Joel D. Kline
September 19, 2004
Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Janice and I are in the process of having our kitchen remodeled, and the entire house feels as if it is in disarray. This past week the refrigerator was in the living room, the table and dishes in the family room, the microwave temporarily on the kitchen floor, and we had no kitchen sink or stove. Still, out of force of habit, we would find ourselves headed to familiar places to perform customary tasks or to find commonly used utensils, only to remember that things are not where we had grown accustomed to having them.
We human beings appreciate a certain level of predictability, proportion, and order in our lives, and this thirst for stability and familiarity carries over into our experience of faith and our involvements in the church. Indeed, many of us look to the church as a bastion of predictability, as a place where we may be buffeted from the swirling change in the world around us. I recall, in my teenage years during the era of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam movements, being astounded by the number of “good church folk” who little wanted to consider what the Christian faith had to say to those critical issues of the day. And one might well suggest that not much has changed, as many churches yet today choose not to engage in conversation regarding the light their faith in Jesus might shed on today’s struggles and wars and injustices.
Truth be told, this desire for predictability generally deepens when we find ourselves in uncertain and troubled times such as we now live in. Immersed in a culture of fear and suspicion, it is tempting to try to form the church primarily as a place of security—a place where we do not have to think about life’s troubling divisions and pain. And yet, one need not read long into the Scriptures before realizing that the journey of faith is seldom neat, orderly, and trouble-free.
Instead, as Sarah and Abraham discover, faith is a matter of venturing forth in trust, not knowing where we are headed. Moses hears a call to leave the relative peace of Midian and return to Egypt, where he is to confront the Pharaoh with God’s message of liberation, “Let my people go.” The prophets find themselves in the discomforting position of calling the people to embrace anew paths of faithfulness to God, a call that frequently meets with resistance and hostility. The Gospels portray Jesus over and over again embroiled in conflict with the religious leaders of his day, and in our text from Luke 15 those religious leaders—the Pharisees and scribes—are pictured as grumbling and complaining because Jesus is not following customary patterns. Jesus is not playing by the rules those leaders deem sacred. Jesus is not acting in neat and orderly ways. Jesus is not bound by the divisions of his day, choosing instead to welcome the very persons who had long been relegated to the margins of life, including tax collectors and “sinners.” Tax collectors are seldom appreciated in any culture, but as collaborators with Herod and the Romans, the tax collectors of ancient Palestine were passionately abhorred, and Jesus is therefore seen as teaming with the enemy. His associating with other “sinners,” those who did not meticulously follow the letter of the law, is viewed with equal disdain.
Aware of the grumbling, Jesus offers several parables in response, each affirming the gracious character of our God as One who takes the initiative to seek the broken, the lost, those relegated to the margins of society. Indeed, the key characters Jesus chooses for the parables are “marginal” persons themselves. Shepherds were generally poor, outcast from acceptable society, their word not even trusted in a court of law. And women were relegated to the margins, with the rabbis of the day debating whether they even had souls!
The parables do not portray an orderly God who knows God’s place, but rather a God who relentlessly reaches out, a God who takes risk, a God who intrudes and seeks, a God who throws parties in heaven. God is akin to a shepherd, Jesus tells us, who, losing one sheep out of a hundred, leaves the ninety-nine to journey into the wilderness to find the one who has strayed. In a neat and orderly world, it makes little sense—does it?—putting the ninety-nine at risk in order to rescue the one. And what of the second parable, where God is likened to a woman who has lost one of ten silver coins, and who furiously and resourcefully turns things upside down, searching everywhere until the lost coin is found.
And how does each then respond, but by rejoicing and partying. In his commentary, Luke for Everyone, Tom Wright reminds us of the ancient Jewish conviction that the two halves of God’s creation, heaven and earth, were intended to fit together, to be in harmony with one another. So that if you discover what’s going on in heaven, you’ll discover how things are meant to be on earth. Surely that is the point of our praying that God’s kingdom will come on earth, even as it is in heaven.
