Title: When Do Religious People Whoop It Up?
Text: Luke 15:1-10
Thesis: God invites us to share his joy when someone who was lost, is found.
Introduction
Have you ever lost something you really treasured… something you would really like to find?
After reading the text for today, I thought of a couple of things that I have lost over the years that I valued and wish I could find.
I thought of a steel-wheeled tractor toy I lost while playing farmer in our windbreak at our farm in southern Madison County Iowa. It was an old cast iron tractor with cast iron wheels and a cast-iron man sitting on the seat. It was old and unpainted even then… I looked and looked, but I never found it.
And, I thought of my senior high school class ring. I had saved my money so I could order the nice one… it was gold with an emerald colored stone. One sunny afternoon I went swimming in a farm pond with some friends and placed the ring in my shirt pocket so I would not loose it. At one point, I waded across the pond to put my clothes on the other side and somewhere along the way, the ring fell out of my pocket. I don’t know if it is lost on either side or somewhere in the pond… I never found it.
I’ve been thinking lately of going up to Sports Authority and buying one of their Bounty Hunter metal detectors and going back to Iowa to try to find my lost tractor-toy and my class ring. Though it may seem insignificant to most folks… finding either of those two things would make me very happy.
If I were to find my little tractor, I would bring it home and show it to Bonnie. I would call the kids and when they came, I would show them my treasure. I would show it to my grandchildren and tell them how I used to play with it when I was their age. I would put it on a shelf… perhaps on the mantle of our fireplace.
If I were to find my class ring, I would probably put it in my top dresser drawer…
Our text today speaks to what it means to loose something and then find it. It comes to us in parabolic form. A parable is sometimes defined as an earthly story with a heavenly (or spiritual) meaning. We have read two of three parables that are linked together as:
1. The parable of the lost sheep in Luke 15:3-7, speaks of a shepherd who looses one of 100 sheep.
2. The Parable of the lost coin in Luke 15:8-10, speaks of a woman who looses one of 10 coins.
3. And the parable of the lost son in Luke 15:11-32, speaks of a man who looses one of two sons. You know it as the parable of the prodigal son.
This whole scenario of parabolic teaching is precipitated by the events described in Luke 15:1-2.
Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach. This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he was associating with such despicable people – even eating with them!
This is not the first time Jesus had to deal with this bone of contention. The first time it happened, the religious folks were complaining to Jesus, “Why do you and drink with such scum?” Jesus replied, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor – sick people do. I have come to call sinners to turn from t heir sins, not spend my time with those who think they are already good enough.” (Matthew 9:9-13, Mark 2:13-17, and Luke 5:27-32)
Isn’t it interesting how the text juxtaposes the two groups of people in our text? We have the notorious sinners who are listening to Jesus. And we have the religious leaders complaining to Jesus.
So Jesus used these stories or parables to illustrate some truth.
We’ve just read the stories. A man had 100 sheep and one gets lost. So he leaves the 99 and searches until he finds the lost sheep. Upon returning, he calls his friends and neighbors to come and celebrate the recovery of the lost sheep.
Similarly, a woman looses one of her 10 coins. So she turns the house upside down looking for it. And, when she finds it, she calls in her friends and neighbors to celebrate the recovery of the lost coin.
I want to focus on the emphases I see emerging from out text. The first emphasis I wish to make is this:
I. God is concerned about restoring relationships with people who are lost.
• …one of the sheep strayed away and was lost in the wilderness. Luke 15:4
• Suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Luke 15:8
These stories are about lost people and the enormous value God places on people. Just as a shepherd risks life and limb and the well-being of 99 other sheep to retrieve the way-ward lamb and a woman turns her house upside down in an effort to find her lost coin, so Jesus gives his own life, a ransom for many.
Many of you followed the details of the search for the six miners who were trapped in the collapse of the Crandall Canyon (coal) Mine near Huntington, Utah on August 6, 2007. For some twenty-five days, we waited as drillers punched hole after hole into the mountain, drilling down some 1,800 feet in an attempt to find and rescue the miners. Every hole drilled into the space where the men were to reportedly to have been working cost the owner of the mine $1,000,000. Families and friends gathered day after day waiting anxiously for some sign of life until the search efforts ended on Saturday, September 1, 2007.
People are precious… we will dig and dig and dig and drill and drill and drill, expending great amounts of energy and spending vast amounts of money to rescue a lost miner.
The parables in our text today are not about lost sheep and lost coins… they are about lost people. The parables illustrate:
• The enormous sense of loss and sadness we feel when we lose something we value.
• The extent to which he one who has suffered a loss will go in order to find the thing lost.
The second emphasis I want to lift from our text today is this:
II. God rejoices when people are restored in their relationship with him… and he invites us to rejoice with him.
In both the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, when the lost has been found, the finder threw a party for his or her friends and neighbors to celebrate the finding.
Jesus said, “In the same way, heaven will be happier over one lost sinner that returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven’t strayed away.”
At first blush, it would seem that God doesn’t care about the good sheep that stay home or the good coins that stay in the purse or the good son who stays home. But that is not the point. This is the point: God invites us to celebrate the restoration of the lost when they come back to him.
Just as we feel…
• The enormous sense of loss and sadness when we lose something we value. And we know…
• The extent to which he one who has suffered a loss will go in order to find the thing lost. We also understand…
• The extravagance of the joy and celebration that follows when the thing lost is found.
