Sunday, September 18, 2016

The Scandalous Shepherd

Parable of the Lost Sheep by Max 7

September 18, 2016
Gospel Reading: Luke 15:1-7
1Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. 2And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."
3So he told them this parable: 4"Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? 5When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' 7Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

Sermon:  “The Scandalous Shepherd”

I was born to be invisible.  I don’t even have a proper name: Mikra they call me, which is just a pun on “tiny” in my language.  Can you imagine?  Living your whole life with someone shouting “tiny” to get your attention?  It doesn’t do much for the self-esteem, I’ll tell you that. 
But a slave doesn’t really need a name, I suppose.  We’re not really treated like humans anyway.  I didn’t have any of those things other children did.  My mother was a slave; my father was her master.  As soon as I could talk, I was sold to a family for my whole life.  And so, I found myself a young girl, taking care of the privileged children of a wealthy family.  At first I resented being invisible, only being seen when a glass needed filled or a bath needed drawn.  Eventually, though, my invisibility as a tiny thing in the world – Mikra – became my armor.  I could slip through a room without anyone even noticing me.  I could dash through the market with barely a glance from anyone, not even the merchants I was buying things for my master from.  Which is what I was doing the day I saw him.

I was in the market to get some fresh dates for my master for a big dinner that night, and saw people gathering around some raggedy man.  This is normal for the market, and I almost passed by.  But then I noticed the people: both the visible and invisible ones, standing together around this man.

Now, you may not know who the invisible people are, and if you don’t, well, you’re one of the visible ones.  The invisible people are like me, the ones who serve you at restaurants, the ones who wash the dishes, the ones who made your Belk outfit at some factory in Bangladesh, the ones who ask for change outside of Cooper’s Pharmacy, and the ones who are so glad school’s started back because it means their kids get fed at least once a day. 

There are so many of us invisible people, but usually, just like in my day, we’re kept in our place.  But that morning in the marketplace, the invisible people – called “sinners” or “lazy” or “addicted” or “foreign” by the visible ones – gathered around this Jesus fellow to hear what he had to say.

I worked my usual magic trick and wove my way into the crowd without anyone noticing, until I was right in front of him.  That’s where the scribes and Pharisees, the most visible people of all, were.  (They’re used to being in front, you see.)  And they were shouting at him from their well-washed faces, saying he was eating with and welcoming sinners.  Jesus, you see, was making the invisible people visible.  And those who were used to not seeing us did not like it one tiny (Mikra) bit.

As if working some magical misdirection of his own, this Jesus started talking about sheep of all things.  I can’t remember all of it, but the essence was that if you had 100 sheep, and 1 wandered away, a good shepherd would leave the 99 and go find the lost 1.  And then that shepherd would invite everyone to a lavish party to celebrate the 1 sheep who was missing, who was home again.  You could immediately tell who in that crowd identified with the 99 and who identified with the 1.  Those visible, powerful Pharisees knew they were being insulted somehow, but couldn’t quite put their finger on it.  We invisible slaves knew that Jesus was putting us first, for the first time ever in our lives. 

You see, it takes a lost sheep to know one.  It takes someone who’s used to being invisible to find others like us.  Because, I guarantee you, those 99 sheep didn’t even realize 1 was missing until the shepherd left them.  And those Pharisees and scribes didn’t even realize what they were missing about Jesus’ story until he ascended into heaven.  They just knew that this “kingdom of heaven” he described sounded topsy-turvy and backwards to the way the world was supposed to be. 

But for us – those who knew we were lost because we were trapped in systems of oppression and injustice not of our own making – we knew that this story, these words, were the gospel, good news.  We knew this Jesus fellow came to shine God’s gracious light on us invisible ones, until we were seen for who we were and valued as children of God.

Now, I hope this doesn’t offend you, but I couldn’t help but notice how very visible you people are.  I mean, your faces are clean, your hands, too, and you probably have proper names and all.  Maybe you even knew your parents.  I’m betting you even had a say about whether you’d come here today, and no one ordered you to.  You get to choose so much of your life.  It’s not chosen for you.  That, my friends, means you’re visible. 

