Luke 15: 1-10
Elizabeth Macaulay
9/12/04
We
have, on this rally Sunday, a pair of parables to guide us as we gather for
this new year; if we open our hearts to hear and heed them well.
Jesus
told these stories of the lost sheep and coin to church insiders. He told them in response to grumblers.
Throughout
time, grumblers have been those who see change unfolding and are frightened by
it. They are the “but we have never
done it that way” folk who don’t perhaps intend to be the death of creativity,
but they often times are.
It
is the grumbling religious elite of Jesus’ time - the Scribes and the Pharisees - who prompt the parables we
learn from on this day. Jesus, with
his crowd gathering and status-quo questioning ways was (and is) a tradition
guardian’s nightmare. He had the
message and charisma and a genius for storytelling that challenged the
privilege of the religious and political elite.
What
did Jesus do that got the grumblers going in today’s lesson? He is accused of consorting with religious
outcasts. People deemed so vile because
of their past sins or because of their current vocations that they are banned
from the polite company of the temple.
The scribes and Pharisees see Jesus choosing to sit at table with such
folk and they want to know. How is it
that he can be a man of God and consort with outcasts like sinners and tax
collectors?
Good
church folk are supposed to know well who belongs at the table and who does
not. Things run more smoothly and with
less anxiety that way.
Jesus
speaks to that sentiment by telling stories.
Stories deceptively simple and profoundly challenging – particularly to
the grumbling elite who are skewered by his stories and his choice of teachers.
Because,
to twist the intensity notch up a bit, Jesus uses two outcasts to teach about
the ways of God.
Shepherds
were social outcasts in the time of Jesus.
Not to be trusted and on the bottom rung of culture. And women?
Well, women were among the invisible.
Jesus
uses outcasts – shepherds and women – as stand-ins to teach about the lavish
way that God loves those who know the way of feeling cast out.
Jesus
uses the parables to teach that each one of us is precious. And maybe most precious of all are those of
us who know how very much we are in need of God’s promise to carry us because
we know what it is to feel lost and frightened. We know what it is to fall.
And
if we are blessed, we know what it is to open ourselves to a God who reaches
toward and welcomes us: the lost, the
fallen, and the frightened.
Not
only welcomes us, but feels joy because we are willing, in our kaleidoscope of
imperfections, to be found.
Anne
Lamott tells a story in her book Operating Instructions.
I
have a friend named Anne, who took her two-year-old up to Tahoe during the
summer. They were staying in a rented
condominium by the lake. Now of course,
it’s such a hotbed of gambling that all the rooms are equipped with these
curtains and shades that block out every speck of light so you can stay up all
night in the casinos and sleep all morning.
One
afternoon she put the baby to bed in his playpen in one of these rooms, in the
pitch-dark, and went to do some work. A
few minutes later she heard her baby knocking on the door from inside the room,
and she got up, knowing he’d crawled out of his playpen. She went to put him down again, but when she
got to the door, she found he’d locked it.
He had somehow managed to push in the little button on the
doorknob.
So
he was calling to her, “Mommy, Mommy,” and she was saying to him, “Jiggle the
doorknob darling,” and of course he didn’t speak much English – mostly he
seemed to speak Urdu.
After
a moment, it became clear to him that his mother couldn’t open the door, and
the panic set in. He began
sobbing. So my friend ran around like
crazy trying every thing possible, like trying to get the front door key to
work, calling the rental agency where she left a message on the machine,
calling the manager of the condominium where she left another message, and
running back to check in with her son every minute or so.
And
there he was in the dark, this terrified little child. Finally she did the only thing she could,
which was to slide her fingers underneath the door, where there was a one-inch
space. She kept telling him over and
over to bend down and find her fingers.
Finally somehow he did.
So
they stayed like that for a really long time, on the floor, him holding onto
her fingers in the dark. He stopped
crying. She kept wanting to go call the
fire department or something, but she felt that contact was the most important
thing.
She
started saying, “Why don’t you lie down, darling, and take a little nap on the
floor?” and he was obviously like “Yeah, right Mom, that’s a great idea. I’m feeling so nice and relaxed.” So she kept saying, “Open the door now,” and
every so often he’d jiggle the knob, and eventually, after maybe half an hour,
it popped open.
(Lamott
continues) I keep thinking of that story, how much it feels like I’m the
two-year-old in the dark and God is the mother and I don’t speak the
language. She could break down the door
if that struck her as being the best way, and ride off with me on her charger.
But
instead, via my friends and my church and my shabby faith, I can just hold onto
her fingers underneath the door.
It
isn’t enough, and it is. (Pg. 219-220).
So
in this year to come, when we are belly down on the floor searching for any
sort of hope and comfort I pray that we have a sense that the touch of the holy
is always within our reach. Always.
And,
I pray that we remember the lesson Jesus would have us to know as those who
would be guarders of the temple.
God
calls us not to the way of judgment.
God calls us to the way of rejoicing and joy.
In
talking with a friend who has gone through recovery, he was sharing what used
to be his favorite pastime in church:
taking the moral inventory of everyone else present. He could entertain himself and make himself
feel so vastly comfortable by sitting in the back of the church and cataloging
the sins of those present. He lived in
a small town, where the inevitable stumbles in the lives of townspeople made
for such great gossip fun.
What
he came to realize was that focusing on the supposed sins of others kept him
from owning his own shortcomings – including his dependence on alcohol. The entertainment he got out of setting himself
up as judge and jury kept him from the soul work to which he was called. Honest hard work in which he had to come to
know himself as a man sorely in need of God’s grace in order to heal.
He
went through the steps of recovery. And
he works them every day of his life – including the twelfth step, which
instructs those who know the joy of being made whole to share it with others.
Can
we remember two things, on this day of gathering and in the year to come?
God
seeks us, each one. And God calls us to
be the kind of found community that just HAS to share the joy. Happy New
Year Amen
.