March 14, 2010

At All Cost, We Seek the Lost

March 14 – Communion Sunday

Psalm 32 sung as Psalter and Luke 15:1-7

Preached by Linda Jo Peters ~ March 14, 2010

INTRODUCTION TO SCRIPTURE
Luke 15:1-7
Jesus tells three stories about seeking the lost. The first is our reading for today, about a shepherd losing a sheep, the second is a woman who losses a coin and finally a very familiar parable about a father who losses a son. Our Lenten worship on Thursday is focusing on the story of the Prodigal Son. Each week we consider the view point of a different character in the story. One of the commentators on Luke reminds us that the Bible’s focus is on God not humanity. The point of these parables is not how we become seekers but how we are the lost and God is the seeker. This story about God is also an invitation to become a part of God’s story—if we can stop running away and hiding from the one who yearns and searches for us we will be found and then can become seekers with God.


Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” 3So 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? 5When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6And 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.’ 7Just 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.


SERMON
These stories Jesus tells are packed with challenge and wisdom. There is usually a twist at the end. Did you hear the twist at the end? A complete reversal of their way of seeing and being in the world confronts the Pharisees.

Vincent Donovan was a Roman Catholic priest-missionary in Tanzania in the 1960s. Exasperated with conventional forms of Catholic education, he persuaded his bishop to let him simply wander among the Masai tribes, sharing their life and talking about God. Initially he wrestled with his own doubts about how the particular story of Jesus’ cross and resurrection translated into the Masai culture. But a Masai elder told him to contrast the relationship of a Western hunter with his prey and with the relationship of an African lion with its prey. To a white hunter shooting an animal with his gun from a great distance only requires his eyes and his fingers to take part in the act. But a lion uses his nose and eyes and ears picking up on the prey. His legs give him the speed to catch it. All the power of his body is involved in the terrible death leap and single blow to the neck with the front paw, the blow that actually kills. And as the animal goes down the lion envelops it in his arms thus pulling it to itself, and making it part of himself. This is the way a lion hunts. The Masai elder went on. “You told us of the High God, how we must search for him, even leave our land and our people to find him. But we have not done this. We have not left our land. We have not searched for him. He has searched for us. He has searched us out and found us. All the time we think we are the lion. In the end, the lion is God.”

This violent image of God tracking us done to consume us is far more terrifying than the gentle shepherd looking for one lost sheep, even at the risk of losing the 99 left behind. But today we gather at the table of Christ whose broken body and blood shed for our lives is remembered as we consumed the bread and drink of the cup. Such a feast creates a violent picture. In this violence we find communion with God. God is invested fully in union with us. The challenge for us is to realize how totally God’s investment is in our relationship and how total our response must be in relationship with God and God’s creation.

Here we are gathered together to do church. That is good. It is not foolproof or idol-proof, but good. It is better to be gathered together than to be off alone, perhaps scared or despairing. Surely it is better to be gathered together than to be isolated doing one’s own thing, perhaps lost in indifference, never thinking about anybody else, or perhaps lost in power, being controlling and ruthless to those around you.



Now here’s the trick: We are doing church, and that’s good. But we have followed Jesus in here, we have gathered together to be renewed, so that every week we can follow Jesus out of here -- out to the school and the hospital and the bank and the office and the neighborhoods. We gather together here to follow Jesus, and then we follow Jesus out of here to seek the lost, the broken, the bleating, and the alone.



Jesus seems to care inordinately about the ones who aren’t here. This interest in the absent may seem unreasonable to those of us who show up and keep the institutional church humming, but it is the gospel. Jesus came to find the lost -- lost sheep, lost coins, lost brothers, lost prostitutes, lost loan sharks, lost jack-asses, lost weaklings. Jesus came at terrible violent risk to look for them. He seeks the very people we have given up on or forgotten about or dismissed because of their unworthiness. These are the very ones that Jesus has headed out to look for. He looks back over his shoulder to see if we are following him.

Remember what happens every-time somebody who was lost gets found? Amazing grace happens! Celebration for all erupts, because we are so inextricably bound one to another, church leader to stranger, hungry to full, joyous to mean-spirited, faithless to faithful. What happens when the lost sheep gets found is that the joy is contagious. And the 99 sheep have an excuse to throw a party, we do it every week but even more on Communion Sunday. Amen.