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Luke 15:1-10
1 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
3 So he told them this parable: 4 “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? 5 When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6 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.’ 7 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.
8 “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? 9 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.’ 10 Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
I suspect that it will not surprise you to hear that when it comes to moving into a new house I am not terribly flexible or relaxed. I want the boxes unpacked. Pictures on the wall. Drawers full. In other words, I want to it be home as quickly as possible. Temporary is not a comfortable place for me. When we got into our house in West Virginia, Ben and I got to work unpacking. Getting settled. I began in the kitchen. It always seems a little better when you can eat dinner on your own dishes and with your own utensils. So I got to unpacking, and only our utensil tray didn’t show up in the boxes where I thought it would be. No worries, we were sure it would show up in another box, so we just kept on unpacking. Through the kitchen boxes. Still no utensils. No worries, sometimes things get packed in an odd box to take up the right space- packing is, after all, a giant game of Tetris.
But the utensils did not appear. Not in the obvious boxes. Not in the not-obvious boxes. And finally, two days later, in none of the boxes. So we started going back through things. Had we missed them? Where were they? I began to question my sanity. I mean, we had owned a tray of stainless forks, knives, and spoons, right? Had I hallucinated that?
Ben suggested, multiple times, that it would be fine. That we didn’t really need those particular forks, knives, and spoons. The church kitchen had loaned us a few to get us through. We didn’t actually need them. And they’d show up. It may or may not surprise you to find out that I was not soothed or settled by his offers. Irrationally, I didn’t want other utensils, I wanted ours.
Finally, we gave in. We called our realtor. Would she mind going by our old house and looking? And there they were. Still in the drawer where they had already been. Our movers had forgotten to pack them. They arrived by mail a few days later. [pro tip, a good realtor is worth their weight in gold].
And as much as I know that it is likely foolish to talk about the challenges of moving in a congregation and community with so many military families who know about moving far better than I, when the utensils arrived, I felt like I could breathe, finally.
Have you ever had an experience like this when you couldn’t find something and you couldn’t let go of looking for it until you found it? Maybe you can relate, as I do, to the woman in the parable in Luke 15. The woman who misplaces a coin and cannot rest until she finds it. It is not an expendable coin. Unlike my utensils, it is something she needs. Something that is a part of her survival.
That’s not the case with the lost sheep. After all, it’s only one out of one hundred sheep that is lost. So as much as I feel like I can relate to the woman, when Jesus asks, “Which one of you, losing one sheep does not leave the ninety-nine to go and find it,” the answer I have is “No. I wouldn’t leave the ninety-nine vulnerable to the elements and predators.” And not only me, but everyone listening to Jesus’ words would have felt the same thing.
Doing such a thing would mean that you were a very poor shepherd, indeed. And it’s interesting because on one level these parables are remarkably similar. And yet they are, when you dig in, very different.
Add to this the fact that these parables are ostensibly (At least that’s how I have understood them and preached them across the years) about sinners who are lost and then found, and you hit some issues with that interpretation. Because there aren’t any named sinners in the parables. There is a shepherd who is overzealous. A woman who loses the coin. And the sheep and the coin themselves, when we commonly associate with the lost sinner. Well, they can’t sin at all.
So… who are the sinners in this parable?
What many, myself, have come to believe is that the key to these parables is at the beginning and at the end.[1]
In the beginning, where we are told that the scribes and the Pharisees are grumbling. And the parable being shared with them, and, maybe for them.
And the end of each parable where there is rejoicing- rejoicing in the lost being found and rejoicing that expands to include more than the shepherd and the woman, it includes their communities, too.
What if these aren’t parables about being lost, but are, instead, parables about the importance of joy?
What if these parables aren’t at all about lost sinners but about the dangers of grumbling and the importance of cultivating a spirit of joy?[2]
We live in a world that has elevated grumbling to an art form. Sarcasm. Outrage. Complaint. I’m not immune. When something doesn’t make sense or doesn’t work, my fuse is far shorter than I would like to admit. And when you are feeling hurt it’s so easy to lash out and hurt. When you feel your own flaws are showing it’s so easy to point out someone else’s flaw.
Lest we think that this is only a 21st-century problem, Psalm 1 disabuses us of this notion. For it tells us, “Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers.”
Grumbling occurs throughout the Bible. Translated frequently as complaining. Grumble, grumble, grumble, words and actions that disrupt and agitate. Distract from God. In other words, sin.
Interestingly, it’s not that fear or worry is unjustified in all situations, it’s how we respond to things not going the way we expected that matters in scripture, not figuring out how to get everything to go our way. In fact, the challenges of life may be so knit together with the ability to truly cultivate joy that they cannot be untangled.
The Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, in the book they wrote about the topic of joy, said:[3]
We are fragile creatures, and it is from this weakness, not despite it, that we discover the possibility of true joy…Discovering more joy does not… save us from the inevitability of hardship and heartbreak. In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will laugh more easily, too. Perhaps we are just more alive. Yet as we discover more joy, we can face suffering in a way that ennobles rather than embitters. We have hardship without becoming hard. We have heartbreak without being broken.
In other words, as Truvey Jones in Steel Magnolias famously said, “Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion.”
And here, in Luke, we have the shepherd and the woman lifted up before us. Two people who are not wealthy. Not highly regarded. And yet, joyful. Cultivators of joy.
