Statistics have it that there
are more than 105 million parking spaces in America. And
Disney World alone has 46,000 of them. Now imagine
arriving with your family in a rental car and hurriedly
boarding the shuttle bus that takes you to your fantasy
day. Late in the evening, tired, you arrive back to the
transport area only to realize you don't remember where
you parked the car - you don't have a clue what lot. The
car is lost and you are stranded. But wait! Disney has
an entire crew trained and ready to help reunite you
with your vehicle. They will use every means imaginable
in their task from calling your OnStar global
positioning system to systematically driving up and down
every aisle while you relentlessly push the panic button
on the key chain hoping to hear the car go off. It may
take minutes, or hours, but the reward is one exhausted,
but joyously relieved family. Ready to party, probably
not, but the fruit of the search is a happy continuation
of a hard-earned vacation.
Now maybe that is not really a
personal story for you, but you no doubt have lost and
found stories that are particularly memorable in your
life. Perhaps a momentarily lost child in a department
store or while camping. Maybe you lost your wedding ring
or stock certificates or that winning lottery ticket!
But whatever your story, get in touch with and hang on
to that sinking, hollow, empty feeling that accompanies
such a loss. And, then transfer that feeling to God. God
aches to find you - the real you - again.
Now, the question to ask is, why
after all the millions and millions of human beings that
God has brought into existence over the centuries would
one - one more person matter so much? But that is the
whole point of the scripture passage, isn't it? That
kind of compassion is a God thing. The range of human
caring is rather narrow, when you think about it. Thanks
to the abundant coverage by the media, we have become a
bit callous to suffering outside the US. And when
violence is occurring in another city, we breathe a sigh
of relief that it isn't happening here. And when it is
happening here, we pray that it isn't someone we know.
I'm not saying this to put my
fellow men and women to shame. Instead I'm saying, our
hearts were not created to be that big. For one of us to
care with the same depth of feeling for all the people
in Venezuela, Trinidad, Russia, China, Alaska, etc. as
we do our own brother or son would require an amazing
amount of energy. In the movie, Jesus Christ Superstar,
there is a scene where the sick and injured are so
crowded around Jesus hoping to be touched that Jesus
himself cries out, "There's not enough of me." But as we
know there was and his whole life was given in the
process.
So, what the writers of 1
Timothy, Luke, and the Psalm are trying to convey to us
is God's amazing capacity for love. Paul used the word
patience in describing that love. He is never afraid to
tell about the kind of person he once was - about the
anger, hatred, and violence that once came from him. How
long it took for God to get through that misdirected
passion. It wasn't that people hadn't told him about the
cross and resurrection and witnessed to him about
repentance and forgiveness. It was those very ideas that
incited him to do such horrible things to the earliest
Christians. What it took was the perseverance of the
Father who had the patience to keep at it until he found
the Paul underneath. You see, from the very beginning
God created all of us so that he might enjoy our
company. Revelation 4:11 says, You have created all
things, and for your pleasure they are and were created.
Even the prophet Isaiah talks about the people that God
formed for himself that they might declare his praise.
This is what Jesus means when he
describes the commitment of the shepherd and the woman
seeking what is lost. God will go to great lengths to
find you again. God longs for your presence at the
dinner table. The interesting thing about the situation
which prompts Jesus to tell these parables is that Jesus
is telling them to people whose job, whose life's work
was supposed to be caring for those who were lost. And,
yet it was these very servants of God that had lost
sight of their calling. Those very people were grumbling
because Jesus was welcoming sinners into his presence
and sharing a meal at their home. And, yet in each of
these parables the finder asks those who are nearby to
rejoice with them. Even the angels in heaven have joy
when just one individual turns toward God.
This illustrates a human
characteristic that can well be described as
"self-serving greed." Let's look at the Psalm. If I
counted correctly, words that describe the self are used
about 21 times. Have mercy on me, wash me, cleanse me,
purge me, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a
right spirit within me. This is where it begins - with
the one. With the individual who longs to get right with
God and for whom God welcomes home with loving arms.
With the person who finally recognizes their complicity
with what is wrong in the world today. Who sees the
layers of sadness, resentment, grief, anger and despair
life has painted upon them. Who understand that there is
something of great value deep down inside of them worthy
of nurturing. The door is open, work on me God. And God
does! Amen!
But then sin creeps back in
disguise. Sin convinces us that God's forgiveness is
conditional or exclusionary and suddenly the doors of
grace are not as wide open as Jesus would have them be.
The generations of Pharisaic responsibility had emerged
in time to mean privilege and that was something to be
guarded and protected instead of rejoiced over and
shared. As religious authorities they recognized that
allowing sinners and corrupt individuals into their
midst was placing themselves and their community at risk
and in danger. So, the obvious solution is to reject and
exclude them for the community's own protection. But
Jesus' solution was always to include sinners to restore
and transform them to their place in God's family.
There's a Jewish story that I
believe exemplifies this point. It tells of the good
fortune of a hardworking farmer. The Lord appeared to
this 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 he had. Finally, he
stated his third wish: that God would strike him blind
in one eye. And God wept.
What is it about some of us that
we are not able to grant to others the same measure of
joy in the Lord unless they have gone through the same
process that we have? What is it about human nature that
doesn't like it when someone else gets more than us,
even though we have been blessed? The Pharisees had it
all but they couldn't stand it when Jesus associated
with the undesirables of Israelite society of 30 AD. Tax
Collectors, demon possessed, lepers, poor people, women,
even shepherds in New Testament times had a stigma of
low class associated with them. But Jesus could sit and
laugh with them and talk about God's kingdom having come
among them even now. He asked them to proclaim God's
mercy even though by law they were still sinners. These
stories ask us to look at our world today and ask who it
is that is not receiving the fullness of God's love, the
fullness of life experiences ordained by God at
creation, the fullness of mercy. Is it because society
does not understand their situation, or because we fear
what we have not experienced ourselves, or we are afraid
of losing the person we have built ourselves into by
learning something new about what it means to be alive
or to be loved by God? These parables are NOT
encouraging us to repent of our sins, but for the
righteous to join the celebration when someone who is
lost has turned their eyes toward God.
These parables ask us to examine
our motives for any of our relationships. Are they based
on merit or mercy? If we find it offensive that God
would call the sinner into his fold because of mercy,
then we are not able to celebrate with the angels. The
parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin expose the
grudging spirit that prevents many of us from receiving
and enjoying God's mercy. Only those who can celebrate
God's grace to others can experience that mercy
themselves.
God seeks to peel back the
layers and layers of human conditioning that covers our
hearts so that we can understand the wideness of God's
mercy that not only includes you and me, but the lost
who have not yet been restored and returned to God's
waiting embrace. Look around us and see who God is
calling and open your hearts to new understanding.
Amen