Rejoice with Me
Pentecost 16
September 12, 2010

Rejoice with Me
by James McCrea

Luke 15:1-10

This past week the news was dominated by coverage of Pastor Terry Jones and his Gainesville, Florida church, the Dove World Outreach Center. The cause of their notoriety were the congregation’s plans to host what they called an “International Burn A Koran Day” event on September 11th. The idea — such as it was — was to commemorate the victims of the 9-11 attacks of nine years ago by insulting the religion that spawned the attackers.

Never mind that holding all of Islam responsible for the criminal actions of some of its extreme believers would be like blaming Christianity for the actions of Jim Jones in murdering a congressman and then inciting mass suicide of 909 men, women and children in Jonestown, Guyana due to his warped understanding of Christianity.

The same may be said of the actions of David Koresh and his Branch Davidians, who set up a compound in Waco, Texas that routinely battled allegations of child abuse and polygamy. Their group met its end in a controversial raid and standoff with federal authorities in which 76 Branch Davidians died. All theoretically in Christ’s name.

It’s hard to imagine any of us claiming that those extremists represent mainstream Christianity. And yet Pastor Jones and his Dove World Outreach followers somehow believe that Bin Laden and his 9-11 attackers should be seen as the public face for all Islam.

It has to make you wonder if Pastor Jones and his congregation have lost the message of Jesus, who taught us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.

Our Gospel lesson today features two parables that are all about being lost and found. The stories are told in response to a group of Pharisees who are upset with the sort of people Jesus is hanging out with. According to those Pharisees, the fact that Jesus spends any time at all with people who clearly sinners is evidence that Jesus cannot be the moral and religious leader he claims to be.

So Jesus tells them three stories, two of which we have this week and the third next week. The common thread to all of them is that they picture God as someone who will never give up on anyone. This past week I read an interesting interpretation which was written by the Rev. Larry Stevens, who says:

“[…] I come from a background which can only be described as very ‘underprivileged.’ I’ve lived in houses which had absolutely no insulation and were so poorly constructed that the snow came in through the walls; not the windows or doors, the walls. Several of my childhood homes had no electricity or running water, and only a cook stove for heat. It would get so cold in some of them that the pail of drinking water that was drawn from the well the evening before would freeze solid during the night; this despite having been left beside the only source of heat in the entire house.

“Once that fire went out, the temperature in the house plummeted until it was pretty close to the below zero temperature outside. For years the only ‘store bought’ food stuffs we had were things like coffee, tea, sugar, and the ingredients my mother needed for cooking, baking, and canning. Otherwise, if we didn’t grow it in the garden, raise it as part of our livestock, pick it in the berry patches in the woods, or hunt it, we didn’t eat it.

“I mention this only to establish that when I hear the stories of the lost sheep and coin, I hear them from the perspective of someone who knows all too well the ‘hand to mouth’ existence that may have been the lot of many of those who heard Jesus tell these stories.

“Consequently, I tend to think that rather than marveling at the extravagance of the owners of the lost sheep and coin, many of those original hearers would have understood that their very existence probably depended upon finding that which was lost and, therefore, identified VERY closely with them for they shared the same kind of precarious existence.

“I think what they would have heard might have been something like this: You know much you would suffer if you lost a major portion of your livelihood? And how desperate you would be to find it because it might be all that stands between you and starvation? …That’s how desperate God is to be reconciled with you.”

“Given how often their religious leaders had told them that God wanted nothing to do with them, that they were cast off and abandoned, those stories would have been good news indeed. For in them they could see a God who wanted them more than they ever could have imagined; which is why I see these two stories as some of the most real, logical, and most connected with the very real plight of those who heard him that Jesus ever told.”

Like all of Jesus’ parables, these two may be understood on many levels. The most common way to take these two is from a very personal perspective. That is, even when we become lost, God will refuse to abandon us. No matter what we do, no matter how far we may stray, no matter how long we stay away, God will continue to seek us out, longing to return us to the fold, longing to bring us back as an honored member of his family.

In that regard, John Sumwalt tells “a story about a girl who was deeply troubled. She became increasingly rebellious. Her mom and dad didn’t know what to do. Late one night the police arrested her for drunk driving. Mom had to go to the police station to pick her up. They didn’t speak until the next afternoon.

“Mom broke the tension by giving her troubled daughter a small gift-wrapped box. The daughter nonchalantly opened it and found a little rock inside. She rolled her eyes and said, ‘Cute, Mom, what’s this for? ‘Read the card,’ her Mom instructed.

“Her daughter took the card out of the envelope and read it. Tears started to trickle down her cheeks. She got up and lovingly hugged her mom as the card fell to the floor. On the card were these words: ‘This rock is 200 million years old. That is how long it will take before I give up on you.’”

