Introduction to the Celebration
Each of us can stand here because the Lord has sought us out
and forgiven us. We call Jesus is ‘our saviour’, but we could just as easily
call him ‘our pardon’ or ‘our reconciliation’ or ‘the One who reveals the
Father’s love to us’. Now we gather to join with Jesus in offering thanks to
the Father for his love, and to grow in our awareness of how we are sought out
and welcomed home by the Christ.
Gospel Notes
The three parables are part of the basic memory of
Christians about the content of the good news, so much so that we could go so
far as to say that if someone did not have these stories in his/her store of
memory, then they would be deprived of some of the keys to how Christians view
God. So it is important that people hear these together as Luke preached them,
but also hear their subtle differences: the first two stories are addressed to
the cause of the welcome the Jesus offered sinners:
There is more rejoicing in heaven over one repentant sinner
than over the majority which have no need for repentance, while the third story
is directed at the sense of indignation of those who feel that it is their
constancy rather that the repentance of those who have strayed that deserves
reward. Pausing for a second after the introductory verses, then after the
first two parables, and then finally reading the verses, from ‘He was angry’,
in a slower and more mournful tone, can help hearing these differences.
The shorter version of the today’s gospel
Given the importance of all three stories, and because Luke
intended them to be appreciated as a unit, it is regrettable that the
compliers of the Lectionary offered this inappropriate shorter version. If time
is that pressing a feature of the assembly, then jettison in this order: 1 the
second reading; 2 the psalm; 3 the homily; 4 ask why bother celebrating if
people are confusing the Eucharistic Banquet with so-called ‘Fast Food’.
General Textual Comments
Verses 1 to 3 give us an overall picture of the kind of
person Jesus was – and thus an image of God.
We follow that path
in our meditation: we recognise and celebrate human beings who were images of Jesus for us, and
allow them to reveal God to us.
In meditating on these verses, we are free to identify
either
(a) with Jesus: who
are the great people who draw the outcasts and are criticized for it? or(b) with the “tax collectors and sinners:” when were we deeply touched at being
welcomed by someone we looked up to? or
(c) with “the scribes
and Pharisees”: when did we criticize a member of our community for associating with
people we considered “tax collectors and sinners”?
The two parables are complementary in that the “seeker” is
male in the first parable and female in the
second. Both are wonderfully portrayed as well-rounded persons, however
– no stereotyping here. The shepherd is very tender, the woman efficient and
business-like. Though the “seekers” are the main characters, we can be
imaginative enough to identify with the lost sheep or the lost coin.
Don’t hurry your meditation. Linger over the two movements.
The search first, the feeling of being lost on the one hand, the frantic search
on the other. Then there is the moment of finding, which can also be meditated
on from the perspective of either the finder or the found. Both parables stress
that the joy is not private but poured
out and shared with the whole community.
In the well-known poem “Footprints”, a man dreams that as he
walks through life, there are two sets of footprints behind him – except at
those times when he feels lost. He questions the Lord who replies: “During your
times of trial, there is only one set of footprints, because at those times I
carried you.”
“There is greater rejoicing… ” In the gospels Jesus always
seems to prefer sinners to the just. We must not try to understand this (or
explain it) rationally. Jesus invites us to follow the parable way, remembering
our experience as parents or teachers.
Like every loving parent, God loves his children equally and
always, but he knows that there are times when they feel “lost”, and are in
greater need of care and reassurance than the others.
The sheep that was lost had broken away from the herd,
symbolizing those who take risks, dare to question, to seek new ways. The
“ninety-nine who have no need of repentance” are the complacent; they do not
trust enough to take risks. They do not get lost but they achieve nothing
either. No wonder there is “greater rejoicing” over “the lost”. Experience
teaches us too that those who think they have it all do not learn. We know the
paradox: we can only be found when we are lost.
*********************************************
Sean GoanGospel Notes
We have already heard the story of the Prodigal Son this
year (in Lent) so why again? The simple answer is that we can’t hear it enough,
for the image of God that is put to us here is one that we do not easily
believe in. While it may be the best known of Jesus’ parables it is frequently
thought of as being a story for sinners to persuade them to repent. However, in
its context in ch 15 of Luke the story is told by Jesus to the Pharisees who
are grumbling and complaining about him keeping company with such people. The
parable is as much about the relationship between the father and the older
brother. He is the one who feels hard done by and is probably the person that
most of us would identify with in the story. We like the idea of a merciful God
but we get upset when that mercy is shown to those we consider undeserving.
