Sermon for St. Matthew's
Susan J. Barnes
Luke 15: 1-10
16 September 2001
We have just heard two parables about the lost. Everyone here today has
a heightened sense of the tragedy of loss. Indeed, since Tuesday,
we have dwelt in the tension between joyful stories of people being
miraculously found, and the dreadful reality that countless more are
tragically lost forever.
Five days--121 hours later--we are here and we have to deal with
the wrenching truth of our own loss - more than 5,000 fellow citizens -
and of the incomprehensible hatred that caused it.
This terrorism was a violation of our community, and community is
the basis of our humanity.
Through shared struggles and tragedies we can bond so
strongly in small groups--at church, in the neighborhood, at work--that
we form a corporate identity like a family's, a sense of one-ness, of
wholeness. Some of Tuesday's survivors mourned the loss of their
colleagues as though they were cherished kin, because that's how close they
felt.
In today's Gospel, Jesus' parables of the lost and found are images of
that kind of wholeness, which has been shattered. He was replying to
his critics, the Pharisees and the scribes who could not understand why
Jesus was dining with people who were outcasts, who had no standing at
all in the strict social hierarchy of the day. According to them, that
wasn't appropriate behavior for someone of Jesus' high status as a
rabbi. You were only supposed to break bread with social equals.
Jesus seized the moment to teach his fellow teachers--who were griping
on the sidelines--in two master parables.
In the first, Jesus said: "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?" With this story, Jesus tweaked the
Pharisees--pulling them in two ways. On one hand, he let them identify
with the shepherd as a metaphorical spiritual leader. On the other hand,
he defied them to put themselves in the place of a real shepherd, who
was a peasant and socially beneath them.
But Jesus had another audience, too, and one that was truly listening.
The crowd that had come to hear him included shepherds who would have
identified with his first story. The women in the crowd would have
identified with the second parable, about the woman and the coin. That
one must have really baffled the Pharisees. Why would Jesus talk about a
poor woman--someone without any social standing, a non person? But
Jesus did, and he dignified her, likening her careful stewardship to
God's own. Through that simple parable, he honored all of the women in
his audience.
In both parables, Jesus conveyed the depth of loss through the numbers.
At the outset of each tale, the count is in round numbers: 100 sheep, 10
coins. With the loss--just of one--each group is fractured, reduced to
an odd number. If the lost is not found, the group will never be whole
again. Jesus' message to the them and to us is clear: no one is
dispensable--however humble, however misled, however disaffected or
crazy they might be. God will not rest until every one of us is gathered
together.
The Pharisees criticized the company Jesus kept because they had
narrow, legalistic ideas about who God's people were. Through the
parable of the sheep, Jesus tried to give them a God's-eye view of the
flock in which every single person of every state and condition belongs.
He challenged the Pharisees to see a new world--God's Kingdom--where
there are no outsiders, where power and status don't exist, where every
person is equal in God's sight. He challenged them also, like the shepherd,
to seek out the lost and bring them in. That's what Jesus did when he dined
with "tax collectors and sinners"; he accepted them as equals, brought them
into God's fold.
Jesus' worldview raises questions about our own outcasts. A sample
list might include: people addicted to drugs; or to alcohol, gambling,
shopping or other, legal things; homosexuals; the mentally ill;
convicts; people from different countries; different faiths; from
different neighborhoods, schools or social classes. Each of us knows
our categories of people who lie on the other side of the us/them
divide. I cringe to recognize the Pharisee in myself. I may be able
minister to people on my list, but I can balk at the idea that--like
Jesus--I must also break bread with them, befriend them, love them as I
love my own nearest and dearest, as I love myself. Today I have to ask
myself how I would greet someone from Afghanistan? Worse still--a
member of the Taliban?
On Wednesday night I was with Eric and the youth. We knew we needed
to pray together, to seek God's comfort and God's word in scripture.
Mostly we needed to listen. Listening, we heard the emotions that people
of all ages are feeling--grief, confusion, anger, fear. We also heard
some remarkable wisdom. At closing prayer a thoughtful young man prayed
for God to be with us, but even more for God to be with the men who
committed the acts, because--he said--they need God more than we do.
And a not-so-little child shall lead them. That high school student has
gotten it. He has internalized the radical message of today's gospel.
In God's sight, there are no outsiders, no "others"; we all are one family, one flock.
How on earth do we, do I, extend the love I have for closest kin and
friends, people with whom I belong---to people who may offend me, or
infuriate me, or disdain me, or frighten me in ordinary
circumstances--much less now, to people who might be threatening our
very way of life? I begin by meeting them as individual human beings,
not as members of any category--as children of God, like me.
Then I have to face and to break down my prejudices. It may be that
all I can do is to pray. But that is the right beginning, because it
puts the matter in God's hand where it belongs. Today's reading from
1 Timothy Paul reminds us that only God can melt the hardened heart,
as God did Paul's own
God is working, even through these horrible events. There are signs of
a new sense of unity in the human family. Headlines in European
newspapers on Wednesday read: "We are all Americans." On personal
business in Houston Friday, I worshipped at Christ Church Cathedral.
As the crowd there swelled to bursting, the pews packed and hundreds
standing through the service, I thought, "We are all New Yorkers."
At the same hour, a standing-room congregation was here at St. Matthew's--
some for the first time. They came to weep and pray together.
The tragedy of our great loss has opened our hearts to God
and to one another in beautiful, powerful, miraculous ways.
There is a time to weep, a time to mourn. Now is such a time.
But as Christians we are called to do more. A few weeks ago, Bishop
Cox reminded us that the church is a healing community year round, not
just on special weekends. The mission of the church is to reconcile
all humankind to God and to one another in Christ. Jesus' parables of
the lost sheep and the lost coin tell us that we all are meant to be
whole, to be together as God's family.
Jesus gave us the words and the example. We know what we must fight
every barrier within us, every prejudice, every judgment that keeps us
from honoring any person. More: we must go out, to find those who are
lost--in Austin and everywhere. We must minister to them where they are
and pray for them. And when they are ready, to carry them lovingly
into the community, to create the whole family of God--here, now, one
relationship at a time.
This a towering ideal, but it is all there in the Episcopal baptismal
vows. There we pledge "to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving
our neighbor as ourself," and to "strive for justice and peace among all
people, respecting the dignity of every human being".
We can not do that alone, but we can, and we will do it, with God's
grace, with God's help.
