Sept. l2, 2004
Luke l5: l-10
THE TRUE WELCOME
By Howard Seip
As usual in our gospel lesson for this morning we hear a story about Jesus, and
the things that he said and did. This particular morning the story is
about how he attracted sinners and trouble- makers to himself and how that
caused some of the religious authorities to grumble about him. Luke uses
this setting to share two parables about finding things that were lost that
tells us about God's love for those in need.
You know Jesus, and what he said and did, is big business nowadays in our
world. My wife Nancy just got back her dog-eared copy of Dan Brown's
book, The DaVinci Code, which was gone for the
summer. God only knows how many people read it during that time.
(You know it's great being married. You have your on personal censor;
advisor would be a better word. She read it and told me I didn't have to
bother. You can hear about her review at coffee hour.) The immense
popularity of this book and its spin-offs show how popular Jesus and the
investigation of his life is now.
And the same thing has been happening in popular scholarly religious work for
years. I'm sure that you remember the controversy that was in the press
and on TV in recent years about a group called "The Jesus Seminar"
that has published all kinds of books and findings about their investigation
into Jesus' life and words. And one of their conclusions fits right in
with our passage from Luke this morning. For even they would tell us that
if there is any one thing at all that we can say we know for certain about the
life of Jesus and that it was absolutely crucial to his life, it would be that
he ate and drank and socialized with sinners and outcasts and welcomed
them. Just like Luke said.
Instead of living a politically correct life in the way that would be
religiously and socially proper and acceptable, the gospels clearly tell us
over and over and over again that Jesus sought out the political traitors, the
diseased and unclean, the sinners and women as his companions not just to
minister to them in a healing way, but to be with them in their lives and
socialize with them. And the gospels see this as a sign, both of the
nature of God's being, but also that God's new kingdom of goodness and love is
breaking into our world. And today's gospel is just one short example of
this.
Now Luke adds two parables to this account, one about the shepherd who goes in
desperate search for the one lost sheep, and who rejoices so when it is
found. (I was told this week in my latest learning-about-Coventry update
that many of you raise sheep, so you probably could have lots to say about
this.) And the other about the woman who has lost one of her few coins,
and again after a lengthy and troubled search finds it, is ecstatically happy
about it. And the point Luke says really is about the joy there is in
heaven when one of those lost souls Jesus hung out with repents, and by
implication, I think, how much God loves them.
And here we get right at the heart of what I think the point is and what
the big picture is in this gospel lesson. Because we believe that Jesus
reveals God to us, and more than that, that he puts flesh and blood on who God is and what God is. And so it is our faith
that what Jesus is, that is what God is like. But what is God like?
Who is God anyway? What kind of God do we worship? You'd think with
people thinking about God for many thousands of years that the answer to that
question would be pretty clear and obvious by now. But it's really
not. I think that especially in recent years we've received all kinds of
mixed (and I think) misleading messages and ideas about who God is and what God
is like.
Because in these recent years people in different religions
and in different parts of the world have been trying to tell us that if God is
love at all, God loves only one kind of people. That more likely
God isn't really what I'd call love at all, but rather a violent, hateful,
judgmental, vengeful, punishing kind of God that is out to get us, or at least
some of us, especially those who aren't like us. And with those kinds of
messages and images bombarding us out there, I think that it's easy for us to
become confused and questioning and really be misled about what God is really
like. Now I know just as well as you do that the Bible itself gives us
all kinds of diverse images of God. I also know how absurd and
pretentious it is for me to pretend that I can personally tell you exactly what
God is like.But I think that there's a pretty clear
image that is there throughout the New Testament, gospel accounts that tell us
that what God is, is overflowing, overwhelming love. That God has created
all that is because God loves it. And that God reaches out to give us the
fullness of life and saves us because God loves us. That's what the cross
is all about after all. The images may be mixed, the messages we receive
may be too, but the gospel proclamation I think is clear - that God is love and
that God's love is a universal, all-encompassing thing that is for everyone.
And that our world would be a much better place is we actually believed
that. And I think that that is what Luke's gospel story this morning is
all about. Because it's about the love God has even for the lost and
needy among us.
