Proper 19C; September 15, 2013; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of love, 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.

Our Gospel reading from Luke contains two well-known stories as a preamble to the granddaddy of all parables – the prodigal son.  But we won’t hear the prodigal son story next week – it will get skipped because it got read in church this past Lent.  I’d bet most of you know it, though.  These stories of the lost sheep and the lost coin build up to the story of the lost son.  For those of us who attended ChurchSchool as little children, they are among the first stories that we learned.  I was thinking about this the other day and remembered how when I was a child, getting lost was a clear and present danger for me.  So these stories were very reassuring.

One of my earliest memories is leaving my backyard at the age of two, to go toward a woman I thought was my mother, far off in the distance.  But as I got closer to her, like a mirage, she turned out not to be my mother and so I kept looking, wandering further away, across a busy street, more and more confused and distraught.  As I reflected on this, from my middle-aged vantage point, I realized that I was both the lost one and the seeker.  But mostly now I am the self-righteous one who grumbles, what on earth was my mother doing that she left me unsupervised in the back yard in the first place?

These three stories – where one in one hundred gets lost and found, and then one in ten gets lost and found, and then one in two gets lost and found, are a set for Luke – a set of stories that are told not to the lost tax collectors and sinners, not to the seeker disciples.  Jesus tells these stories to the grumblers – the grouchy murmuring judgers, the ones with a well-developed sense of responsibility, with a keen moral compass who are living respectable lives, the ones who appreciate predictability and safety.  The word that gets used to describe what they were doing – that is, murmuring or grumbling, is the same word that gets used in the Torah to describe what the people were doing when they were complaining that they were better off as slaves in Egypt than wandering in the wilderness, wondering where their next meal would come from.

I get why they were grumpy and why these Pharisees and scribes were grumpy.  According to Luke, they are traveling with Jesus.  (Rabbi Berman is persuaded that Jesus was a part of the Pharisaic movement.)  According to Luke, Jesus ate with scribes and Pharisees on a regular basis and they were friends.  It’s apparently frustrating to them when Jesus is whooping it up with people like tax collectors and other sinners who are not taking responsibility for their lives and who don’t seem to care about the lives of people they are hurting in the process.  I imagine that the first two stories made the grumblers feel better – the reassuring story of the shepherd who will search for the lost sheep and the woman who will search diligently for the lost coin.  I love them too.

But the third story brings me up short every time.  I’ve never much cared for the prodigal son story.  I am, of course, the oldest child in my family – responsible, obedient, careful (except when I go wandering off in search of an illusive vision of my mother), and okay – self-righteous.  I do make mistakes, sure, but I atone for them.  I repay my debts.  I trespass, but only when I’m justified. Here’s how the story of the prodigal son sounds to me.

At the audacious request of the younger son, the father divides and distributes the inheritance before he dies rather than afterwards.  A few days later, the younger one takes off to live it up and the older one is in the awkward position of having his inheritance and having to use it to care for his still-living father – who continues to act like the boss of the place, while his brother isn’t sharing in the care of his father at all.  Later, when the younger son returns, all his money long gone, willing to work like a hired hand for his keep, the ecstatic father says, “no, no, no – you’re not a servant – you’re the guest of honor” and throws a great big party at the older brother’s expense – without even asking him! He’s coming back from a hard day’s work wondering what all the commotion is!  And to add insult to injury, the way the story gets told, the old brother just looks bad.  And we don’t know how it turns out – does the older brother get over it and join the party or does the older brother get lost? Does the younger son stay for a while and then head off again to pawn his new robe and sandals and ring?

Back to the first two stories – did I miss something?

“Which one of you, if he has 100 sheep, and one strays from the flock, will not leave the 99 [percent] in the wilderness — vulnerable to wolves, wandering off, and other all manner of mischief — and go out and beat the bushes until you find your one lost sheep? Then will you not put that sheep on your shoulders, just as if you were carrying a newly found child, and when you see your friends, will you not cry out, ‘Come party with me! I have found my sheep!’”

Now which one of you would not do that?

And which one of you, like a woman who has lost [10 percent], will you not be like that woman and rip up all of the carpet in your living room, move all of the furniture out into the front yard, then move all of the heavy appliances out of the kitchen into the front yard, and search relentlessly until you have found that coin? And when she has found the coin, she comes running out into the yard, calling to everybody up and down the street, “Come party with me! I found my coin!”

Now which one of you would not do that?

And which music teacher among you, if you have a student who is having difficulty with intonation, will you not leave all of your other students, cancel all of your appointments and projects for the coming semester and go, search out the student in the dormitory, and spend every evening, late into the night, working with that student until she can match pitch? And when that student does it, will you not run to all of your departmental colleagues and say, “Come party with me! The one who was completely tone-deaf is now ready for an elite ensemble!”¹

Now which one of you would not do that? Hmmmm.  Actually maybe no one.

The answer to Jesus’ question, which of you would do this, is no one in their right mind would do that.  That’s the clue that Jesus isn’t talking about people at all – Jesus is talking about the Holy One.  God, or Love, Jesus says, would do that.  The Holy One, or God, or Love does do that. Jesus is teaching something about Love (capital L) to 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.

You know, I wanted to start my sermon prayer this morning like this:  “O God of extremely low standards” but I thought you might not hear the rest of the prayer over the laughter.  I think that Jesus is teaching people with a well-developed sense of responsibility, with a keen moral compass that God Who is Love, seeks stuff that gets lost that no-one in their right mind would search for – either because we consider it not that valuable, or not worth risking our other assets – whatever the reason.  Jesus is teaching people that in Love, nothing and no-one is lost forever.

What if we were to think of ourselves – of our community – as a flock of sheep or a cache of coins, or as members of the same family.  Jesus is saying that parts get lost and rather than considering those parts not worth the effort of seeking them out and finding them, God or Love considers those parts every bit as valuable and the angels rejoice when Love finds them.  Love is like that shepherd.  Love is like the woman.   Yearning to seek out, to uncover, to welcome back what has been lost.

Or think of your self as a flock of sheep or a cache of coins or a family.  What part of you is so lost that you think it is not worth seeking out, uncovering or welcoming back?  What part of yourself have you lost that you think is not worth seeking out, uncovering or welcoming back?  What parts of any of us are missing because of accident or carelessness or shame or self-righteousness?  What have we done or left undone that now seems lost forever?

“The wonder of [this teaching] is that God’s mercy has room for the absolutely worst instances of our action or inaction…God’s love for each of us is greater than anything, good or bad we have managed to do…[and] God sits on the edge of God’s chair preparing to forgive your and my failures,”² whether those failures have to do with shame or pride, inattentiveness or smothering attention, too little or too much.  And not just yours and mine – but what is least and lost and last in the whole world.  Nothing and nobody is too far lost for steadfast love to find.  That is a given, Jesus tells us.  We don’t earn it – we can’t do anything to ensure it.  Our faithful, grateful, and joyful response is what Love longs for and looks for, perhaps most of all.  Come to the party.

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