In the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin Jesus is declaring that heaven has a great, noisy party every time a sinner is found, every time new life is experienced, every time old barriers are broken down, every time liberation is announced, every time peace breaks out. And whenever Jesus welcomes those deemed as unlovable or as unworthy of God’s grace, the kingdom of God is among us. Whenever you and I in the name of Jesus take the risk of embracing God’s new reality, heaven and earth become more fully intertwined.
Tom Wright continues,
The real challenge of these parables for today’s church is: what would we have to do, in the visible, public world, if we were to make people ask the questions to which stories like these are the answer? What might today’s Christians do that would make people ask, “Why are you doing something like that?”, and give us the chance to tell stories about finding something that was lost?
The first Christians, we are told, lived by such remarkably different values and priorities that those in the surrounding culture marveled, “Behold, how they love one another.” And many began to question what it is that enabled those early believers to live so differently. Are others led to ask the same of us, wondering what in the world we think we are doing?
Could it be that we have become so concerned with propriety and order that we have lost sight of the gospel challenge to embrace an alternative vision for living—a vision of peace and compassion, of servanthood and self-giving love, of grace and mercy and hope. It’s a vision that challenges us to let go of predictability and convenience in order to respond to the rigors of discipleship.
In a book entitled Soul Tsunami Leonard Sweet suggests that the church by very definition is chaordic, living on the boundary between chaos and order, that place of creativity where new life emerges. We need some level of order in our lives; the apostle Paul, you may remember, reminds the turbulent church at Corinth that “all things should be done decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:40). But when that penchant for order inhibits the taking of risk, when that sense of order makes us fearful to dream new dreams and grapple with how we might more faithfully fulfill Christ’s mission in the world around us, something is amiss. Prods Leonard Sweet,
The church is missing the boat on what it means to be a leader…. The church is bursting at the seams with rationality, decency, order, dignity, and predictability. What it needs is the holy intoxications of foolishness, humor, craziness, outrageousness, creative disorder, and passion.
Sisters and brothers, are we willing to be a chaordic church on the boundary between chaos and order? Are we ready to be a church where faith is deepened, peace proclaimed, community embraced, others are welcomed, and neighbors are served, all in the compassionate spirit of Jesus? Are we prepared to serve the God of grace and God of glory who, even now, takes the initiative to seek the lost and care for the broken, the God who is able to cure our warring madness, the God who celebrates new life? Shall we discover new possibilities as we risk embracing the holy intoxication of creative disorder? May it be so among us. Amen.
Creator God, Source of love and light, we hear your call to walk in the light. Yet we confess that frequently we hold back. We have acted in our own interests, not wanting to consider how our actions impact the lives of others. We have chosen to live in fear, too often remaining silent in the face of war, injustice and oppression. Short of courage, we have neglected your call to live as light by doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with you.
God of all grace, forgive us. Forgive our fearfulness and our self-centeredness. Forgive us when we have chosen an easy peace with the evil in us and around us. Forgive us when we have shut our eyes—and our hearts—to the pain of our fellow human beings. Forgive us, O God, and create new hearts and spirits within us. Grant us wisdom and courage, that we might truly walk in the light, be the light, serve the light, pray for the light, sing the light. God of all creation, in your steadfast love take us by the hand and empower us to be messengers of your peace—respecting life, building community, embracing right relationship with you and with one another.
O God, guide us to that day when nations no longer teach the ways of war and suspicion, but instead transform swords into plowshares and bombs into instruments of healing and wholeness.
Hear us now, holy God, as we turn our thoughts to those in our midst who are in special need of your healing touch. We hold before you…
Thanks be to you, O God, for standing with us in the good and the bad, the difficult and the smooth, the frustrating and the calm. Guide us as we seek to be a people who deepen faith, proclaim peace, embrace community, welcome others, and serve our neighbors, in the compassionate spirit of Jesus. It is in the name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.