OT reading: Exodus 32:1-14
NT reading: Luke 15:1-10
The Lord
changed his mind about the people of Israel out there in the desert, didn’t he?
Don’t ever forget, we are just like them. The people of Israel were impatient
and they wanted to rely on their own strength. Moses had been on the mountain
top way to long, and they were ready to get on with it, for all they know Moses
was gone for good. So Aaron his second in command, of all people, told them to give
him their gold jewelry and he made
them an idol to worship. He said this is the god that brought you out of Egypt.
Can you imagine?
The
Israelites were ready to celebrate. They arose the next day, made a great meal and ate it in
front of this idol and carried on with their women in a drunken stupor praising
a metal god.
How soon
they forgot the plagues the Lord brought on Pharaoh; how soon they forgot the
parting of the Sea; how soon they forgot the pillar of the Lord’s cloud that
led the way, how soon they forgot the manna from heaven. You can see why God
was an angry God. He was ready, in spite of his promise to Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob to make them a great nation, to be their God, to be done with them, to
let his wrath burn them away like a fire does dry grass.
But Moses
pleaded and argued with the Lord, reminding of his promise and the Lord changed
his mind. Do you hear that? He changed his mind. We have all been told God does
not change his mind; his word is The Law. But here it is in Exodus: The Lord
changed his mind. The Hebrew reads, The Lord repented, had compassion, felt
sorry for. Thanks be to God that he did, because otherwise we would be poor
wayfaring strangers, no Jesus for us.
So here we
come to these two parables Jesus told the scribes and Pharisees. They are
short, only three or four verses each and they sound very similar, but what doe
they have to do with the Israelites partying in the desert insulting and
inviting God to use his wrath against them?
I told you
last week that in Luke we are following the man Jesus as he made his way from
Galilee to Jerusalem where he was going to enter as a king, be arrested and
crucified at the time of the Jewish Passover that honors the Lord freeing
Israel from Egypt. As Jesus walks across this dusty desert land, crowds of
castaways, sick and sinners, and scheming scribes and Pharisees beset him. They
beg for healing, the look for ways to trap him. Last week we heard him say we
need the single-minded commitment to our faith that we let nothing draw our
loyalty from it. We need a single-minded commitment that is the same as you
have when you hate something. You must hate anything that gets in the way off
following him. “Don’t get me wrong,” he says, “It isn’t going to be easy, you
gotta carry your cross just like me.”
And Jesus is always ready for a meal.
Unfortunately he seems always to offend someone at a meal. He ate at a big
dinner with the scribes and Pharisees, the movers and shakers in the Jewish
community. They all fought for the best spot but Jesus rebuked them saying
always to sit at the foot of the table, and even better when you throw a
banquet, always invite the outcast and sinners, the worst part of society, not your
friends and family.
Who were
the outcasts in that time? Some were the most despised of society, the tax
collectors (they were usually fellow Jews working for the Romans and they
cheated and abused the public for their own pocketbooks and were worse than
sinners). Then there were the people who worked disagreeable jobs like tanners
and shepherds who stink of their work and handled unclean items such as blood
and carcasses. There were the people who were judged unclean because of disease
and deformity. There were the sinners who indulged in immoral behavior and
deceit, and finally there were those people who failed to live according to the
Law.
But Jesus
never differentiated among them. He willingly consorted with outcasts just as
he did the wealthy, and often ignore food and other ritual laws. And that got
in the craw of these scribes and Pharisees. They had just eaten with Jesus at
that big feast and now find him eating with the very people they despise. They
say, “This fellow has the gall to do this.” It is outrageous behavior in their
eyes. Not only is his behavior sacrilegious to them on face value, it insults
and diminishes their reputation. They have eaten with a person who consorts
with the unclean. In their eyes, there is nothing good about his behavior.
That is
when Jesus told them these two parables.
These
scribes and Pharisees raise a good question for us. When we look at people what
kind of sinners do we see? Is it the televangelist we read about who swindled
his congregation? Is it the person who is mowing their lawn at 11:30AM Sunday
morning rather than attending church? Is it the same-sex couple walking down
the street hand in hand? Is it the alcoholic stumbling down the sidewalk at the
city park? Is it the person who abuses their spouse or children? I ask myself
sometimes, how often do I recognize the sinner in me? What kind of sin would
you publically name about yourself? What offense demands repentance?
Jesus says
in this parable that the Lord celebrates when someone repents. “Repent” has an
important meaning in these two parables.
The problem
we have is the Bible was written in languages we don’t use, Hebrew, Aramaic and
Greek. In the New Testament there are several words we translate as “repent” in
English. To repent can mean to see the error of our way and feel sorry or
contrite for our actions and desire forgiveness. That certainly is a major part
of repentance, but the particular word in our parables is metanoia; it has a deeper and more important meaning. It means that
something has happened in our mind that causes a complete 1800 reversal
in our behavior. We have seen the light and have a changed our life, outlook
and our mind, just like God did when the Israelites insulted God with the
golden calf at Mt. Sinai. This is the repentance of these parables.
Now I ask
you, how does such repentance fit into this story about the shepherd and the
lost sheep? Jesus says when the shepherd came home, “(6)he called
together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I
have found my sheep that was lost.” He must be talking about the shepherd’s
gain not the sheep’s gain. The sheep
didn’t do anything but get lost.
Is Jesus
saying the shepherd is elated because he has brought the sheep home? Is Jesus saying this one sheep is more
important than the other 99 who were safely gathered into the flock?
It is a
puzzling why Jesus continues, “(7)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.” Did the lost sheep repent with an about face
in behavior, or is something else going on?
Let’s keep
that question in mind. Jesus is not done. If you don’t understand one he gives
you another one.
