Which One of You?

Luke 15: 1- 10, Exodus 32: 1-14, Psalm 51 Canberra Baptist Church 12 Sept 10

A few weeks ago we had a terrific sermon by Belinda on hospitality- on the grace we find in sharing meals together. In that sermon she told a story about a family in Paris who had their passports stolen and were reconciled in a small hotel near the Eiffel tower.

Our sermon today is again about hospitality; the divine invitation to celebrate our restoration by God with the whole heavenly realm of God. We also have another story about Paris, passports and reconciliation in a little hotel near the Eiffel Tower. This story begins in the Metro.

It happened in an instant.

I stepped onto the train and felt the doors shut behind me. I turned in disbelief and saw Garry still standing on the platform. We were leaving Paris by train, heading to next part of our trip. And now I was being whisked away into the tunnels of the Metro and Garry was standing on the platform, with all our luggage (including my passport), waving and pointing energetically down the tracks.

I had lost my beloved and I was alone in an alarming and, not speaking any French, incomprehensible predicament. I felt completely disempowered and with racing pulse, sweaty palms and trembling bottom lip - the beginnings of panic.

I was lost.

We’ve just heard 2 parables from Jesus about being lost: the lost sheep and the lost coin. These are the first 2 stories in a trilogy of lost and found: the 3^rd is the Prodigal Son and together they make up this 15^th chapter of Luke. Today we’re focusing on the just the first one, while remembering that it is part of a bigger story.

This is one of those ‘old favourite’ parables isn’t it? One that we probably remember from our Sunday School days and can recite the storyline without thinking too hard. They can seem simple stories with a happy ending telling us of the gracious and loving nature of God who seeks and cares for the lost one.

And so they are, but to label them as stories just for children is to miss the uncompromising defence Jesus gives for the hospitality of God, the invitation to share in God’s restorative grace. The challenge to this hospitality is seen in today’s story in the accusation levelled against Jesus: “this fellow eats with tax collectors and sinners!’

Jesus, in sharing a meal with these despised people is embodying God’s hospitality. To invite someone to a meal is an offer of peace, trust, friendship and forgiveness; sharing a table means sharing life. Jesus is offering acceptance to the most reviled people of first century Israel.

Tax collectors worked for the Roman Empire, the brutal occupying force of Israel, and sinners were those who had broken the purity laws and therefore threatened the continuity of the Jewish faith. A thoroughly bad bunch of people. No wonder the Pharisees and scribes, the religious leaders, were grumbling under their beards and plotting how to get rid of Jesus.

There are many riches in this parable and we could spend weeks exploring them. Today I’d modestly like to suggest 3 ways in which Jesus defends the hospitality of God through this parable: acceptance, forgiveness and freedom.

1. You are accepted.

The accusation against Jesus was that he ate with tax collectors and sinners. His hospitality, absurdly, accepted the shunned ones, bringing them in from the margins to share the celebration at his table. This is how he answers the charge.

“Which one of you, having a 100 sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the 99 in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it”

Which one of you indeed! Who is going to leave 99 valuable sheep exposed to the dangers of the wilderness to search for one who has wandered off? Surely a sensible shepherd would cut his losses and head home with 99 safe and secure sheep. This is a foolish, almost reckless, response by the shepherd.

If parables are to tell us about the nature of God, what does this one say? God is foolish!? Reckless even?? I think it gives us a glimpse of God’s ‘otherness’. That God operates from a different economy than we do. That God is unafraid of convention and ridicule and is extravagant with love.

Being lost is frightening and disempowering. It was bad enough when in Paris I temporarily lost my beloved, the doors shut and the train carried me into hostile territory.

The real thing is much more traumatic. If you have ever felt that you have lost God, or lost your connection with one you love, or yearn to be loved by; or been shunned by others, you will know what it is to be bereft, to be filled with a sense of loss. In this place we try to understand, to restore broken relationships, to love again but the train pushes on insistently.

In this story Jesus reaches into this pain and says you are sought by God, you are accepted, you are welcome. God goes out into the wild places and enters the world of the lost one in order to find her. God joins in the grief and the pain of the lost one in order to bring reconciliation. God has done this in and through the life, death and resurrected life of Jesus.

To the rational mind it may seem a foolish thing but to the mind and heart of grace it is very simple; it has to be done so it will be done. God will, and does, seek the lost, the alone, and the frightened. God’s passion for us as the lost is so intense it is almost reckless.

This is the grace of God visited upon us in, and through, Jesus. In the world’s economy it is more likely that the lost one is expendable. God as host, foolishly, seeks us out as acceptable for the divine table.

