Day 1371 - Can Someone Give Me an AMEN

A sermon shared at Mowbray Presbyterian Church, Soddy-Daisy, TN on September 11, 2016

OT Reading: Exodus 32:1-14

NT Reading:   Luke 15:1-10 (to 32)

We can’t fully appreciate this reading in Luke without recalling what we have heard Jesus said and do between the middle of chapter 13 and these parables. and engaging the last parable, the man who had two sons.  Here is a brief summary. This entire time Jesus has been either in the synagogue where people gather in common worship of the Lord or at the common table sharing the fellowship of others over a meal. His focus on compassion and humility, and inclusiveness at the common meal reflects the inclusiveness of the good news.

First, a religious leader criticized Jesus for healing a crippled woman on the Sabbath. Working on the sabbath is a literal violation of the Law. Furthermore, people at the time believed illness was caused by sin or evil spirits. The woman was an outcast so the Pharisee had him on two counts. Jesus rebuked the religious leader saying we should have the humility to accept that neither status nor a literal reading of the law should ever stand in the way of compassion, especiallythe  divine compassion that heals a sinner.

Next, Jesus used a shared meal at the common table with these leaders to teach that humility is the primary virtue for one who chooses to follow him. Why?  Because His good news is a fully inclusive message, we cannot open our arms and assemblies to the forgotten, rejected and despised sinners of society until we extinguish ego-driven, self-centered desires that fuel pride. We are to love as God loves.

Now in chapter 15, Jesus takes a peculiar, but not unexpected turn with the Pharisees and religious leaders to pull these teachings together to explain the divine reason for humble compassion towards the sinners of the world, something, by the way, we all have in common. Jesus relates three parables ostensibly about lost sheep, a lost coin and a lost son but really about joy. Today’s lectionary only gives us the first two parables, but everything Jesus has said and done culminates in the third parable called the man who had two sons, or as we often hear it called, the prodigal son. This parable reaches a crescendo that clearly reveals the foundation of divine joy that inspires Jesus. That foundation, his purpose, is inspired by an unflagging, deep, heartfelt compassion for God’s creation.

A word about parables is in order. Jesus said that he would use parables to communicate the good news.  (see Matthew 13:10-15,35). Parables are intentionally hard nuts to crack.

Fred Cradock, a pastor and writer, describes a parable as a literary device most closely related to poetry in the sense that poetry does not deal with concrete meaning but the subjective or metaphorical nature of reality. The meaning of a parable can be complex, obscure and almost certainly contradicts its initial “common sense” impression.

The parable intends to disrupt conventional thinking and cause one to consider fully the implication of what has been said. The value of a parable may is that its meaning can depend on the setting in which one hears it, that is, with discernment a parable becomes a generalized teaching aid that guides action of the faithful Christian.

Keeping all this in mind and returning to Luke, hear the first two verses of chapter 15: “¹ 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.’” These verses clearly reveal the entire context of the ministry of Jesus in this world, the tax collectors, outcasts and sinners.

In disregard for everything he has said about compassion for the outcasts, again Jesus is criticized for sharing the common meal with “sinners.” This accusation forces the Pharisees (and us) to admit Jesus practices what he preaches. These “sinners” are his invited guests. Sharing the common meal means he has fully accepted them. This is the offense the Pharisees see. After all his talk on the humility of the common meal and compassion needed to be a true disciple of the Way, what do you think Jesus is thinking as he listens to this grumbling?

He casts his message in parables, first in terms of property and then money.

In the parable of the lost sheep, the original audience would immediately relate to several prominent things. First, everyone understands the situation of the shepherd. They know that the shepherd would go look for his lost sheep. (In fact, this attitude towards responsibility to the sheep under care persists to modern times. A goat herder looking for his lost goat discovered the cave with the Dead Sea Scrolls!)

The original audience also would know there were dangerous predators in Palestine at the time and expect the shepherd to herd his 99 into the safety of a corral, or better enlist someone to watch them. But the shepherd did not do that. The shepherd left his large flock to seek the one lost sheep.

Fred Craddock said safekeeping the sheep would make this simply an act of frugality, or exercise of common sense. Risking his other sheep leaving them “in the wilderness” to find the lost one magnifies the power and value of the one lost sheep. Jesus says the lost sheep are like sinners, and we should rejoice with him, “…for I have found my sheep that was lost.”

The Pharisees are probably thinking, “Is the shepherd a fool to be so full of love and compassion for his flock that he is driven to risk his possessions and even life to find the one lost sheep? Could Jesus be talking about Divine compassion in this parable?”

