I’m
going to start by answering Jesus’ presumptive questions, because I
know the answers. It is really exciting to know the answers to
questions Jesus asks, because they are usually trick questions, but I
have these. “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one
of them. Does he not leave the 99 in the open country and go after
the lost sheep until he finds it?”  

NO.
– What are you crazy?  Have you met sheep?  They are seriously the
dumbest creatures God ever created (ok, fine, they are tied with
deer).  If you leave 99 sheep behind while you go look for one that
got lost, when you come back, you’ll have 70, if you are lucky.  I
mean, I was a camp counselor, and we went over the “lost camper
plan” and step one as a counselor is that you STAY WITH THE CAMPERS
YOU STILL HAVE.  (The support staff looks for the lost camper, you
work on not losing another.)

NO,
you don’t go after that sheep.  Not unless you have a really good
team backing you up, and it doesn’t sound like you do.

Next
question?  “Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses
one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search
carefully until she finds it?  When she has found it she calls
together her (female) friends and neighbors …”  Um.  No one.
Because a silver coin is a days wage for a laborer and it is
basically enough to buy half a loaf of bread, and no one can afford
to throw a party for their neighborhood because they just found a
coin that would cover 1/20^th of that cost.  I’ll agree
that she’d search for the coin, it is after all 1/10^th of
her life savings, but NO she wouldn’t throw a party.  Are you nuts?

These
two parables feel like Jesus is doing a really bad Childrens’ Time
with all of us, waiting for us to object with the most basic of
reasoning, and then laughing at his presumed stupidity.  

The
problem is that I’ve been preaching regularly for 10 years now, and I
know not to trust it when Jesus appears to be an idiot. I’ve learned
that he only plays dumb to get our attention.  So, what is really
going on here?  It seems that the key to understanding Luke 15 is in
paying attention to the opening paragraph.  “Now
all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him.
And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This
fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’“ (Luke 15:1-2,
NRSV)

Curious.
The New Testament seems to assume that some people are sinners and
others aren’t.  Modern Christianity seems to assume that all people
are sinners (although if we look at actions and not just words, there
is an assumption that some people are WORSE sinners than others, but
no one cops to that).  What did it mean to call some people sinners
in those days?  R. Alan Culpepper, who wrote the commentary on Luke
for the New Interpreter’s Bible says “Those designated as ‘sinners’
by the Pharisees would have included not only persons who broke moral
laws but also those who did not maintain ritual purity practiced by
the Pharisees.”¹
I’m mesmerized by the idea of sin being finite enough that many
people wouldn’t qualify as sinners.  It might take some of the guilt
off of life if, at least once in a while, we “weren’t sinners.”

The
so -called sinners are set up in contrast to the Pharisees and
scribes, people who were religious insiders.  (To be precise,
Pharisees weren’t religious insiders at the time of Jesus, but they
were when Luke was writing his gospel, so we’re going to live with it
for today.)  The religious insiders were concerned about the access
the religious OUTSIDERS were getting.  

I
chose to use this text this week because I didn’t understand it at
all, and I took a leap of faith that some commentators would be able
to help me with it.  Sometimes life works out exactly as planned, and
I discovered AMAZING work in the commentary series Feasting on the
Word by Charles Cousar (Professor Emeritus of New Testament at
Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia.) and Penny Nixon
(Senior Minister at Congregational Church of San Mateo, United Church
of Christ).  The rest of this sermon is indebted to their genius, and
largely to their words 😉

“Often
this parable unfolds in a way that emphasizes the redemption of the
‘lost,’ but it is the ‘already found’ that the parable is meant to
bring to repentance.”²
Issues arise because in verse one the tax collectors and sinners are
coming near, and the ones who think they have an exclusive right to
be there are getting antsy.  Jesus seems to respond that the ones who
are “lost” are already a part of the flock.  They are lost out of
the flock, or in the house.  They already count.  

The
two parables are the same idea, they repeat for the sake of getting a
point across, or maybe because it is fun to have God as both a
shepherd (hated by Luke’s time) and a woman – and make most people
anxious at once.  The Pharisees and scribes are said to be mad
because Jesus ate with sinners, which according to Luke he’s done all
of once by this point.  They’re annoyed, “especially because the
sinners are ‘hearing’ Jesus.  ‘Hearing’ for Luke is a sign of
repentance and conversion.  Like the prophet Jonah in the Hebrew
Scriptures, the Pharisees and scribes do not take kindly to
the possible repentance of those who lie outside their definition of
the redeemable.”³

I
fear they’re not the only ones who feel that way.  Have you
heard about the Wesleyan Covenant Association?  They’re an emerging
group within the United Methodist Church who are trying to take
Luke’s “Pharisees and scribes” as their models for behavior.
Emerging as in their initial meeting is in October in Chicago.  Their
stated goals start with “Connect
evangelical, orthodox United Methodists with one another in a common
ministry of the gospel,” and culminate with “To uphold and
promote biblical teaching on marriage and human sexuality.”  (You
might be shocked to learn that they don’t actually mean “biblical
teaching on marriage and human sexuality” as  I understand it.
They mean excluding the LGBTQ community from the Body of Christ.) The
Wesleyan Covenant Association is designated to be an alternative
structure that can become a new denomination, based on the litmus
test of believing that excluding God’s children from the church is
the best way forward.  That is, they
do not take kindly to the welcome of people who lie outside of their
definition of worthy of God’s love, and they are willing to break a
denomination over it and define themselves by it.

