two parables by telling one more story, this time about a son who is lost and thought to be dead, and about the great party his father throws when his beloved child comes home.
We rejoice when the lost is found. But what about the people who are lost even while they are right in front of us? What about the people who might be in the same room, but to everyone else they are lost because of the way they look, or smell; because they are bitter and mean, those long-applied defenses; or lost because of the shameful secret about them that everyone else knows, the one that is whispered in the other corners of the room. “He’s the one.” “Do you know what she did?”
Those people are the ones that Jesus sought out – the ones who were lost in plain sight. He shared his meals and conversation with them, and showed mercy to them, trusting that these acts of generosity, of grace, would be a way for these lost people to be found.
It is good news that God finds us when we are lost, but that’s not why Jesus told these stories. He told these stories because the uptight religious people were upset again about Jesus spending time with all those sinners. Righteous people shouldn’t get near them, they thought; they should maintain their dignity! And God’s holiness surely could not be compromised by the presence of these sinners.
In response, Jesus told these stories, telling them not to the people who were lost, but to the people who were not joining the party, which is another way of being lost, I suppose. If one way of hearing these parables is identifying with the lost sheep and lost coin, the other way is for us to identify with the neighbors who are invited to join the celebration. How will we respond? Will we rejoice? Will we celebrate that God loves the lost, and loves them just because?
Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest, tells the story of a ten-day backpacking trip in the mountains that she and her husband took with eight strangers and a trip leader.[1] Each day they would pack up camp and hike over mountain ridges to a new place to camp for the night. They took turns in the lead, and some were fast hikers and some were slow, but eventually they always had to wait for the last person in line to catch up, and so realized that the group could cover ground only as fast as their slowest member, and that was Pat. Pat was always the slowest, partly because she spent much of her energy to maintain a running commentary of her complaints. The day was too sunny or too damp, we can’t stop for lunch here, it’s too rocky. She didn’t join in conversations, but she would listen in on them, and interrupt in order to correct someone’s grammar, geography, history, or botany. She hadn’t come with anyone, and didn’t particularly warm up to anyone.
At the end of one difficult day in which they had climbed three separate peaks, they finally arrived at their campsite with little daylight left only to find that Pat was not with them. They quickly discovered that no one had seen her since just after lunch, when she had told the person responsible for bringing up the rear of the group to just go on ahead and she would be there soon. He’d been only too happy to let her take the last spot by herself, and no one had thought of her since.
Everyone was tired and hungry, and no one could imagine going back to look for her, although they all felt a chill and horror at the thought of being lost, alone in the woods. The trip leader took a flashlight, blanket, and warm soup and went back for her, because it was his job. The rest milled about, trying to avoid the awful thoughts about what might become of her.
Hours later, very late at night, the leader emerged from the trail into the clearing, and with him was Pat. Everyone swarmed around them, giving her hugs and pressing food and hot cocoa into her hands. Everyone was genuinely, intensely glad to see her, and did not remember anymore all the ways that they had come to dislike her. She was lost and now she was found. She didn’t return the hugs very warmly, and acted as if she had never been worried or scared, but the next morning she was one of the first to roll up her tent and pack her things, and that had never happened. She no longer lingered far behind, slowing down the group, and although she never became exactly easy to get along with, the experience of being lost and found did seem to have changed her, just as it changed the attitudes of those around her.
The thing is, Pat had been lost long before the night she was physically lost. And I wonder: how can we do the same thing for each other without waiting for someone’s life to actually be in danger? We are lost, in one way or the other, and we need to find each other, to see in each other what is valuable. When the lost are found, that is what leads to the joyful celebrations, and rejoicing for the lost who are found is what God is all about.
[1] From the sermon “The Lost and Found Department” printed in The Preaching Life, Barbara Brown Taylor, 1993.
Luke 15:1-10
Dedicated to Betsy; and always to the glory of God.
Last month, when the mine in Utah collapsed on those six miners, I remember following the news day after day about the efforts to find them, about the size of the holes they were drilling deep, deep into the earth to the places where they thought the miners might be trapped, with hope that they find signs of life. As it became ten and eleven days since the collapse, they were drilling yet another hole, and I wondered what hope they could still have? But everyone wanted to keep looking. When people are lost, we want to find them.
When someone is really lost and we know it, we will go to heroic efforts to find them. When there are climbers trapped on a mountain. Maybe they weren’t prepared, maybe they shouldn’t have gone up with a storm coming in, but it doesn’t matter, we will call forth great rescuers and resources. A child missing in a small town will have crowds combing the fields, parks, and woods. We post pictures and send them out in the mail, asking if anyone has seen them.
And we hope that if we are ever lost there will be no limit to the efforts made to find us, wherever we may be. The parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin tell us that when we are lost in a spiritual sense, when we are buried deep and the weight of the world is upon us, God will search and search for us, will find us, will rejoice and bring us back. That is good news, and news that we need to share, because too often the message about God gets twisted, and we hear instead that if we are lost, then we did it to ourselves, and it’s up to us to get back, not God. That’s not the story Jesus told, and not the one we should tell either.