A good Pharisee who knows his scripture might answer “yes.”  He (and us?) might recall Ezekiel 34:11-12, “¹¹For thus says the Lord GOD: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. ¹²As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered... “

If they are not making the connection to Ezekiel, Jesus spells it out in verse 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.” We can’t deny Jesus is using sheep to answer the criticism of inviting “sinners” to his common table.

Verse 7 is a key element of the parable of lost sheep. It appears again in the next parable of the lost coin (verse 10).  Jesus goes to the length to ensure we understand the two parables and messages are linked together by his choice of the first word of the second parable, “Or, what woman having ten silver coins…”

I cannot pass over the intentional parallelism Jesus uses in these two parables to underline the inclusiveness in the good news, one parable is about a man and the other about a woman. For those male Pharisee listeners, if eating with sinners isn’t bad enough, a parable involving a woman takes the cake. But that’s a parable for you.

The woman’s ten silver coins might be about two week’s wages. Her distress over the one lost coin and search until she finds it clearly shows her loss is significant. When she finds it, “She calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’” Isn’t that almost the same words of the shepherd who “… calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost?”  The shepherd and the woman share their joy of recovering what was lost by celebrating over a common meal with friends and neighbors.

Jesus makes sure the joy of being found celebrated in the common meal binds all three parables together. Jesus repeats the message in each parable, “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.” In doing this, Jesus invites the listeners (the Pharisees and us) to understand his joy and rejoice with him as he shares a meal with lost sinners, “Rejoice with me, for I have found what was lost.”

Reflection

Think about where we would place ourselves in these two parables. Are we sitting beside Jesus as he tosses these barbed parables at his opponents, the scribes, Pharisees and hypocrites? Or, are we, the church, sitting with the Pharisees that are not so hospitable towards “those people,” and often thanking the Lord that we are not like them? (Matt. 6:5)

My intent is not to force anyone in one position or the other, but to wonder as the parables cause me to do, exactly what is being said, to whom is it being said, and what does it mean in my own life?

There is little doubt we can excuse the concern of the Pharisees for religious conservatism and adherence to the word of the law as a desire to preserve righteousness. We can point to passages such as Proverbs 1:10,15, or Psalm 1 to defend those who avoid associating with unclean, or “evil” persons.  We can even point to Paul who advised the Corinthians to avoid “immoral” people. But we seldom appreciate Paul’s probable motivation to admonish his early congregations that were under siege by religious and government authorities to avoid giving the them excuses to suppress them and publically denigrate their faith.

There is also no doubt that Jesus presented a broadsided fusillade against that kind of literal thinking. Already Jesus has warned us not to fall into the trap of rigidly applying scriptural teaching at the expense of mercy. Jesus rejected that idea when he defended healing the woman on the Sabbath as an act of mercy and the religious leader’s criticism as hypocrisy.

Fred Craddock suggests placing our self in the camp of the disciples or Pharisees misses the point of the parable. Perhaps we should look towards the third party in these events for a clue about where we should put our self. Perhaps we should look at those that Judaism rejects under the Law, the outcasts and sinners to whom Jesus says he brings the good news? The question may be, “Are we standing with the outcasts and sinners, not the disciples or the Pharisees?”

I suggest we take a little time to visit the third parable to complete this trilogy of parables. You should be familiar with it, The man who had two sons. One son exercises his right to claim his inheritance, wastes it on revelry and returns to the father expecting only to be a slave in his household. The father sees the son at a distance coming up the road home and is overwhelmed with heart-felt compassion. 
The Greek word used here is a powerful expression of compassion. It is used in the gospels only 12 times, ten of those are describing the compassion Jesus has for humanity, the other two are unique expressions of human compassion in parables. One is the demonstrated by the selfless act of the Samaritan when he espied the half-dead man in the ditch on the way back from Jerusalem. The other instance is here, as the father catches a glimpse of his lost son coming up the road home.  We cannot underestimate the immense intensity of this compassion, it is truly Divine compassion.
What does his compassion compel him to do? He celebrates his son’s return over the common meal to the chagrin of the other son who already enjoyed his father’s grace. This third parable suggests that none of the three are so much about “social action” or personal obligations towards the outcast that our faith motivates, or, as the Pharisee and religious leaders were,  a call to defend the faith against those who oppose us. These parables are about grace.

Parables are obscure and disrupt or contradict conventional thinking. Jesus surely invites us to see our common situation with the tax collectors and sinners, the reprobates and outcasts who merit no grace from God or person but are forgiven and welcomed as God’s children into Divine presence by a rejoicing, compassionate Lord. If you doubt this, remember the parables conclude with the same powerful and compassionate expression of joy, “this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”

Now, can someone give me an AMEN?