Proper 19C. 11 September 2022. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28. It will be said a hot wind comes from me…toward my poor people.
1 Timothy 1:12-17. But I received mercy.
Luke 15:1-10. This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.
O God our help and our home, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.
Hello! I’m so glad to see you. I’ve missed you! This morning I want to invite you to reflect with me about sinning and repenting. How’s that for my first sermon out of the gate after vacation? You may know that in our lectionary cycle of readings, the pairing of the First Testament reading with the Gospel is random during Ordinary Time. That is, we hear large segments of Hebrew scripture, scheduled without consideration of the Gospel appointments. So the pairing of Jeremiah and Luke is coincidental. Today, we also hear Psalm 14 and a reading from 1 Timothy. In seminary, preachers are admonished to stick with one lesson in our sermons, but I just can’t do it. I hear the readings in conversation with each other, even if they weren’t designed to be, and in conversation with us, even though they didn’t anticipate us.
Today’s portion of Jeremiah sounds to me as if it could be a description of life in the 21st century, even though it was written more than 26 centuries ago. The prophet Jeremiah is decrying the sins of those in leadership, their social injustice, their spiritual corruption, their war-making, which has demoralized and devastated the land, indeed the climate. Just before our passage begins, the priests and prophets have complained to God that God had promised all would be well and that it’s not. The Holy One replies, “It will be said that the hot wind that blows toward my poor people, is from me, not to winnow or cleanse, a wind too strong for that.” In other words, it’s not from me; it’s from you. In response to their complaint, the Holy One delivers a scorching response to the leaders of the people: your own conduct and actions have brought this upon you; disaster follows disaster.
In the verses that are omitted from our lectionary, God cries out in agony (actually it’s the word for childbirth pains). God cries out in labor pain that the leadership has broken Her heart with their flags and trumpets that lead people into war. Then God laments with a broken heart about the foolishness of people skilled in doing evil, not knowing how to do good, making war instead of peace. The leaders of the people are headed in a wrong way, a stupid way. Psalm 14 puts it this way: foolish people were saying in their hearts, “There is no God.” This not a critique of individual philosophical or theoretical atheism; this is an ethical critique of a people who did not think it mattered how the most vulnerable in society were treated: widows, orphans, and resident aliens.
In the olden days, it seems that people thought that prosperity, power, and security were all that mattered. In ancient times, there were people who profaned what was sacred, who pursued others in order to oppress them, who engaged in violence, who cheated and mistreated people, who were serving wealth instead of fidelity to love. In ancient times, leaders who did believe in doing justice, loving kindness, and walking the way of humility were not in office very often. Jeremiah proclaims that relationship with the Divine and with creation are inextricably bound together; and damage to one means damage to the other. “Disaster follows disaster,” to quote Jeremiah in Verse 20. I could list some contemporary examples, but I don’t think it’s necessary.
What I want to emphasize, because we don’t hear it in this portion of Jeremiah, is that the book is not one of despair, but of desire. In Jeremiah 29:11, the Holy One says, “For I know the plans I have for you, [my people], plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” In Jeremiah, hope is not optimism about political power or economic prosperity, but for right-relationship with the Divine and with one another. Hope in Jeremiah is made manifest in turning again toward God and heading in the direction of Love. If you bravely read Jeremiah as far as Chapter 31, you would come to the beautiful promise of God for a new covenant, not written in the stars or the sky like the rainbow, not written in stone like the tablets given to Moses, but written on our hearts. Thus says the Holy One: [1]
I will put my teaching within them and I will inscribe it on their hearts, then I will be their God, and they shall be my people….They will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest…for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.
In other words, I’m going to find them, forgive them, forget about their sin (in the Biblical sense, of course, sin is separation from God, or Love). I’m going to bring them home in Love, to Love, for Love.
In the brief pastoral letter to Timothy (written not by Paul, but in the name of Paul), we hear a description of what it feels like to be separated from Love because of blasphemy, ignorance, or violence and, yet, to experience the overflowing grace in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. I want you to notice that what saves the sinner are the faith and love that are in Jesus Christ, not the faith and love that are in the sinner. In this account it’s not the sinner who has to muster the faith and love; it’s seeing Jesus’ faith and love that saves the sinner.