The second
parable is about a widow with 10 drachmas. Most people think one drachma
probably represented at least a day’s wages. So the widow has a significant
amount of money here, ten day’s wages. It could be her savings for the Passover
trip to Jerusalem coming up in a few weeks where Jesus is heading.
It seems
this widow is a little better off than some Jesus talks about. In other
scripture we hear Jesus referring to a widow who has a single copper coin that
she gives to the collection. The emphasis is she is clearly a very poor person
who has given all she has in honor to God.
For some
reason, he makes this widow a little different. But we are faced with the same
quandary in each parable because Jesus says in verse 10 makes it unarguably
clear where God stands with our repentance, “(10)Just so, I tell you,
there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Even God rejoices over someone who realizes their error and repents by changing
their way of living. The joy in heaven is the same.
What do
coins and sheep have to do with repentance?
Is Jesus saying that if the shepherd is so overjoyed at the value of the
one sheep of the 100 he found, and the widow the 1 coin of the 10, think how
much greater God’s joy is when someone changes their mind and gets right with
God, repents? God’s joy is greater than the joy of the shepherd and the joy of
the widow because one of us is infinitely more valuable to God?
I think we
are onto something but the mystery remains, who is repenting in these parables?
The answer could lay elsewhere. Matthew 9:35-40 and Mark 6:30-34, say when
Jesus looked upon the crowds of outcasts he had compassion, as they seemed to
be a flock without a shepherd.
Another
clue in our two parables is that Jesus is talking to the scribes and Pharisees.
Could he be giving them a lesson about how they have lost their focus? This is
really the way it often turns. We lose
sight of the underlying meaning of the parable (just like the words of our
hymns) looking for how it applies someone else.
We sang the hymn, Amazing Grace, with this idea in mind. Two of its verses say,
“Amazing Grace saved a wretch like me. Amazing Grace…how sweet the sound! I
once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.”
My worry is
how easy it is to hear a message so often that we become deaf to it and do not
live by it. Words like “How precious did
that grace appear the hour I first believed!” and “Tis grace has brought me
safe thus far, and grace will lead me home” speak from the heart of the writer,
a man named John Newton. This is about the joy in heaven we are discussing.
You may know
the story of John Newton, he was the subject of recent TV program and a movie
about his influence on William Wilberforce who started the British anti-
slavery movement.
John Newton was
a rebellious young boy, entered the British Navy early, was courtmartialed,
convicted, flogged and eventually discharged to service on a slave trader ship.
Probably the Naval authorities thought this would be suitable punishment
because the job was so horrendously cruel.
He sailed with
his ship from Africa to the US and elsewhere slave trade flourished. I can’t
paint an accurate picture of what it must have been like for the Africans. The
conditions were abhorrent, inhumane and unimaginable with many dying before
landfall. Newton’s captain was up top at the helm, proud, respected and fully
insensitive to the fact his cargo was human beings, because to him, that is
what it was, cargo. He was just like the scribes and Pharisees looking over the
bad crown Jesus shared a meal. Newton behaved so badly they gave him to a slave
trader who abused and mistreated him, but even so, his life was still
overwhelmingly better than the slaves’. In a severe storm at sea, he underwent
a conversion experience eventually quit the slave trade in disgust and became
an Anglican minister. When he described himself as “a wretch like me,” he was
serious. It wasn’t poetic exaggeration; he understood the gravity of his deeds
on the slave ships and the power of repentance that empowers a changed life.
In Luke’s
Gospel, Jesus constantly drives home the point about ministering to the parts
of society most people call the outcasts and sinners. I think he focuses on the
people who suffered because it is so easy to see the despair of the hopeless
and so easy for us to help them. It only takes personal action. There is one
often distorted passage, John 12:1-8 and Mark 14:3-8. It captures the message
about how easy it is to help. A woman washed Jesus’ feet with expensive nard
and Judas, the traitor, chided Jesus for allowing it, saying it was wasteful to
use money for the perfume on his feet when it could be used for the poor. Jesus
said, in my words, “You can help the poor anytime you wish but you won’t so
they will be with you always. You only have me for a little while.”
The message of
our two parables is not about just the sheep we help as a good shepherd or the
coins and the widow. It is not just about the joy of God over a changed life of
the person who had stopped coming to worship and has returned, or the errant
sinner who tastes God’s grace and turns around.
The parable is
a question to us all, who of us shall be the shepherd? Who of us shall offer
the Good News to a destitute dreg of society bringing the taste of living water
that will bring grace? This parable is about the scribes and Pharisees who
criticized of Jesus and ignored those lost wretched souls who like John Newton
long for rescue by saving grace.
What joy there
will be in heaven when one scribe or one Pharisee repents and adopts a new way
of living. What joy when one scribe or Pharisee ceases to ignore and embraces
the worst of society because they have the revelation that they are as
impoverished spiritually as the outcasts are economically. Repentance, a full
reversal of behavior, a changed mind, is the only hope of escaping this
wretched state of sin. We may get to heaven f or having compassion for the
people society rejects, but it is different from taking action to bring them
the Good News. That, I imagine, is the joy in heaven, when God sees one of his
children loving someone who knows no love.
If we are
serious about repentance we have to know Jesus is calling us all scribes and
Pharisees, not of the poor and outcast. We may be one of the 99 who are blessed
by God’s grace. We may end up a child at play at his feet, only God knows for
certain. This parable says we have not fully repented with a changed mind until
we do understand that we are the poor wretches tied to this world of material
wealth and give our attention to God’s least children. We have to live and love
so God can use us for our neighbor, any time and anywhere. Let us pray that our
compassion brings the lost sheep home so we are part of that great heavenly
celebration of joy.
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