A DESPERATE GOD

A Sermon for the 16th Sunday in Pentecost

September 12, 2010

Pastor Laura Gentry

Luke 15:1-10

Don’t you just hate it when you lose something and you have to go searching around for it? Have you ever lost something really important? What did you do? How did you seek it?

I once lost a turtle in the garden outside my office in the church where I interned. I turned the place upside down. I even let the children’s choir mess up the landscaping in an attempt to locate the wayward reptile. “Izzy!” they shouted wildly as they hunted around. I had to chuckle when I overheard one little girl pleading. “Izzy, Izzy!” she cried, “please come back or I think Pastor Gentry’s going to cry!” When we found Izzy five months later, we rejoiced. It even became the headline story for our Christmas letter that year.

In today’s gospel reading from Luke, Jesus tells two parables in a row on being lost and found. Now these parables are probably quite familiar to us and so they might sort of fly under the radar. They seem so nice. Even sentimental. Especially the one about the lost sheep. That is even cuter than my turtle story.

But what we might not realize is how shocking these parables really are. So let’s try to unpack Jesus’ radical message in them, shall we?

First of all, let’s look at the context. It begins with Jesus getting criticized by the religious authorities. Now we have religious authorities today too, me, for example. And we’ve got our church council members and our Sunday school teachers, who we will be installing this morning. They’re good people. They work very hard to know God’s will and obey it. But these folks are having a hard time understanding Jesus’ actions.

You see, Jesus isn’t behaving the way they expected him to behave. They don’t mind his message so much as the company he’s keeping. He’s hanging out rather extensively with sinners. We’re taking about tax collectors—traitors who worked for the oppressive Roman government, and sinners so bad they couldn’t even move in polite society. And if that weren’t bad enough, he’s eating with them. In biblical times, that implied a closeness, a familiarity. You only eat with people that you’re really connected to. So why would Jesus, this famous rabbi, be eating with this band of scumbags? It is not surprising, then, that the religious authorities felt obligated to say something about this to Jesus. His behavior was driving them through the roof.

Jesus, however, in typical Jesus-fashion, has a ready answer for their complaint. In fact, he’s got two parables ready to go. He unleashes them to help them understand that God is not at all like they thought.

"Which one of you," he asks them, “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?”

Now at first, you might think that this is a logical anecdote. Ah, but wait a minute. Think about it: who would you leave their ninety-nine safe and sound sheep to go search for their stray? Well, perhaps if they had a nice clean pen to put them in so they’d be safe. But that’s not what Jesus is asking. He’s asking who would leave them out in the wilderness where they would be in peril to go search for the lost one? Um, well, then I’d have to say nobody. Nobody would be that ridiculous and reckless. That makes no sense. No. You cut your losses and move on. That's what a normal shepherd would do.

Well, what about the second parable? This one makes a bit more sense: if you had only ten coins and lost one, you'd search, too, sweeping and sweeping until you find it. Hey, you’ve probably done this! But once you found it, would you really call your friends and invite them to rejoice? Keep in mind that in biblical times to have a party means to serve a meal. So with that in mind, let's try that again: which one of you would search all night for your silver coin and then spend at least twice that much in celebrating your find with your friends? Again, nobody! At least nobody with sense.

But that's just it. When it comes to God's children—God's lost children—God hasn’t any sense. At all. God would eagerly risk everything to find one of them—one of us—and having found a lost child, would give everything to celebrate. There's only one kind of word for this behavior: desperate. We don’t usually think of God as being desperate but that’s the exact picture Jesus is painting of God in these parables. God is desperate for us. God wants to throw all caution to the wind in hopes of finding us and drawing us back into the fold of God’s love.

It is in Jesus that we see most profoundly that God is desperate for us. God sent Jesus to come and claim the wayward children who are lost. This is radical news.

Have you ever been physically lost? It’s a frightening feeling. When we traveled to Bulgaria 3 years ago, we were surprised to discover they rarely post street signs so having a map doesn’t really help. We joked that we had no idea where we were until the third day. But seriously, being lost is no fun.

And when you're lost, at least according to this parable, there's not much you can do. Jesus doesn't set out a formula about how you have repent first or earn your salvation by saying the appropriate "sinner's prayer." He seems to understand that when you’re lost, you’re lost. Sometimes, you don’t even know you’re lost. You need someone to come find you.

And Jesus finds us. The good news is that you and I have been found. Now that we’ve been found, we are free and we can rejoice. That’s why the Christian life centerd around joy. We were lost but now we’re found. When we can let this fact sink in, we cannot help but be happy.

Perhaps that’s what the Pharisees have forgotten—how amazingly joyful it is to be sought, found and loved by desperate God. They remember the importance of obedience, discipline, and morality, but they’ve lost touch with the pure joy of being found.

