What To Pray When We've Gone Astray

September 11, 2022
Psalm 119:169-176; Luke 15:1-10
What to Pray When We’ve Gone Astray
Rev. Kerra Becker English          
 
I’m going to begin today’s sermon with a controversial statement.
Jesus takes sides.
And when Jesus takes sides,
he doesn’t necessarily take the side of the religious or even the righteous.
You can be flawless in religious purity and completely wrong at the same time.
Jesus understood that.
So, before we get into this parable that describes the lost sheep and the lost coin,
let’s look at a really important detail about the context of Jesus’ delivery of this message.
He was speaking to a crowd where there were obviously two “sides” present.
They are named.
Who is listening to Jesus at EXACTLY this moment?
On one side, all the tax collectors and sinners were coming to listen to him.
Got it?
Tax collectors.
Luke could have lumped them in with the other sinners but didn’t.
The tax collectors were agents of Rome, doing the dirty work of the Empire.
Collecting from the poor to fund the lavish lifestyles of the rich.
It’s a familiar story.
These are the middle-management folks who are just doing their jobs,
but they are doing jobs they hate, for people they may hate even more.
Jesus is intriguing to them – so they show up to hear what he has to say.
Then you have your average sinners.
These are the people like you and me who aren’t perfect and know it.
They are merchants, and farmers, and artisans, AND a smattering of the intentionally marginalized poor.
These tax collectors and sinners are just people.
The basic, ordinary people whose voices often go unheard and certainly go underappreciated in the various machinations that seem to rule the world.
That’s one side.
Then there’s the other side.
The hoity side.
The presumptuous side.
They want to hear Jesus for other reasons – to see if he is one of them, or not.
The Scribes and the Pharisees have voice enough to demand that Jesus answer their question.
And the question is, “Why do you welcome and EAT WITH sinners?”
Why are you having lunch with those kinds of people? When you could be lunching with us?
This group despises the first group, considering themselves far above the peasant riff-raff.
For a wannabe spiritual leader to try to speak to both sides at the same time is career suicide, right?
How are you gonna speak to a “purple” church?
That’s how the question gets asked nowadays – presuming that the sides are defined as the deepening chasm between “red” and “blue” America that makes for an uncomfortable purple.
What I wonder, is how DOES Jesus speak to the purple church, when purple is the color of angered faces whose hate is directed at any and all of those considered the sinful “lesser than?”
That’s what Jesus is doing here.
He’s about to speak to a mixed crowd, a crowd that includes a subset of people who want him to conform to their ways or shut up, and a crowd who is desperately hungry for a word of hope.
It’s an impossible audience.
Walk away Jesus – Run if you have to!
You will not “win” here.
But we know Jesus, don’t we?
He’s going to open his mouth.
In this case he will speak boldly.
The story of the lost sheep goes viral.
Everyone knows some version of it.
But he will also speak cryptically, just a little bit sideways to buy himself more time while the religious elite are left scratching their heads.
You would think he would speak TO his questioners to prove himself,
But instead, he speaks TO the people in such a way that the purple-faced religious purists will overhear his retort to their jab.
He may be telling a story about sheep and a shepherd.
But it becomes quickly obvious that sheep are just a stand in for people.
The shepherd cares more about the one lost sheep than the other 99 already in his fold.
The woman with her savings of silver sweeps and cleans, looks under the couch cushions and behind the refrigerator, checking absolutely everywhere until the one lost coin is found.
Then – it’s a party.
Full on rejoicing.
The people normally dismissed as not really worth the bother are celebrated upon their return to wholeness.
By the shepherd, by the diligent woman, and even more so, by God, the loving parent.
Sinners aren’t evil. Jesus will deal with intentional evil differently.
Sinners aren’t worthless. They are valued deeply in God’s eyes.
Sinners aren’t deserving of punishment. They are deserving of God’s restorative love.
Sinners are human, people just like us. Perhaps lost. Perhaps wandering away. Perhaps caught up in systems that give them very few choices about how to be in this world.
Sin – according to scripture – gives us an opportunity to return to God,
To remember God’s commandments and rejoice that God invites you to come back
Over and over again.
Sin isn’t without consequences.
We get caught up and we mess up. That’s for sure.
But it’s not the end of the world when we do.
It isn’t a cause for clutching pearls and asking someone why they have “those kind of people” over for dinner.
That’s getting our righteousness wrong.
 
To hear that story AS a tax collector is to be mentally freed from the trap that has you stuck.
To hear that story AS one of the sinners is to be given an amazing gift.
It matters which side we align with to understand how we will hear that story.
To hear that God will search for you until you are found -
To hear that God will sweep out every corner
and clean under every piece of furniture to find you –
How does that make you feel?
Special?
Valuable?
Beloved?
Free to be who you are?
Confident that you are something more than the labels others put on you?
There’s a reason Jesus talks about finding the lost as a cause for rejoicing.
To feel “found” by God is to have a literal miracle happen in your life.
It is remarkable.
It is humbling.
It is terrifyingly amazing to find out that your “sin” isn’t what defines you.
God loves you for you.
You don’t have to earn God’s favor – it just is.
In searching for echoes of this parable in other parts of scripture,
I came across the last verse of Psalm 119 – which happens to be the longest psalm in the Bible.
The last verse reads: “I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek out your servant,
for I do not forget your commandments.”
So, if you go back and read that whole poetic prayer, which includes a stanza for each letter of  the Hebrew alphabet, beginning at “alef” and continuing with at least 8 lines per letter to its ending verse about being the lost sheep found by God,
you will find it FILLED with rejoicing.
Exactly what Jesus was talking about.
It is the praise psalm of all praise psalms.
It rejoices over God’s goodness to be found in God’s steadfast love,
God’s ever relevant word,
and God’s live giving commandments.
It describes quite accurately the human condition that struggles with sin and hates what is evil.
It is the prayer of a person who has encountered illness and oppression,
death and disappointment,
and YET can still find hope in God’s abundance.
Let me just say, Jesus didn’t mind stealing good material when he saw it.
AND he knew that the Scribes and Pharisees would know that psalm from A to Z – so to speak.
He was talking to them too. They weren’t left out.
He was reminding them of how to pray when life gives you hardship and frustration.
He was asking them – indirectly – to remember how to rejoice.
They knew how to judge. That was apparent.
I can hear this parable that way too – as indictment for my judgey inside voice.
Was he reminding them how to invite a friend to lunch?
Was he reminding them how to love the law without all the rigidity?
The psalmist writes, “I hate the double-minded, but I love your law.”
The law isn’t the problem. It never was.
And yet -
The application of the law in angry and judgmental minds creates classes and bigotry.
Following the law shouldn’t be a chore or a tool.
Following the law is like tasting the sweetest honey, or the finest wine.
It is a joy.
God’s law is a blessing.
When we lose sight of it, God will come looking for us.
How awesome is that?  How awesome is that?
Amen.