Get Lost.

Luke 15.

I.

            Sensing his acceptance, the tax collectors and sinners gather around Jesus to hear what he has to say.  The scribes and the Pharisees criticize him for associating with tax collectors and sinners.

            In order to explain why he hangs around with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus offers three famous parables.

            First, he asks, “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?”

            Let’s consider that for a minute.  Is this really how we act?  Assuming the shepherd is alone with the sheep, would he really leave the 99 alone on the hillside, to go off and look for one that wandered off?  Would he risk coming back with the one only to find that the 99 had scattered and even been attacked by wolves, or stolen by bandits?  Would he risk having to go back to the owner with one sheep, explaining that the other 99 were lost when he went to fetch it?

            Some commentators postulate that there were other shepherds there with whom he could leave the 99, in order to make sense of the parable.  They say it would be so understood that no shepherd would be out there watching 100 sheep all by himself, that Jesus doesn’t have to mention it.  And maybe that’s true.  Or maybe we should assume that the shepherd would lock the 99 up safely in a corral, and then go in search of the lost one. 

            But on the surface, if the shepherd is alone, the answer is that he would be irresponsible to the point of insanity to leave 99 valuable sheep unprotected to go after one that was missing.  Would we?  Wouldn’t we consider it more prudent to just write off the one, rather than jeopardize the 99?

            Jesus, of course, isn’t talking about best shepherding practices.  He is answering the charge of why he associates with the dregs and losers, the nobodies, and even the anti-social characters in society.  He places himself with the expendable, sometimes hated, always discounted, rejects.  He places himself with the people whom the general society is content to sacrifice for the greater good.

            He knows that it is standard practice in every culture to dismiss or hate these people.  Indeed, one of the ways society maintains its unity and coherence is by having a class or people whom everyone is united in dismissing.  It takes their attention off of the conflicts they have with each other, to focus on the “sinners” or the sick people whom God is obviously punishing, blaming them for the mess the society is in. 

            We still do this, for crying out loud!  We still identify individuals and groups whom we define as “sinners” in some way, and upon whom we decide to place the blame for our predicament.  Hating them brings the rest of us together.  So not only do we not go after the single lost sheep as an economic calculus, we often arbitrarily pick out a sheep specifically to reject!  As theHighPriest Caiaphus would later remark about Jesus, it is good for one to die so that the rest may be saved.

II.

            This is the reasoning of the scribes and Pharisees.  Their job is to hold society together.  This is done by maintaining a social order and hierarchy, part of which is and making sure there is always some class at the very bottom who can be sacrificed, hated, rejected, blamed, scapegoated, and sometimes even lynched.  There has to be an “other” over-against which we can all be united.  It’s those “sinners.”  It’s those predatory, treasonous tax collectors. 

            Jesus, however, is pretty sick of this attitude.  And he’s not alone.  The whole Hebrew Bible is written from the perspective of the lost sheep, the rejects, the losers.  It starts out as the record of a band of escaped slaves.  And it hits its stride with the prophets railing against sacrifices, and urging the people to do justice and love kindness.  Finding our social unity by ganging up on an invented common enemy is something the prophets find repulsive.  They demand that the people remember when they were the common enemy, and they were the slaves, and they were the victims, and not behave that way towards others themselves.

            The scribes and Pharisees are afraid that if this hierarchy is not maintained and if there is not a class of people at the bottom against whom everyone else can be united, then everything, the whole Jewish nation, the whole religion, falls apart.  Because if we’re not all focused on one common enemy, we all become enemies to each other.

            Jesus and the prophets would have us find our unity not in an arbitrarily determined and completely innocent scapegoat who becomes the focus of our paranoia, condemnation, righteous indignation, and violence.  Rather, our unity is discovered in our shared suffering.  In the middle of the Ten Commandments, Moses says: “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.”

            We are the lost sheep; God is the shepherd.  But unlike human shepherds, God always remembers us, seeks us out, finds us, and brings us home, even if we get lost.

 

III.

            In the second little parable, we are the lost coin, and God is the woman.  She searches diligently, sifting through the dirt of her floor, until she finds us, each one of us, an insignificant, barely valuable penny.  Pennies are what people don’t even bother to pick up from the sidewalk.  Pennies are what we store in large amounts in our drawers because they’re not worth the energy to take to the bank and have counted and redeemed.  Who invests all this time in finding a single penny, and when finding it, throwing a party at a cost of hundreds of dollars?  God, that’s who.  

            Then Jesus launches into what may be his greatest parable.  After the lost sheep and the lost coin, he gives us the parable of the lost son.  How many of our families can relate to a lost son?  I wonder if America does not now have an entire generation of lost sons.

            You’ve all heard the story and probably at least a few sermons on it.  The younger son basically gives his father the finger, in effect, wishing his father was dead by demanding his inheritance early.  He takes the money, which the father must have had to liquidate a fair amount of property to provide, and goes off to waste it in what Jesus understatedly terms “dissolute living.”  Use your imagination.

            He hits bottom.  The economy goes into recession.  The younger son winds up doing a job you couldn’t pay most self-respecting Jews to do: feeding pigs.  The remuneration is so low and he is so hungry that even the pig-feed looks appetizing.

