The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Proper 19C
The shepherd seeking the lost sheep. The woman seeking the lost coin. And, if we were to keep reading in the Gospel of Luke, we’d hear the parable of the prodigal son, his resentful brother, and their loving father. Jesus tells each parable, amping up the rhetoric to drive home how much God loves us sinners, and how God is the one actively searching for the lost.
Us sinners – all of us, sinners.
We often skip over that. The word “sinner” sounds so moralistic, so judgy. A sinner is a bad person, and we’d never call someone a bad person, at least to their face. If I call myself a sinner, maybe it feels like a false humility or bad self-esteem (Maybe that’s what came to mind when we read Paul’s letter to Timothy today!). If I call someone else a sinner, I’m judging them, saying they’re bad, and obviously I probably mean that I’m not a sinner. I’m better than them. They’re bad, they’ll always be bad.
But that’s the word we encounter over and over again in the Bible texts. It’s all over the Gospels. It’s a central word. It’s an important word.
How do we change our perspective?
We can take a page from the parables: to be a sinner is to be a lost sheep, a lost coin. A lost sheep, wandering on our own – maybe not sure of where we’re supposed to be, not sure of the way, or insisting that we know the way better than anyone else. Or a lost coin: out of place, silent, stuck, separated from others.
Notice the parables: sheep wander because sheep sometimes do their own thing; coins are inanimate objects and can’t be blamed for rolling under the couch. There is remarkably little judgment here. The parables tell us about God’s desire to find us who are lost, about God’s dedication to finding us. The lost sheep and the lost coin are celebrated when they are found.
Jesus tells us that God is eager to find the lost sheep and the lost coin and will rejoice when they are found, and call everyone together to rejoice. There is more joy over the return of the lost sheep and the lost coin than over the remainder who were never lost in the first place.
This contrasts sharply with our Exodus reading. In Exodus, God is enraged at the idolatry of the people of Israel in the wilderness. They build a golden calf and they sacrifice to it – and so God swears that they will all be destroyed and God will start over with Moses. Moses pleads with God to change the plan; Moses pleads with God, saying, “remember Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and remember what the Egyptians will gossip behind your back!” The sin of the people is so strong that God wants to destroy them.
How do we hold these two readings together?
One tells us of the seriousness of sin, of wandering away on our own path, of turning our back on the ways of God’s justice and goodness. The other tells us how God continues to see us.
We see the chaos, confusion, and injustice in the world around us. We see violence and calls for vengeance. We see coldness of heart and greed. We see countless idols around us, a boundless herd of golden calves we could worship and trust instead of trusting in God. All of this is a sign of how far things have wandered away from God since the beginning of human history, and this is a sign of just how harmful it is when we wander away from the merciful justice of God.
And yet, scripture says not only in the New Testament but countless times in the Old Testament, too, that God will not forget us and will not abandon us to being lost. God seeks us out, not just once but every time our hearts start to wander from the love of God. God will seek us out time and time again, no matter where we let ourselves be lost.
If we are lost in our own perception of our righteousness, God will seek us out to help us open our hearts and eyes.
If we are lost in the busy-ness of our own lives and forget to spend time with God and gather in his love, God will seek us out to spend time with us.
If we are lost in the chaos and rage of the world around us, God will seek us out and call us to be justicemakers and peacebearers. Remember that God called Paul, who once was a persecutor of the church and eager to shed blood. God called Paul to change his ways and to follow the way of Christ’s gracious love.
To be a sinner, then, is to be one who is endlessly sought by God. We can let ourselves be pursued by God and rejoice when we are found. ven if we are lost again and again, we will still be sought by God. We do not celebrate our own goodness or boast that we are “not one of those people” – instead, we celebrate God’s goodness, we boast in God’s compassion for all people, and we share that in word and deed with all the world. We are sinners, endlessly sought, endlessly found, and endlessly loved. Amen.