THE FRIEND OF SINNERS

24th Sunday in Ordinary Time

            If you didn’t know it before you were junior high age, you learned it then.  If you didn’t listen to your parents, then peer pressure made you listen.  This is what everyone was trying to teach you:  People judge you by the company you keep.  Everybody knows that.  Everybody but Jesus, it seems.  Here we find him in our gospel lesson, hanging out with all sorts of sinners, including tax collectors.  It’s enough to make your jaw drop.  How would you feel if this were the Sunday you brought a non-Christian visitor to church?  Today they hear about the one we profess to be the Son of God hanging around with crooks and sinners.  It’s a scandal.  Doesn’t Jesus know that?  And how does he respond to the religious leaders who complain?  He tells some of stories.  We’ll look at two of them.

            The first one is odd.  “Which of you,” Jesus begins, “Which 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?”  The question is asked in such a way that the audience is supposed to say in their minds, “Why, everyone.  Everyone would do that.”  You think?  Here in Texas we have a lot of farmers and ranchers who raise cattle, horses, or goats.  If one cow in a hundred gets loose, will the lone cowboy leave the ninety-nine unguarded cattle to go after the one?  No!  Would a lone shepherd in Jesus’ day leave ninety-nine sheep in the wilderness to go after a stray?  Not on your life.  Let’s be clear:  We’re not talking about leaving the herd or flock safely in a fold, corral, pen, or barn.  Sure, then a shepherd or rancher would go looking for one, if the rest were safely penned in.  But Jesus said, “Which of you . . . does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost?”  Well, here’s the answer:  Nobody does!  It would be tough to lose one animal, but no one is going to risk the lives of ninety-nine to save one.  Imagine a kindergarten teacher with only twenty kids in tow.  Imagine one gets lost.  Does she leave the nineteen children alone while she wanders around looking for the lost kid?  No.  It would be irresponsible.  She’d get on her cell phone and call the police to look for the lost child, and she’d keep her eyes on the other kids.  Who would leave the many unguarded to save the one?  The answer is:  “No one.”

            Now, looking for a coin until one finds it—that’s a different matter.  Jesus tells a second story about a women looking for one of ten coins that is lost.  Heck!  I’ll look for a pencil until I find it.  I tend to be a little on the obsessive-compulsive side.  But I would surely look for a day’s wage, if I lost it.  The coin in question amounted to a day’s pay.  It isn’t at all like disregarding a penny that was dropped.  The woman in the story searches for that single coin representing a day’s wage.  You can be sure I’d look for that much money.  I’d look until I found it.  I’m going to tell a story on myself, but this will be just between you and me.  One day, years ago, I went to the bank to make a deposit.  The envelope contained my paycheck.  I took it out, endorsed it, made out a deposit slip, threw the envelope in the wastebasket, and then went to the window to make my deposit.  Having told you that I’m a little obsessive-compulsive, I now admit to you that I would usually double check the envelope to make sure that it was empty before throwing it away.  This time I didn’t.  But, why wouldn’t it be empty? I convinced myself.  Don’t be silly, I told myself.  I’m so obsessive-compulsive.  Or is it that I’m usually careful?  Eventually I had a mileage reimbursement check fail to clear.  What had happened to it?  I looked all over for it, but I couldn’t find it.  I’ll bet I know what happened to it.  Right!  Chances are it was in the same envelope as my paycheck, the one I talked myself out of double checking.  You bet I searched for that check.  I don’t think that that check amounted to a day’s pay, but it was enough not to ignore.  Search for money until it’s found?  Yeah, I’d do that.  Who wouldn’t?