But we invisible ones – we Mikras – still exist.  And, I mean this with all humility and kindness, Jesus came not just so you would see God, but so you would see us.  Do you?  Because if you’re reading this sheep story and thinking you’re the lost ones and feeling good that Jesus found you, you’re missing it like those Pharisees and scribes did the day he first told this story.  You’re the 99.  Jesus knows right where you are, and knows that sometimes you’re so set in your ways, so penned in, that he can’t create real repentance and change in you. 

So he’s off somewhere else, searching for that 1.  That 1 person who needs to know God is there for them, even if no one else is.  That 1 person who needs to be seen by another human being.  The impatient waiter who you give a tiny tip to because they don’t fill up your tea enough, when it’s a miracle they’re on their feet still after working 3 straight shifts to keep the lights at home on. 

The child slave who works on a cocoa plantation in Western Africa against their will so you can enjoy your Snickers bar. 

The Native American elder trying to save their burial grounds from bulldozers. 

The student who keeps falling asleep in class because she has to care for her younger siblings after school, and then stay up late helping her mom with complicated paperwork as the sole English speaker in her household.

See how uncomfortable it is when Jesus makes the invisible ones like me visible?  You can understand why those scribes and Pharisees were so angry.  Leaving the 99 to search for the 1 is not only a little reckless, it’s scandalous. 

But, it seems to me this whole Jesus movement was all pretty scandalous – God becoming a poor, brown-skinned Jew.  God exposing all the invisible people and prejudices we weren’t supposed to talk about.  God letting the resulting anger spill over, and taking all that hatred upon himself.  God then putting that anger in a grave and rising above it all.  The gospel is all one big, beautiful scandal.

So, I suppose my question for you is, what are you going to do about it?  Are you willing to leave the 99 to find that 1 invisible person, leaving behind your comfort and created worldview and cushy pews for the sake of the gospel? 

Because, the thing is, it’s good news for you, too, not just for that 1.  When the 99 and the 1 are reunited, God throws a party that rocks the heavens themselves.  Everyone wins.  Everyone celebrates.  And everyone has a home, and a name.  Even me.  Amen. 


Sunday, September 4, 2016

The Other Good Book

Image Source
September 4, 2016
“The Other Good Book”

Scripture: Psalm 139 (a responsive reading)
LEADER.
     O LORD, you have examined me, and you know me.
CONGREGATION.
     You alone know when I sit down and when I get up.
     You read my thoughts from far away.
     You watch me when I travel and when I rest.
     You are familiar with all my ways.
LEADER.
          Even before there is a single word on my tongue,
               you know all about it, LORD.
CONGREGATION.
     You are all around me--in front of me and in back of me.
     You lay your hand on me.
     Such knowledge is beyond my graph.
     It is so high I cannot reach it.
LEADER.
     Where can I go to get away from your Spirit?
     Where can I run to get away from you?
CONGREGATION.
          If I go up to heaven, you are there.
          If I make my bed in hell, you are there.
          If I climb upward on the rays of the morning sun
               or land on the most distant shore of the sea where the sun sets,
                    even there your hand would guide me
                         and your right hand would hold on to me.
LEADER.
     If I say, "Let the darkness hide me
          and let the light around me turn into night,"
               even the darkness is not too dark for you.
CONGREGATION.
                    Night is as bright as day.
                    Darkness and light are the same to you.
LEADER.
     You alone created my inner being.
     You knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
CONGREGATION.
     I will give thanks to you
          because I have been so amazingly and miraculously made.
               Your works are miraculous, and my soul is fully aware of this.
LEADER.
     My bones were not hidden from you
     when I was being made in secret,
     when I was being skillfully woven in the depths of the earth.
CONGREGATION.
     Your eyes saw me before I was born.
          Every day of my life was recorded in your book
               before one of them had taken place.
LEADER.
     How precious are your thoughts concerning me, O God!
     How vast in number they are!
          If I try to count them,
               there would be more of them than there are grains of sand.
                    When I wake up, I am still with you.
CONGREGATION.
     Examine me, O God, and know my mind.
     Test me, and know my thoughts.
          See whether I am on an evil path.
               Then lead me on the everlasting path.

Sermon:   “The Other Good Book”

This morning’s sermon begins with a little game.  I’m curious to see how many of you are book lovers like me.  So, I’ll give you the opening sentence of a well-known book, and you give me the title and the author.  Got it?  Here we go!

