During the past Lent and Easter Sunday, I preached a series of sermons on the parables, proclaiming that the parables Jesus told were at the very heart of his teachings and, by his life and example, he embodied and lived out many of those same parables. After examining several parables each Sunday for seven weeks, there were still many that were not addressed, such as the ones you just heard read. As we saw repeatedly in that series, Jesus often told parables in response to those who were publicly criticizing and even trying to disgrace him. In doing so, he usually did not respond directly to his accusers, or even speak to them directly, as happens again in today's scripture.
Once again, many upstanding religious people of Jesus' day were grumbling about the company Jesus kept, the kind of people no respected person would dare be seen with. To make matters worse, he even sits down and eats with them. This would have been as unheard of then as a white person inviting a black person to join him for a meal at a restaurant in Albany, Georgia in 1960. They were outraged.
When Jesus heard their belligerent words, he turned to those around him and told what on the surface seemed like harmless little stories. The first was about a man who had a hundred sheep and discovered one of them was missing. Jesus asked his audience, "Which one of you would not do what he did; he left the ninety-nine in the wilderness and went after the one that was lost." With a straight face, Jesus is having fun here. Everyone must have looked at each other thinking, "I wouldn't do that." Jesus was acting like what the shepherd in his story did was the normal thing to do, but to everyone listening it sounded like a crazy thing to do. That's because in the story the ninety-nine sheep were not resting safely at home in a sheep pen; they were in the wilderness. The wilderness is a dangerous place with too little water and food and wolves and other wild beasts that liked to eat sheep. The only thing that kept hem from harms way was a watchful shepherd. Not only that, but sheep are prone to wander off just like the lost had. Who knows how many more might be missing when the shepherd got back.
But this crazy shepherd left ninety-nine sheep at great risk and searched for one lost sheep, no matter how long it took, not giving up until he finally found it. When he gets back to the flock, amazingly all the other sheep had not run off or attacked by some wild beast. The shepherd then herds all the sheep back to the village where he lives. Some of his neighbors see him coming leading his sheep and are astonished that he is carrying one of them on his shoulders. As every child who has seen sheep in a petting zoo knows, sheep are dirty, stinky animals that are as likely to poop on you as not. Not only is the shepherd carrying a filthy sheep on his shoulder, he is yelling out to everyone he sees, good friends and casual neighbors, "Come party with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost." Even his close friends must have though all that time alone with no one to talk to but sheep was finally getting to the old boy. But that night the whole village was at his house eating and drinking. Everyone had a great time, but went home shaking their heads, thinking that party must have cost a lot more than one sheep would have cost to begin with! They had been to a lot of parties where a sheep was the centerpiece of a meal, but never in honor of one!
Jesus must have had his original audience all laughing out loud at this funny story. Jesus is having so much fun that when the crowd settles down, he begins another story. The first one was directed more to the men listening, since they would have been familiar with the life of a shepherd. Being the feminist that he was, Jesus tells another story directed more towards the women. He tells a story about a woman who had ten silver coins. She loses one of them, which was a careless thing to do. Then she turns the house upside down and searches every corner and cranny until, finally, she finds the silver coin. Then she goes around the neighborhood inviting all her friends and anybody else she sees to a party at her house. That night as others hear the music and dancing, I imagine someone wandering in asking, "What's the big occasion? Is it her birthday? Is her daughter getting married?"
"No, it's not anything like that," someone said. "It is because she had lost one of ten silver coins and looked everywhere and found it." The latecomer looked at them like they were playing a joke on him. "Yeah it sounds crazy to us too," they thought as they glanced around and thought, "Man, this party must have cost at least ten silver coins!"
Jesus began this story like the other asking, "What woman does not do what this woman did? The women especially must have enjoyed his humor here. The answer was no one; no normal woman would act like that! Now the crowd around Jesus must have been guffawing.
The only ones not laughing were those on the edge of the crowd who had been grumbling about Jesus to begin with. As they stood there looking angrier than before, Jesus may have glanced at them, giving them an innocent look that said, "Its just little stories about a man and some sheep and a woman and some coins. You don't think I am talking about you do you. Do you." Yes they did, but what could they do about it. Yes, they were just little stories&emdash;but with a great big punch.
