josephholubsermons


 

May 17, 2009
Easter 6
Luke 15

Found

This parable of Jesus comes from a very special chapter in the gospel of Luke.  It is commonly named the Parable of the Lost Sheep.  Its context is the 15th chapter of Luke which I call the "Lost and Found" chapter of the New Testament because this chapter contains three parables, each portraying something lost and eventually found.  One cannot talk about the Parable of the Lost Sheep without at least referring to the other two parables because the three are interconnected. 

Immediately following the Lost Sheep is the Parable of the Lost Coin.   A women loses a silver coin, so she lights a lamp, sweeps the house, searches carefully until she finds it. Upon finding it she is so joyfully excited that she invites the neighbors over for a party to celebrate. 

The third parable is the familiar but, in my opinion, grossly misnamed the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  You know the story of the boy who demanded his inheritance from the father and then took off and squandered it in dissolute living.  In a state of total depravity he comes to his senses and returns home hoping his father might accept him back as a hired hand.  Upon seeing him approaching from a distance his father, filled with joy and compassion, runs to him, embraces him passionately, and calls upon his servants to prepare a grand celebration - a party - a feast with all the trimmings! 

The thing we easily forget is that there is another son in the story who was also lost, but lost in a different way.  This son was the good boy; the son who always towed the line, Mr. Clean, Mr. Straight and Narrow, Mr. Morality, the one who never deviated from his righteous course.  However, as much as the younger brother had become lost in his self-indulgence, the older brother had become lost in  self-righteousness, and as a result angrily withheld himself from both his brother and his father.  The ironic thing is that the ending is ambiguous as to whether the older brother ever came to terms with his particular brand of being lost.

My point is, this chapter in Luke's gospel is anything but three cute little stories, but a deeply poignant chapter that carries profound implications about living in this world as a Jesus person and Jesus follower.    

It is incredibly important to note that the chapter begins: "Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus.  And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them." (Luke then says)  So Jesus told them a parable..."  (three to be exact)

The thing that really agitated the respectable religious people about Jesus was that he bonded with those that they, in their moral arrogance and prideful exclusivity, had written off as lost.  "Tax collectors and sinners" was a euphemism and a slur for all of those the respectable religious people had consigned to a place outside of their narrowly defined religious boundaries.   "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."  "Eats with them"  was the real burr under their self-righteous saddles.  The fact that Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners was totally scandalous to the properly religious.  Table fellowship in biblical times was a deeply bonding experience among those who shared a meal and broke bread at the same table.  Table fellowship signified mutual acceptance of the humanity, worth and dignity of the other.  The meal table was a place of unconditional meeting and coming together that carried the prerequisite of letting go of anything that had previously separated and divided.  It was intolerable to the religiously proper that Jesus would "eat" with "tax collectors and sinners" and all they represented.  Jesus was modeling a scandalous paradigm of a spirituality and religious living that was reprehensible and totally unacceptable to them.      

If you track closely the life and teachings of Jesus in the gospels and make an effort to understand the social, political, economic, cultural and religious context of the times in which he lived, he lived his life in a most unique and totally remarkable way;  a way that undermines and is an unequivocal threat to many conventional paradigms of Christianity.  One of the most remarkable characteristics of Jesus was that he passed through barriers and stepped across all sorts of boundaries as if they didn't even exist; barriers that stopped everybody else in their tracks; especially religiously legitimated boundaries and barriers. 

I remember distinctly my grandma telling me when I was boy (grandma lived with us, and it was her house which only served to enhance her authority) that I was forbidden to ever cross the bridge that spanned the river that divided our town into two distinct parts.  The east side of that river was where the Scandinavians had settled, (where we lived) and the west side of the river was where most everyone else settled because they had no choice. (Italians, African Americans, Latinos, a melting pot of ethnicity, culture and race)  She made it clear to me that not so nice people lived over there.  It was unsafe over there she told me.  I was never to set foot on that bridge - the bridge that ironically she declared a barrier.   I remember riding my bike down to that river and right up to that bridge - and I would stop every time.  I would get off my bike and sit down and look across and wonder what really was over there; who was really over there; wondering if it was as terrifying as she portrayed.  As a child I never crossed on my own.  I guess because of fear!   But I am not sure what I feared the most: what I might find on the other side - or my grandma's wrath if I did cross. 

