Sermon for Proper 19 C: “God will get you for that!”

The Gospel today is from the 15th chapter of Luke, often called, “the Gospel within the Gospel, it gives us a trilogy of parables that speak of forgiveness and repentance.  Repentance evokes images both comfortable and uncomfortable referring to sorrow for offending God, turning away from sinful acts and returning to God, along with  what Roman Catholics call a “firm purpose of amendment”.  But the Jewish idea of repentance is much richer than this.  The Hebrew term teshuba evokes a return to God by a person who has already experienced God’s loving kindness, by a person who already knows God’s great compassion as we heard in the 51st psalm.  In fact the word for God’s compassion comes from the word for womb.  It reminds us that God loves us with that undying love of a mother for her child, the fruit of her womb.   We are loved—therefore we are.  A philosopher once said, I think therefore I am, but that was a lie and a fantasy.  The Hebrews got it right—I am loved there I am.  We exist because God loves us.

 

The Poet Francis Thompson wrote of God’s undying compassion that tracked him tirelessly in his poem, The Hound of Heaven.

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
  I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
  Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears

I hid from Him…

No matter how fast we run, no matter how well we hide, God’s mercy seeks us and finds us. Once we’re found, we know the joy of God’s saving help.

The two parables in today’s Gospel respond to criticism by certain Pharisees and scribes of Jesus’ frequent practice of seeking out tax collectors and sinners. Jesus responds to his critics with a question, “What man among you having a hundred sheep...?” This invites them ironically to identify with a shepherd, which was one of the occupations disdained by the high brow Pharisees. Irrationally, this shepherd leaves 99 of his flock “in the desert” (where danger lurks and wild beasts roam) to seek out the one lost, which he tenderly carries home on his shoulders. He then summons his friends and neighbors and throws a party, which Jesus says reflects a heavenly party where there will be “more joy over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous who have no need of repentance.”

The second parable of losing and finding again challenges the listening leaders to move beyond their privileged position and to see the world through the eyes of a poor woman searching for a lost coin.  She lights a lamp, sweeps the house and searches “carefully.” After finding the coin she calls together her friends and says, “Rejoice with me, because I found the coin that was lost.” The celebration may have cost as much as the coin that was lost.

That poet Francis Thompson finally did surrender to the mercy of God that tracked him down like a laser guided missile. He writes:  

Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke!
My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me, And smitten me to my knees; 

His words bring us back to psalm 51 where God’s love and compassion bring us to our knees.

In his book Fear No Evil, Natan Sharansky, the noted Jewish dissident who eventually became a member of the Israeli parliament, tells how the book of Psalms saved his life during a long nine-year imprisonment by the KGB, the Soviet secret police.

He spent just over one year in a punishment cell, a cold, damp basement room that measured barely six feet square. In a constant battle of wills with Soviet authorities, he went on hunger strikes and endured countless hours of interrogation. His one possession and constant companion during those hard years was a book of Psalms given to him by his wife Avital. Though not a particularly religious man, God’s mercy found him, even in a Russian concentration camp.  He began reading the psalms, even memorizing them. To his astonishment he found a striking similarity between his experience of bondage and the distresses articulated in many of the psalms.  The laments became his own and the hope of deliverance became a gleam of light in his cell. After nine grueling years, several confiscations and reluctant returns of his book of Psalms, he was finally transported to an airport outside Moscow for his trip to East Germany and then to freedom.  Sharansky's release was choreographed by the Soviets to insure the most favorable exposure in the world press and so an official car drove him to the airport, then to a plane at the far end of the airport. Photographers were in place when he got out of the car; he was now minutes away from freedom and the end of his nine years of humiliation and suffering. This is what happened next, in his own words:                                                                                                                                                           

'Where's my Psalm book?"                                                                                          

                        "You received everything that was permitted," answered the intellectual in an unexpectedly rough tone. He signaled to the tails to take me away.  I quickly dropped to the snow. "I won't move until you give me back my Psalm book." When nothing happened, I lay down in the snow and started shouting, "Give me back my Psalm book!"--The photographers were aghast, and pointed their cameras toward the sky.--After a brief consultation the boss gave me the Psalm book.”

On the plane ride to freedom, Sharansky opened his book of Psalms to keep a promise he had made to himself, while in prison. He vowed that his first act in freedom would be to read Psalm 51. He turned the well-worn pages to the appropriate place and began, 

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving compassion,

In your great compassion blot out my offenses.

 

Amen--