Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost
September 16, 2007
All Saints’ Bentonville
Gospel:
Luke (15:1-10)
All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."
So he told them this parable: "Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, `Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
"Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, `Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."
Ultimately, I have to ask, what can really be lost? Can we loose a sheep, can we lose a coin? We never really own such possessions anyway. We don’t actually own our houses and land and furniture or our stocks and bonds. We are merely stewards – just taking care of these things that really belong to God. The only thing we are seriously in danger of losing is our consciousness - our awareness that we and all that surround us are children of God.
Let’s look at this scene from the gospel reading more closely. Jesus is telling these parables to two groups, the insiders and the outsiders. The tax collectors and sinners (society’s outcasts) draw near to Jesus, straining to listen. The Pharisees and scribes (society’s elite – the insiders) are keeping their distance and grumbling. It’s one more example of Jesus not just practicing tolerance for those lost on the edges of society– but showing open acceptance by eating with them at the same table.
Like a lot of Jesus’ parables the one of the lost sheep doesn’t seem make much sense. What logical shepherd would leave behind his 99 sheep, and endanger their lives, to go searching through the wilderness for a single sheep who had wandered off. It would have made a great deal more sense for the shepherd to cut his losses and look after the flock that stayed together. In fact, the shepherd’s action makes so little sense to the writer of the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas that the picture is painted of a lost sheep that was larger than the rest and especially dear to the sheep herder. But that isn’t the way the writer of Luke tells the story.
The parable as told by Luke raises the question of whom we let slip away. Who are the throw away people among us? And causes us to ask if we are we willing to leave the fold and bring in those that society already considers lost.
In the Old Testament reading his morning, Moses was able to alter the course of history by asking God to reconsider the disaster he had planned for his people. Moses pleaded, “Lord, change your mind.” Sometimes it appears to us that God is willing to allow society’s outcasts to sink lower into disaster. It appears that they are lost and that God has forsaken them. Maybe we, like Moses, should be pleading, “Lord change your mind.” But how do we change the mind of God? Perhaps by working on behalf of the one sheep who has strayed. By working on behalf of those not included in the elite 99. Maybe, instead, we should be praying, “Lord, change our minds.”
These two parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin are part of three consecutively told parables about losing and finding and the celebration that happens when restoration occurs. A sheep that was lost and then found. A lost coin, a frantic search, and the coin is found. And the parable we didn’t read today, about a son who leaves home, squanders his inheritance and returns to the embrace of his father. Three stories of restoration.
We all long for restoration. Restoration of relationship - with exes, with children, with parents. And we long for that which is lost – lost sheep, lost coins, lost children.
Celebration is at the core of each story. Note that all three stories are told in response to the grumbling of the Pharisees and scribes at the fact that “this fellow, Jesus, welcomes sinners and eats with them.” He hangs out with the wrong crowd. Then the story is told of a shepherd, a housewife, and a father who all sought after what was lost and threw a party when it was found. Jesus had to make the point three times to make sure they got the message. God doesn’t want to leave anyone behind!
You probably have read J. D. Salinger’s classic novel, The Catcher in the Rye. Perhaps, like me, it’s been so long since you’ve read it that you’ve forgotten the source of its title. It seems that the only thing the young protagonist, Holden Caulfield, can imagine himself doing with his life is spending his days in a field of rye grass, where children play in a green meadow on the edge of a steep cliff. The job that Holden imagines for himself is that of the catcher, watching after the children and catching those who wander from their play in the rye and tumble off the edge. A catcher in the rye - saving lost children. It is a calling if there ever was one.
In God’s economy who is the insider and who is the outsider is reversed. “Outsiders, tax collectors, sinners, rebellious children, lost coins, lost sheep are the insiders.” “Pharisees, scribes, sheep that are comfortably cared for, coins tucked away in the safety deposit box, obedient children, the insiders are, in God’s economy – standing on the outside – grumbling. We can ignore the lost, those on the margins of society and pretend everything is okay. Or we can invite them in and have a real party.
She calls them “my babies”. They call her “Ma”. Her name is Oral Lee Brown. One afternoon she was standing at a street corner in the violence plagued flatlands of Oakland, California, waiting for the light to change. She noticed a shabbily dressed young girl, about six years old, standing beside her. The girl looked up at Oral Lee and said, “Lady, would you give me a quarter?”
Seeing that the child was hungry, Oral Lee took her to a nearby store and bought her some lunchmeat and cheese and bread and fruit. She fed her and sent her on her way with the remaining groceries. That evening, reflecting on her encounter, Ms Brown felt called to do more and the next morning went to the neighborhood school, described the young girl to the school secretary and was eventually taken to the first grade class room to find her. No one could recall the child. She seemed not to exist.
So instead, Oral Lee decided to adopt the entire first grade class of 22 students.
Born into an impoverished family of 12 in Batesville, Mississippi, Ms Brown was now neither destitute nor wealthy. She had a job in real estate and made about $45,000 a year. From that $45,000 she always tithed to her church (faithfully giving the biblical 10% of her income). After deciding to adopt the entire first grade class of Brookfield Elementary School she began setting aside an additional $10,000 a year to establish a scholarship fund to enable the students in the entire first grade class to attend college. She did this every year for the next 11 years, investing $10,000 annually. When asked, “Isn’t that difficult on $45,000 a year?” She replied, “It’s easy. I was living on $2 an hour in Mississippi.”
She not only set aside the money, Oral Lee, invested her time in the kids. She volunteered in the classroom, helped with homework, got to know the parents, and helped them stay out of trouble. She encouraged them, paid for doctor’s bills and clothes, and in a thousand ways showed that she cared about them. And when they were in high school she took them to visit colleges. Of the 23 kids in the class, 19 went to college. This was in a neighborhood where 2/3 of the children who start high school, never finish. Along the way, as she got to know the students, she would look at them and think, “This is one who doesn’t go to a welfare line. This is one who doesn’t have to sell drugs. This child doesn’t have to be lost.”
I like the idea that in each of these parables there is a celebration. When the lost coin is found, when the lost sheep is restored to the flock, there is great joy. So they have a party. We are called to share in the Divine joy that comes through restoration. And it is restoration with the Divine that we celebrate each Sunday at this table. As my best friend from college, Jack, used to say as he went around campus spreading the word of planned festivities, “It’s gonna be a small party, but you are all invited.”