            So, what’s similar about these two stories?  These features are the same in both of them:  One is lost.  Someone pursues after the one until it is found.  It is found.  There is rejoicing upon finding that which was lost, and that turns into an outright celebration.  Setting aside the problem of a shepherd leaving the ninety-nine in the wilderness in real life, consider what happens in the story.  Out of one hundred, one sheep wanders off and becomes lost.  Lost, in this case, implies that the sheep is in danger of harm or even of dying.  The shepherd leaves the ninety-nine safe sheep and searches for the one that is lost.  The shepherd searches until he finds the lost sheep.  Then he holds a party to celebrate the recovery of the one that was lost.  The woman in the second story has lost a valuable coin.  The coin, of course, won’t suffer any harm by being lost; but the woman who lost the coin might.  So she searches for the coin until she finds it.  When she has found it, she throws a party to celebrate the recovery of the one what was lost.  Again, here are the similarities in these two stories Jesus told:  One is lost.  Someone pursues after the one until it is found.  It is found.  Then there is rejoicing that turns into a full-blown celebration.

            What does it all mean?  This is how God celebrates when the one is found.  That’s what Jesus said.  When Jesus finished the story about the shepherd searching for and finding his lost sheep and throwing a celebration because of his joy, he said, “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.”  And after Jesus told about the woman searching for and finding her lost coin and throwing a party because of her joy, he said, “Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”  Both stories point to our God who pursues the lost one until that one is found.  How does God pursue the lost?  By sending his Son, Jesus.  Of course, what did Jesus, do?  He befriended sinners.  Look at the record.  There was that time when Jesus went over to Levi’s tax-collecting booth.  Levi—now there was a crook!  Jesus went up to him and said, “Follow me.”  Afterward, Levi gave a banquet, with a whole bunch of his cronies in attendance.  And who do you suppose was with them?  Right!  Jesus.  Jesus was gaining a reputation.  He himself said people were calling him “. . . a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!”  If that is indeed what people were calling him, then he did nothing to dissuade them when he was the guest of one of the religious leaders.  On that occasion, a woman—a sinful woman, so we’re told—came up to Jesus and began to bathe his feet with her tears and wipe them with her loosened hair.  Then she anointed his feet with ointment.  And what did Jesus do?  He accepted her attention and then told her that her sins were forgiven.  This is how God pursues the one who is lost through his Son, Jesus Christ, the friend of sinners.  But for how long?  To hear Jesus tell it, until that one is found.  Turn your attention to six years ago Tuesday.  The twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center lay in ruins following each one being rammed by a fully-fueled commercial jet.  Firefighters and rescue workers searched and dug endlessly in that rubble until they found someone who was alive.  They kept up the search, day and night, night and day.  They searched until all who could be found were found.  Remember how impressed you were at their relentless pursuit of the lost.  That’s how God pursues the one who is lost until that one is found.  And, Jesus says, when that lost one is found, God celebrates.

            This may be a scandal to those who believe that they’re righteous, but to us it is good news!  Why to us?  Because we are the lost, aren’t we?  We are!  We’ve turned our backs on God, forsaking God’s will to do our own.  We have perverted our lives.  With other sinners, we have corrupted our family life as well as our other relationships.  We have corrupted our society, our governments, and our world.  We can remember times when we have deliberately disobeyed God’s will.  We’re sinners.  We’re the lost.  So, good news!  God pursues the lost until that lost one is found.  Remember.  Remember how God pursued you.  Remember when you became so aware of God’s grace that it made you want to drop to your knees and weep.  You couldn’t believe God would pursue you until you were found, but it happened to you.  You heard the good news in scripture or sermon or in the declaration of pardon or in a counseling session, and you knew God was pursuing you.  You may even have had a personal revelation, like a voice speaking directly to your heart.  I remember the day I felt God speaking to my heart, saying, “Jesus dying on the cross was also for you.”  But you may be saying to me now, “Dick, I’m still lost.”  Then hear the good news loud and clear.  God is pursuing you with reconciling love, and God will keep pursuing you until you are found.  Don’t take it from me, take it from God’s Son, Jesus Christ.  God is pursuing you through him, who is the friend of sinners.  Accept God’s reconciling love through Jesus Christ right now, and experience the joy of being found.