2. You are forgiven

The finding can happen in extraordinary ways. When I was lost in Paris Garry tried ringing my mobile but that was useless underground. He didn’t have his own phone then so, after about 4 hours, he rang my brother back in Australia to get him to send a SMS which would reach me when I surfaced.

After hours of fruitless searching for Garry I had decided to go back to the hotel we had left that morning because I knew there was someone there who spoke English, there was a toilet and a McDonalds on the corner where I could at least recognise the food. My last resort plan was that Garry would eventually return there also.

And while explaining my story of woe to the hotel receptionist my phone beeped: what a wonderful sound!!! A message from my brother, to meet Garry at St Lazares Main Line Platform. The relief was overwhelming and off I fled to meet my beloved. It had been hard work looking for him and I was worn out.

Back to our text:

“And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices.”

Bringing the lost sheep home was hard, dangerous work for the shepherd. This is not the story of Little Bo Peep who leaves her sheep alone to find their own way home, wagging their tails behind them. This is the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. This is costly grace given in love.

And the text continues:

“Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance.”

Parables often surprise us and this is no exception. Who repents? The sheep that was found?? No, there is no indication of any act of repentance. All the action has been by the shepherd. The sheep did nothing, and there is no sense of the sheep being a sinner who needs to be forgiven.

And remember the next story about the lost coin? The same thing is said : “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Here the foundling is a coin – hardly likely to be the one who repents.

So what do we make of this? Could repentance be the act of being found, of being restored to wholeness? Our OT reading helps us here. The Israelites were sick of waiting for Moses to come back down the mountain where he’d been talking with the Lord. Under Aaron’s direction they decided to build and worship their own god, the golden calf.

Now here we do have some pretty serious wrong doing for this breaks the commandment to have no other gods before the Lord. And Moses hears about it in no uncertain terms from the Lord who is very angry.

Moses intercedes for the people though, reminding the Lord of how He had rescued them from Egypt; would He now kill them and consume them from the earth? Remember your covenant, O God with your people! And the Lord changed his mind about the destruction he planned to bring on his people.” The Lord repented. The Israelites did nothing.

So maybe, there is a time and place for passive repentance, not on its own for there are many occasions when we are told of the costly repentance the call of God entails. Paul spoke of some of this last week in his sermon, an outrageous invitation.

But, maybe there is also a time when the very act of being sought out by God and found, restores us into wholeness, where we are forgiven and can celebrate. This is unconditional forgiveness, a gift freely given before we’ve even realised we need it.

As we receive this gift can we then share it others? A hard thought! But I think we have seen something of this forgiveness in the response of the Amish people to the school shooting which murdered several of their children. They asked for no repentance before offering forgiveness to the murderer.

Yesterday was the 9^th anniversary of September 11. Where might the world be now if the Amish had been put in charge of the Department of Defence after the towers fell?

When we are carried home by the Good Shepherd who has laid down his life for us we can sing with the psalmist:

Create in us a clean heart, O God

Renew within us a right spirit

Cast us not away from your presence, O Lord

And take not your holy spirit from us

Restore to us fullness of joy

The joy that springs from your salvation

Lighten our minds, strengthen our lives with your spirit.

The lost are found and forgiven and the rejoicing begins.

3. And you are free

We are accepted, we are forgiven and the celebration begins.

When Garry and I finally found each other on St Lazares station we clung to each other, oblivious to the crowds around us. There was no way I was going to let him out of my sight! I think I even said – ‘don’t you EVER do that again’!! My brother and his wife back in Australia, in bed ‘cause it was midnight their time, had a good laugh with us by SMS and offered the wise words ‘hold hands’! Our hearts rejoiced.

How much more must heaven, the realm of God, rejoice over the one who is restored to wholeness! We as the found are free of the paralysing effects of being lost. We are accepted, we are forgiven and we are free....... and we all live happily ever after..... or do we??

It’s easy to read just parts 1 & 2 of the trilogy of lost and found stories in Ch 15. We need though to read through to the end, to the story of the Prodigal Son, to see that our inheritance as God’s children; our acceptance, forgiveness and freedom; can be squandered or hoarded selfishly as the 2 sons did.

And God, the father needs to seek us again. There he is alone standing on the road waiting, or later leaving the party and coming to us in the dark field of bitterness. This is a reminder to treasure our gift and share it generously.

Jesus begins his parable with the rhetorical question “Which one of you!?’ When heard by the one who is found this question leaps to life and becomes the invitation to celebrate with the whole realm of God, to say ‘yes’ I am accepted, I am forgiven and I am free.

Amen.