Reflection
The gospel and readings for today all point us in the
direction of the mercy of God that this wonderful parable celebrates. The
temptation of the Israelites in the wilderness was to forget the God of the
Covenant who wanted them to go forward in faith, and to opt rather for the
familiar religions which appeared to offer security and prosperity. These
readings are a reminder that the story of biblical faith is not one of riches
and prosperity for those who believe but one of developing a loving trust in
the God who wants us to walk in his ways and who lifts us up when we fall.
*********************************************
Homily notes
1. Given that these parables are only found in one gospel,
it is a tribute to their immense power as stories that they have been central
to Christian imagination down the centuries. When we remember that the only
stories or incidents from the time of Jesus’s public ministry that are equally
well remembered are the Good Samaritan story (Lk 10) and the Zacchaeus
incident (Lk 17) – and these too are only found in Luke – we get an insight
into one of the key messages of Luke’s preaching. God is mercy, God is
forgiveness, God is reconciliation, God is peace, and God is love.
2. And when we gather as Christians, this is clearly
something we want to hear: we desire mercy, forgiveness, a fresh start, and a
welcome home. How we know that we want to hear it is the way we listen and
react to this gospel.
3. That leaves us with a question: if this is a central message
of Jesus – and it is – why is it not a message that people who are not
Christians link with Christianity? This discrepancy between ‘our core-message’
and ‘perceptions of us’ reveals something very important to us. Jesus not only
came to reveal the Father’s love, but sent us his Spirit so that we would
become agents of reconciliation. He came to bring us peace, but called us to
become peacemakers. He came to seek out the lost, but calls us to welcome the
outcasts and the poor. The message of the gospel is always two-sided: he
reconciles us, we must reconcile others. Jesus is the centre of reconciliation
in the universe; his followers must be little local centres of reconciliation
throughout the universe. Alas, we are better at seeking reconciliation for
ourselves than being reconcilers; better at wanting peace than being
peacemakers; happier at being welcomed home than offering a welcome to the
stranger.
4. Where can we see this two-sided message of reconciliation
in a nut-shell? In the ‘Our Father’: we pray ‘forgive us as we forgive those
who trespass against us: Yet we are very quick to think of how we need to ask
God for his forgiveness; how often do we think of our need to reconcile others?
5. We have just read three stories about the nature of God;
but they are also challenges to our nature.
*********
Scriptural Reflections Prayer
Lord, we remember times when we found ourselves in company
where we felt out of
place:– poor in a wealthy home
– young in the company of adults
– our first day at work and we were lonely and alienated
– something we had done came to light making us feel ashamed of ourselves
– a conversation was way above our heads.
You sent someone like
Jesus who gave us a warm welcome
and made us feel at
home, ate with us, conversed with us as equals,just as important as the scribes and Pharisees who were around.
Lord, forgive us for the times when we are content
to remain with those
of our social class, race, religion, academic world.We thank you for people who break out of these narrow confines
and mix freely with those whom we tend to ignore.
Our first response is to be surprised even angry, to complain.
We recognise now that it is Jesus among us.
“The sheep may be lost in fog or wandering aimlessly but the
shepherd is always in search of it. No matter how desperate our plight, we may
always rely on the love which will never tire of seeking us out, whatever may
be the burden of sin or guilt we carry.”
Cardinal Basil Hume
Lord, we thank you
for the times when we feel we are failures,
not worthy of being
loved,we withdraw from those closest to us, lost in self-pity,
like a sheep wandering around the hills,
or a coin on the floor hidden in the dust,
and you send us people who seek us out
– spiritual directors, parents, teachers, friends.
They leave their ninety-nine other preoccupations and give us their undivided attention,
take our burdens on themselves, like a shepherd taking a lost sheep on his shoulders.
They seem so happy to be with us
that we feel we are more important to them
than all those who never gave them any trouble.
Lord, these people reveal to us how you love us.
Lord, we are so afraid of taking risks,
of being separated
from the rest of the flock, of getting lost.
Fear is the reason
why we find it difficult
– to forgive those who have hurt us;– to reach out to those of a different race or ethnic group;
– to explore new ways of prayer;
– to commit ourselves to a new relationship.
Remind us that we can trust life, people, you in the last resort.