The story Jesus told was about a shepherd who, perhaps, is bringing the sheep from the hills to the village at the end of day, only to realize that one sheep didn’t make it back. In those days, all the sheep owned in the village were herded together, and the owners would take turns to stay with the animals. As the shepherd goes back to the hills, the rest of the town waits and watches in the failing light, not knowing whose sheep is lost, but together hoping for its safe return. Finally, the shepherd’s form can be seen in the moonlight coming over a hill, the lost sheep across his shoulders. He calls out to them with triumph, and everyone rejoices, and brings out the food and drink for a late night celebration. The gospel is told in that kind of story.
Or try this one on: A woman loses one of her ten coins, called a drachma, which is each equal to the wage for one day’s labor. But a single woman in that time and place was not in a position to easily earn such a wage. She was a widow, perhaps, or never married -vulnerable in either case. Those ten coins are all her wealth. It would be like someone on a small fixed income of social security having lost a check. She laments to her neighbor, and soon word spreads. People feel awful for her loss, and what it means to her security.
The story goes that she lit a lamp and swept the house, which in those days would have had a pounded dirt floor covered by thatch. Not an easy place to spot a coin, especially by the limited glow of a lamp. But she is persistent, and does not give up the search until the coin is found. When she spots the dull glint of metal, smudged with dirt, she cries with happiness and relief, and calls to her neighbors, who come with hugs and food and drink to help her to bask in the joy of the lost being found. And so it is with God. The lost is found. God will search, and search, and search. And when we are found, what joy there is. If you finish this chapter in the gospel, you will find that Jesus completes these two parables by telling one more story, this time about a son who is lost and thought to be dead, and about the great party his father throws when his beloved child comes home.
We rejoice when the lost is found. But what about the people who are lost even while they are right in front of us? What about the people who might be in the same room, but to everyone else they are lost because of the way they look, or smell; because they are bitter and mean, those long-applied defenses; or lost because of the shameful secret about them that everyone else knows, the one that is whispered in the other corners of the room. “He’s the one.” “Do you know what she did?”
Those people are the ones that Jesus sought out – the ones who were lost in plain sight. He shared his meals and conversation with them, and showed mercy to them, trusting that these acts of generosity, of grace, would be a way for these lost people to be found.
It is good news that God finds us when we are lost, but that’s not why Jesus told these stories. He told these stories because the uptight religious people were upset again about Jesus spending time with all those sinners. Righteous people shouldn’t get near them, they thought; they should maintain their dignity! And God’s holiness surely could not be compromised by the presence of these sinners.
In response, Jesus told these stories, telling them not to the people who were lost, but to the people who were not joining the party, which is another way of being lost, I suppose. If one way of hearing these parables is identifying with the lost sheep and lost coin, the other way is for us to identify with the neighbors who are invited to join the celebration. How will we respond? Will we rejoice? Will we celebrate that God loves the lost, and loves them just because?
Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest, tells the story of a ten-day backpacking trip in the mountains that she and her husband took with eight strangers and a trip leader.[1] Each day they would pack up camp and hike over mountain ridges to a new place to camp for the night. They took turns in the lead, and some were fast hikers and some were slow, but eventually they always had to wait for the last person in line to catch up, and so realized that the group could cover ground only as fast as their slowest member, and that was Pat. Pat was always the slowest, partly because she spent much of her energy to maintain a running commentary of her complaints. The day was too sunny or too damp, we can’t stop for lunch here, it’s too rocky. She didn’t join in conversations, but she would listen in on them, and interrupt in order to correct someone’s grammar, geography, history, or botany. She hadn’t come with anyone, and didn’t particularly warm up to anyone.
At the end of one difficult day in which they had climbed three separate peaks, they finally arrived at their campsite with little daylight left only to find that Pat was not with them. They quickly discovered that no one had seen her since just after lunch, when she had told the person responsible for bringing up the rear of the group to just go on ahead and she would be there soon. He’d been only too happy to let her take the last spot by herself, and no one had thought of her since.
Everyone was tired and hungry, and no one could imagine going back to look for her, although they all felt a chill and horror at the thought of being lost, alone in the woods. The trip leader took a flashlight, blanket, and warm soup and went back for her, because it was his job. The rest milled about, trying to avoid the awful thoughts about what might become of her.
Hours later, very late at night, the leader emerged from the trail into the clearing, and with him was Pat. Everyone swarmed around them, giving her hugs and pressing food and hot cocoa into her hands. Everyone was genuinely, intensely glad to see her, and did not remember anymore all the ways that they had come to dislike her. She was lost and now she was found. She didn’t return the hugs very warmly, and acted as if she had never been worried or scared, but the next morning she was one of the first to roll up her tent and pack her things, and that had never happened. She no longer lingered far behind, slowing down the group, and although she never became exactly easy to get along with, the experience of being lost and found did seem to have changed her, just as it changed the attitudes of those around her.
The thing is, Pat had been lost long before the night she was physically lost. And I wonder: how can we do the same thing for each other without waiting for someone’s life to actually be in danger? We are lost, in one way or the other, and we need to find each other, to see in each other what is valuable. When the lost are found, that is what leads to the joyful celebrations, and rejoicing for the lost who are found is what God is all about.
[1] From the sermon “The Lost and Found Department” printed in The Preaching Life, Barbara Brown Taylor, 1993.
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