Preaching with the Season of Creation
September 2016
A Season of Creation:The Biggest Loser
17th Sunday After Pentecost, Year C
Sept. 11, 2016
Introduction
Friends,
I’d like to our guest writer for the month of September, The Rev. Dr. Sam Persons Parkes. I first met Dr. Parkes a year ago at the Academy of Homiletics. I was immediately impressed by his energy, creativity, and commitment to helping other preachers become better at their craft. As we have come to know one another better and to collaborate on projects, Sam has become a critical conversation partner, colleague in ministry, and good friend. As a local church pastor and an academically-trained homiletician, Sam is uniquely able to teach and write both as a pastor and for pastors. Sam has recently joined the Preaching Consultation Team that is working with me to develop a national strategic plan for improving preaching in The United Methodist Church. I know you will enjoy Sam’s unique teaching style and creative insights into the lectionary passages, especially the Old Testament readings, for September as he presents his series, “Preaching with the Season of Creation 2016.” – Dawn Chesser
Sam Persons Parkes is the pastor of Cloverdale UMC in Dothan, Alabama.Sam earned his M.Div. from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University and the Th.D. in homiletics from the University of Toronto and the Toronto School of Theology.He has been a contributor to theAbingdon Preaching Annualand to the recentAbingdon Theological Companion to the Lectionary.Sam is serving in his 25th year under episcopal appointment in the United Methodist Church and is a clergy member of the Alabama-West Florida annual conference.He likes to spend his time cooking good food and then attempting to run it off.He is the father of two exceptional children who keep his academic fancies grounded in the concrete world.
Luke 15:1-10
WEEK 2: God gets SO stoked at creating the possibility of fresh faith and bringing people into God’s joy.
My friend, Trey Hall, in Chicago was at a party a couple years ago and struck up a conversation with two other attendees. He got quickly “outed” as a pastor, so the conversation turned pretty quickly to faith. He reported the conversion this way:
“One of the guys said, ‘Oh, I’m a Christian,’ and as we talked, he sounded pretty similar to me theologically and philosophically. When it came to core ‘truth claims,’ we were probably in the same boat. But when I asked about his personal experience of God, his spirituality, he couldn’t talk about himself at all. His responses kept coming back to these platitudes about God and namedrops of theologians maybe he thought I would be impressed with (and in some ways, I was). But it felt a bit flat to me. It felt disconnected. I knew what he thought about God, but I couldn’t get a sense of who he was, what he cared about. And so after a few minutes of theologically-correct bullet points, I got bored.”
Trey was quick to admit that people sometimes “act funny” around pastors and that this guy was probably an interesting person. But he discovered such a contrast with the other guy, who said to him, “I’m not sure what I believe about God, and, no offense, I’m definitely anti-religion.” Trey continued:
“But when I asked him about his spiritual journey, he talked really humorously and humbly about how he’d been addicted to crystal meth and how being knocked on his butt by that addiction had really woken him up to what was important and to the possibility of new life — of real, substance-free life. And in this new life, his senses had come alive, he was doing music again, he was aware of beauty, he was thinking of starting a not-for-profit, he felt like he had the passion and some of the smarts for that, but not enough smarts and was wondering how he could find others to partner with him.”
Trey didn’t describe it, but I think I can see the look on that dude’s face: lit up, big smile, passion in the eyes, on fire.
Trey then asked: “So which of the two guys seems to you to be more in sync with God? I’m not asking which one God loves more — God loves them both deeply — and I’m not asking which one is more moral, or better, or nicer, or smarter, or more knowledgeable. I’m asking which one seems to you to be the more spiritually conscious? The one who could talk about God and the Bible, but not about himself or the one who knew himself deeply, even as he had some doubts about God?”
Which one expressed a sense of spiritual joy? Which one seems more found than lost?
(Read Trey’s post here:
Trouble in the Text: The Pharisees wanted Jesus to ignore the lost sinner
The Pharisees had a pretty good idea of lost and found, sinner and righteous. Now, look, the Pharisees have gotten a pretty bum rap for the last 2,000 years. In fact, Jesus’ rebukes to the Pharisees have resulted in some awful anti-Jewish sentiment and action over the years. But Pharisees are not demons. In Jesus’ day, they wore the white hats among the average folk. They were the people you wanted for neighbors. God-fearing and law-abiding. Righteous. And Jesus had no problem with that. Jesus never scolded the Pharisees for being good. Jesus was upset that the only face of God that the righteous wanted to show to the sinner was, at worst, stern, angry, and unwelcoming, or, at best, just to ignore them in their lostness.