Even if we get lost, you always send someone, a word, to come after us,
even if this means leaving the ninety-nine in the wilderness.
Lord, we thank you that you understand us parents.
You know how we fuss
over the one child who is always in trouble
like a woman who has
lost her money and lights a lampand sweeps out her house, searching thoroughly until she finds it.
Our other children complain that we are always leaving them in the lurch
and going after the one who is missing.
But it is not that we
don’t love them equally;
we would do the same
for every one of them.It is just that, here and now, we feel more joy over the one child we can bring back
than over the others who are safe.
People who are ruled
by logical argument, like the Pharisees and the scribes,
cannot understand –
but you do,and all of us who have experienced love.
Lord, our world is run by cold, calculating logic,
so that losing one
sheep is of little importanceif we have ninety-nine others in the wilderness;
and it is not worth lighting a lamp, sweeping out the house
and searching thoroughly for one drachma out of ten.
You want us build a
different world,
founded on love,where there is more rejoicing over one repentant person
than over ninety-nine virtuous ones who have no need of repentance,
and great rejoicing among your angels over one person who was lost and is now found.
*************
HOMILIES
1. Mgr
David Rubino
Forgiving
others as God forgives us
Purpose: When and how we ask for forgiveness
to return to our God is our choice. Today’s Gospel reminds us that when we make
that choice, our Father is the first to forgive us, the first to welcome us
home, and the first to restore our place in God’s family. The only catch is
that we need to take that first step towards forgiveness. God has not
moved away from us. We have moved away from God. And once we decide
to ask forgiveness and return to our God, the Lord will run to us, and do the
rest.
He does not
have a name. He is a hard worker. He refused to join the welcome home
party for his brother. He insulted his father by arguing with him in
front of the guests.
Who is this
mysterious figure?
He is the
older brother, and his actions trigger in us the question, why is ho so
cranky? The older brother’s plight is not uncommon. We may even
know how he feels because, at times, we have felt like him. We do the
volunteer work, and someone else gets the praise. For all of our efforts
at our job, we get the same raise as someone whose hardest task during the day
was punching the clock. We sacrifice for our family, and no one recognizes our
efforts, or even seems to care.
We know
from our own experience, how the older brother must feel when his younger
prodigal brother returns, having done nothing but leaving home, spending money
foolishly, and abandoning all the work to his brother.
The reason
was to demonstrate a point. A significant break with Middle Eastern
custom was the father’s action upon seeing the son. In the Middle East
culture, old age was seen as a blessing, and reflected certain cultural norms,
and ways of behavior. Seeing his son in the distance, he runs to embrace
him. He does not walk; he runs. For an older person to run was a
significant loss of status, rank, and dignity as the father would have had to
pull up his tunic, expose his bare legs, and run. The father’s behavior
was totally beneath the understanding of how “senior citizens” behaved.
Surely aware of the customs of the day, he still ran to his prodigal son,
risking harsh criticism from his guests for his behavior.
Regardless
of these customs, the father embraces the prodigal brother in an embrace of
forgiveness. He puts a ceremonial robe on him, signifying his union again
with the family, put sandals on his feet, recalling his son’s freedom, and a
signet ring with, most likely, the family crest, indicating his oneness in the
family. Totally and without reservation, the father forgives the prodigal
son, and welcomes him home. And then throws a lavish party adding, in the
older brother’s mind, insult to injury.
In the
middle of this party and celebrating the return of his son, the guests at that
festive celebration could see and hear the exchange between the father and the
older son. Displaying such an attitude of ill will by the elder son to the
father could embarrass the father. Hearing his other son’s complaint, the
father expresses his constant love for him, and reiterates his promise of the
transfer of the estate to the older brother.
The father,
then, totally forgives the older brother. He behaves toward the other brother
with the same spirit of forgiveness and acceptance and love as he does towards
the prodigal son.
What is
interesting is the parable leaves us hanging. The parable closes with the
father’s plea to his other son. We do not know if the father’s plea
persuaded the other brother to join the party. Does the older
brother decide to welcome home his younger brother? Does he leave the estate?
It is up to us to craft our own ending.
It is
equally left for us to decide when we ask for our heavenly Father’s
forgiveness.
Most of us
probably have a little of both brothers in ourselves. We may not always
use wisely our God-given gifts and talents, or we become envious of what others
in our circle of family are given. In the process of misusing
resources, or being blinded by our own pride, our distance from our God seems
to exponentially grow, as does our need of forgiveness grow.
