Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

September 16, 2007

Sermon by Pastor Joy Bussert

The Holy Gospel according to Luke. (Luke 15:1-10)

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

So he told them this parable: “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? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 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.’ 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.

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? 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.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

The Gospel of the Lord.

Let us pray.

Our loving and gracious God—you who hover where the margins can be found, you who seek the one lost—show us where your spirit is at work; grant us grace to be there.

Amen.

If you love children’s literature as much as I do, you will recognize these famous lines from the pen of Ludwig Bemelmans’ Madeline:

“In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines

lived twelve little girls in two straight lines.

In two straight lines, they broke their bread

and brushed their teeth and went to bed.

They left the house at half past nine,

in two straight lines in rain or shine.

The smallest one was Madeline.”

Of the twelve little orphans, Madeline is not only the smallest but the most courageous, and the one most likely to stray from the fold and become quite lost. There is more than one close call and frightening moment for the little orphan. But each time she disappears, the benevolent and searching Miss Clavel embarks on a relentless quest for the little lost orphan, and not resting a moment until the little one is found, rescued from the snares of Gypsies or from the dangerous waters of the river Seine. Always, it is the benevolent Miss Clavel who, at the end of the day, reassures them all:

“Goodnight, little girls!

Thank the Lord you are well!

And now go to sleep, said Miss Clavel.

And she turned out the light and closed the door.

And that’s all there is; there isn’t any more.”

It is the little lost orphan scene as old as the hills and one that goes back a long ways in great literature. You know the favorite ones: Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist; Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre; and, of course, the classic American heroine Little Orphan Annie. Whether or not you have ever been an orphan, the theme and the metaphor resonate deep within the soul of every child and are the substance of every parent’s and every preschool teacher’s worst nightmare.

It is no wonder that the remarkable parables of the lost sheep and lost coin resonate deep in the soul of unbelievers and believers alike, for the picture of a benevolent shepherd leaving the ninety-nine and going after the one lost sheep reminds us of the compassionate concern of a searching God for each one of us. And the picture of the woman who sweeps the house from top to bottom for just one lost coin reminds us of how much we are of value in the eyes of God, whether we sit within or outside the conventional parameters of the social and religious establishment.

That Jesus would choose two figures associated with the underside of Jewish society, both second-class citizens, as images for God would have been shocking to his hearers. That this God would search relentlessly for just the one, and then throw a party for all the angels in heaven at the retrieval of the lost, would have startled his audience into re-imagining the kind of God that was at the center of their corporate worship and private practice, raising questions his hearers could not have missed. Is God experienced more as a burden or a blessing? Was God experienced more like a pressure or a presence?

“Each of us,” the philosopher John Paul Sartre once said, “goes through life with a sense that God is looking over our shoulder with a suspicious stare or a loving glance.” “Which image is God for you,” Jesus challenged his hearers, “a suspicious stare or a loving glance”? What kind of God motivates your prayer and your practice on behalf of others in the world? A God who will search relentlessly for the one lost and throw a party when it is found is a God of remarkable generosity, a generosity that would have offended the religiously self-assured, the ones who believed that favor with God was an honor deserved or earned through strict adherence to holiness codes.

Jesus’ shocking and prophetic pictures of a God who seeks, searches for not the redeemed but the lost, especially among the marginalized segments of society, would have put him at odds with the leaders of the religious establishment; a tension in Luke’s Gospel that will continue all the way to the cross.

Confidence in a benevolent presence who accompanies us wherever we go, especially whether orphaned or not, when we feel lost and alone, is like the confidence expressed by a college freshman who once told me that her parents would have been quite surprised to know that upon after arriving for the week of orientation her first year at college, unpacking and carefully arranging everything in her dorm room, the last thing she did before falling asleep, looking straight up at the ceiling, was to offer a prayer: “I guess it’s you and me, God. You’re the only one here I know.”

Confidence in a benevolent God who seeks and finds is what we hope baptism will be for our children and our youth from Sunday school on as they grow; a reminder of a God who received them and promises, no matter where they go, how far they stray from the fold, to be with them and never let them go.

After that first wonderful session that we had this week at Immanuel of Aging Splendidly, I am thinking this week of the professor who coined the phrase after whom the series is named, a professor who inspired students years ago to think of life as a journey of growing older long before you get there. Just like the philosopher Paul Tourneau always impressed upon his students and readers, “When you’re young, you ought to be careful of what you are because when you get old you’re just more of the same thing.” So Dr. Brantner, who taught at the University of Minnesota Medical School, inspired generations of students to stretch beyond conventional thinking, learning, and to see before it is too late what their lives could really be. Brantner was known to be a free spirit and an independent thinker. He was ahead of his time, studying along with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, long before hospice and nuances faced by the death-and-dying phenomenon of grieving and loss. He never drove a car; he was a vegetarian; he had a long gray ponytail. He always lectured with one boot propped on a chair. And he had a memorable laugh that came from a sense that life was grim but never serious.

For some reason, he took up the study of what he called the splendid old, those he noticed who aged gracefully, while others did not. “What are they like,”—he asked in a lecture—“the great ones, the elite amongst the aging, the splendid old?” “Some of them are famous people,” he said, “but most are living ordinary lives in ordinary neighborhoods like our own. We may overlook them because our society overlooks them. But when we look at them closely, we can learn things about them and from them.” “Characteristics of the splendid old,” he said, “are that they are gregarious people, people of high morale. They have a sense of humor. They are candid people. They are active. They do not think of themselves as old. And most importantly, they are always learning, right up to the very end of their days. These are the splendid old,” he said, “the ones who, if we pay attention to them, can teach us how to live, even if we are not yet old.”

Biblically speaking, those who pay attention to the margins of society at the beginning of life, at the end of life, or in the shadows of life, are those who reflect the spirit of the compassionate, searching God of Luke’s Gospel, who seeks those at the edge and in places where the established would never think to look.

It is a striking picture of God, especially to those for whom God is more of a pressure than a presence, more of a burden than a blessing, more of a suspicious stare than a loving glance. Yet, it is a God who not only searches relentlessly until the lost is found, but then throws a party all of the angels in heaven would not dare to miss.

“Goodnight, little girls!

Thank the Lord you are well!

And now go to sleep, said Miss Clavel.

And she turned out the light and closed the door.

And that’s all there is; there isn’t any more.”

Amen.