Depth of Mercy

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

September 9, 2007

Text: Luke 15: 1-10

A man and his wife had adopted an elementary-age boy, who had spent much of his life in foster homes. The couple went with the boy to their pastor with a problem. Everything had been going well except for one thing: the little boy was always running away. After some conversation about why he was running away, with lots of “I don’t know” answers, the boy finally said: “I run away because it feels so good when someone comes to look for me.”(Told by Reverend Barry Bailey in a sermon at a session of the STTX Annual Conference, in the 1980s)

If the tax collectors and other sinners could have verbalized the reason for their love of this man Jesus, they may have also said, “It feels so good when someone comes to look for us.” These were the lost sons and daughters of the house of Israel, a part of the covenant people who were, in the eyes of the religious leaders, as good as dead. Yes, in some cases, with the appropriate changed behaviors, they could be welcomed back into the fold. But the religious leaders were not going to go out looking for them. They were certainly not going to have table fellowship with them.

But Jesus went out to people. The sick, the mentally and emotionally unstable, prostitutes, tax collectors (quislings), shepherds, donkey-drivers, peddlers, tanners and others who were ‘lost:’ Jesus had compassion for them. He went the extra mile to find them.

This would have been unusual behavior for any rabbi. But, for one who claimed to be planting the seeds of God’s New Day, this was outrageous behavior. Jesus was announcing and demonstrating a new divine initiative. As one has written, “Jesus is acting in God’s stead [place]: he is God’s representative [re-presenting God]…In his actions the love of God to the repentant sinner is made [real]….God’s love to the returning sinner knows no bounds….” (Norman Perrin, Parables of Jesus)

There are many quests for the divine. There are many recommended paths for spiritual awakening and bliss. Too often, the “god” we find in these searches is a god of our own making, a god who looks, acts and talks like we do.

Jesus was different. He revealed a God who searches us out. “God follows us into our own darkness; there, where we thought finally to escape God, we run straight into God’s arms.” (Simon Tugwell, Prayer) The God who is holy and righteous beyond our imagining, and who does have standards for human community and personal moral behavior, is at the same time the God who will enable us to rise to the fullness of our human nature. This is the nature of the God who is revealed in Jesus’ encounters with people, in the stories he tells, and finally, in his death on the cross

Have you been there? Have you been lost and longed to be found? It may not have been in a desert or a forest, but in a spiritual no- man’s- land. I have known such places, and I have known such feelings. When all we can do is pray, with the psalmists, ‘make haste O God, for the waters are up to my neck.” “I am like a bird on a tree limb in the wilderness.” “I am wandering like a lost sheep: come and look for [me].”

We may function well enough, but there is a God-shaped emptiness inside us. In these times of lostness, even scripture seems to us as dry as a stick. Being with people simply makes us feel more isolated and lost. And we long to be found..

We may say, “Well, I have not been lost; I have my act together and do not desire to be found. God can leave me alone, thank you very much” But there are different ways of being lost. We are adept of hiding our lostness. We can be so squeezed into the cultural norms of our world that we think the way we are is the way we must be. No matter how long you and I have been knowing God, we are-- every one of us-- recovering sin-addicts. One day at a time, by the mercy of God, we are being changed from one degree of glory to another. But if we do not see ourselves in solidarity with the more obvious lost souls, we simply have not yet admitted our powerlessness over sin.

But this is not the last word. Jesus pulls back the curtain and shows us that God is indeed trustworthy.

The deceptively simple parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin touch our hearts. Artists have depicted the shepherd, reaching over a cliff, pulling the frightened sheep to safety, while the 99 sheep wait. A woman loses a coin, perhaps a coin which is a part of her dowry, and she desperately sweeps the whole house, using precious oil to bring light to the dark interior. In both stories, emphasis is on strenuous effort to find the one.

Roberta Bondi in her Ministers Week lectures some years ago, reminded me of our common seminary experiences of the 1960s. It was the unspoken assumption in those years that God cared mostly about the big things----world peace, poverty, ecology. We were guided to pray for the big thanks, and to give thanks for God’s overall care for the universe. But the thought that we should pray for individual ourselves, that God cared for what happened in the week by week events of our lives----well, we had grown up now, and God would far too busy to be so personal.

