Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

Luke 15:1-10

1 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them." 3 So he told them this parable:

4 "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? 5 When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, "Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' 7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

8 "Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9 When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, "Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' 10 Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

A while back the New York Times travel section published this story on pubs. it said that “a good pub is a ready made party, a home away from home, a club anyone join.”  It’s not hard to imagine the Jesus of our bible story today sitting in this kind of pub and eating and drinking with whoever was there. In the case of the bible story we just head, this would be Jesus sitting and eating with tax collectors and sinners.  The fact that Jesus—a religious leader of the day—was sitting and eating with folks like that was enraging and embarrassing to the other religious leaders who were present.  And they start to grumble, the story says. Can you believe who he’s eating with!  Tax collectors and sinners!  This is outrage!

In response to their grumbling, Jesus responds with three little stories: the first about the lost sheep, the second about a lost coin, and then a third, which doesn’t make it into our reading today, is known as the prodigal son, or the lost son.

Some a you know these stories, but to sum them up:  One way to look at these parables is to imagine that God is like a shepherd with 100 sheep.  He loses one, leaves the 99 and scours the wilderness till he finds the lost sheep.  Then He throws a huge party to celebrate that he found it. 

Then, God is like a woman who has lost a precious coin.  God turns Her house upside down, digging through drawers and sweeping every crevice until She finds her precious coin.  She’s totally stoked when she finds it, and decides to invite all her ladies over for a big party (you know, the Greek actually specifies that this is a party just for the ladies).

Not hard to see what Jesus is up to here, right?:  that foolish lost lamb and little lost coin were the sinners who had wandered off!  They’ve strayed out beyond the fold, wandered away from the home, and left the secure haven where God is. They have wandered outside the realm of Christianity!  And now God is leading a massive search and rescue to try and find them and bring them home! And we should too!!

Hmmm…Or wait.  Maybe this story is about Jesus is teaching all those self-righteous religious leaders a lesson.  You know the ones who are gossiping and grumbling and salty about Jesus hanging out with the wrong crowd? Obviously, those religious leaders of the day had it wrong—don’t they get it? (duh!) God loves the sinners and we’re supposed to hang out with them and bring them back into the fold! Just like Jesus did.  You know, the last shall be first…

One can almost imagine the scene rolling out with Jesus at the pub with the sinners, and religious leaders and the disciples, he’s spelling it out, and everyone’s getting all hyped up about who is right and who is lost. And people pointing their fingers and getting all resentful about who deserves to be sought out who doesn’t. (Polarization is a heck of a drug…)

But then right there, in the midst of the finger pointing and the grumbling and chest-thumping, and all the sinning, Jesus looks out and says: y’all it doesn’t matter who you are (religious leaders, fishermen, sinners, disciples).  Because you all share a common experience. You’re all lost. All y’all. Something about the 99 is lost incomplete without that missing sheep.

Lost.

One would think that after hearing these bible stories today in church that being lost is bad.  We have this way of talking about lost:  “Yeah, after college, she was a little lost.”  Or, “when his marriage fell apart he was totally lost.”

I mean, the title of the parables doesn’t really put the coin or the sheep in a good light:  “The lost sheep.” What about: “The parable of irresponsible shepherd who let his sheep wander off!”  

“The lost coin.” What about: “The woman who spaced on where she left her purse!”

Somehow, being lost seems like the sheep’s fault or the coin’s fault in these parables.  They got lost. Dumb sheep.

But I don’t think lost is bad. We’ve all been there. 

Lost: When we lose the feeling that we belong or the feeling that we’re valuable.  Maybe we’re lost when life has been on a predictable course and suddenly we’re thrown a total curveball.  Some of us get lost when a loved one dies or when we lose a job.  Some of us are lost in our marriages or lost in the feeling that no one really quite knows us.  We get lost in wanting our lives to mean something.  A friend once told me that after she stopped drinking, she felt oddly lost as a sober person.

I’ll admit it that I have been thinking a lot this week of a time in my life when I felt deeply lost as a member of my own church years ago.  Like lost, even when I was sitting there in the pew.  The music grated against me, the prayers felt irrelevant, scripture seemed thin, I felt misunderstood. I was bitter and bored.  I think I was lost and longing for God right there in church. 

We get lost. And then we get lost again, and again.

Our story tells us that God seeks what is lost.  God scours the wilderness and She sweeps the house.  And that means, as Debie Thomas puts it, that “God isn’t [back] in the fold with the ninety-nine insiders.  God isn’t curled up on her couch polishing her nine coins she’s already sure of.  God is where the lost things are. God,” she writes, “is in the darkness of the wilderness,  God is in the remotest corners of the house, God is where the search is at its fiercest,” she ends. 

And this means that when everything has been undone and we have completely lost our bearings, when we see that we are all lost in some way or another and we recognize it, we will be found.  There are all kinda lost people out there in the wilderness, after all.  And all it takes is the grace of one to find you, to hear you, to see you, to know you, to show you the love of Jesus, and you will be found. 

The word grace comes from the latin word gratia, which came from the Greek word charis.  Grace was this idea of “favor” or kindness that someone shows another.  Grace was like an offering.  In her book, “The art of Grace,” Sarah Kaufman explains that “there’s a sense of physically reaching out and leaning toward other people that’s embedded in the word ‘grace.’” 

When Jesus tells these parables that afternoon at the pub (or wherever he was) he was talking with some of his greatest critiques.  And he is calling them, as disciples, to reach out.

Grace is being known. It is trying to step into another’s shoes.  It is compassionately listening.  To each other. It is forgetting ourselves and searching, sweeping the house from top to bottom, searching the craggy wilderness, reaching out and offering who we are in order to find the lost. And in order be found.   This is the grace of God.

This is holy work.

Finding and being found is an act of community making.  About 350 years after Christ, it was Basil of Caesarea who said that if religion is just a private matter, “Whose feet will you wash?”

Our call as disciples is to search for one another and share of our hearts (here at church, in our work, in our families) and to find each other. And then, Jesus says, to throw a joyous party with all our girlfriends, or a party with all the bro-mance, or a party with just all of it, and rejoice!

Amazing Grace, How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now am found
T'was blind but now I see

T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear
And Grace, my fears relieved
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed

Through many dangers, toils and snares
We have already come.
T'was grace that brought us safe thus far
And grace will lead us home.