2. Connections
THE WORD:
The three “parables of the lost” in chapter 15
are unique to Luke’s Gospel. Luke wrote
his Gospel at a time when the Christian community was embroiled in a great
controversy: many Jewish Christians were indignant that Gentiles should be welcomed
into the Church without first embracing the traditions and laws of Judaism.
In these three parables, we enter God’s world:
God communicates the depth of his love in his unconditional and complete
forgiveness; his mercy breaks through and demolishes all human
restrictions. The Pharisees could not
imagine a God who actually sought out men and women, a God who is more merciful
in his judgments than we are, a God who never gives up hope for a sinner.
Today's Gospel reading of chapter 15 includes
three parables:
The parable of the lost sheep: Shepherding demanded toughness and courage --
it was not a job for the weak and fearful.
Responsible for every sheep in his charge, a shepherd was expected to
fight off everything from wild animals to armed poachers. Shepherds often had to negotiate the rugged
terrain of the wilderness to rescue a lost sheep. Like the responsible shepherd, God does
whatever is necessary to seek out and bring back to his loving providence every
lost soul.
The parable of the lost coin: Finding a small silver coin in a dark, dusty,
dirt-floored Judean house was nearly impossible, but so great was the value of
any coin to the poor that a woman would turn her poor hovel inside out in
search of such a lost treasure. So great
is the value of every soul in the sight of God that he, too, goes to whatever
lengths necessary to find and bring back the lost.
The parable of prodigal son: This is probably the most inaccurately titled
story in all of literature. Jesus’ tale
is really about the great love of the prodigal’s father, who forgives his son
and joyfully welcomes him home even before the son can bring himself to
ask. The father’s joy stands in sharp
contrast to the prodigal son’s brother, who cannot even bring himself to call
the prodigal his “brother” -- in confronting his father, he angrily refers to
the brother as “this son of yours.” But
the father is a model of joyful reconciliation that Jesus calls his disciples
to seek in all relationships.
What is striking in the three stories is the
joy experienced by the shepherd who finds the lost lamb, the woman who recovers
the missing coin, the father who welcomes home his wayward son.
HOMILY POINTS:
The most extraordinary element of Jesus’
teaching is the revelation of a God who loves each and every one of us uniquely
and individually, as a parent loves his/her most beloved child. God’s love for us is eternally forgiving,
constantly inviting, never limited or conditional.
Our God is a God of inclusion -- yet we
sometimes make him a God of exclusion, excluding from our own presence those we
deem as unworthy or unfaithful to be included among “God’s people.”
To forgive as Christ forgives is impossible to
do on our own: It calls for a spirit of
humility, a generosity, a spirit of compassion that is beyond most of us. But we are not called by Christ to create
forgiveness on our own. God has already
forgiven, we are being asked to participate in God’s gift of forgiveness that
surrounds every one of us.
Grace is the experience of God’s complete and
unconditional love in our lives.
Sometimes we experience grace in the support and love of generous family
and friends — and sometimes we are the agents of such grace, giving and doing
whatever is necessary for the good of another, refusing to give up our search
to find the lost and bring back those from whom we have been separated.
In the three parables in today’s Gospel, Christ
challenges each one of us to the hard work of repairing broken relationships,
of restoring community in the wake of division and dysfunction.
‘My shepherd is my D.R.E. . .’
Every parish religious education direction
knows at least one family who is perpetually lost -- the parents who never read
any of the materials sent home, who always seem to “lose” their child’s class
schedule, who are just too overwhelmed with work, class and sports schedules to
make it to Mass on Sundays as their family.
The D.R.E. spends as much time following up with visits and telephone
calls to this one family as is spent organizing the entire program for the
other 300 or 400 or however many other families involved in the program; the
child’s teacher devotes more time helping their unprepared child grasp that
week’s lesson than with the other children in the class combined.
The D.R.E. reaches a point where he or she
wants to write them off and move on without them. Why do they bother if it means so little to
them? Why do I bother if it means so little
to them? the D.R.E. wonders, quite understandably.
But the moment does come when the “lost” is
“found” -- when the child comes to understand -- really understand -- how much
God loves us, that the child’s First Communion or First Confession becomes a
moment of conversion for the whole family, when the parents come to appreciate
what the D.R.E., the teachers and the parish community do for them.
