Year C

Luke 15:1-10

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

Mercy Is What God Has Done

Have you ever read the classified ads in the newspaper just for fun? Let me tell you about one that appeared in a paper in the section on pets-lost, found, and for sale. The classified ad was evidently placed by a dog owner needing to find a new home for the pet. Stuck between notices for German shepherds and golden retrievers, the ad was interesting not only in the way it described the animal, but even more, because of a typesetter’s error. The letters d-o-g had been transposed to spell “G-o-d”! So it appeared like this: “God. Free. Needs a home. 35lb, house trained, loves people, catching Frisbees, and loves water. 

We more than likely we wouldn’t place a similar classified ad yet, like that typo, would we say that God is free, loves water and people, and catches Frisbees? If we were to describe God, what words would we choose? When the scriptures describe God, it often does so in “word pictures.” The picture we get of God from the fiery prophet Jeremiah today is anything but free and loving. Two words that characterize the Old Testament text today are: total despair. The world is plunged back into darkness and chaos because the people have chosen to live in darkness rather than in the light of God. They have ceased to call upon God, acting as if God does not even exist. Psalm 14 rightly says: only fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.” And in verse 3 the psalm describes the chaos, “All of them have turned bad…no one does good—not even one person!”

Although the text of Jeremiah seems to suggest that God has determined to destroy Israel forever, we hear God say, “I will not destroy it completely.” Despite sin and darkness, God will not abandon God’s people, because God’s mercy overcomes the darkness. Mercy here can be described as “entering into the chaos of another.” Mercy is what God has done, from Adam and Eve, to Paul, “a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence,” who received mercy because he had acted in unbelief, to us today. God seeks to enter into the chaos of our lives and invite us to come home though Jesus who is God’s mercy in the flesh. Despite sin, God remains faithful. 

We see God’s nature to forgive and restore God’s people in the parables Jesus tells today in the gospel of Luke of the lost coin and the lost sheep which both portray God in striking images, and call to mind losing one’s way in the darkness of sin and then, wonderfully, being found. We read that the crowds are pressing in around Jesus to hear his teachings. All types of people make up this group who gather around him for a variety of reasons; the disciples to receive instruction; the Pharisees and Sadducees to keep tabs on Jesus’ radical teachings; and the people who have lived much of their life on the fringes; the tax collectors and sinners. The people that no one else wants to hang around with.

Religious leaders in their role as guardians of the traditions were very suspicious of any audience that included tax collectors and other so-called sinners. To them, cleanliness was not next to godliness, it was godliness! In other words, they were meticulous in staying “clean” according to their understanding of scriptural law. They wondered why a rabbi like Jesus would let himself become “unclean” by welcoming sinners, even eating with them. They believed that if you mingled with the unclean, others, including God, would think you were unclean too. Therefore, they avoided certain situations and people deemed unclean as a way of limiting, controlling, and even defining who was in and who was out of that faith community.

Jesus’ response to their grumbling was to tell stories about lost things, the search to find them and the joy of recovering what was lost. All to talk about what God is like and how God feels toward those called “outcasts.” The “outcasts” in Jesus’ audience had been led to believe that God’s care did not include them or they were not worthy of it at all. Yet, from Jesus they heard words of love and acceptance. No wonder tax collectors and sinners gathered around and listened to Jesus.

What a picture Jesus paints of the grace and mercy of God, never giving up on a person, searching until the lost is found. Then to explain this love of God even further, Jesus tells another parable in the verses just after the text today about a father with two sons. The younger son, the Prodigal Son after wasting his life and sinking as low as he can go, resolves to return to his father. He rehearses an apology but does not get to use it because his father is way ahead of him. His father has been watching out for him since he left.

How easily the children of God wander away and become lost, so filled with regret they are unable to undo their mistakes. There seems no possible hope for reconciliation. They cannot retrace their steps or make it right and Jesus assures them that God is waiting. Home is already waiting. Love’s door is open to all sinners. Mercy trumps the deepest darkness when those in darkness are willing to be found and to be led out of the chaos into the light, when they are willing to return to the Father. When this happens, when the lost are found, we experience how amazing God’s grace and mercy is. God rejoices when the religious insiders in all of us repent and change our minds about who is in and who is out. 

Throughout Luke’s gospel Jesus tells us about the demands, risks, and sacrifices of those who would follow him. In the stories today, Jesus is telling us how and why those demands, risk, and sacrifices are possible. It is because of the extravagant grace, the extreme mercy, of God! With a tireless love God reaches out from the cross of Christ to those who have wandered away, or have lost their usefulness, or are presumed unacceptable. If we were to write a classified ad to describe God, we surely would use these descriptive phrases: unyielding determination and unrestrained joy. Having found and embraced those lost ones that same God declares to all who would listen: “Friends and neighbors, come share my joy.” “To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever amen.”