June 5, 2005 (David Hyers)

It is hard these days not to feel tired, jaded,
and anxious.
The war in Iraq,
the intensity of another presidential election, the horror of the attack against the school
in Southern Russia,
the number of deaths suddenly
within our own congregation,
the private knowledge we all have
of struggles within our own
family or circle of friends.
It can all weigh heavily.

I wished I knew who was right
and who was wrong about Iraq.

I envy those who speak with moral certitude
about their position in regard to the controversial issues of our day.
Who see the world in stark right or wrong terms.
Who are not beset with the uncertainty
and ambiguity which keep me
in turmoil.

What I do know is that on the whole humanity
is a pretty sorry lot.
Not our babies and children,
not our teenagers.
But, we adults seem to be a lost cause.
Which is what all those poetic stories
in Genesis are imaginatively portraying.
Stories about a man named Adam
and a woman named Eve,
stories with a talking snake,
and trees whose fruit possesses infinite
wonderful knowledge.
Made for a garden,
our hostility and prejudice and greed
have doomed us human beings
to a war torn crater
called Earth.
Expelled from innocence, we find it impossible
to see our true selves and find our way home.
We are lost and increasingly believing ourselves
though we would never admit it openly
increasingly believing ourselves
to be no more than pocket change.

I would be filled with anxiety and despair
were I not also grasped by an unshakeable
belief
that there is a Mysterious Presence called God alongside us.
A belief and trust I question daily.
But nevertheless a belief and trust
which gurgles up within me each day
like a stream of hope.
Like you I hold the Enlightenment view
of modernity
that this is a cause and effect world.
A naivete belief in an interventionist God
who rewards some faith to pull a rabbit
out of a hat
is a god-image to which I can not return
again.
Perhaps all of you who wish to think
in your believing
and believing in your thinking
can no longer work
from that model of the Holy either.
But, let us be quick to say we also can not deny
our belief
that there is this beautiful, hopeful
trajectory of Purpose
present in our predicament.
A Holy Purpose Who is always and only improvisationally
working toward good and love
and Who refuses to stop searching
for us.

A God who if Jesus is our image still seeks
friendship with sinners
and a God who will seek and search
and never lose the joy which erupts
when we are found.

Though clearly near the end of the text
someone in the early church got nervous
about grace
and puts in a word suggesting
these parables are about the joy in heaven
over sinners who repent—
this text with its parables of lost sheep
and a lost coin
are not about human repentance
but about Holy Rejoicing.

Holy Rejoicing occasioned by a God
who will never give up the search.
There is the basis of our hope.
Not our ability to stop, look, listen
and finally see the truth and change,
but rather a God whose mirth
is to ceaselessly look for us
until we are brought home
on this God’s shoulders.
A God who sweeps and sweeps
and shines the flashlight
into all the dark corners
and moves all the furniture
until at last She jumps up and down
with the joy of finding
what to everyone else appears
to be of no consequence—
just pocket change.

This text from Luke about Jesus getting in trouble
with the religious
because he intimately associates
in open friendship with sinners
is about the foolishness of God.
These parables reverse the usual understanding
of church and religion.
Church and religion too often are thought of
as the place and people who point the finger
at sinners.
The place and people who are obsessed
with making sure no one is getting away
with anything.

But Church and religion in this text is the place
and people
who are there with the sinners
in open friendship
letting the chips fall where they may
because church and religion
according to Jesus
is about the shared joy of God
who never gives up the search.

Sheep and coins can’t repent.
The whole truth of the parables is over the God
who hunts, and searches,
who climbs and looks,
who refuses to lose us.

You want to know why we are baptizing baby
Drake Cameron this morning?
It’s not because his grandparents are active here,
and his mom is a child of this church.
The sacrament shows in action
what words can’t.
God finds the helpless.
That’s why we baptize babies.
To show the main draw in this assembly
is not how smart we are to repent and believe
but how crazy God is to rejoice
over finding small pocket change
like us.

The secret of the Christian life is to keep
your eyes on the crazy shepherd
who puts 99 at risk
just so one will not go unfound.
The secret of the Christian life
is to keep your eyes
on the woman who tears her house apart,
turning everything upside down,
just to find a quarter
and who throws a glad gathering
to show off the little coin
now within her grasp!
Neither action, the Shepherd’s nor the woman’s,
makes sense.

And it doesn’t make sense for there to be more
mercy in God
than sin in any of us,
but that is the gospel.
That is the Good News.
That’s what Holy Baptism boasts!

As sorry and lost lot as we adults of the world are,
there is every reason
to give thanks
for there is a Search going on.
Not a search and destroy mission
as depicted in the silly Left Behind series
but a search and find mission.
The mission of a God who will not cease
being true to Godself
which is all predestination means.
The God who calls us to swap our high standards
and self congratulations
for a strong flashlight.
To trade in our trying to be good examples
so others see our light and repent,
and instead purchase a good broom
so we can participate in the mirth of God
who if like Jesus
never tires of sweeping
until we find what we lost—
basically our hearts and lives.
A God who doesn’t mind a bad reputation
for having friends in low places.