Now so far you might have been listening to what I have been saying and thinking, "Yes, you're absolutely right Howard! That's exactly the way that it is." And you know I hope that it would be pretty hard to find a bunch of Christians in church who wouldn't vote yes for God being love. But now we get to a much more difficult place, because now we need to think about the implications of this message for our lives. Because as people of faith, made in God's image and created to become like God, if we see God in a certain way, like loving and rejoicing in everyone, then we ourselves are called on to live our lives in the same way that God is. In a loving and accepting way. And that's not nearly as easy a thing to do. For if we believe that God is wholehearted love, and that we are called to be like God is and live that way, then we will have to take a look at areas of our lives and see how they stand.
And a great place to start is with ourselves.
And that seems natural. Because don't we do a good job of beating up on
ourselves much of the time? And for some of us, don't we really beat up
on ourselves pretty much all of the time? Jesus says that we should love
our neighbor as we love ourselves. Not
in a selfish, greedy, idolatrous way. But by love and
acceptance and forgiveness. But a lot of the time we find that
very hard to do. We're so hard on ourselves so often. We're so critical, we're so judgmental and so punishing of
ourselves. Boy can we hold a grudge. And too often we start with
ourselves. The gospel message that God is love and loves us is a message
of acceptance and openness and love. And just like the more questionable
saying "charity begins at home", so does love. With ourselves. And
again, this isn't selfishness, it's really just letting go of that self-critical,
judgmental, punishing way we can have of seeing and treating ourselves that is
really so harmful to us, and really prevents us from being open and accepting
and able to love others.
So if we want to believe that God is love, then we'd better take at least a
little look at how open and forgiving and accepting we are with
ourselves. And then it will be time to look at how we are with
others. And again, we might begin at home, because it's here that we
train ourselves in how to treat other people and learn how it is that we will
interact with them. Because what seems to happen is that too often we
take that beating up that we put on ourselves and just hand it off to other
people.
Again, we can be so hard on people in life, this time our loved ones, or
relatives, co-workers or neighbors. And the same principle applies to
them that did to ourselves. If the gospel
message is that of God's love and forgiveness, mercy, caring, and acceptance of
them, then that is our calling as well. And like the difficult task we
have letting go and being open with ourselves, our call with one another is to
lighten up a little bit, let go of that grudge, drop the quest for revenge,
walk a little while in their shoes, cut people some slack, and even reach out
to seek their growth and health and goodness in life. All because that is
what God seeks for them.
Well, we might be able to start loving ourselves (although that's really
tough), and we also might be able to extend that caring to those around us too
(as difficult as that will be too), but then we get to what human beings find
really tough. Having God's loving, caring, open attitude to those who
aren't near and dear to us, who aren't like us, who aren't close to us and we
don't even know. This is the really hard one.
But the principle is the same. It was the ones that maybe Jesus' folks
would see as sinners, as outcasts, as the lost that was his (and God's and heaven's) special focus of concern and caring and
love. We call the issue diversity and pluralism nowadays, but it's really
the same thing that we have been talking about in extending the circle from
ourselves to others and to our world in our thoughts about God's love and how
we are called to live in light of that. Again, the task of openness and acceptance
will not be easy. (It's not easy with ourselves
or with our in-laws or bosses either, is it?) But the issue is the
same. And when Jesus spoke about loving your enemies and praying for them
and their well-being, he got right to the heart of what is so hard for us as
human beings and what is so at the heart of what will
be right, good and Godlike for us.
And like Jesus did with the people around him, no matter who
they were, it just comes down to a true and genuine welcome. Lately Nancy
and I have been ignoring the reruns on television and have been watching tapes
of Ken Burns' series on jazz music that was on PBS a number of years ago.
When it aired I knew nothing of jazz music, but the power of his presentation,
and of the music itself made me an instant jazz fan, and we have continued that
over these years since it aired.
In the middle of the ten-part series there is an episode on the triumph of big
band swing music in the l930s, and the joy that its beautiful music and joyful
dancing gave to a nation in the midst of the great depression. And the
title of this segment was called "The True Welcome". And that
came from what one person in that racially segregated time called the reception
that anyone would get when they came to one of the great dance halls in
Well, fortunately for me, in Jesus' kingdom and in God's, you don't even have to dance to receive the true welcome. You just have to be and want to receive it. And that welcome is God's love and caring and compassion. And like jazz, it's not just for some of us, it's for all. And for that, let's all say a big "Amen".