Truth is, we had nibbled our way into deism, the belief that God has set everything up in a fine way, and then decided to leave us to our own devices, absent from the individual struggles of our lives. Dr. Bondi, through the painful experiences of her life, and through her immersion in the Lord’s Prayer and the teachings of the desert fathers and mothers, began the long trek back into belief in the God of the woman searching for the one coin and the shepherd looking everywhere for the one sheep. God cared for her. It did not mean that God cared only for her. But the God revealed in Jesus had compassion for persons as well as the big things.

Jesus tells these stories to explain why he “receives sinners and eats with them.” He eats with them---- not as we might in the midst of strangers in a restaurant, but seated with them in their home, around their table, engaged in conversation, inviting them to change their lives in the power of God’s unbounded love for them.

And Jesus does not search for the one lost sinner merely out of duty, or because he wants to make one more convert. Jesus is motivated by his Abba’s joy in saving persons. For God, “our recovery causes boundless joy….It is God’s good pleasure that the lost be redeemed, because they are his. Their wandering causes God pain.” (Joachim Jeremias, Parables) “God is the cosmic shepherd who gets more of a kick out of that one lost sheep being found than over the ninety-nine who had the good sense not to get lost in the first place.” (Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth)

It is a provocative image: a rejoicing God. So different from the one we have of a scowling and nit-picking God. Our being found contributes to God’s happiness! This must be what glorifying God means: not simply pleasing God, though that is true, but really loving God by coming home to be a part of the family again.

The difference is in knowing and trusting in the mercy, the compassion, the forgiveness of God----believing that the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever; that there is more joy when we repent than there is over those who think they do not need to repent; that Christ died for our sins while we were yet sinners; that God could take a violent, pride-filled, self-righteous man like Paul and convert him into a passionate and courageous preacher and missionary for the sake of Christ; that God can turn our lives around and free us for abundant life and extraordinary service for God’s kingdom.
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We must begin with Jesus’ parables by identifying with the lost sheep, the lost coin. The story is first about who God is and how God acts, not first about what role we have in God’s work. We are always “being-saved” followers of Jesus. We never outgrow our need to be rescued or found.

But as those who follow--- we in the church, and individually members of it--- can be the ones through whom God “makes his appeal” as the Apostle Paul puts it.
 
The response of the mainline churches in recent decades has been largely a Bo-Peep mission. “Little Bo-peep has lost her sheep and she doesn’t know where to find them. Leave them alone and they’ll come home, wagging their tails behind them.” Contrast this with the shepherd’s pursuit of the lost sheep and the woman’s thorough search for the lost coin----and even the Father’s race down the road to meet his prodigal son who is coming home!

How can we be servants of God’s outreaching mercies?

We can take the initiative in befriending people, in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ. We can learn from Jesus the value of the one. Like Jesus, we do not have to wait until people change their ways before we sit with them.

We can be active listeners, patiently giving our time and attention. We can show up and be responsive to their felt needs.

We can rejoice with people when they have breakthroughs. Calling when people need a shoulder to cry on is important; but it may be equally important to rejoice with friends when they celebrate turnarounds.

If we never forget how God reached out to us---  how God came to find us in our times of lostness --- we will be more able to be the ones through whom God may touch another. God cares for the one as well as the many.

Mouzon Biggs told the story of taking his little pre-school son on trips with him as he was traveling to preach in various places. One time, on the way back home, he asked him if he was getting bored with all of this. His son said, “Oh no, Dad, I want to go with you.” Mouzon asked, “Well, why do you like to go with me?” “Because,” his son said, “on these trips, it’s just you and me.”

We are not peddlers of the gospel. We don’t own a franchise. We are instruments God may use to bring someone home to him. We may be the means of God’s seeking, persistent, faithful love---the ones’ through whom God may make disciples of Jesus Christ.

There are times to “do” and there are times to just “be.” Jesus shows us that we each count, and God will turn the place upside down to find us, and hack through the thickets to save us.

Rejoice and be glad. And spread the word.