Fourteenth Sunday in Pentecost Luke 15:1-10
All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."
So he told them this parable: "Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, `Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
"Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, `Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."
Sermon by the Rev. Carole Horton-Howe
When I spent time as a seminarian in El Salvador, we lived in a house that backed up to an elementary preschool. Each morning we heard one of the teachers playing guitar and the children singing “Yo tengo gozo, gozo, gozo en mi Corazon!” “I have joy, joy, joy in my heart.” And they weren’t singing standing still, hands politely folded. They were dancing, bouncing around, with loud voices, grinning ear to ear. And they would sing as they entered the school. That’s how they started their day, like a fiesta of joy. I used to imagine that Jesus was watching over them also smiling, maybe also dancing. And making sure each of those sweet lambs found their way into their classroom.
Today we have a couple stories that are sometimes referred to as the Parables of the Lost. Perhaps they’re called that because all of us can relate to loss, we can remember a time when something precious to us was lost or missing.
The first parable is about a lost sheep and the second a lost coin. But neither one will stay lost for very long because these are stories of restoration, return and the joy of finding. Note that Jesus mentions “joy” and “rejoicing” 5 times in just 10 verses. That’s what these stories are all about. That’s what’s important here.
Though each parable ends with celebration, they begin with the grumbling and discord. Too many tax collectors and sinners are coming to Jesus so his opponents are grumbling about appropriate behavior and appearances. They seem to be singing their own worn out chorus of legalism – “if you were really one of us, you would comply with our laws and norms! We are separate for own protection! We’ve never done it this way before!” They see Jesus’ offer of hospitality to sinners as dangerous, irreverent and just plain unpleasant. These grumbling people were religious people, and seem pretty sure that they themselves were safely in God’s sheepfold, safely deposited into God’s change purse.
Notice that Jesus does not dismiss them; he doesn’t give up on the grumblers. He tells them stories that only the most miniscule of hearts could fail to be moved by the compassion of a shepherd so caring that he not only finds the one lost sheep but also carries it home. The echoes of the prophet Ezekiel must have sounded in their memories: “For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out.” (Ezek 34:11) And they are led by Jesus to imagine the devotion of a woman so committed to her search that she will burn the midnight oil itself to find the one missing coin.
All of us, including those grumblers, have known the anxiety of losing things, because everyone loses something sometime. No one is exempt from the pain of losing something made precious by time, devotion or love. Armed with these experiences, we go to great lengths to prevent a repeat of them: we install doorbells with cameras to keep an eye on things when we’re not home, we microchip our pets, we download apps onto our cell phones to track them if they go missing, we employ Amber Alert systems to locate lost children and the elderly. Jesus, I think, knows that when confronted by the anxiety of loss, we humans will burn nearly every resource to gain the return of that which was loved.
If you have Netflix, you might have seen a recent documentary called “Amy Bradley is Missing.” It’s the story of a family that went on a Caribbean cruise to celebrate their daughter Amy’s college graduation. The mom, dad, son and daughter had a fun day on shore followed by an evening of entertainment. Mom, dad and younger brother when to bed around midnight but Amy told them she wanted to check out the disco. She danced until after midnight and left the disco with one of the band members. She was never seen again. The documentary traces the events that followed, the searches, the sightings and give various theories for what might have happened to Amy.
As you watch, you notice the clothing and hair styles and realize Amy has been missing a very long time. Since 1998. It’s been more than 10,000 days. Her family has searched for her each of those days. In the documentary, her mother, Iva, pleads with the viewers for the one clue they need to find her. It’s just heartbreaking.
Because in our economics, we’d say it’s just been too long. You’re not going to find her or find out what happened to her. Just accept that and move on with your lives. But not the Bradley family: They are convinced that Amy is alive and trying to come home. They are certain they will find her and that there will be rejoicing. And I pray there is. That level of faith is extraordinary. That level of relentless pursuit of your beloved is God-like. Because God always believes that the one lost soul is worthy of the search, worthy of being found.
These side-by-side parables remind us that God is vigilantly searching until all are found. Jesus is offering a grand invitation to a fiesta of joy, saying all the while, “Rejoice with me.” God still yearns to gather us all up, so that not even one more person ever feels lost, as if they have to do it on their own, as if they’re not worth a cent, because even just one is precious to God.
Maybe it’s significant that when the woman finds the coin that had been lost, she throws a party for all her friends. Can you hear the dissonance in this: the woman may be thorough, but she’s not miserly. She may be meticulous, but she is not a wizard of home economics. She found one coin, and then spent who knows how many to throw a party! Is it irony or is it grace?
When the lost is found, the heart explodes with joy. It is joy so loud and rejoicing that even the angels take note. Of course, Jesus folds the point of his teaching back to the original charge. Just as a shepherd and a woman can rejoice over one object, heaven itself rejoices when one lost soul is found. All of us fall short and get lost along the way.
If we are the coins in the story, so precious to God that even just one is worth everything, and the occasion of finding just one is cause for great celebration, then we are God’s coins, and our lives are to be spent in the cause of seeking and finding and celebrating. God doesn’t just tuck us away in some safe-deposit box, a heavenly coin collection waiting for our value to increase. God says, let’s have a party and let’s have it now. Let’s be joyful now. Let’s live joy.
Because joy lives in human hearts, deep down in hearts that have been fine-tuned by God’s grace to trust a God who is so caring that whenever 1 of 100 is missing, the search is not abandoned, because God never stops believing that even one lost soul is worthy of being found.
The joy is God’s too. Jesus says, “Just so, I tell you there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents that over 99 righteous people who need no repentance.” No matter how lost the people become and by whatever means they lose their way, the promise is never exhausted: the lamp is burning. The shepherd is searching, God is watching and believing that the lost shall be found until the journey home is complete by every lost, struggling soul.
In our worship, we practice God’s economics. We gather, acknowledging that all we are and all we have comes from God, belongs to God, is loved by God, can be given and offered and spent for God. We offer our time, our talents, our money, and the produce of our hands and our minds in God’s service here in this place, out in the neighborhood, and in the world.
Our ministries are varied, but each one is valuable, each one is important to God, because even just one enables us to continue God’s work of seeking and finding and celebrating. Even just one. Even just you. Even just me. Precious to God. And precious here, in God’s house, in God’s family. Amen.