Although that brings us to today’s portion of the Gospel of Luke, I want to remind you of what has come just before it. Jesus has said, “None of you can become my disciple if you do not hate your family and give up all your possessions.” He adds this sort of Zen koan: “Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is fit neither for the soil nor for manure pile; they throw it away. Let anyone with ears to hear listen!” Then Luke writes, “And yet, all the tax collectors and sinners were crowding around to listen to him.” Jesus was teaching about the letting-go that will have to be done in order to learn from him about restoring the well-being of the kin-dom; and yet, the tax collectors and sinners (think cheaters and criminals), people who have been actively threatening the well-being of the common good by their dangerously deviant behavior, are coming to listen. One of my colleagues wonders if the tax collectors and sinners were the only ones left listening after those who didn’t want to give up all their possessions had left. Oh, and some Pharisees and scribes were still listening, too.
In spite of what you might have been told, Pharisees and scribes are not the bad guys in this story, in my opinion. They are the good guys, who have been coming from every village in the Galilee, according to Luke, to hear Jesus from the earliest days of his public ministry. They are well-educated; they work hard; they care about the well-being of the community; and they are leaders along with Jesus in the reform of first-century Jewish practice during the oppressive Roman occupation. As a group, they were probably more centrist than Jesus, but they were on the same team. Jesus’ teachings were certainly in line with the Pharisaic movement. These Pharisees and scribes were grumbling or murmuring that Jesus’ standards for table fellowship were dangerously low, risky. They were concerned about good order and safety.
Jesus responded to his colleagues’ grumbling with three illustrations of returning to one’s rightful place: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. First, one in a hundred gets lost and found; then one in ten gets lost and found; and then one in two gets lost and found. Jesus told these stories to the grumblers, the grouchy mutterers; the ones with a well-developed sense of responsibility, with a keen moral compass, who were living respectable lives; the ones who appreciated order and safety. According to Luke, Jesus spoke to them, not to the lost tax collectors and sinners, and not to the disciples.
Some of you have heard me focus on the risky behavior of the shepherd leaving 99 sheep in the wilderness to search for a lost one, or the zaniness of the woman telling friends and neighbors about her own lost-and-found money. The answer to Jesus’ question (about which of you would do this) is, “No one in their right mind would do that.” That’s a clue that Jesus isn’t talking about people at all; he is talking about the Holy One. Jesus says, God (or Love) would do that. The Holy One (or God or Love) does do that. Jesus is teaching something about Love to remind the religious folks, who think they have a pretty-good handle on what God is all about and what’s required to be a part of God’s realm, that, in the end, “If it’s not about love, it’s not about God,” as our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry often says.
What about the 99 who need no repentance? The clue that repentance is not what we often think it is, is that the lost sheep and the lost coin did not acknowledge the error of their ways; did they? I think repenting in this story, means something different. I think repenting is being returned to one’s rightful place. This story is about what direction people are heading, away from God (or Love) or toward God (or Love). Those who do not need repentance (in this sense) are those who are already headed in the right direction. Sure, there may be delays or detours or, as Paul Simon says, “incidents and accidents, hints and allegations;” but, the right direction is toward love of God and neighbor, toward restoration, reparation, and away from destruction. The lost ones have gotten pointed in the wrong direction, the direction away from love of God and neighbor, away from Home. Jesus doesn’t seem at all concerned about how or why they got lost. What concerns Jesus is that when they turn back in the right direction, there’s great rejoicing with friends and neighbors, and in heaven.
I hear Jesus teaching that Love bids the turning around, the change of direction, and the eventual return of whatever and whoever is lost or headed in the wrong direction. For Jesus, nobody is too-far lost for steadfast Love to risk finding. That is a given, Jesus tells us. Whenever a lost one turns in the direction toward love of God and neighbor, our faithful, grateful, and joyful response is what Love longs for and looks for. So, hard as it might be, stop the grumbling about sinners getting re-directed, recovered, or restored. Rejoice with the angels, and give thanks to God!
Jeremiah 31: 33-34.