SERMON FOR THE SIXTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Proper 19 C ~ September 16, 2007

Holy Trinity & St. Anskar

There is rejoicing in Heaven over one sinner who repents

+In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity

    At first, I was a little stumped about today’s gospel. Last week we heard about giving up everything and being ready to lose everything and this week, we hear about feverish attempts to avoid losing anything! The guy with the lost sheep and the woman with the lost coin. That illustrates the beauty of parables and the difficulties we can get into if we take them literally. The shepherd and the housewife are examples of typical human behavior; what we all do naturally. In this case, it is a way of saying that if we can be concerned about such small matters, how much more will God be concerned about us.

And God’s concern is for the least of us. Not just the majority who are pretty much ok, but for the marginal, who may NOT be at all ok. That fits right in with all the other gospel stories, which we have been reading in Luke this summer. They all seem to have to do with shaking us out of our ordinary way of looking at the world:

· Hating father and mother,

· taking the lowest places at the banquet,

· getting shut out of another banquet we thought we deserve to be in and others didn’t,

· selling possessions and giving alms,

· life not consisting in the abundance of possessions.

And even though that idiot with the big building plans who died that very night may seem like the housewife all concerned about her lost coin in that they both seem to be concentrating on possessions, the point of today’s parable is that God cares about the insignificant and lowly, not just about people of substance.

Here again, Jesus is causing scandal by encouraging bad people to hang out with Him. They really WERE bad people, too. Not just charming, misunderstood non-conformists. These were genuinely unsavory characters. But they wanted to be near Him, for some reason. He interpreted it as a desire to get better. That meant repentance, thinking differently. Apparently those tax-collectors and other sinners were ready to do that , and that caused joy in heaven ~ just as finding the lost lamb or coin would cause joy.

The scandalized people ~ who were scandalized because they thought themselves good ~ forgot two facts:

v the bad people belonged to God, too. Just because they were lost did not mean they no longer were God’s people, and

v the scribes and Pharisees were in need of repentance, too; they too were sinners, and in Heaven’s view, there was not much to distinguish them from the bad people.

This is right in line with taking the lowest place and forgetting about the number of the saved, because those who get shut out of the banquet are those who would shut out others because of their unworthiness.

Another thought occurred to me. Think about these wicked people ~ these outcasts. They never went to the Temple (the province of the scribes- the religious lawyers, the mullahs of the time) nor did they go to the Synagogues, where the Pharisees held sway. They would not have been welcome there, as is clear from today’s passage. But they did want to hear Jesus. There is something pathetic about that, isn’t there? These bad people, whom no one valued very much and many feared, felt drawn to Him. They were probably a little hesitant, hanging back , expecting to be shunned. As most bad people do, they probably had what we would call self-esteem issues. These people would never dream of sitting at the best place at the banquet. They wouldn’t expect to get into the banquet in the first place. They were not going to be saved. That was one thing they could agree on with the scribes and Pharisees. But still they came to Jesus, however tentatively.

And that was enough. Just the bare flicker of hope was enough of a change of mind for Jesus to say that it caused joy in heaven. That is all repentance is: just the slenderest opening to the possibility that things might be different for me. That is all it takes. God is so much more powerful than our wickedness. But God refuses to overpower us. We have to want Him. And those tax-collectors and sinners wanted him enough to come out to listen to Jesus, and that was enough.

The other thing that occurred to me was the idea of rejoicing in Heaven. Think of that. It is really an extravagant image, when you consider that we usually think of heaven as a state of indescribable bliss. How could it get any better? What could it mean for the heavenly host to break out the champagne and celebrate? How can they rejoice any more than they already are? How can the infinite get bigger? But that’s the image: Verily I say unto you, there is rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents. Just as the housewife invites all her friends and neighbors in to sing and dance because of the found coin, heaven goes into full party mode. THAT is how much God cares about these bad people. Because they are God’s people just as much as the faithful scribes and Pharisees.

As Jesus advised those who asked if the number of the saved would be few (the answer was NO), so today He advises the scribes and Pharisees; look to yourselves. Are you unhappy about the presence of these bad people? Well, here’s some more scandal for you: Heaven is happy! I am happy about it. Heaven is not rejoicing because of you, but because of them. And, by the way, you can get heaven to rejoice over you, too. All you have to do is change your mind.

AMEN

MARANATHA

COME, LORD JESUS!