So much so, that their joy encourages them to let go of the very thing they sought, for celebrations require food - like sheep. Celebrations require things that must be paid for with coins.
And yet it is the respected leaders who are the grumblers. The complainers. Who see and voice the negative.
Today, as we think about these words from Jesus, I invite you to consider, where is your joy? How are you experiencing joy? How are you sharing joy?
If you ask Joyce Lovely about the best ice cream she ever ate, she will tell you about the ice cream she ate in 1945 at the end of World War II. She’d last had ice cream in 1939 before the rationing, before giving up refrigeration, before air raids. Before gas masks and bombs hit houses around her. But when the war was over. She said that at school:
That afternoon, all 54 of us sat at our desks as our teacher whispered that there was a special treat. I fidgeted with great hope….Our teacher placed a small, wrapped, rectangular bar upon each desk. I picked mine up. The cold stung my fingers slightly. Gingerly, I peeled back the layer of paper. A tantalizing, frozen substance peeped from the wrapper. Hesitantly I took a nibble, just as a wave of shouts filled the air. “It’s ice cream, it’s ice cream!”
Sure enough, I closed my eyes as the pleasurable smooth sweet taste melted on my tongue and slid slowly down my throat, leaving its chilled trail behind. As creamy drips stickied my hand, I realized I would need to eat faster. Finally, the last traces were gone.
I love the clarity with which Joyce remembers each moment of that ice cream, even decades later. But what struck me most of all about what she wrote wasn’t the joy she found in the ice cream that day, but in writing about the joy she experienced during the war. Not for the war, but in spite of it, in the middle of it. In reading and games, they made up. In ways, they adapted.
The ice cream was joyful that day and so memorable not because it was the only joy she had experienced in six years, but because she learned how to find and savor joy throughout those six years when things were hard.[4]
Joy like the legacy of Briar Bates who, as she dealt with a terminal cancer diagnosis, insisted that her friends gather not for a funeral but for a flash mob water ballet in the kiddie pool in their local park. Complete with custom lime-green swimsuits, choreography, and bathing caps. Some 75 gathered to do the dances in the pool and hundreds more gathered around them to celebrate and dance to the songs “Happy,” and Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy.” Bates had been clear, she wanted the legacy of her life to be, don’t postpone joy.”[5]
For Bates, too, joy was not a one-time decision, it was a lifetime of practice, of choice.
Where is your joy? How are you experiencing joy? How are you sharing joy?
It’s easy, often easier, to stay on the sidelines and complain when things don’t happen the way I want them to. Particularly if you, like me, are so frequently right about things.
Like waiting to decorate until close to Christmas and then keeping your decorations up until Epiphany- the 12 days of Christmas.
Or holding off on Pumpkin Spice Latte until it’s, you know, actually fall.
Or pineapple on pizza.
The Corn Kid. Or Hallmark Christmas Movies.
And yet, in life, in faith, whom do I want to be like? Like the Scribes and Pharisees who are upset that Jesus is doing things differently, not the way they are used to, or like the shepherd and the woman who invite their friends to celebrate that they lost something and then found it.[6]
Why on earth do I need to voice an opinion about something that brings someone else joy- that does not hurt or affect me? (I don’t.)
So often, grumbling is what we hide behind when we don’t want to admit that we are vulnerable. That our hearts are tender.
And it takes work, work I see so many of you embrace, to
to be vulnerable, look for the joy, be honest about love and sadness, and work to expand welcome.
Cultivating joy.
In the words of Wendell Berry, “Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.”
In the words of poet Lisel Mueller: “Joy, joy, the sopranos sing, reaching for the shimmering notes while our eyes fill with tears.”
In the words of William Wordsworth, "Tintern Abbey": With with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things.
In the words of the Psalmist who promises that joy comes in the morning. (Psalm 30)
Where is your joy? How are you experiencing it? How are you sharing it?
In the words of the shepherd and the woman, may we say “Rejoice with me.” For there is the kingdom of God. Alleluia. Amen.
[1] There aren’t many direct quotes or references in this sermon for the textual study, but here are the resources that were a part of writing this sermon:
Walter Brueggemann, Charles B. Cousar, Beverly R. Gaventa, James D. Newsome, Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary
Commentary Based on the NRSV, YEAR C, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994) pages 514-516.
Leander Keck, New Testament Editor, R. Alan Culpepper, “Luke” in the New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary. Volume
IX, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995).
www.pulpitfiction.com/notes/proper19c/#Luke15
www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-24-3/commentary-on-luke-151-10-3
[2] Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables Of a Controversial Rabbi. New York: Harper One, 2015. Pages 35-36. While we’ve traditionally seen the sinners and the tax collectors as comparable to the sheep and the coin, many, Amy Jill-Levine among them, have offered that the Scribes and the Pharisees are the sinners in this case, for neglecting the needs of the poor. She writes “Sinners are not ‘outcasts’; they are not cast out of synagogues or out of the Jerusalem Temple. To the contrary, they are welcome in such places, since such places encourage repentance. In a first-century context, sinners… are individuals who have removed themselves from the common welfare, who look to themselves rather than to the community.”
[4] https://www.christiancentury.org/article/first-person/indulgence-essays-reader
[5] http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/friends-honor-artists-last-wishes-with-water-ballet-in-a-seattle-kiddie-pool/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=article_title_1.1
Do you want to watch the video? https://vimeo.com/229045016
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