Dealing with the “lost families’ is
frustrating, aggravating and, yes, unfair and unjust. But, through the grace of God, they are
“found.” It is an experience of great
joy for the family -- and for the D.R.E. and the teachers.
We all have “lost” sheep in our lives -- well,
if not lost, often “misplaced.” They
demand more love, take more of our time, usurp more of our energy and capacity
to care than they are reasonably entitled to.
They anger us, frustrate us, sometimes reject us. But Jesus asks us to “hang in” there with
them, not to reject them or forget them or move on without them, because they
are still worth it. Such difficult love
is but a taste of the great love of God for all of us. Christ promises us the grace and strength to
keep seeking the lost among us and rejoice in their recovery, their conversion,
their “being found.”
ILLUSTRATIONS
1.
Andrew Greeley:
Background:
This story should be called the parable of the
indulgent father. The man is really quite
insanely good. He has these two miserable rotten sons and he loves them
beyond all reason. The one who leaves home is not only a spendthrift and a
lecher, he is a faker, a phony and a liar. He has no interest in his father’s
love, only in his own comfort. He plans to return to his father, feed him a
cock and bull story about his sorrow and then collect the good life that he so
foolishly left behind. Does the father know the son is a fraud? How can he help
but know it. The young man has been trying to play these games all his life.
Yet the father embraces him and cuts short his dishonest plea for pardon. The
other son is mean, narrow, rigid, resentful, as ungenerous as his father is
generous. But the father loves him too and promises him all his
possessions.
As we ponder the story, we wonder why the
father puts up with either of these unsavory characters. The answer? He loves
them both. He loves them so much that his behavior is crazy by human standards.
Any human father who so spoiled his children would be dismissed as daft. But
that’s the way God loves us.
Story:
Once upon a
time there was a mother who had twins when her next oldest was a senior in high
school. She was surprised but happy. She loved all her children. The twins were
so cute and so lively that she figured they’d keep her young. Alas for her, the
twins were monsters. They fought with one another, they fought with other
children. They lied, they stole, they broke things deliberately. Whenever they
outnumbered another child they beat up on that child and then told their mother
than the other kid had started the fight. They never studied in school. They
tormented all their teachers, they were mean and nasty to their parents and to
every other adult they encountered, including their older brothers and sisters.
They started drinking in sixth grade, and smoking
pot in eighth grade. Their mother and father did their best but they simply
could not control the two adorable but vicious little hellions. Neither could
anyone else. The summer they were fourteen, they stole their father’s Benz and
destroyed it totally. They ended up in the hospital where they made life
miserable for the nurses and the doctors.
The parish priest suggested to their mother
that she send them off to boarding school. (He thought that they should go to a
place which had barbed wire and cut glass on their walls.) But, no the mother
said, I would miss them so much if they weren’t home with us.
Why asked
the priest? Because I’m their mother and I love them.
*************
The Gospel reading begins with these words: 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." (Luke 15:1-2)
That is the framework for all that follows in chapter fifteen:
the story of a shepherd and his sheep, of a widow and her coins, of a man and
his two sons. It is important to remember the situation which prompted Jesus to
tell these stories and to ask - "whom do I identify with in this
situation?" That's what we do when we read a novel or watch a movie. We
tend to identify with someone in it. So, which group or character do you
identify with in today's gospel reading?
With Jesus, the good guy, who tries to straighten out the
religious folks? Who calls into question all they believe? Who reaches out and
loves everyone, especially the most unloved?
With the Pharisees, the ones who rightly saw the dangers of
too close an association with the "wrong crowd." For what parent has
not worried about a child falling in with the "wrong crowd"? But here
the Pharisees go beyond looking out for people. They are convinced that they
and they alone understand God and man's relationship to Him. They are right and
no one else.
With the tax collectors and sinners, those traitors, the tax
collectors who worked for the Romans, robbing their own people? With the
sinners, the people of the land who never attended synagogue and seemed to lack
even basic morality?
1. Which one are you?
2. What ought we to do?
___________________________
The gospel is not a tablet of ink, but a table of food
around which everyone is invited to sit down together and eat, drink and dream
-- for tomorrow we act.
A few weeks ago we marked the fiftieth anniversary
(1963-2013) of Martin Luther King Jr.'s iconic "I Have A Dream"
speech. The power of that proclamation, the timely words of one man spoken at
the one right moment before the enormous crowd gathered before the Lincoln
Memorial, provided the "tipping point" for the civil rights movement
and for decades of legal and social changes to come. The power of one man at
one moment, the potency of that one speech, was a beacon of change and hope for
the nation and the entire world.