Obviously, that’s a comforting feeling when we’re lost in our sins, certain that God must turn away from the very thought of us. It’s equally comforting when we are staggering under the weight of our private grief or depression or loneliness. The fact that God is constantly seeking us, gives us reason for hope in all circumstances.

But there’s a danger in seeing these parables in that light only. When we focus solely on our own relationship with God, it becomes possible to become self-satisfied — just like those Pharisees whose snide comments led Jesus to tell these stories in the first place.

We can become convinced that the church exists solely to meet our own needs. After all, we’re the ones who have been found. We’re the ones who dedicate our time to worship and donate our income to keep the church running. We’re the ones who need that weekly boost of inspiration to continue to serve God in our daily routines.

But if we think these parables are just about us, then we miss the point. Even though we all have our moments of being the lost coin or the lost sheep, more often than not, we’re numbered among the nine coins that were never lost and the 99 sheep still safe in the fold.

So it’s important to look at the interpretation which says this isn’t directly about us at all. It’s about those outside the church. The world is filled with people who are struggling with all kinds of issues.

People who have been beaten down by their jobs or their private sorrows. People who have lost their faith and their zest for life. People who choose to stave off their heartaches with alcohol or drugs or something else that provides a very temporary respite from the difficulties that hem them in. People who are starving for the good news that we have already received.

That’s where Barbara Brown Taylor points out a key element in these parables we might have missed. She writes, “Repentance is not the issue, but rejoicing, the plot is not about amending our evil ways, but about seeking, sweeping, finding, rejoicing. The invitation is not about being rescued by Jesus over and over again, but about joining him in rounding up God’s herd and recovering God’s treasure.

“It is about questioning the idea that there are certain conditions the lost must meet before they are eligible to be found, or that there are certain qualities they must exhibit before we will seek them out. It is about trading in our high standards on a strong flashlight and swapping our ‘good examples’ for a good broom. It is about the joy of finding.”

In other words, these parables serve as a reminder that we are called to join God in the work of seeking and finding those who need God’s presence in their lives even when they aren’t really aware that that’s the case.

Most of those people are very much aware of the existence of the church and choose to ignore it — or to actively reject it — because they have been hurt by a previous congregation or because they think that what the church offers is irrelevant to their lives or perhaps even irrelevant to their form of spirituality or their relationship with God. Clearly that can even be true about people who used to be members of the church, but have since drifted into inactivity.

So what can we do about any of that? For one thing, we can go where those people are, listen to their stories and offer whatever assistance we can. And by that, I mean both emotional and practical support for them. But if we’re really honest about it, we have to begin the process by choosing to make a change in ourselves and our expectations. For example, a few weeks ago, we had a Hymn Sing Sunday. For about three weeks before that, I asked for your favorite hymns and received 17 different responses, some of which were repeated many times.

It was instructive to me that only one or two of those hymns were written in the past 100 years. In some regards, that makes sense since these are the hymns that have meant something to us in our past. Perhaps they helped us through a difficult patch in our lives or perhaps they serve to remind us of happy memories or perhaps we simply like the tune or the lyrics.

But the truth is that times change and tastes change. What other aspect of your life can you think of in which one of your favorites dates back to when your great-great-grandfather — or his great-great-grandfather — was alive?

That’s why one of our major goals for this fall is to create a contemporary service using new styles of music and new forms of worship. It will be held on Saturday afternoons, so it will be in addition to the Sunday morning service we already have. This contemporary service may not be your cup of tea, but it does need your help.

I’d like ask each and every one of you to make two commitments in regards to our new service: First, promise to attend it at least once to give it a chance. Second, and even more importantly, promise to invite someone to go to it with you, especially if that someone isn’t currently going anywhere because the church seems out-of-touch to them. But that’s not the only commitment I’m asking of you.

I once read about a recovering alcoholic, who complained that, after his life-changing experience in Alcoholics Anonymous, his local church was unbearable. He said, “After I had at last been part of a real community where we loved each other enough to be honest, to sacrifice our time and energy to aid others in their struggle with alcohol, the sweet superficiality of my church was repulsive. When I tried to share with them some of the insights gained from my own struggles, they looked at me like I was crazy, like my struggle was a purely personal problem.”

The church is designed to be an ever-expanding family that shares its genuine joys and concerns on a deep level. We’re pretty good at doing that within these walls, but we have to make a real commitment to do it in every aspect of our lives also or we will, by default, allow the vocal extremists like the Dove World Outreach Center to show the world what Christianity means.

Churches are always very good at asking people to make commitments to do the work of the church. But the final commitment I want to ask of each of you today is a commitment outside the church: Seek out someone in need this week, this month, this year and truly offer them your time and God’s love.

Each one of us is eternally loved and each one of us has been found by the persistent heart of God. God would never give up on any of us in 200 million years. The same thing is true for all of God’s children. Let us join in that search. Amen.

(Comments to Jim at jmccrea@galenalink.com.)