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
(Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen)

“It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
(George Orwell, 1984)

“Call me Ishmael.”
(Moby Dick by Herman Melville)

“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four Privet Drive were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”
(J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone)

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”
(Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”
(Tolkien, The Hobbit)

“All children, except one, grow up.”
 (J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan)

I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.”
(Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen)

“In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth…”
(Genesis)

Whether we read them, or watch them, or tell them, story is the language of our souls.  Story is the first way we engage with the world as children, and when we grow old, sharing fond stories from the past brings great joy.  Maybe it took a writer to say it best…Margaret Atwood once wrote, “In the end, we’ll all become stories.”

And then Psalm 139 says it another way.
   In your book were written
    all the days that were formed for me,
    when none of them as yet existed.”

It is a lovely thought; that God has every day of our life recorded in some good book.  But on a deeper level, it’s also a troubling thought, thinking about God being in on tragic illness and too-soon death, or a puppet master toying with humanity, forcing us down the intended path for us, with no room for free will. 

In reality, we won’t know what it means that God has each day written in a book of our life until this life ends and we get to ask God.  But I do believe some things about this other good book:

I believe our story is written by the One who created everything there is.  (In other words, the most creative writer in all existence.)  And maybe the book of our life is less a dictated path and more like the Choose Your Own Adventure stories I used to read as a child, where free will is woven into each and every page. 

I believe that the God who knows us completely, knitting us together in our mothers’ wombs -- the God who knows when we sit, when we rise, when we fall over, what we do, what we say, what we post, what we think -- this God does chart a course for each of us. 

I believe this because there are these key moments in my story –   
-encouragement from a stranger on a airplane right before a big, scary ordination interview

-my sister’s urging to look at church positions outside of Texas, maybe even (gasp) in North Carolina

-a feeling of peace and excitement just before walking into a place I’d never been to meet a friend, and happening to be next to a stranger who would become my fiancĂ©

I’m sure you can name these sort of plot twists in your own story to yourself.  Moments when you had the choice of right or left but one way just felt in your gut to be the one to choose.  And so the page is turned, a new chapter begins, and we read on.

Sometimes, though, if we’re really honest with ourselves, we stop reading our own story.  Like an old family tale we’ve heard over and over again, or an well-worn book we’ve read dozens of times, we cast it aside, and think we know every word, every paragraph.  We especially begin to think we know the ending, and so why bother to keep reading?

But the beautiful thing about these stories of our lives written in God’s good book is that they’re not just for reading.  We get to partner with God in writing them.  And this means that we can allow our imaginations to run free.  We are not bound to the past.  We are not bound to the future, either.  We are created by God to be creative souls, who make sure that when the book of our life is closed, it is not a dusty, forgotten thing, but a passionate, imaginative tome with ink still left to dry on its pages. 

I lost a dear friend this week after a very brief battle with cancer.  At her funeral yesterday, as I listened to the beautiful music and the comforting words, I read the poem printed on the bulletin called “So Brief Our Days” by Sybil Arms.  It captures the importance of seeing our life as a story worth writing and reading, for every moment we’re given.  It says:
         So brief our days, so very brief
         Like an autumn rose with its falling leaf,
         A moment’s light, a glance of sun
         And then our pilgrimage is done.
         As the rainbow fades in the summer sky
         As the green grass flourishes to die
         This moment’s triumph, too, will wane
         And none shall call it back again.
         Write quickly, then, while the candle glows
         A little while and the book will close,
         So carve your figure of renown
         For soon you must lay your chisel down.
         Use well this hour’s joy, its grief,
         For life is brief, so very brief.

What is the story of your life?  Would it be drama, comedy, romance, horror, even? 

What is the story of the life of our church?  Would it be adventure, history, fantasy, poetry?  

God has written all of our days in a good book.  But this cannot be an excuse to stop living now!  If anything, this should reassure us that, no matter what happens, God is keeping an eye on us.  If anything, this should free us from controlling our destiny to instead embrace this fragile, fleeting life with imagination and creativity. 

Looking back on your past, re-read your story. 
Looking forward to the future, re-write your story.  Follow those bookmarks along the way that God uses to bring you grace and meaning, and never think you know the ending before it’s here.

Because, I’ll tell you a secret, a spoiler, even: our book doesn’t actually end with this life, and we can’t even begin to imagine the adventures that await us on the other side.  But that’s another story for another time…
Amen.