One of the things humans historically have done well is build walls and pass on to posterity the knowledge and skills required.  Humans have built some magnificent walls including: the Berlin Wall, the Great Wall of China, Hadrian’s Wall, Hitler’s Atlantic Wall, the Wall of the Forbidden City, the Kremlin Wall, the West Bank Wall, the Walls of Jericho, the Walls of Troy, and one of the newest walls, the border fence between U.S. and Mexico.    

Human beings are wall-builders.  Are walls bad?   "Well, no, not necessarily!  In the kind of broken  world we live in, walls become necessary,"  we might say - and say it with passion - especially walls of security built to keep us safe and protected.   Does that mean God blesses all of our magnificent wall-building?   I don’t think so because walls are also and ultimately a testimony to humanity's deepest and greatest failure - to live harmoniously in community with diversity.

Perhaps the most profound walls are the ones that cannot be seen, but are as real and formidable as any stone, brick, steel, wood or concrete wall on this earth, like that wall that was supposed to be a bridge connecting diversity in my home town; a wall that existed in my grandma's world view that she tried to pass on to me, so that I would make it a part of my world view. 

Traditionally these parables have been interpreted by those who perceive themselves not to be lost, as a kind of commissioning to go out there and find those poor lost souls, and convert the lost, and if possible make the lost comprehensively look as much like them as possible.  This interpretation has fueled the great global missionary movements of the 19th and 20th centuries and has been the impetus behind many evangelical efforts, and I would add, the cause of much harm and the infliction of a great deal of pain.  Many have been deeply wounded by the hell-fire judgmentalism, rigid legalism and forced confessions of faith held under threat of punishment and even death that historically have characterized and accompanied these efforts in an effort to save "the lost."

I look at this chapter differently, and I'll tell you why. If you read the whole chapter, it's not altogether clear, and it's ambiguous as to just who are the lost and who are not; who are the righteous and who are not.  Because the chapter ends with this eldest son, the prototype of righteousness, portrayed as also being lost, and because there is ambiguity as to his ultimate response, it changes everything for me.

The chapter ends with the father pleading with his eldest son to come in to the homecoming celebration for his brother, to sit down at the same table with his younger brother and eat, that is bond with him.  Doing a slow and intense burn, it didn't appear that the older brother was going to do that.  It doesn't say if he did or he didn't which means the story is not over.  And you see, that indicates to me that this chapter was especially written by Luke for the righteous and properly religious of his community who perhaps were beginning to construct religiously legitimated barriers of their own between people.  It was a call to them (and to us) to let go of whatever it is that prevents us from simply and unconditionally stepping over the barriers that separate in order to bond with those on the other side.

You see, for Jesus there was no other side because there were no boundaries.  He lived as if the world was a wall-less, boundary-less, and border-less world.  "Impossible," we say!  "No way!"  we insist.   Perhaps.  But even so, if I name myself after Christ in some way, I must deal with a Jesus who reveals in his life it is not impossible in the mind and heart of God.  It is, in fact, the way things are in the kingdom of God, and he invites us into his mind-set. 

I will say that I know of no other way to get yourself crucified faster in this world, figuratively at least, than to live with that mind-set.  Perhaps that sheds some light on what Jesus meant when he said following him requires taking up a cross.    

I think the bottom line on this chapter is that we become lost, lost from each other and lost to our truest selves, lost to our God intended humanity when we live behind confining barriers as if our barriers are what make us truly human and save us; barriers  that prevent us from connecting and really knowing those on the other side; barriers that prevent us from sitting at the same table; barriers that prevent us from breaking bread together; preclude us from looking each other in the eye and seeing the human being looking back - as different as he or she might really be.     

The statements printed on the back of this bulletin are a good effort to erase boundaries and barriers that only divide, categorize and dehumanize - barriers that are an affront to the Kingdom of God.

The meal we are about to celebrate is a meal that is meant to look a lot like the meal that the woman prepared for her neighbors when she found the coin; or the meal the father prepared for his wayward sons (plural); or the great inclusive reconciling meal portrayed in Isaiah 25 that God prepares for "all" the nations; or the last meal that Jesus shared with his confused and frightened disciples including even the one about to betray him. 

It's a bonding meal where we all come to know that we are "found" in the love of God that envelopes us all; erases all boundaries; reconciles to ourselves and to one another.

So, let the meal begin and let's celebrate!