Not everyone wants to believe what we believe or do what we do. And we should be fine with that. But intentionally spending lots of time with those people? Well, you know what momma told you: If you hang around with lost, you are going to get some lost on you.
That, in my thinking, is the chief trouble in this text: religious people are often prone to the assumption that they are found and that the non-religious are lost. But by the end of this chapter (and a parable that we won’t get into but that seems to precisely emanate from this question), the reader has to ask, “Just who is lost, according to God, and who is not?”
I cannot remember where I got the following set of ideas. I know they didn’t originate with me. (I’m sure one of you well-read peeps will inform me!) But I’ve used this for years.
Behold, a diagram:
Religious people often construe religious life in this way. At the center is God; and by God, I mean God as defined by whatever religious group is doing the defining. Around God is a field bound by a line: the line of confessional faith. We enter that field at the point that we believe in our hearts, confess with our lips, and act with our lives in ways that are consonant with the God of our predilection. Then, of course, people relate differently to that field and the God who defines it. Some people, like Carol, are nearly sitting in God’s lap. Others, like Frida, seem miles away from God. When we make decisions about who is lost and found in this diagram, it’s easy if our assumption is that how relationships are today is how they are going to continue to be in the future.
Trouble in our World: Sometimes our religion ignores our own lostness
This, in fact, is the way many people define Christianity. If you believe x, y, and z and do 1, 2, and 3. And do NOT do 4, 5, and 6, then you must be found! The difference between all the denominations, of course, is that they fill in the variable with different doctrines and practices; i.e., “You have to be baptized to be saved” or “No baptism doesn’t matter, but you have to believe these doctrines, etc.”
And most of us have our own set of beliefs and behaviors, too, which form a picture of what righteousness ought to look like.
I’m not saying that we are wrong, necessarily. Scripture can be uber-plain about what constitutes just, right living – foundness. But, if you are like me and maintain a more or less static relational image of God’s reign, then we wind up ignoring some really significant possibilities. We begin to assume that the “lost” really deserve little from us. How can we really help them anyway? The onus is on them to move this way. More significantly, we begin to assume that those of us on the inside of the boundary of belief and behavior have nothing lost about us.
But, God knows, we do.
If you are like me, you don’t define yourself as “lost” (for heaven’s sake most of us are in the pews!).But Jesus seems to have a word for us today in these parables. By the time you get to the end of them, you have to ask, “Just who is lost here and who is found?” And that asks us to consider how we righteous, how we the church-attenders, how we the good deed-doers might actually be lost.
David Lose also read this passage and asked whether we might we be both righteous and lost at the same time (or simul justus et peccator, as Dr. Luther would put it):
Might the parents who want their children to succeed so much that they wrap their whole lives around hockey games and dance recitals be lost? Might the career minded man or woman who has made moving up the ladder the one and only priority be lost? Might the folks who work jobs they hate just to give their family things they never had be lost? Might the senior who has a great pension plan but little sense of meaning since retirement be lost? Might the teen who works so hard to be perfect and who is willing to do just about anything to fit in be lost? Might the earnest Christian who is constantly asking whether people have accepted Jesus into their hearts be lost?
(David J. Lose, “Lost,” Dear Working Preacher, September 9, 2013,
Which brings me, beautiful people, to another diagram:
In this diagram, we see the same people at the same locations, but we see them DYNAMICALLY. Few of us have static relationships with God or neighbor. They are always shifting and changing. So, while Carol would be entirely willing to make confession of faith in God, much more than Frida would be willing to do, the trajectory of her life is aimed away from God. One might expect her before too long to find herself as one of the “dones,” of which our ecclesial navel-gazers are so often speaking. Frida is far from confessional Christian faith, but she is responding to the light that she has and is moving ever closer to that confession.
Might those of us who work so hard in the church, here in the fold, we “found coins” nestled safely in God’s purse, might we with A-grades on our truth claim report cards and loads of volunteer hours be among the lost? Well, look at your trajectory. When was the last time you had a spiritual eureka? When was the last time you had at least the hint of a presence beyond what you could sense, a presence that seemed to be so happy with who. you. are. No matter what. you’ve. done.
