"The Joy of Being Found"
A sermon by The Rev. Keenan Kelsey
Noe Valley Ministry, Presbyterian Church (USA)
September 12, 2004
- Luke 15:1-10
- 1 Now all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ 3 So he told them this parable: 4 ‘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? 5 When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6 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.” 7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance. 8 ‘Or what woman having ten silver coins, (drachmas, each worth about a day’s wage for a laborer); if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9 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.” 10 Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’
The psalmists and the prophets certainly knew Yahweh as a God who listened to their complaints and fears, who received their praise, who knew each individual name, who never deserted them, never stopped searching for their hearts.
But by the time Jesus came along, some of the Jewish people seemed to have forgotten or distorted the nature of God. The scribes and Pharisees had come to believe that God only cared about those who kept the law; that the law was the ultimate measure of worth. And the law was based on propriety and cleanliness. So when they were outraged when they found Jesus eating with the riff-raff, the harlots and tax collectors, even lepers, even gentiles, even women!
They began to grumble - the Greek word is wonderfully onomatopoeic, diagongyein - to complain - The peasants must have gathered closer, straining to see the latest theological argument with the Pharisees, to hear the unraveling of complexities. But the whole matter was a simple one for Jesus - God loves every single person in the world. Everyone! The religion of his day was much into who was in and who was out, into building walls, drawing lines, raising barriers. Jesus would have none of that. All that mattered was persons, letting them know they were loved, that God's love would make a difference in their lives, they were welcome in the flock every bit as much as the purist Pharisee.
I imagine Jesus, pondering how best to describe the depth of God's love, surveying the crowd, fixing on the ordinary objects the peasants held in their hands, and telling a pair of stories about how we look for things that are lost. First Jesus reminded his listeners of what it’s like to lose something. I can identify with these stories. On Thursday Joan Huff, the interim who preceded me here, left me a message: " You'll appreciate this Keenan. I bussed back to church and could not find my keys anywhere! I finally backtracked all the way to my home and found them in my front door! " Apparently I have become not just famous, but infamous, for losing my keys. People call me to tell me stories about lost keys! I do tend to put them down anywhere and everywhere, leaving them in my car or in the kitchen.
This past week I surpassed myself by putting them down by the ladies room basin and apparently knocking them into the trash! I was as frantic as I've ever been- and the afternoon was spent in searching and searching, walking backwards through my mind, as Big Bird once described it. I searched until I found them. Whatever made me dig into the trash under a mound of paper towels I do not know. But I found them. And I rejoiced!
And sometimes, when I don't have time for one of you because I am talking to a street person, or spending time with a nursery school parent or a drop-in, I think I might understand that first-century shepherd. For the shepherd, every sheep had to be accounted for. If one was lost, the shepherd was required to at least bring home the fleece to show how it had died. It was often part of the day's work for a shepherd to risk his life for the sheep, to search incessantly for the one missing one -and I suspect that the missing sheep was not often the adorable little lamb, but a craggy old ram with gnarled horns and a scowl. The shepherd rejoiced when he found the missing one!
The peasants would have recognized this as the steadfast nature of Yahweh. And they would have recognized themselves as the objects of God's search. Jesus meant for this to be instructive for the Pharisees, but just plain good news for the peasants. And friends, isn't it still good news for us today? Good news for anybody who has ever done anything wrong - anybody who has ever messed up so badly and saw so little hope for changing that they simply went on giving in to their selfish, self-destructive habits. Good news because as much as we try to escape that offer of love and acceptance, as often as we insist on turning our backs on it, God will not rest until we "get it". She isn't going to bother herself about anything else except sweeping the place high and dry until there is no place left for us to hide.
It's just the way God is, that's all. The way Jesus was, that's all.
All of us get lost from time to time. We all make wrong turns based on greed or pride or fear or lust or anger or laziness. Some of us are like the sheep - we never intend to get lost but we nibble our way blade by blade of grass, until we get far away from the rest of the flock. Others are lost like the coin, by accident, by carelessness; it is not anything that is planned; it happens. Or sometimes our lostness comes from an intentional decision, a choice to distance from one's source of life , as in the lost- and-found story of the Prodigal Son. Our lostness reminds me of a story of a husband and wife who climb in the car. The wife complains, "Dear, we don't sit as close as we used to." The husband turns, safely tucked behind the steering wheel, and says to her, "Well, honey, who moved?"
I have been listening to Barbara Kingsolver read her essays called Small Wonder, written in the months following the 9/11 terrorism. She talks about the day her daughter came home from kindergarten, her face tense with expectation. "Mommy, are they still having that war in Afghanistan?" As if, Kingslover muses, in one afternoon while kindergarteners were working hard to master the letter L, the world would decide to lay down its arms. She sat on the floor and held her tightly, wrapping her arms around her: "Yes, I am sorry, but they are still having that war." "Well then," her daughter stated, "if people are just going to keep doing that, I wish I'd never been born." At that moment, the child was lost, as lost as the sheep or the coin or you or me.
Her mom said, "Do you really mean that? You wish you'd never known daddy or me or your sister? That you'd never gotten the chance to hug us, to have us read books to you? Or tuck you in at night? Do you wish you'd never gotten to take care of your chickens and gather their eggs? To see rainbows?" "Well, no, of course not," she said soon enough, as she allowed that she was glad to be alive. In that moment, she was found. And Barbara Kingsolver said, "I'm sure that's true as she threw her heart and her limbs into a mostly unburdened life. But I understood, that day, that we are all in the same boat. It's the same struggle for each of us, and the same path out, the utterly simple, infinitely wise, ultimately defiant act of love one thing, then another, of loving our way back to life, of letting God find us and love us back to life."
I remember reading a Peanuts cartoon strip in which Lucy comes up to her brother Charlie Brown and does something that is very unusual for her. She says-"I love you." But Charlie Brown keeps responding by saying: "No you don't." And each time Lucy answers a little louder: "Yes I do. I really love you." But Charlie Brown has been rejected so many times he keeps saying: "No. It can't be true." So in the last square, Lucy has reached the limit of her patience and she screams out in a loud voice: " Hey stupid, I love you."
I wonder if God has to do that with us sometimes. I mean, what does it take to get through? Does God have to yell out: "Hey blockhead, I love you ?" Can't you see that God will literally turn this world upside down in her search for one human soul. Maybe you feel like God has been turning your world upside down a little bit lately. Well, that's love at work. And the supreme sign of that love is the gift of Christ Jesus.
God's love seeks and moves toward us even before we do any seeking or reaching out to God. We call it Grace, the faith understanding that even if we are unworthy, God reaches out to us. It is God who disturbs our conscience, opens our eyes, brings us to our senses, prompts us to pray, lifts us into fellowship and even brings us together on Sunday. God enables us to rise above passion and prejudice and all littleness and meanness into the life we were meant to live. Terribly tempted, tried, on the point of giving up, we have found ourselves strangely upheld and empowered. The God of the Christian faith takes the initiative. And when we respond, it is God who rejoices.
These parables are especially appropriate for us today, because as we gather, the joy of finding each other is so abundant that it cannot be contained. The lost coin and the lost sheep are more than prized possessions; they are parts of a whole. The sheep belong to the flock and the coin belongs to the purse. Without them the whole is not complete. The search, then, is not the end of the parables, not the end of the story. The search is only the means for restoration and wholeness. Today we rejoice, in being found by God, in being found by one another. The presence of each of us here together, called by a God who lovingly reaches, intrudes, seeks, and saves is a cause for rejoicing. The presence of the table around which we will gather is the real end of the story. I hope you are ready, and willing to be loved by that much of a God.