Come to the Party!

September 15^th, 2013   “Come to the Party!”      Rev. Heather Jepsen

Luke 15:1-10

          We find Jesus this morning once again in the presence of tax collectors and sinners.  These people represent those on the outside, those on the margins.  Here is the great new religious teacher hanging out with the people who don’t even go to church.  Naturally, those who do go to church, the Pharisees and the scribes grumble about this.  What kind of holy man is this anyway?  He even welcomes sinners to his table.

          Jesus hears this grumbling and responds with two parables that seek to point to the nature of God and to our nature as well.  “Imagine yourself as a shepherd who has lost a sheep,” he says to the Pharisees.  Now mind you, shepherds are known to be trespassers and thieves.  Jesus’ listeners were surely not pleased to place themselves in a shepherd’s shoes, let alone to imagine God in the role of a shepherd. 

          “Which 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.  And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’”

          Jesus then challenges them to imagine themselves as a woman.  Again, this is another person who is low on the social ladder and not someone the Pharisees would ever consider comparing themselves to, let alone relating their lives to.  It is even more offensive to think that Jesus may be drawing a comparison between God and a woman. 

          “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 friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’”

When we examine this passage we find out that while Jesus talks about sinners and repentance, those ideas don’t really fit with the parables he tells.  A sheep or a coin has not really decided to be lost, nor can sheep or coins repent.  In my reading, I don’t find this passage to really be about repentant sinners.  Rather, this passage speaks to me about the nature of a searching God, and our response to the party God throws.

 “If you have 100 sheep and one wanders off, who wouldn’t leave the 99 and go looking for the lost one?” Jesus asks.  Who wouldn’t?  Well, most of us wouldn’t.  Why would you leave 99 sheep in the desert wilderness to go off looking for one who wandered away?  That simply doesn’t make any sense; and you are bound to loose more than one sheep that way.  But, Jesus implies, this is the reckless way that God searches for us.

          “And imagine yourself as a woman.  If you had ten coins and lost one, wouldn’t you search your house top to bottom to find the lost coin.”  Well, maybe, but I probably wouldn’t go to such effort for one coin.  And yet, Jesus implies that this is the way God searches for us.

          Like the shepherd and the woman, God searches diligently for us.  The shepherd risks temporarily abandoning the 99 sheep in the wilderness and when he finds the straying sheep, “he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices.”  The woman is described as lighting a lamp and taking broom in hand in her attempt to recover her missing coin.  Neither the shepherd nor the woman has a moment’s hesitation as to what to do; neither forsake the search until the sheep or coin is found.

          God is like that, the stories say, meticulously pursuing confused and lost creatures.  Such searching gives value to those being sought.  They become treasured and significant because they are not left for lost, but are made the objects of divine concern. 

          None of us would leave 99 sheep, go looking for a lost one, and risk the possibility of returning to find less than 99 where we left them.  And none of us would move all of our furniture, rip up our carpet, and push around appliances looking for a lost quarter.  That just doesn’t make sense.  We believe in balance and rationality.  It is not worth it to risk 99 looking for one, and it is not worth it to turn the house inside out for a quarter.  Yet, this is the way God searches for those that are lost.  It is a search that is unbalanced, irrational, and just plain crazy in the way it seeks to bring grace to the world.

And when the lost sheep and the lost coin are found, the person announces to friends and neighbors.  “Rejoice with me, I have found what was lost.”  Once the lost item is found, the party begins.  Such is the way God rejoices over us.  Come to the party!

          I wonder how people responded to these party invitations; our response to God’s invitation to the party is the other important part of these parables.

          Imagine if you had a neighbor with 20 chickens who suddenly knocked on your door and said, “I had lost a chicken but I found it, come celebrate with me.”  You would probably think that strange, and maybe not worthy of celebration. 

Or even still, if a friend came to your house and shouted, “I lost a quarter but I looked in the sofa cushions and finally found it, come celebrate with me.”  We might roll our eyes at such a strange invitation. 

          The Pharisees have rolled their eyes at the parties Jesus was throwing.  Here is the great teacher, whooping it up with sinners.  No thanks, I am not even interested in an invitation.  Everyone knows those people are not going to heaven.

          And yet, heaven had come to them.  Here was Jesus celebrating over one sinner who had repented, and the righteous, the Pharisees, could not even recognize what was going on and so excluded themselves from the party. 

          Think of the way we respond when we hear about someone repenting and coming to faith while on their death bed in the final moments of life.  Do we rejoice?  Or do we grumble at this person who has made it in just under the wire?  Think of the way we respond when we hear that some low life is back in church.  Do we rejoice?  Or do we comment on the side that it will only be a matter of time until that person is back in trouble again?

          In many ways we are like the Pharisees.  We don’t want to go to a party with sinners.  “Where is our party?” we ask.  Like the 99 sheep we may wonder why we were left behind as God focused all of God’s energy on the lost.  Why is there no party in heaven for me?  We are jealous. 

          These parables are Jesus’ response to the Pharisee’s murmuring and they still have the power to expose the roots of bitterness that dig their way into us whenever we feel that God is too good to others, and not good enough to us.  Typically, we want mercy for ourselves and justice for others, but the parables call for us to celebrate with God because God has been merciful not only to us but to others also, even to those we would not otherwise have accepted into our fellowship.   

          A Jewish story tells of the good fortune of a hardworking farmer and it illustrates this point well.  The Lord appeared to the farmer and granted him three wishes, but with the condition that whatever the Lord did for the farmer would be given double to his neighbor.  The farmer, scarcely believing his good fortune, wished for a hundred cattle.  Immediately he received a hundred cattle, and he was overjoyed until he saw that his neighbor had two hundred.  So he wished for a hundred acres of land, and again he was filled with joy until he saw that his neighbor had two hundred acres of land.  Rather than celebrating God’s goodness, the farmer could not escape feeling jealous and slighted because his neighbor had received more than him.  Finally, he stated his third wish: that God would strike him blind in one eye.  And God wept.

          These parables expose the grudging spirit that prevents us from receiving God’s mercy.  Only those who can celebrate God’s grace to others can experience the mercy themselves.

          Today we gather at the communion table, and this is a place that is all about what is lost and what is found.  This is a place that is all about the grace that comes not only to us but to those whom we might consider outsiders.  Everyone is welcome at this table, and it is a table that we come to when we are lost and broken.  For it is the times in our lives when we are wandering lost that we most need to be fed.

          God is like a shepherd who leaves 99 sheep exposed in the wilderness to search for one which has wandered off.  God is like a woman who turns her house over from top to bottom, to find one small coin.  God is full of compassion, and God hunts and searches for that which has gotten confused, or misplaced, until God finds it.

          God is like a shepherd who found his sheep and throws a party.  God is like a woman, who has found a coin, and spent it in celebration.  God is throwing a party, for everyone who is found, for every sheep who returns to the fold, and for every coin back in the money purse.  God is throwing a party for the sinners of the world and we are all invited, including those of us who have remained behind in the fold, those of us who don’t consider ourselves sinners. 

Come to God’s party!  Granted, our friends may not be there, and it may be full of people we don’t like.  But this is God’s party, you are invited, come as you are and celebrate.  Amen.