Thanks to these parables, we are reminded again of our own joy. It is easy to forget amid the stress of our everyday lives that what we’re called to is rejoice. How comforting to know that God is still desperately searching, sweeping, and looking for God's lost and beloved children and won't ever stop until we're all found.

I understand this because that run-away turtle I told you about earlier, well, she ran away again. So if you happen to see a box turtle who answers to the name of Izzy, please let me know. I’m desperate to find her.

Now may the peace of Christ, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

© 2010 Laura E. Gentry

CHOOSE LIFE

A SERMON FOR THE 15TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

After their 40 year journey through the desert, Moses and the Israelites have approached the Promised Land. Now, their leader gives them final instruction, as they will soon press on to dwell in the land promised to them by God and he will remain there to live out his final days.

The book of Deuteronomy contains the incredible set of instructions, which Moses delivers to God’s people. These people are people of the promise. They are truly living in God’s grace. They have been delivered from slavery and given freedom. They’ve survived the trecherous years of wandering in the wilderness. And they have been given the Law, which has the power to guide them into the paths of life.

In this morning’s passage from Deuteronomy, we are allowed to listen in as Moses lays out the important choice that they will need to make: obedience or death. Love God and live, he tells them. Or serve other gods and perish! The entire Torah, the first 5 books of the Hewbrew Scriptures, has been driving toward this choice.

Now, on brink of the Promised Land and at this crucial point at the end of his big sermon, Moses urges the people to make the right choice. God won’t make the choice for them. God simply lays it before them. Life or death. You can imagine the passion with which Moses cries out these words: "See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity." Choose life.

How do they do this? They cling to the law. They learn it, they love it and they obey it. All too often, as Christians, we get so fixated upon grace in Jesus Christ that we forget that the law is life-giving. When we obey God’s law, we send our roots deep into the very heart of God. We know God and we learn to conform our actions to God’s will. Not that we’ll ever be perfect, but each good choice we make brings us closer to life, closer to joy, closer to being who we were created to be.

You see Moses is preaching to the people who came from Egypt. They were born and raised there. Slavery in Egypt is all they knew. Now, he shows them the way of freedom. The hope is that they will want to embrace this freedom and not be tempted to go back to Egypt.

The hope for us is that we, too, will embrace the life-giving freedom God offers us. We too, must resist the temptation to go back to Egypt. Why would we want to go back to Egypt? Because it’s easy. Because it is what we know. Because it is where everybody else is going. Egypt, in this sense, is not the country, but the state of mind that loves to disobey God. It is that part inside of each one of us that says: “You don’t need this! Obeying God is too demanding. It’s way too risky. Just forget it. Be selfish. Live for your own purposes. You don’t need God.”

And that voice, my friends, is the voice of enslavement. It is the way that leads to fear, saddness, and death. It lies to us. Every day it lies to us. But we don’t have to listen to that voice. We have a choice, Moses reminds us. And the choice God wants us to make is life. Will we choose life? It’s risky, it’s alaming, but it’s incredible!

In the Psalm for today, it says: Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither.” (Psalm 1:1-3)

For us to be happy, according to this piece of wisdom literature, we must reject the advice of this world and delight in God’s Law. We must meditate upon it constantly so that we’ll be like trees plated by streams of living water. No matter how the weather batters us, we will still be tapped into our source. We will not wither. We will be choosing life.

What does this mean? How are we to meditate upon God’s Law? The word “meditation” often scares people off—they associate it with eastern mysticism. That’s not the point here. To meditate means to think about the instruction God has given for life. It means to dwell on it so much that it changes us. Day and night, we are to keep God’s Law in mind. This means the Bible is not casual reading. It is not for amusement, it is for life! We need to be reading it, considering it, meditating upon it, and acting upon it. That’s what choosing life is all about. How exciting that we can make this choice.

Jesus put this choice before his followers as well. To everyone’s shock, he says: "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26-27)

Wait a minute, I thought Jesus wanted followers. Now, he makes it sound so difficult that nobody would want to follow him! But he wants people to know exactly what they are getting themselves into. Early Christians left everything to follow Jesus and exchanged their place in their birth families for the Christian community, which became a surrogate family for them. It is not that they hated their families, but their allegiance to Jesus was so much greater that it resembled hate by comparison. These followers understood that life apart from Jesus is without value. Nothing is more important than following him. Nothing. And for this reason, they were willing to forsake all for him so that they could choose life—authentic life.

And so today, we have the exciting opportunity to meditate upon Moses’ message of the choice we have to make: life or death. We hear the joyful wisdom of the Psalmist who reminds us that happiness comes not from this world but from God’s law. And we have the call of Jesus who also invites us to choose life and not take that choice lightly because it may cost everything. Today, my friends, may we recognize anew that life, true life, the life we seek so deserately, is found in God alone. So let’s go after it with everything that is within us. Let’s choose life.

© 2010 Laura Gentry