In our story today, the religious leaders did not know how to do joy.
Last Sunday afternoon (September 9, 2007), playing in Buffalo, with 18 seconds remaining on the clock, Jay Cutler completed an 11-yard pass to Javon Walker, which put the ball on the 24-yard line. Someone on the sideline shouted “Toro! Toro! Toro!” signaling the offensive unit to get off the field and the field goal kicking unit to get onto the field and set up so Jason Elam could kick the 42-yard field goal that split the uprights the moment the clock ran out. Commentators said that they believed the field goal unit pulled that off in 8 to 10 seconds.
It was a wonderful play resulting in a 15 to 14 victory for the Broncos. The Broncos went berserk… Jason Elam was running around pumping both arms in the air, teammates were chasing him and when they caught him they collapsed in a pile of revelry. They were grown men celebrating with absolute abandon… feet-hoping, backslapping, high-fiving, chest-bumping, fist-pumping celebration.
Can you imagine religious leaders carrying on like that? Can you imagine the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, upon discovering a bunch of low-life, scum gathered around listening to Jesus, bursting out in celebration.
Can you imagine them holding hands and forming a big circle and then to the music of Hava Nagila they begin the Horah, stepping forward to the right and back… circling to the right, faster and faster?
If you don’t do joy, it is hard to imagine being overcome with the joy and exuberance common at Easter European and Middle Eastern weddings and festivals. But, that is precisely the kind of joy Jesus describes in the text today. It is “let’s kill the fatted calf, invite all the neighbors, and throw a party” kind of joy.
Our story is about God’s desire to return and restore the lost and how God rejoices when that happens. So what does that mean for us? It means we have to overcome at least one obstacle, and that is remembering.
III. God does not remember what people were or hold it against them… what was, was. What is important is that they are found or find their way back to God.
From the parable of the prodigal son, the loving father speaks to the older brother who resents the return of his wayward little brother and the way his father has welcomed him back.
We had to celebrate this wonderful day. For your brother was dead and has now come back to life! He was lost but now he is found! Luke 15:32
When you have an opportunity, read of God’s great mercy in Psalm 103.
God’s loving kindness toward those who fear him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth. He has removed our rebellious acts as far away from us as the east is from the west… he understands how weak we are; he knows we are only dust. Psalm 103:11-12
God is great at forgetting and forgiving… we are good at remembering.
In his latest novel, Pontoon, Garrison Keillor spins a tale about Debbie Detmer who left Lake Wobegon when she was a teen-ager and moved to California. He wrote, “Growing up in Lake Wobegon Lutheran church, what she felt was dread of God’s judgment. God, all righteous, his great hairy eyeball glaring down from the sky, reading your every thought and making black marks by your name. They said God is love, but nobody believed it for a minute. It was a culture of fussy women, angry men and horrified children.” And now, Debbie was coming home. She was coming home a new person. She was going to get married and she wanted to pitch in and be a supportive daughter to her aging parents.
Keillor wrote, “The ladies of the Bon Marche Beauty Salon could’ve written the book on Debbie Detmer. You can run away from home, but don’t assume your secrets are safe out there, honey. We know people in California who know other people. Word gets around. People talk. The walls have ears… they knew the inside story of how Debbie had broken her parent’s hearts. She was an only child who was given everything. But, somewhere around the age of fifteen, the princess turned cold and cunning and spiteful and foulmouthed.
And she has come home and six ladies in the beauty salon sit under their hair dryers remembering Debbie the old Debbie… giving no thought to the possibility that Debbie might be a new Debbie.
Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus, which made the religious folks complain that he was associating with such despicable people – and even eating with them.
Conclusion:
Imagine you’ve decided that you are going to go out for barbecue ribs after church today and you find yourself in a wonderful rib joint where they use newspapers for tablecloths. The host ties a big paper bib around your neck and servers bring you a huge platter of ribs and sides of baked beans and coleslaw. You eat like a barbarian. You gnaw on the ribs and toss the bones in a pile in front of you. And, when you are finished, the server brings you moist towelettes and warm cloths to clean your hands and wipe the sauce off your chin.
You make your way to the car, still smacking your lips and checking your elbows to make sure you don’t get barbecue sauce on the upholstery… and that’s when you realize you left your car keys on the table. Your car keys are now wadded up in newspapers along with barbecues sauce, gnawed rib bones, baked beans, piles of napkins, and deposited in the dumpster along with the wads of newspapers, barbecue sauce, gnawed on ribs, baked beans, and the napkins of all the other diners there this afternoon. What to do? You’ve lost your car keys!
You will do what every person, desperate to find his or her car keys does when they lose their keys at Sweet Baby Ray’s Barbecue Shack. You dumpster dive! You sift through all the muck and mess until you find your keys and then you crawl out of the dumpster and announce… rejoice with me. We are going to Cold Stone Ice Cream to celebrate. Once my keys were lost, but now they are found.
I’ve heard it said that God is a dumpster-diving God who sifts through the stuff of this earth to find what is precious to him… people like you and me. And when he does, he celebrates!
We can sum up the challenge for us this morning as three-fold:
1. To care deeply for the eternal spiritual destiny of those who are far from God.
2. To give those who show interest in spiritual things the benefit of the doubt.
3. To join God is whooping it up and welcome them when they return to the faith community.