If it has been a while, beautiful people, then perhaps even in this location, you feel like you are a lonely lamb in a thicket. Perhaps, little coin, you have rolled behind God’s great refrigerator, there with the dust bunnies wondering if there couldn’t be something more to this life of faith. Maybe spiritual apathy is the result of forgetting stories of struggle and awakening like the one Trey was telling. Maybe addictions are a misdirected expression of a desire for spiritual life and passion. Maybe depression is the human spirit searching hard for an experience of joyful transcendence in a world that is so bored with itself that a presidential campaign could entertain it.
Maybe you and I and the people with whom we worship each week are more lost than we imagined.
Grace in the Text: God gets so stoked at finding people and creating faith
God loves creating that moment of revelation and doing it with us. God gets so absolutely stoked at that moment when we realize that some part of us (or all of us) is lost and that, in our heart of hearts, we want a different way.
God is like the biggest loser ever. Why? Because God is nearly addicted to finding!
Suppose someone among you had a hundred sheep and lost one of them. Wouldn’t he leave the other ninety-nine in the pasture and search for the lost one until he finds it? Wouldn’t you do that? Are you CRAZY? The reasonable answer is heck, no! A 1-percent loss is okey-dokey! And then there’s the business about calling people up to come for a celebration. Does that seem reasonable? Well, did you do that the last time you lost your keys, or went out searching for your lost dog? Did you throw a barbecue for the neighbors? Probably not. You may have just breathed a deep sigh of relief and went on. You might have even been so ashamed about the losing part that you didn’t want to draw attention to the finding! But that is not our God, says Jesus!
What woman with ten days of pay isn’t going to look for that $100 bill she lost? Each of us would do the same! But when SHE finds, it she is so happy that she spends $300 on the party with her friends to celebrate! Wha-what? That’s a little crazy. And this is our God.
These are not stories about how people are really to blame for their lost lives. It’s not primarily a picture of us (simple sheep and inert coins) as much as it is a picture of what God is like and what God likes. And what God likes, what God seems to just love, what gets God completely stoked is creating that moment of turning, of revelation. That moment when we realize that we, too, are lost. Then to you and to me, God says, “Eureka! I found you! Let’s DO this thing! Come with me! Let me show you purpose and joy! Let’s create a relationship of meaning and service! I choose to create, with your help, the possibility of faith in other people! And, my friend, when you experience that, when you taste what it is like to see faith created in someone else, you will find it hard to go back, or to keep doing this stuff that is destructive and death-dealing! It. is. amazing.”
See? Jesus offers a different image of how God is at work. God is never satisfied with a 10-percent loss. God isn’t even satisfied with a 1-percent loss, says Jesus.
Behold, the third and final diagram:
These parables portray a God who will not sit in stasis on her royal cloud! God is dynamic, out at every distance, creating the possibility for faith if only, my God, we Pharisees can get over ourselves long enough to let God do that thing that makes her heart flip out: woo folk toward the chance of confessed faith.
To those who locate God only at the center of Christian community, and who define lostness only by an absence of belief and behavior, loss is okay because we feel we can’t do anything about it. If you are lost, it’s your fault. But Luke’s Jesus heads out into the thickets and behind the refrigerator. Luke’s Jesus goes out to the margins and beyond. Luke’s Jesus goes to places where no one would even suspect that God might be, outside the city, to the places where life is crucifyingly harsh, and no revelation seems possible. Even there.
Even the Pharisee, the one with the well-defined rules about who is in and who is out, the one who is satisfied to let some go their own unrighteous way – Jesus will not even let the Pharisee go because he can’t help but tell stories that can wake them up to a new way of understanding what God is like. What makes God really, really joyful, what gets God totally stoked is not righteousness alone, but awakening, that little turn of yes, creating that change of heart and life. What gives God the giggles down to her toes is when people say, “Whoa, I never thought of that before. Tell me more about that idea about God.” And then they begin to head home dragged along by a God who is determined to set them into a community that will celebrate their presence and inclusion.
Grace in our World: God gets SO stoked at creating the possibility of fresh faith and bringing people into God’s joy
What this means, of course, is that those who have rejected Christian faith because they can’t begin to accept the crazy “scientific” claims of the Bible such as a six-day creation or a worldwide flood are not ignored by God. Some have rejected Christianity because some of us with our worst frowning Pharisee faces on have told them that God will not welcome the addict, the criminal, the nonconformist, the confused, or depressed. Instead, to them, Jesus says, “Let’s go have coffee! Tell me more about you! Because, you know, I am curious about what makes you tick. I am going to continue to dig around into your story and find the points where I can apply the salve of my love to your aching guilt, despair, and need.”