March 14:
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Maybe it’s a function of my crochety personality. I’m drawn to gospel stories where Jesus goes out of his way to offend religious people. Like the stories in the 15th chapter of Luke.
Forget all those church windows with handsome, muscular shepherds carrying sheep on their broad shoulders. Forget the Sunday school pantomimes. Little girls in headscarves crawling around on the floor looking for invisible coins. Put the cotton wool, dried beans, and Elmer’s glue away. By the end of three connected parables — we hear the third today — Jesus offends everyone.
He may even blaspheme. Suggesting God’s loving-kindness in covenant can be compared to the unmeasured love of an old fool who’s such a bad father he lets his sons bleed him dry. And leave him, for all intents and purposes, dead. By the end of this assault on human decency and community values, Jesus ticks off just about anyone who has any religious sense of what’s right. Maybe even the people he sets out to defend at the beginning, who may think Jesus is going to excuse what they do. And accuse the righteous men of worse.
The caricatured scribes and pharisees confront Jesus. Point out that he accepts hospitality from tax collectors and sinners. And he gives it back! They have a case! Jesus risks alienation from his community. Loss of honour, if he has any. Maybe not first or second grade contamination, but the shadow of impurity.
Would you invite someone into your home who’s likely to take an inventory of your property? Then go and adjust your tax bill! Is Jesus stupid? The ritual of hospitality includes an up-front, verbal exchange of blessing, and buttering up. Jesus goes to table with people whose names shouldn’t even be spoken in good company.
A righteous man might open his home and set a table for outcasts and down-and-outs. People whose circumstances identify them as sinners. He’ll do it as an act of charity. But he won’t be there! Jesus doesn’t say, “There, there gentlemen. I know what I’m doing. Let’s just sit down and recall some of the words of the prophets.”
No. Jesus invites the scribes and pharisees to think of themselves as despised shepherds. As forgetful women. To stand for a moment in the sandals of a foolish father of two hard-hearted sons.
Many of them believe in a pre-Wesleyan version of perfection. They’re there, or they’re on their way. Jesus doesn’t deny their ticket to heaven. But he says they’ll have to slip in past publicans and other sinners. Any old soul who wants to change her or his ways.
“Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” So, the angels, God’s messenger–warriors, heralds, protectors of the Presence, have nothing better to do than watch for precious sinners to repent! Jesus seems to think so!
According to scribes and pharisees, the tradition and religion they represent, and the religious calculus embedded deep within you and me, repentance is a good work. Something a serious sinner — usually that sinner over there — has to find the capacity to do. To show God real determination to change. To want to be forgiven. So grace will flow. Or at least be measured out appropriately.
Jesus says repentance is nothing more, or less, than a response to grace freely given. Grace finds us. Then we know we can come home. Even the younger prodigal gets it. When he comes to himself. He remembers there’s so much grace at home. He can count on just a little. And it will be enough.
Boy, is he in for a surprise!
Paul writes, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Corinthians 5:17) Scribes, pharisees, prodigals, elder brothers, all. All children of a God who sees everyone as a new creation in waiting.
