“Beloved”
Luke 15:1-32
If there were one word I could use to describe how other people see you what would it be?
Maybe it would be “smart” or “athletic” or “funny” or “popular” or “loner” or “nerd.”
Think about it for a minute.
What is that one word I could use to describe how other people see you?
(pause)
What would be the words you would use to describe yourself if you are being truly honest?
Beautiful?
Ugly?
Shy?
Lonely?
You fill in the blank…
What if I were to use this word: Loved.
Would you say that word fits you?
Because if there is one word I could choose for each of you, it would be the word: Loved.
What does it look like to be loved?
Our Gospel Readings from Luke Chapter 15 for this morning give us a pretty awesome picture of what it means to be loved.
The context for the three Parables Jesus gives us in Luke 15 can be found right at the beginning: “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus.
But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
Jesus was hanging out, speaking with, teaching and sharing a meal with the only crowd that ever wanted to hang out with Him.
In high school we might have called them the “dirt bags” or the “losers” or the “loners” the “uncool people,” the kids that were always “in trouble,” “skipping class,” “in the principal’s office,” and “detention”…the “unpopular crowd.”
They were the people with the lowest self-esteem.
They had been bullied to the point of being broken by the bullying.
They had been shunned their whole lives.
They were the unlovely, and the people who felt unloved and unloveable.
They never did seem to fit-in anywhere…
…except when they were around Jesus.
Jesus had changed everything for them.
He was unlike anyone they had ever met.
Jesus loved them.
Jesus accepted them for who they were—no matter what they looked like, whether or not they were cool or fit-in.
No matter their financial situation or what side of the tracks they lived on.
Jesus loved them unconditionally.
And so, in Jesus’ presence they felt something that had been dead in them, come alive.
And because of this, they loved Jesus right back.
To the world they had been a lost cause.
Like a lost sheep or a lost coin that would never be found.
They were the rebellious child who had truly acted like a selfish jerk to their parents—taking all they could get and then running away to squander everything on drugs, drink, sex, you name it.
For some, this child would have been easy to “write off.”
Just like the son in our parable, they had made themselves very grotesque and undesirable characters.
Yeah, these were the kinds of people who liked to hang out with Jesus and Jesus was more than happy to hang out with them.
And this made the popular people, the powerful people…or in this case, the Pharisees and teachers of the law—sick!
“This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
In Jesus’ day, meals were major symbols of togetherness, especially meals that took place beyond your immediate family circle.
Food was precious.
Hosting a meal for a number of people cost something in a time of scarce resources.
So, understandably, in the ancient world people took these large community meals very seriously.
It wasn’t catching a quick bite at the local coffee shop and moving on.
Eating—that is, table fellowship—was a mark of friendship and acceptance.
And so, in eating with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus is expressing a deep and abiding acceptance of those whom society had deemed less than and morally reprehensible.
Imagine if people would accuse Jesus’ church of “welcoming sinners and eating with them”?
Luke is pointing us toward a fundamental mind shift in our understanding of God.
Although we say that God is a God of love, we tend to think of that love as conditional.
It’s conditional on our repentance; it depends on our keeping the rules, rules which are too often somewhat arbitrary habits that support our local prejudices.
This sense of conditional love leads us towards, or allows us to live in a mindset of disapproval.
This makes it easy for us to believe that God disapproves of us and loves us only when we fit in with what we imagine to be God’s expectations of what is acceptable.
And this imagining of God’s expectations shapes the way we treat others and the way we think of ourselves.
But look how unconditional God’s love is for us.
The Pharisees and Teachers of the law misunderstand God’s love and this leads Jesus to tell the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son.
Jesus is saying to them and to us: This is what God’s love looks like.
This is how much you all are loved.
I love how Jesus says, “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them.
Don’t you leave the ninety nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until you find it?
The human answer to this is: Nobody does this.
It’s insanity.
If you lose 1% of your holdings, you don’t risk the 99% of your holdings in order to get it back.
By leaving the 99, you risk them roaming off, being stolen or being killed by a wolf.
No one leaves the 99.
“Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one.
Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it?
And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’”
Nobody does this.
You don’t call friends and neighbors together for a celebration only to spend more money feeding and entertaining them than that one coin was worth.
I mean, why bother looking for it at all, if you’re just going to blow more money anyway?
It’s insanity.
Nobody does this.
Except Jesus.
That’s how much each human being is worth to God.
That is how much each one of us are loved.
And that’s why the Gospel is such good news!
I love how Phillip Yancey puts it in his book: “What’s so Amazing about Grace?”
He writes, “I have meditated enough on Jesus’ stories of grace to let their meaning filter through.
Still, each time I confront their astonishing message I realize how thickly the veil of ungrace obscures my view of God.
A housewife jumping up and down over the discovery of a lost coin is not what naturally comes to mind when I think of God.
Yet that is the image Jesus insisted upon.”
We, along with the Pharisees and teachers of the law miss the implication of Jesus’ honoring sinners and tax collectors by eating with them…
…and so Jesus tells us these parables including what we have come to call “The Parable of the Prodigal Son.”
In that parable the younger son is greedy, self-centered, shameless and depraved.
The hurt, the shame and economic suffering he brings upon his family is crazy.
When he decides to come home, most would agree that his repentance is half-baked at best: “How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death!
I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.
I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’”
It sounds as much like careful calculation as genuine repentance.
Yet even before he utters his carefully rehearsed little speech, his father runs to meet him, runs to embrace him, and kisses him.
Before he can finish his apology his father has given orders for him to be clothed, and for the feast to be prepared.
We never find out if he was genuine or not.
But only with him at home was the family complete.
Except that it was not, because the older brother, representing the religious authorities and in our day, perhaps, much of the church, decided to get in a huff, to stand on his dignity, and despite having everything that belonged to the father, could not rejoice with him.
And so, the one word I that I could choose for each one of you—including myself—is loved.
The reason?
We are the lost sheep and God is the shepherd.
We are the lost coin and God is the woman who searches until she finds us.
We are the lost son, the lost daughter who God runs out to greet and throws a party for when we come home—no matter what prompted us to do so.
God doesn’t just love us a little or put up with us.
God’s love is overflowing.
It’s a love so amazing so crazy the world doesn’t get it—and a lot of times the church might not get it either.
Have you ever stopped to think about how much God loves you?
Maybe you are sitting here thinking that “Surely this doesn’t apply to me.”
“God loves other people, but couldn’t possibly love me.”
But please listen to me, and know that I do want you to take this personally.
God loves you.
And there is nothing you can do about it or to change that love.
A guy named Brennan Manning wrote the following: “Define yourself radically as one beloved by God.
This is the true self.
Every other identity is illusion.”
There are so many ways that we can define ourselves, aren’t there.
We say that we are athletic or smart or dumb or funny…but when have you thought of yourself as “One who is Beloved by God”?
Maybe you can write this down on your bulletin or another piece of paper.
Beloved.
This is who you are: You are Beloved by God.
And whatever anyone else, including yourself says about you, I want you to try to let this thought stay with you: You are Beloved by God.
You always have been and always will be…
…No matter what.
And THAT should change everything.