I believe that when Jesus originally told both of these parables, they ended with the parties going on, leaving the hearers to decide themselves what they meant. Luke later offers his own analysis of these stories. Luke says the first one is about how there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. He says the second one is similar, about how the angels in heaven rejoice over one sinner who repents. That's a perfectly reasonable interpretation of these parables, but it does not explain them fully. After all, Jesus was hanging out with sinners and the religious folks are the ones complaining because he doe not seem to be asking the sinners and community outcasts to repent of anything. Here and elsewhere, its the self-righteous, the ninety-nine, who are in need of repentance.
That's a problem with Jesus' parables. It's hard to explain them only one way, even if you are one of the Gospel writers. For they were looking at a collection of Jesus' sayings decades after Jesus first told them and are writing in a different context for a different audience. Flannery O'Connor wrote stories that work a lot like Jesus' parables. When someone asked what the meaning of one of her stories was, she said rather gruffly that if she had intended to write something with just one meaning, she would not have written a story. She added, "Some people have the notion that you read the story and climb out of it into the meaning, but . . . the story is the experience, not an abstraction." (Mystery and Manners, p. 7.)
Luke says these parables are about how heaven rejoices over the repentance of a sinner but Jesus was just as concerned with the kingdom of God that comes "on earth as it is in heaven." For those of us who hear these parables today, we are not even sure which characters we are supposed to compare ourselves to. But herein lies the brilliance of Jesus. At different times and places in our lives, we are different characters in the story. It may be most natural to imagine ourselves on the receiving end. Barbara Brown Taylor says, "I listen to the parable of the lost sheep and it is about me. I am the poor, tuckered out lamb, draped across my redeemers' shoulders so full of gratitude and relief that I vow never to wander away from him again. Or I am the silver coin, lying in some dark corner of the universe until the good woman who will not give up on me sweep me into the light. They are stories about me, and I treasure them, but in their original context they sounded like anything but good news to (some of) their hearers…. From a modern perspective, it is hard to we what the fuss is all about.
To really understand them today, Taylor says the parables need real characters,
Real Pharisees and real sinners brought face to face with the real Jesus. I do not know how they look to you, but I imagine down at the plasma bank on boulevard, standing in line with the hungover men waiting to sell their blood, or maybe down at the city jail shooting the breeze with the bail bondsmen who cruise the place like vultures. I imagine him at the majestic diner on Ponce De Leon with a crack dealer, a car thief, a prostitute with AIDS, Buying them cheeses omelet's when I come in with the sixth-grade confirmation class and sit down a couple of booths away.
I imagine the kids getting a load out of this and then begin asking questions: "Is this who we think it is?" or " How come you warn us to stay away from people like that and there he is?" Then imagine myself saying something to them about those who are well do not need a physician or hw the good Shepard cares more for one than ninety-nine, But the words get stuck in my throat. I could tell this mornings parables, I suppose, but I am afraid they might get the message: that to be lost is to be precious in the sight of God, and their behavior rates less joy in heaven that the alleged repentance going on at the nearby table. How do you tell kids something like that? It is like telling them to get lost. (The Preaching Life, pp. 149.)
Barbara Brown Taylor helps us admit that we don't want our children hanging around with folks like that, and really, neither do we want to be seen with them either. If we are honest, we can relate to the Pharisees a lot better who were outraged that Jesus was not only hanging out with those seen as the scum of the community, but also thoroughly enjoying himself. Luke says these parables are about how heaven rejoices over one repentant sinner, but to the contrary, these parables very little to do with repentance. I can't see how a lost sheep is capable of repenting of anything and certainly the lost coin does not repent. It is not so much about repentance as it is about rejoicing.
The plot is not about amending our evil ways but about seeking, sweeping, finding, rejoicing. The invitation is not about being rescued by Jesus over and over again, but about joining him in rounding up God's herd and recovering God's treasure. It is about questioning the idea that there are certain conditions the lost must meet before they are eligible to be found, or that there are certain qualities they must exhibit before we will seek them out. This is about trading in our high standards on a strong flashlight and swapping our "good examples" for a good broom. It is about discovering the joy of finding. (The Preaching Life, pp. 151.)