But it almost didn't happen. King was determined to keep his
remarks brief that day. Toward that end he had a carefully written out speech
that was to go no more than ten minutes. At the end of nine minutes King was
done with his script and the crowd was still waiting for . . . something.
Then from behind him came a stage-whispering voice. It was
the magnificent, soul-stirring voice of the great gospel singer Mahalia
Jackson. Like a kid tugging on a parent's coattails, Jackson leaned forward and
urged Dr. King to "go on," to keep talking. "Tell them about
your dream, Martin," her voice insisted. "Tell them about your
dream."
So King did. He cut away from his text, went off-script and
climbed into history as he spoke from his heart and soul. King's
"dream" became the dream and desire of generations to come. Mahalia's
one voice told Martin to "change his plan." Martin's one voice then
told the people to "change the world." One speech changed the world.
One person changed the world...
_____________________
2. We Have All Been Lost
A marine tells about a field exercise he was participating
in at Camp Lejeune, N.C. His squad was on a night patrol making their way
through some thick brush. Halfway through, they realized they'd lost their map.
The patrol navigator informed the rest of the squad that their odds were 1 in
359 that they'd succeed in getting back to their base of operations.
"How did you come up with that figure?" someone
asked, "one chance in 359?"
"Well," he replied, "one of the degrees on
the compass has to be right."
Those marines were lost. One chance in 359 is not very good.
Fortunately it was just a training exercise, but they were lost just the same.
We've all been lost at one time or another. That's part of the human condition.
King Duncan, www.Sermons.com
______________________
3.
Lost and Found
Everyone has lost something at one time or another. There is
even a website complete with mobile app, www.lostandfound.com, that acts as a
global 'lost and found' box. Users can report items missing and users can
report items found. It is a good example of how technology can help people
connect in a useful way. This is a gateway site for all of the physical things
that can be retrieved and returned to their rightful owners. According to their
statistics, about twice as many objects have been reported lost as have been
reported found in the U.S. So, the site's users are losing things at twice the
rate they are finding them.
Haven't we all had the experience of losing things that we
know deep down we will never recover? Depending on the situation, we can feel
disappointed, heartbroken, hopeless, or simply discouraged by our own inability
to keep up with things. Isn't it a wonderful relief to know that we will never
fall into the 'Lost Forever' category? Isn't it reassuring to know that God
will never give up on us? Let us include a word of thanks in our prayers this
week to acknowledge how grateful we are for that kind of gracious love.
Staff, www.Sermons.com
____________________
4. Is Your Church a Museum or Mission?
An inner city church, located in an area of the downtown
where there were few residents, was forced to a decision. A large corporation
was offering them a great deal of money for their site, on which the
corporation wanted to put a parking lot. The money would enable the church to
move to another part of the inner city where they would find many more people
to serve. Even though this was exciting to some of the congregation, other
members were resistant to the idea. They pointed out that the church was the
guardian of a building whose history and architecture reached back into the
early part of the nineteenth century. Denominational history had been made in
that building, and some of the grand figures of the church had passed its
portals.
Eventually the congregation decided to sell the site and
make the move to a new building in a teeming inner-city neighborhood. The
pastor who was with this congregation through all this upheaval said, "We
had to decide whether we wanted to be in a museum or in mission." They
couldn't have it both ways. It meant either staying on their site, glorying in
their past history and serving a few people, or giving up their past and
gearing themselves to a significant ministry among the city's people. They
opted for mission status over museum status.
Something of this same struggle is indicated in this
scripture passage. The Pharisees and scribes came down on the side of museum
religion. They wanted attention given to those who were stable, pious and not a
liability if invited to the country club. Theirs was a "let's have our
synagogue programs be for us dependable, like-minded types," as some
present-day church-growth advocates. Jesus disappointed them by insisting that
the issue was one of mission: to reach out to those who needed great mercy,
lessons in etiquette, social graces, and perhaps a bath. Paying attention to
these "lost" persons would change the comfortable fellowship the
scribes and Pharisees enjoyed at the synagogue, to say nothing of putting a
dent into its budget.
Wallace H. Kirby, If Only..., CSS Publishing Company.
__________________
5.
