In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Good morning.
This week’s Gospel has a very different mood than last weeks. Last week, Jesus kind of drew a line in the sand. He told the disciples that in order to follow him, they needed to make a major commitment, to be prepared for great changes in their lives. There’s a kinder, gentler Jesus in today’s Gospel. He goes out in search of lost sheep and lost coins. Why the difference? I think the audiences are different. Last week, he was trying to prepare his disciples for the difficulties they would have in the future. This week, he seems to be trying to get the Pharisees to understand the Kingdom of God, to break them out of their rigidity. But then, the audience is really the same, isn’t it, because the audience is us.
What does Jesus want the Pharisees and scribes to understand? They were grumbling about this popular prophet who seemed more interested in outcasts than in the fine, upstanding members of the Jewish religion. Like they asked elsewhere in the Gospel, if he were truly a prophet, he would know who these people were, who was “out” and who was “in.”
Jesus responds to their grumbling with two stories – a lost sheep and a lost coin.
“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? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices.” Each sheep is important.
What is he telling us? Quite a bit, I think.
Jesus is promising us that whenever we are lost he will search us out, find us, and take us home. Now, the coin doesn’t really care if it gets returned to the purse. The sheep do not have to express gratitude for being found. It doesn’t have to promise never to stray again. In fact it will stray again, the first chance it gets. So, Jesus is telling us that we are not required to do anything to be found and brought back. Really, we are not much different than the sheep. Every time we’re brought back to the fold, we look for ways to bolt again, and we try to figure out ways to better hide from Jesus. Fortunately for us, it is impossible for us to successfully hide from God’s unconditional love. We can guarantee to God that we will stray again. But Jesus guarantees to us that he will find us and return us again, and again. No ifs, no ands or no buts.
Well, not quite. There is an “and.” Every time Jesus finds us and returns us to the fold, he says, “and by the way, I have something for you to do.” That’s what he did to Paul in today’s reading from the first letter to Timothy.
Paul was a good, zealous Jew. He was trying to help rid the Jewish religion of a nasty little heresy that had arisen. He was doing God’s work! He didn’t know he was lost! But Jesus did. And Jesus used a rather dramatic event to get Paul’s attention, to get Paul to see that he had been very lost and needed to be found. Then he gave Paul a job to be an apostle, to proclaim the Good News of our salvation in Jesus Christ our Lord. Paul took the job and ran with it. And as far as I know, Paul never got lost again.
A somewhat different and more contemporary example is Mother Teresa. Early in her career as a nun, Mother Teresa had visions of Jesus calling her to serve the poorest of the poor. Now, you may have seen or heard recent news reports that brought out the serious spiritual doubts and conflicts that plagued Mother Teresa throughout her ministry. The reporters seemed to feel that these “imperfections” (they thought) would cause her to be seriously reconsidered as a saint, one to be emulated. Perhaps she wasn’t so saintly after all, wasn’t so worthy. But that wasn’t my reaction. My reaction was “Thank God. She’s human.” Her inner conflict and doubts are similar to those that all of us have at times, except that hers were writ very large.
She wrote, “…there is no One to answer – no One on Whom I can cling – no, No One. … Where is my Faith – even deep down, right in there is nothing, but emptiness and darkness – My God – how painful is this unknown pain – I have no Faith – I dare not utter the words and thoughts that crowd in my head – and make me suffer untold agony.”
Wow! Here is a woman in deep spiritual crisis. It seems that Mother Teresa was chronically lost, and unlike Paul, she knew it. She desperately wanted to be found. It’s hard for a saint – you can’t be a coin; you can’t be a sheep. You can only be a saint. Doubts that you and I might have, that we might stew about and perhaps finally just accept, they become full-blown crises for a saint. Mother Teresa called out to Jesus and no one answered. It must have been like that for the disciples after the Ascension. Suddenly Jesus was gone, and they felt lost, like sheep without a Shepard. But Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to give them, and us, strength and courage. Mother Teresa used the strength from the Spirit to persist in her ministry, when a lesser person might have given it all up. When doubts and conflict seem on the verge of overwhelming us, we can draw on that same strength of the Spirit. Think of Mother Teresa. Forge ahead. You will be found.
But not just individuals can get lost. Whole nations can. Found in Egypt and called to be God’s people, Israel frequently became lost. From the golden calf in the Sinai desert to the fertility gods of the native Canaanites, Israel wandered away from the one God time after time. And really, fertility gods can be a lot more fun than a God who gives you a long list of do’s and don’ts – and it’s a very long list.
In today’s reading from Jeremiah, the prophet looked around him and didn’t like what he saw. The people of Israel had gotten caught up in themselves and their self-indulgences. Once again, Israel had abandoned the God of the Covenant. Jeremiah interpreted the advancing Babylonian army, and the coming destruction, as God’s punishment for Israel’s apostasy. Here is a God to be afraid of.
But Jesus is trying to remind Israel that God isn’t really like that. As a result of their own actions, Israel became lost. But God is the one who finds Israel where they are, spiritually or physically, and brings them back to the fold. The God of Israel is a saving God, a loving God. That’s Jesus’ message to the Pharisees.
And it’s Jesus’ message to us. Like Paul, Mother Teresa and the Israeli nation, we get lost. We get lost because of our doubts. We get lost because of our zeal. We get lost when we get caught up in ourselves. But most of all, we get lost because of our humanness. We may know it or we may not know it, and we might not even care. But we still need to be found. And Jesus promises us that we will be found. Think about it. This is really a great comfort. We are so loved that we will never be abandoned.
But then comes the clinker. When Jesus finds us, he calls us. He has a job for us to do. Yes, he calls us each to specific ministries, to specific service. But there’s more. We are called to emulate Jesus, to do exactly what Jesus was doing in today’s encounter with the Pharisees that caused them to criticize him, more than once. We are called to PARTY!! More accurately, we are called to celebrate. To celebrate God’s lavish, and unconditional love for us, and we are called to share that love, like Jesus did, with everyone we encounter. And it is a party.
But, you know, at times, each of us is like the Pharisees. There are those we would exclude from our celebration of God’s love. To us, they are the unworthy. They might be conservatives, or liberals. Gays or followers of a Kansas preacher or African bishop. They might be Pro life or Pro choice. Poor, Homeless, Undocumented. They are those that we feel are not deserving of God’s love. And they are people we simply don’t want to be part of OUR celebration. But let’s be honest, it’s not OUR celebration. It’s God’s celebration. It’s Jesus’. When we exclude someone, we exclude Jesus. And then we sin. We become lost and in need of being found.
So, I invite you during the coming week to consider ways that you are lost (and we all are). Consider the ways that you are trying to keep from being found by Jesus, pretending that he can’t possibly know where you are hiding. I invite you to consider ways that you can celebrate God’s lavish, unconditional and undeserved love for you, and ways to share that love with other equally undeserving people. When you do that, you will be proclaiming the Good News, the Good News of our salvation in Jesus Christ, our Lord.