And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying,
“This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

One of the big hits that church life always takes from those outside who would like to ridicule the faith — and perhaps more than a few less-vocal folks who are inside the faith — is that religious practice would be a lot more attractive if it weren’t so inherently boring. I am happy to report that in the worship survey which many of you have taken the time to fill out and return, on question number 7, which directed you to circle the appropriate response to the statement, “The Bible selections and sermons serve as the central focus for all the other elements of worship,” so far none has selected item “d,” which was “boring!”

But maybe you are just being polite. Or perhaps, while some might actually think that all this fuss about scripture is kind of boring, they were loathe to say so on a questionnaire in church, on the outside chance that they might violate some taboo and wind up in a Presbyterian sort of purgatory.

But let’s face it, we have all known times, hours, when we have had to struggle even to appear interested in a service of worship or during a droning sermon, though certainly not this particular sermon. Why would this be so? Surely the gospel and the worship of the church are not inherently boring.

Perhaps one reason we may sometimes find ourselves to be less than fully attentive at worship lines right up with the failures of generations past, even the generation that lived in Israel around 600 B.C. Of these, Jeremiah reported that God said, “For my people are foolish, they do not know me; they are stupid children, they have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but do not know how to do good.”

And these were the people who, ostensibly, were on God’s side! Yet, for some reason, as Jesus attests, God never gives up on us, never.

Several years ago the chaplain at Duke University decided to ask a group of those in the student body who counted themselves outside the faith — he described them as people who knew something about Jesus, but weren’t ready to put their money down yet¹ — to go on a retreat. There, he would bombard them with anything and everything he could think of to make a case for the Christian faith. On the first night he showed them a film of an actor doing a dramatic reading of the gospel of Luke. When it was ended, there was a stunned silence. They had found it to be a great story well told. One student raised his hand. He said, “Jesus is great, I just can’t figure out why all the Christians I know are so darned boring.”

The story gets better. One of the students came back from the retreat fully convicted, and asked the chaplain to baptize him in the university chapel. As the day approached, all the others who had been on the retreat planned to attend. One of the members of the group called, “Chaplain, I have made all the arrangements for the post baptismal party,” he said.

“Party?”

“Sure. I’ve got the keg and everything.”

“A keg? Of beer? It would never have occurred to me to get beer for a baptism.”

“Why are you always calling us irresponsible?” asked the student, “See? We have to think of everything.”

It is possible that was the very first baptismal keg party in the history of the church, though we might want to check the records on Martin Luther carefully to be absolutely certain. It is also possible that such a party spirit was not far from the spirit of Jesus himself.

Now this isn’t a sermon drawn up to say that Jesus advocated beer parties on campus. It is a sermon that fearlessly declares that Jesus was in favor of parties however. How do we know that? Why, from that pesky gospel of Luke, not to mention the time John recalled him attending that wedding wine tasting at the very beginning of his ministry. In today's reading, the boring religious people whisper behind their hands, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them!” This is the same Jesus who told stories about dinner parties thrown by kings for the people of the street and welcome-home parties for wayward sons who had wandered off the reservation and squandered the family inheritance. Whatever else we know about Jesus, we know he was no ascetic, he ate with Pharisees, and he ate with sinners, he was an equal-opportunity socializer as well as teacher. If someone wanted to feed him, he was willing to go to dinner. If someone was willing to listen, he was willing to teach them, even if he had to do it over the jolly sounds of toasting and conversation and laughter.

Now wouldn’t it be great if the church founded in his name could be a little more like that? Jesus told us that the kingdom of God is like a woman who has lost a coin. She only had ten to start with, so having lost one, she has lost 10 percent of her assets, something to worry a poor woman. But here is the part that amazes. Having found the lost coin, does she quickly deposit it into an interest-bearing CD, or bury it in the backyard in a can so she won’t lose it again? No, she does the party thing, she invites the neighbors in and they have a neighborhood potluck and she rejoices more than anything in the recovery of what was lost.

And in this way, Jesus’ homely little parable about a woman in a headscarf in a small hovel sweeping the dusty floors looking for a lost coin that most people would consider not worth the effort, resembles, not a just humble peasant woman, but almighty God. This is a parable, small as it is, about the way God is. God, the God who called the world into being and Jesus into ministry among us, this is a God who seeks and saves what is lost, without regard for human measure concerning the value of what had been lost. God is a God of the party, the celebration over the discovery of each new one who comes, who returns, who finds his or her way home.

I often watch the actions of us collecting at our coffee time after church, how we behave in that boisterous gathering. We sidle up to the coffee table, perhaps peer at the person next to us. “Who is it? Hmmm, don’t recognize them, let me look for someone I know....” So one stranded newcomer after another, strange and alone at the coffee pot, remains there, standing, trying to look into the cup of coffee as thought the answer to all life’s mysteries were contained there, trying for all they’re worth not to look as displaced and awkward as they feel. Then, along comes a saint of God who knows what you are supposed to do at the sort of party God throws, and says to them, “Why hello! I am so glad to see you!”

Strangers among us are people that God has in mind for us, they are not an interruption in our business of being the church, they are very nearly our whole purpose for being a church at all.

Jesus started his little sheep parable in Luke by saying, which of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one, does not leave the ninety-nine ... and go after the one that is lost? And which of you, like a woman who has lost a commemorative silver dollar would not shake down the whole house, put all the carpets and furniture out on the lawn, until you found it? And which of us, recognizing a stranger in our midst — even if they only be a stranger to us, and perhaps we are as strange to them as they are to us — would nevertheless say to the gathering of 5 or 6 good friends standing around us, “Pardon me, I don’t know that person, I am going to go over and talk to them”?

Now which of us would not do such activities suggested by Jesus himself, the man who loved a good party? Which of us would fail to do the very thing that Jesus recommends? The answer, of course, is all of us.

When confronted by the potential for an unknown response, we cling to the safety of what we know. Sure, we’d like to celebrate and shout hallelujah in church, but we haven’t done that, because, well... what if we look odd? Well believe me, in this day, just coming to church as citizens of the state of Oregon — the state with the lowest church per capita membership of all 50 — makes us look pretty odd already, what have we got to lose? We like to be a welcoming fellowship reaching out to strangers among us, and we sure do hope someone else is doing it. But Jesus didn’t say, “Which of them, he said, which of you...?”

I recall one Spring evening, years ago, after confirmation class was finished at the end of a long Sunday at the church, I went out to the parking lot to discover that two of the young men in my class were out there having a fist fight. A fist fight! The testosterone was apparently at an all time high that Spring, and there, having just been schooled by expert clergy about the love of Jesus, they were trying to bash each other’s brains out. Fortunately, neither one was doing a very good job of it.

I remember, breaking them up, and some of our good church folks passing by, eyes wide as saucers. You could read it in their gaze: “What on earth are boys like those two hooligans doing at church?!”

Well, preparing for their baptism, because unfortunately or not, Jesus answered that question all too directly. Well, it is distressing, isn’t it, to learn from Jesus himself that the Good Shepherd rejoices more over these two returned ones, than over the ninety-nine of us who had been here all along. But that’s how it is. Make no mistake, we know, because Jesus said so.

Copyright © 2004 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved
Sermons are made available in print and on the web for readers only.
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NOTE

¹ - William Willimon, “Outrageous Parties,” preached at Duke University, September 13, 1998.
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