16 September 2007

Luke 15:1-10

I hate to lose things. Of course, being who I am, I lose things…often. Too often. Way too often, I’m searching our apartment for that one important document that I know I put in a safe place which I just can’t remember. Or for a particular item that is the only one that will do what I need to do at the moment.

Of course, I don’t do this on purpose. I don’t hide things from myself deliberately; at least I think I don’t. Now my mother would say, “if you just put things where they belong…” But that’s the problem. Sometimes I forget where something belongs. Or I’ve put something in a logical spot and the spot changes. In short, I am no stranger to losing things.

So I suppose that today’s Gospel reading is made just for me. And those just like me. (And I’m sure there are a few of us around here.) It seems it, doesn’t it? A shepherd losing a sheep? A woman who misplaces one tenth of her wealth? What are these people thinking? Shepherd’s jobs are to keep track of sheep. That’s what they do. And a woman alone losing a coin is catastrophe. Who do these people think they are, losing valuable things like that?

Jesus is telling this parable, remember, to the Pharisees and scribes. They were complaining that Jesus is spending too much time with tax collectors and sinners. Of course, that’s what Jesus did. He spent time with the people on the fringes; those on the margins of their culture; the lost people as it were.

And he uses these same lost people, these marginalized folks of their society, in his parables. For here is a shepherd. Shepherds are the lowest of the low. They have a job that requires them to be out in all weather. They tend their group of sheep 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They smell and they’re dirty and they just aren’t the type of people you’re supposed to care about.

Or a single woman. A single woman, for crying out loud. Who knows why she’s single or how she became single? There’s a hint that she has some money, but who knows how she got it? Who would care about a single woman in that culture? Or her money, for that matter.

But Jesus uses these outsiders as an example to those who are in the religious power in their society, those Pharisees and scribes. They would prefer, it seems, to ignore those who are not in the midst of religious purity. They don’t want to associate with tax collectors and other sinners, no doubt including shepherds and single women.

But Jesus uses them as an example. And they aren’t even the focus of the story. It’s the lost items which hold our attention. Those items that have been misplaced; or wandered off. Even the lowest of the low care about the lost items; more than the Pharisees and scribes, by inference.

Jesus talks about these lost items as precious things. Something you leave 99 sheep alone in the fold for; something you turn your house upside down for. Things that make you forget about everything else and seek out.

It’s just grace at its purest. The sheep and the coin aren’t repentant. They don’t even know they’re lost, perhaps. But they’re precious to someone; precious to the point of an all-out search. This coin, that sheep, is longed for by a woman with only 9 other coins; by a shepherd who has a whole flock of other sheep.

Our God, Jesus is telling us, goes to all lengths to seek us out. When we are lost or we are wandering away, God’s grace brings us back and joyfully celebrates at our return.

But I don’t think we’re actually meant to think we’re the lost items in these parables. We may at times be lost and wandering, but when it comes to coins and sheep, we are probably more like the 9 coins or the 99 sheep back in the fold.

So where does that leave us? Remember that Jesus is telling this story to the Pharisees and scribes in response to the charge that he hangs out with sinners too much. We’re more like the Pharisees and scribes of our day than we’d like to think. We’re the keepers of the faith; the ones who are working to preserve our religion as it is. And as such, we need to identify with the seeker of the lost items more than anything else.

We are called to go after the lost: those on the margins and the outcasts of our culture. We are called to be the shepherds and women of our own age, seeking after the lost so we can rejoice in their finding. We are called to be seekers; those who realize that there are those on the margins who need to hear about God’s grace and love.

We are God’s agents, just as those Pharisees and scribes were too; charged with keeping the faith, as it were. And as such, we must heed Jesus’ call to us to join him in being with the tax collectors and sinners of our age.

We have lots of outcasts in our society. Many are lost; too many are on the fringes. We have a predilection to draw boundaries around ourselves and those like us. But Jesus calls us to new ways of being; new ways of acting that include rather than exclude. Jesus calls us to seek out those who are out there and bring them in; including the lost.

Be the seekers our society needs. Be the shepherds who are looking for their sheep one sheep at a time; be the women who turn everything upside down in order to find one coin. And then rejoice. Don’t sit on your laurels, but celebrate. Celebrate with the God who also rejoices with you.