⁴

Unfortunately,
the Wesleyan Covenant Association is NOT the only group of people who
immediately come to mind as trying to mold themselves after the
scribes and Pharisees rather than after Jesus.  On this 15^th
anniversary of the attacks of September 11^th,
2001, we live in a country where many people are calling for the
exclusion of Muslims, the registration of Muslims, and closed doors
to the refugees of the world.  We have a repeat of the ideology that
existed before World War II and kept many Jewish families from
receiving the welcome they needed to stay alive, except this time
with Muslims.  Instead of learning the lesson that violence begets
violence and the world needs food, peace, and hope from the attacks
of September 11^th,
we have people calling for greater violence, less humanity, and
thereby the creation of more and more desperate people willing to
join extremist groups.  Our sisters and brothers in faith who know
God through the teachings of Mohammad are particularly vulnerable
today, as they grieve with the rest of America.

Getting
back to the deceptively complicated parables, both the sheep and the
coin are passive.  As one commentator explains, “A
lost sheep that is able to bleat out in distress often will not do
so, out of fear.  Instead it will curl up and lie down in the wild
brush, hiding from predators.  It is so fearful in its seclusion that
it cannot help its own rescue.  The sheep is immobilized, so the
shepherd must bear its full weight to bring it home.”⁵
Furthermore according to Cousar, “Neither a sheep nor a coin can
repent.  The issue of the
two parables, therefore, is not to call sinners to repentance, but to
invite the righteous to join the celebration.”

Let
me say that again.  “The issue of the two parables, therefore, is
not to call sinners to repentance, but to invite the righteous to
join the celebration.”  He goes on to quote Alan Culpper who said,
“’Whether one will join the celebration is all-important, because
it reveals whether one’s relationships are based on merit or mercy.
Those who find God’s mercy offensive cannot celebrate with the
angels when a sinner repents. They exclude themselves from God’s
grace.’ The Pharisees and the scribes put themselves outside of the
circle of divine grace by the way in which they grumble at Jesus’
fellowship with tax collectors and sinners.  There is no joy or
celebration, no partying or delight, among Pharisees and scribes.
Even though invited to the reception given in behalf of the joyous
shepherd/woman, they cannot bring themselves to come; thereby, like
the elder brother (15:25-32), they are exposed.”⁶
 Indeed, when Amy Jill Levine was in Schenectady speaking on the
Parable of the Prodigal (which immediately follows these parables),
she said that the point of the parable is the question of if  the
older brother will accept grace or reject it after all.  It therefore
raises the question about ourselves as well.

*Cough*
Wesleyan Covenant Association *Cough*  (Seriously, this is so easy I
feel guilty about it.)

I
have one more gem to share with you from these wise commentators.
Nixon asks about the sheep and the coin, “Is it a search to save or
to welcome?  It is one thing to ‘save’ and another to ‘welcome.’
Religious insiders are more comfortable with saving the lost than
welcoming those whom they perceive to be lost.  Saving is
about power, whereas welcoming is about intimacy.
Saving is primarily focused on the individual, whereas welcoming is
focused on the community.”⁷
 *SNAP*

These
texts present God as the hound-dog of heaven, searching out anyone
who would for any reason believe they are not welcome or not worthy
and proving that person wrong!  All we are asked to do is
celebrate with God when goodness transforms the lives of those
who desperately need it!  All we have to do is rejoice with God!  And
apparently, sometimes, that’s too hard.  It is easier to think of
people as needing to be saved (and assimilated into our way of doing
things), and harder to make space to truly welcome all of God’s
children and allow them to impact our lives in deep ways.

But
that’s the call: to be welcoming and open to intimate friendship and
relationship with all God’s children, and to rejoice when the welcome
is received.  May God’s grace guide us to be the ones who are able to
rejoice!  Amen

1R.
Alan Culpepper, “Luke” in Leadner Keck, ed. , The New
Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville:
Abingdon Press: 1995), 9: 295.

2G.
Penny Nixon, “Homiletical Perspective on Luke 15:1-10” in
Feasting on the Word, Year C Volume 4,
edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Westminster
John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky, 2010) p. 69.

3Charles
B. Cousar, “Exegetical Perspective on Luke 15:1-10” in Feasting
on the Word, Year C Volume 4,
edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Westminster
John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky, 2010) p. 69.

4http://www.wesleyancovenant.org/purposebeliefs
accessed on 9/10/16.  The access date is especially important as the
wording has already been known to change without notice 😉

5Helen
Montgomery Debevoise “Pastoral Perspective on Luke 15:1-10” in
Feasting on the Word, Year C Volume 4,
edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Westminster
John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky, 2010) p. 70

6Cousar
(quoting Alan Culpepper in “Luke” in the New Interpreter’s
Bible, 1995).

7Nixon,
71.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 11, 2016