I have often heard it said that Oakhurst is not an evangelistic church, and there is some truth in that. But in some ways, we are very evangelistic. One of my very favorite privileges at Oakhurst is hosting the membership classes each spring and fall for lunch at our house for the conclusion. I am looking forward to this next Sunday. It is a time when we break bread together and then each person is invited to share something of their spiritual journey. The stories are always amazing in their diversity. There are countless different reasons people find their way here. There is never just one theme that connects their myriad stories. But if I had to pick one that I hear the most, it would be about being somehow lost and found. Again and again, I hear stories of people who had wandered off, or kicked out even, from the spiritual flock they were part of. Some have been out there a little while and others have been out there many years, all but losing hope they would be found by a community that would welcome them in. How did they get here? Almost always, someone told them about a place that might rejoice when they showed up.
When the Georgia Baptist Convention and the Atlanta Baptist Association kicked us out about five years ago, we received lots of publicity that we could never have afforded any other way. A number of people who felt lost and were looking for a church where they could belong learned about Oakhurst during those times. Some came right away, and others have told me that it was years later when they were needing to be found and remembered hearing about Oakhurst in the news. Georgia Baptists have always made evangelism a priority and they helped us a great deal with our evangelism when they threw us out. As time passes, we have not been getting as many people this way. We need to be praying about something else we could get kicked out of.
No, not really. Most of our new members do not come that way.
The most common story I hear is that someone listened to their story of feeling spiritually lost and said to them, "You might want to check out my church. You would be welcome there." One of the greatest evangelists we ever had, the Billy Graham of Oakhurst, was Jack Smith, whose quilt hangs from the balcony. A person could be contra dancing on a Saturday night and in the middle of a dose-do, Jack would say something about his church. If they mentioned to Jack that they had been so hurt by some church that they could not imagine ever going again, Jack would tell them why he loved about Oakhurst and assure them they would be welcome here. Before the dance was over Jack was asking what time he should pick them up on Sunday morning. Jack carried his broom everywhere because he wanted to find anyone who was lost in some corner who needed to be right here. Not just Jack, but all of us are called to be evangelists and discover the joy of finding.
But you know what Jack also taught us. If Jack wanted to find any lost soul he thought might need this flock, it was because he knew how much he needed to be found. Those of us who were here will ever forget the day that Jack stood in this pulpit and told us he was HIV+. Jack lived longer than anyone thought possible in those days with only experimental drugs available. He always said he lived as long as he did because his spiritual community here and elsewhere kept him living.
The real problem for the Pharisees was that they looked at everyone else as lost souls while seeing themselves as the gatekeepers who would decide who was welcome and who was not, who were sinners and who were not. As angry as it made them, Jesus refused to let them have that role because it was reserved only for God. Instead, Jesus wanted them to see through his funny little stories that they were as lost as anybody else.
But what is amazing about the parables is that we are not just one of the characters in the story, but are always changing roles as our lives change. At times, we are out there with God helping to seek and sweep for the lost. At other times, we have not done a thing to help look; we just hear the music and come around to see who is throwing this crazy party. And then at times we are just like the Pharisees and most everyone else as more lost than we are. I believe Jesus' heart went out to the Pharisees as much as it did to the ones they called sinners. He wanted them to see themselves in the stories, laugh at how they fooled themselves into thinking that everyone else but them needed to be found by God. The Pharisees could not imagine that it just might be them who would be lost one day.
For every one of us, everyone, there will come the time when we ourselves are the ones who are totally lost, alone in the dark, scared we won't be found. Jesus offers us hope by showing us that God's persistence in looking for us is even greater than our propensity for getting lost. I want to quote Barbara Brown Taylor one last time inclosing for she puts it so beautifully what it is like to be found by the one his followers called the Good Shepherd:
Then I hear someone behind me who calls me by my name, and big brown hands grab me by the scruff of the neck, hauling me through the air and laying me across a pair of shoulders and that smell of sweet grass and sunshine and home, I am surprised, and relived to be found that my heart feels like it is being broken into, broken open, while way off somewhere I hear the riotous sound of angels rejoicing. (The Preaching Life, pp. 153.)