            At this point the younger son is almost exactly mirroring the stereotype of a “bad kid”.  He is someone who deserves society’s just punishment.  Rewarding such behavior would only encourage him to act in a callous and irresponsible manner again.  He is wasteful, lazy, greedy, careless, selfish, and practically a sociopath.  When he winds up in the pigsty he is a shining example for all sons of how not to act.  Parents and civic leaders could gladly use the parable so far as a lesson to all sons who behave in this way.  See what happens when you waste your money and reject your family?  You wind up feeding pigs!

            The upright and responsible scribes and Pharisees would nod in approval at this point.  The younger son got what he deserved.  We can all be united in judging and rejecting him.  We can all feel superior and vindicated that for once bad behavior is punished.  We can righteously leave him there with the pigs to wallow in his misery, so we can walk by and point him out to our young sons and say, “See?  This is what could happen to you if you upset the order of things!  This is what happens to bad boys who run off on their own!  So now, when we tell you to work hard in the vineyard, I hope you will do as we say!”

IV.

            Society needs the lost, the losers, the failures, the victims, the sick, the outcast, so we have people to turn into object lessons of how not to act.  The more miserable their state, the better. 

            But Jesus doesn’t see object lessons.  He sees human beings.  His parable doesn’t end there where society would have him end it.  He continues talking.

            He says, “But when [the younger son] came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger!  I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’  So he set off and went to his father.”

            The conventional wisdom of the scribes and Pharisees might think they know where this is going.  The object lesson will no doubt continue as we watch the righteous father administer the just punishment to his evil son.  No real father will be taken in by that “I am no longer worthy” crap.  No real father would let this kid get away with what he did.  If we let people like this off, just let them come sauntering back with no consequences, society would just fall apart into chaos.

            We can’t let these people off the hook.  We can’t reward bad behavior.  We can’t foster dependency.  The poor and the sick, the sinners, they got that way because God is punishing them.  When this kid gets home, we hope that the father will at least give him a whipping he will never forget.  That will teach him!

            But the father in the story is not like the fathers, the leaders, of their society.  The father in the story does not righteously demand that his honor be appeased in blood.  He does not insist that his wrath be satisfied.  He does not crucify his son.  The father in the story acts very strangely.

            Jesus says that “while [the son] was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.”  And the father throws a great feast to celebrate the son’s return.

            And at this point Jesus’ hearers are going, “What?  This isn’t like any father I ever heard of.”  And that is Jesus’ point.  God is not like any father we ever heard of.  Just like God is not like any shepherd or housewife we ever heard of.  God does not care about the stability of the social order and maintaining the civic hierarchy.  If God cared about that, God would have been on Pharaoh’s side, not on the side of the Hebrew slaves.

            The father in the story doesn’t appear to know or care how his son got into this state of abject poverty.  All he sees is his beloved son, returning home, in humility and sorrow.  And his heart goes out to him.

V.

            And that is all Jesus sees in the people he meets.  He sees their suffering.  He sees their sorrow.  He sees their brokenness and diseases and victimization.  Even in tax collectors, for God’s sake, he sees wounded and shattered souls, driven to do harm to others.  And he embraces, and heals, and receives, and welcomes, and forgives, and liberates them.  He gathers them together in a new community, without predatory fathers, but in equality and sharing.

            When the grumpy and resentful older brother shows up, everybody knows he represents the scribes and Pharisees, the forces of stability and responsibility, the ones who have to oppress and reject and hate and kill some common enemy to keep order and unity.  The ones who have to have someone at the bottom so they can have their place near the top.

            It is as if Jesus, and through him God, is saying, “You need someone to oppress and reject and exclude and blame and hate and kill?  You need a scapegoat?  You need a lightning rod for your own wrath and sacred honor?  You need someone to crucify?  Take me.  Leave these people alone!  I will receive and bear all your hate and injustice and violence, until you are exhausted; until you are empty.  Then I will receive and forgive and love you.”

            At the end of the story, Jesus tells us that the father said to the older son, “‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.  But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”

            If we just could realize that we are always with God, maybe we would not feel compelled to invent scapegoats and hierarchies and outcasts and others to blame and feel superior to.  If we could get over our mindless wrath and honor-driven psychoses, and wake up to the truth that God is here in infinite beauty and goodness all the time… then maybe we wouldn’t have to be enslaving or crucifying people for the sake of social stability, order, and peace.

            But in Jesus Christ, God is saying, “Yo, the people you hate and judge and reject and kill?  Those are the people I love the most.  So deal with it.”  Jesus doesn’t care what they did.  He is not so naïve and stupid as to imagine that what prostitutes and tax collectors do is all blossoms and bunnies.  But when they awaken to their pain, when they come to themselves, as the younger son does in the pigsty, Jesus is there, waiting in the humanity he shares with us, to welcome them home.

            And when we awaken to our pain and our bottomless sorrow, and our exhaustion from trying to keep it all together, and when we come to ourselves, our true selves as God made us and blessed us and gifted us, and when we can come home with nothing, with no awards or medals or achievements, with nothing but an awareness that we have fallen short, we have missed the mark, things didn’t turn out the way we planned, we actually worked hard against God, squandering God’s blessings and gifts and resources.  When we feel no longer fit to be a child of God… maybe that’s when we grow into our true nature as a son or a daughter of God.  Maybe then, when we don’t have an array of self-righteous porcupine quills deployed defensively around our souls, when we realize that we are just earthlings, just mud-people into whom God has miraculously breathed life, that we feel that warm, welcoming, redeeming, liberating embrace of the living God.

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