I like to ride the bus. I always have. You never know who you are going to see, what you are going to experience when you are on the bus. I have ridden the bus with a man who wore enormous ear muffs and sang Gospel songs really loudly. I have ridden the bus where I am pretty I was the only one who spoke English and I was met with stares. I have ridden the bus when a really smelly guy came on and found himself a seat right behind me and hacked and coughed on my neck. I have ridden the sky train and seen a young man rock back and forth scratching his arms as the drug craving crawled beneath his skin talking to him till he felt compelled to talk back. I have seen the graffiti on the walls and wondered who wrote it. I have ridden down Hastings staring out the window at people who do unimaginable things to strangers so eek out a living. Never once have I thought about getting off the bus and hanging out with a bunch of them. Sure I have done for mission projects, traveling with a partner so I would be safe. Buying them supper with money that wasn’t mine. Which isn’t to dissuade those projects, just to say that I did it to show how Christian I was. As I read these verses today I couldn’t help but wonder why.
There is one story I remember, I am not sure I can explain entirely the hows and the whys well. I was by myself this time. I saw a man, an old man, sitting on a bench in Vancouver. He looked nice enough, till I got close. He was scary, unshaven, one of his eyes milky and vacant as the result of some distant injury. I sat down next to him. I was supposed to talk to him about Jesus. Instead, I just talked to him. He had worked as a welder at a boiler plant, his eye injury had come when he was working a piece of plate struck him in the face. He had a wife, she cheated on him and ran off with someone else. He lived in a hotel up the street on Granville, a cheap hotel. He was simply sitting and enjoying the afternoon. Why did I talk to him, I don’t know. We did eventually get around to talking about faith. Turns out he knew who Jesus was, he asked if he could pray for me. I couldn’t help but feel like maybe I was the lost one after all with my assumptions, my attitude of superiority and wisdom.
Jesus eats with sinners, what a jerk. At least that’s how the Pharisees took it. The nerve of the guy, eating with people who had such a bad reputation. Why would you do that? Why would you risk your own reputation simply to talk to people who were, well, gross… heathen. I think there is a bit of hilarity to be found here, along with a healthy dose of irony. I like the way the Message reads in this passage. It says that the men and women of doubtful reputation were hanging around Jesus listening intently and that the Pharisees were grumbling about Jesus treating these people like old friends. And right there they answer their own question. Why? Because all you guys do is grumble! You whine, sneer and generally act very holier than thou, you have shown you aren’t a big fan of Jesus in the first place, and what he is supposed to want to hang out with you? How hilarious is that? We don’t really want you around us, but we don’t really want you hanging out with them either * sigh *. It’s frustrating to read about these Pharisees at times isn’t it. Sometimes their words make us wince they are so harsh. They just seem so… so… un-Christian in their attitudes.
One thing we need to remember though is how that irony extends to us. The Pharisees are often a great window into our own world, the world of the church. If we aren’t careful our attitudes can reflect theirs can’t it? See, when I read this I think a lot about how we deal with people in our world in the church today. How often do we assess whether people are good enough for Jesus? How often do we size people up in an attempt to figure out whether they fit in enough, whether they are Christian enough. We can do this under the guise of sheltering our children, not wanting to expose them to certain cultural trends for fear that they will lose their faith or be damaged or even worse, get into those things themselves. How many piercings are too many, or are any too many if you’re a guy? I have a pierced ear, but I don’t wear my earring because I know it bothers some folks. How about tattoos, does the subject matter come into play or are tattoos a reflection of a person’s faith and that they lack the wisdom to stay away from that? I have a tattoo and have never felt as though it made me a poor Christian except for when people accused me in such a way. Those are just a couple of the more modern examples I can think of. How many lines have we drawn, how many laws have we made in our hearts as to what makes a Christian a Christian, or what makes a non-Christian a worthy Christian. Does a real Christian have to like Hymns, do they have to like Switchfoot and Newsboys, or can they listen to Metallica and AC/DC? If they do will they have more to answer for when they stand before the throne of God? Does a person accepted into our ranks have to love or hate liturgy, have to know how to make Jello salad, and be able to say, “And also with you.” At all the appropriate times? How often do we grumble when folks show mercy, show love, show friendship to people who are don’t quite meet our own measure of a Christian. Have they memorized the catechism and the Unaltered Augsburg confession? What if they are just looking for answers that make sense?