God Loves Me
There is a wonderful story about Maya Angelou. She is an
active member now of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco.
She wrote that years ago when she first came to San Francisco as a young woman
she became sophisticated. She said that was what you were supposed to do when
you go to San Francisco, you become sophisticated. And for that reason she said
she became agnostic. She thought the two went together. She said that it wasn't
that she stopped believing in God, just that God no longer frequented the
neighborhoods that she frequented.
She was taking voice lessons at the time. Her teacher gave
her an exercise where she was to read out of some religious pamphlet. The
reading ended with these words: "God loves me." She finished the
reading, put the pamphlet down. The teacher said, "I want you to read that
last sentence again." So she picked it up, read it again, this time
somewhat sarcastically, then put it down again. The teacher said, "Read it
again." She read it again. Then she described what happened. "After
about the seventh repetition I began to sense there might be some truth in this
statement. That there was a possibility that God really loves me, Maya Angelou.
I suddenly began to cry at the grandness of it all. I knew if God loved me, I could
do wonderful things. I could do great things. I could learn anything. I could
achieve anything. For what could stand against me with God, since one person,
any person, with God form a majority now."
Mark Trotter, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com
_______________________________
6.
Which Color Would You Be?
Ralph Milton tells of the teacher who, for reasons of her
own, asked the kids one day, "If all the bad children were painted red and
all the good children were painted green, which color would you be?"
Think about it. What color would you be? Red or Green? It is
a tough question isn't it when you pose only two options.
One very wise child answered the teacher:
"Striped"
The reason I am going on about this point is simple. It seems
to me that in the frame of the story - everyone but Jesus is striped. It is the
same in the world today. We are a curious combination of the lost and the
found. We are striped. We are, in some sense, not completely complete. It is
hard language, this language of lost and found, especially for folks in the
middle, as most of us are most of the time. It seems too absolute.
Rarely are we completely lost. And rarely are we completely
found. There is always a part of us that needs to be dragged and cajoled into
the light, and there is always a part of us that is already there in the light.
For some it is more and for some it is less, but always some part.
The wonderful thing is - that God wants us to enter fully
into the light. The wonderful thing is that God wants to bless us all richly to
keep us safe, to make us strong, to help us be like a Shepherd who really cares
for his sheep, or like a poor widow who really values all her coins.
Richard Fairchild, Seeking the Lost
______________________
7.
The Church Is No Place for Joy
In church the other Sunday I was intent on a small child who
was turning around smiling at everyone. He wasn't gurgling, spitting, humming,
kicking, tearing the hymnals, or rummaging through his mother's handbag. He was
just smiling. Finally, his mother jerked him about and in a stage whisper that
could be heard in a little theater off Broadway said, "Stop grinning!
You're in a church!" With that, she gave him a belt on his hind side and
as the tears rolled down his cheeks added, "that's better," and
returned to her prayers. I wanted to grab this child with the tear-stained face
close to me and tell him about my God. The happy God. The smiling God, the God
who had to have a sense of humor to have created the likes of us.
Erma Bombeck
__________________
8.
It Is a Big Ocean
H.H. Staton in his book, "A Guide to the Parables of
Jesus" tells the story of having been on an ocean liner headed to the
Middle East.
Nine hundred miles out to sea a sail was sighted on the
horizon. As the liner drew closer, the passengers saw that the boat - a small
sloop flying a Turkish flag - had run up a distress signal and other flags
asking for its position at sea. Through a faulty chronometer or immature
navigation the small vessel had become lost. For nearly an hour the liner
circled the little boat, giving its crew correct latitude and longitude.
Naturally there was a great deal of interest in all the proceeding among the
passengers of the liner. A boy of about 12 standing on the deck and watching
all that was taking place remarked aloud to himself - "It's a big ocean to
be lost in."
It is a big universe to be lost in, too. And we do get lost
- we get mixed up and turned around. We despair, we make mistakes, we do evil
to each other. We deserve the wrath of God and that is what the Pharisees who
criticized Jesus maintained. But Jesus understood God more. He knew God as a
Shepherd in search of the one lost sheep. He knew God as a woman searching in
the dark, in the crevasses, for that valuable coin. In the end it was Jesus'
view of God which prevailed and not his critics.
Adapted by Brett Blair from a sermon by Richard J.
Fairchild.
__________________9. Create Him Not
Then stepped forward the Angel of Mercy...
