16 Pentecost Yr C

The gospel of Luke today is incredibly hopeful and joyous. The lost sheep and the lost coin stories that we heard read today are followed by the story of the prodigal, which we don’t hear today, but we probably should. We hear that Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them. The question I ask so often is where do you find yourself in this story; and the answer for many of us is right here, as one of these lost ones. We find ourselves right here. I do, anyway, often I find my self being carried back into the sheepfold by the Good Shepherd. There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. This is Good News indeed. It is never too late to turn around. These lost things stories are stories about God’s amazing grace. No matter how dire the consequences of your actions have turned out to be, they will never keep you from God’s embrace.

There is nothing we can do that will keep us from God’s embrace, from God’s love, from God’s grace. And yet, we are so good at keeping our gaze away from all of that. Repent means to turn around, so sin is when we turn away from God, sin is when we set our sights on that which is not God, sin is when we fool ourselves into believing that God does not care. God cares, God loves, God embraces, all we have to do is turn around and let the embrace enfold us.

That is not to say that there are not consequences for turning away, oh yes there are consequences. You and I know that. Our Old Testament is full of the stories of God’s people turning away from God and the consequences of doing that. We hear from the prophet Jeremiah today about the foolishness of the people. We hear the consequences of that foolishness, the fruitful land became a desert, and the earth shall mourn. The kings of Judah became more interested in wealth and power, those things that are idols, than in shepherding their people. You see, when we turn away from God, we turn toward worshipping idols; we worship that which is not God. We turn toward that which seduces us, that which seems so very very attractive. And in turning, we miss the mark.

And what’s so very difficult about it is that most of the time we are pointing in the approximate direction, we are full of good intentions. You know what this is like, But the reality is that we are human, and we will continue to make mistakes, we will continue to suffer the consequences of our decisions to turn away from God. We will continue to miss the mark. The Good News is that in the midst of our mess, God never gives up on us, God never gives up on us, God takes us back, even when we give up on ourselves, even when we give up on each other.

The gospel writer introduces the stories we hear today by telling us that the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” We learn about God’s amazing grace and love by what happens in these stories. These are stories that are told as a response to the grumbling Pharisees, and they are also telling us about why Jesus spends time with people he’s not supposed to hang around with. The Pharisees tend to measure holiness by avoidance. Pharisees are identified by what they don’t do. They don’t touch dead bodies, bodily secretions, unclean animals or wrongly prepared food. These were very clear boundaries, if holy touched unholy, the holy ceased to exist; therefore, it is best to avoid the unholy. And of course it is best not to hang around with questionable, unclean, people.

But, there goes Jesus, hanging around with questionable, unclean people, sinners, outcasts, women and children. Not only does Jesus hang out with questionable people, maybe people just like you and me, but Jesus also tells these stories that seem so odd. Everyone knows that a shepherd would not leave 99 sheep to find the one idiot sheep that can’t seem to stay with the herd. The shepherd leaving the herd would be sure death for the rest of the herd; the wolves lay waiting for the chance to pounce. Besides which, one sheep on it’s own is sure death. Why would the shepherd even bother. It’s an economic matter really. The parable of the lost coin makes a little more sense. The loss of one coin out of ten is an urgent matter, especially since the woman is probably a village peasant. Her coins likely represent the family’s savings, not huge, but the loss of even one coin would be a catastrophic event. Both of these are followed by the story of the prodigal, which is a whole other sermon itself. That’s a story that on the surface makes no sense at all, because the son who took his inheritance and left, really disowned himself from his family.

The commonality of all these stories is twofold. There is celebration in each of them, and there is inclusion of those who are on the margins, those who are outsiders.

So two things become important I think. First, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who turns back toward God. I think this means that there is never a time when we are outside the possibility of God’s embrace. God’s love for us is never-ending, it is amazing and abundant. God loves you, and that love is transforming. That love causes us to respond to God in ways that turn us back, that set our faces toward God.

Secondly, God’s love is available to all, even those who don’t look like us, act like us, sing like us, pray like us. Our job as disciples, and discipleship is Luke’s agenda, is to go out and be God’s light and life in the world. Our job as disciples is to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God’s amazing and abundant love. We must carry into the world God’s love and the reality of God’s forgiveness; we must show that no one is ever outside of God’s embrace.

And, we may invite them to the party. We may invite them to this place where we gather together to celebrate God with us, where we are made into God’s body as we pray together, as we hear the word together, as we turn our sights back toward God, as we stand side by side and receive the gift of bread and wine, the gift of life, and are transformed into the people God creates us to be.

Thanks be to God, Amen, Alleluia