It makes a difference in how a church grows, it makes a difference in how we relate to our surrounding community. Have we holed up in our fortress, complete with a password at the door, waiting for the difficult times to pass, hoping beyond hope that we will survive this evil time or do we swing wide the gates and invite folks in for a glimpse of God and heaven, a glimpse of forgiveness and freedom? We read in our magazines that we are slowly declining in our membership and we can stick our head in the sand and say it is a sign of the times or we can do something about it. Programs are important, worship is important but telling people about Jesus is of the utmost importance, and by that I don’t mean bringing them to church so that someone else can tell about Jesus but that each of us, you and I would share the passion of our faith with people who need to hear it. He have been given the challenged to seek out those who are lost.
Today we hear a couple of easy parables. The parallels make sense, they are right there for us to grasp. First, a shepherd has a 100 sheep and loses one. What does he do? Does he consider it lost? No, he goes and scours the countryside for it. He looks and he looks. And I think it’s important to note what He does when He finds that sheep. He doesn’t strike it, or kick it for getting out of place. He doesn’t even make it walk back by itself. He lovingly places it on His shoulders and bears it back to the field with the rest of the sheep. He brings the sheep back in a gentle and loving way, He does not make the sheep pay for being so silly. He risks Himself to bring it back.
In the second parable we have a woman who 1 of 10 coins and she too looks for it like mad. She looks in every nook and cranny, every little space. The coin will not return itself, and I think that in this case that is something we should pay attention too. Unlike the sheep, whom we could hope may come back after a time, a lost coin does not return itself, it must be found, it must be sought by the owner.
For both of these stories we get the same ending… a big celebration. A victory party. Let’s think on this for a moment. A party… for a sheep… for a coin… when is the last time any of you found a quarter on the street and had a shindig to celebrate it? Kind of funny to think about isn’t it.
Have you ever been lost? In a strange place with no clue how to get out of there? I remember driving in Calgary with Candace once and we got hopelessly lost. Even the map was not helping us. It was late at night, we were trying to get out of the city onto a certain highway with the goal of meeting the youth group in Canmore and we just couldn’t figure our way back. I hate being lost, but being lost at night really sucks. I would love to tell you that through our own ingenuity we figured it out, but we didn’t. We got out of that situation completely by God’s blessing. Turns out I drove in a big circle, a 45 minute circle and we ended up back at the beginning, we found our way after that. If you asked either of us, we wouldn’t have told you we were driving in a circle. For all we knew we were well on our way to Saskatchewan or something. It was kind of a scary feeling. And when we were found we celebrated for sure mostly by starting to breathe again.
Being lost is a terrible thing and you and I have all been there. In eternal sense we are born with no sense of direction, no internal compass to guide us. Being born lost pretty much any chance of finding your own way too. We need to be found by someone, anyone and Jesus is looking for us, for everyone. Like that one sheep, He has carried us on His shoulders by carrying the weight of our sins on the cross. He has scoured every nook and cranny because we are valuable to him, all of us. Jesus does not judge whether the sheep or the coin is marked up, pierced, or damaged, He finds them all regardless and He uses us to do that. Once we are found, we turn our attention to helping Him find more. Not only are we found, we are cleaned up, washed and renewed. Our value increases because we belong to Him. I think there is such a cool image in this reading today, that of the angels celebrating and rejoicing when one sinner is found. Imagine that. The joy that is present there in heaven.
I still find myself thinking about Jack from time to time. Whenever I walk by that bench I look to see if he’s there. I know he couldn’t possibly be any more, he was very old when I met him and that is going on 12 years or so now. He didn’t look like he had much time left. But he has stuck with me because he changed the way I look at the world. He changed the way I look at my faith. There are lots of people out there who need to hear about Jesus, I know you hear that a lot from the pulpit, and I know it seems simplistic and trite. I am sure part of you recognizes that while it’s admirable that chances of you doing so are slim. Don’t be so sure, don’t be so negative. Jesus found you, and He works through you to find others. Sometimes He works through others to find you when you didn’t even know you were lost. I felt grateful to God for having met Jack, a man of faith living a different life. It didn’t matter who he was, or how I thought of him at first. He became 80 year old Jesus in a faded plaid jacket, gray and fragile Jesus with a cane and a gruff voice. May you go out this week willing to find, but also willing to be found. Amen.
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