“This guy welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Wonderings…

1. I wonder if there is a part of yourself that you’d like to do away with?  

2. I wonder who is in your corner, even on your worst day? 

Reflection on those Wonderings + Texts for Year C, Proper 19
Exodus 32:7-14; Psalm 51:1-11; Luke 15:1-10

Let us speak, and listen, held in the presence of our loving, liberating, and life-giving God. Amen.

In the Episcopal Church, we follow a three year cycle of scripture readings, and for this celebratory launch Sunday, the theme of sin and repentance would not have been my first choice. But if this is your first time here, this could still be a good introduction to one way we might approach scripture together. 

Holy Scripture is the record of people wrestling with God, with their ideas about God. Scripture is a record of the many ways our spiritual ancestors made meaning of their lives out of their ancestors’ stories of God’s promises, and out of their own experience. The Bible is made up of family stories; and you don’t need me to tell you that families do not always agree. The people who wrestle with God also wrestle with one another. 

When we read the Bible, we are overhearing an argument among people who love God and are trying to love one another—an argument that stretches across millennia, and continues today—and it is up to us to discern what is wisdom. That’s one of the things we will practice here, week after week: discerning what is wisdom.

I want to focus on this passage from the Gospel according to Luke this morning. Let’s start by noting that this too is the scene of an argument. Jesus is doing his thing, proclaiming that the reign of God has come near—that way of being in the world where everyone has what they need to heal and grow and share their gifts with their neighbors…

And he has been practicing solidarity with people too poor to pay the temple taxes and for sacrifices; with women who didn’t fit into the submissive place assigned to them in a patriarchal society; with foreigners and immigrants; with people struggling with chronic illnesses—and blamed for it; people who had been told they had the wrong kind of brain or body—and shamed for it. 

(And as it says in the first line of the passage from Luke, Jesus also enacted this way of life with tax-collectors—that is, people who could leverage their position in this oppressive order for their own benefit but whose souls couldn’t stand it any longer, to get richer because the poor got poorer.)

These are people that many would like to do away with; put out of sight, cut out of the social fabric. And yet these people are experiencing healing, they are experiencing liberation, they are experiencing the blessing of being witness to each other’s healing and liberation; There is a sense that the Spirit of God is present among them. There is a sense of relief, and release, and possibility.

And right away there are people who want to pick a fight about this. People are scandalized by this movement, and they want Jesus to defend his choices; “This guy welcomes sinners and eats with them.” When we first hear the word “sinners” used in this passage, it’s in the mouth of these critics. They want these “sinners” to defend themselves for existing. 

Notice that Jesus does not respond directly, on the critics’ terms; he does not engage the question of who these people are and if they are good enough to receive care and connection, worthy of healing or liberation. He starts talking about who God is, what God might be like. 

Jesus says that God is like a shepherd who comes looking for the lost sheep. I think it is really good news for us, to be compared to sheep. It might seem like a little deflating, and it is probably a demotion. Sheep are dirty; they stink. sheep are dumb; sheep stick together when they should think for themselves—thus the insult in calling some group of people “sheeple.” On the flip side, sheep wander off on their own when they should stay in safety of the flock. Just like us; we get disoriented in conformity with the crowd; we get disoriented when we go off too far on our own. 

I think it’s good news all the same. Because maybe God doesn’t expect us to be otherwise. Maybe God’s expectations for us are lower than the expectations we have of ourselves—to be always on it, all the time; always in control, always perfect… Maybe God is way more willing to forgive us and help us than we are willing to forgive ourselves, or ask for help. Maybe the anxiety and effort we put into making ourselves acceptable is part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. 

I want to be gentle with these scribes and Pharisees who are critical of Jesus and his movement. Pharisees in particular have gotten a bad rap in the Christian tradition, in part because of anti-Judaism and anti-semitism: caricatured as malevolent monsters, enemies of Jesus. But I wonder if we can think of them as good people who have understandably doubled down on a coping strategy that isn’t actually doing what they want it to do.  

Let’s remember that 2000 years ago, everybody in this territory of Galilee and Samaria and Judea are all under occupation by the Roman Army; people are experiencing political violence in all its forms; state-sanctioned violence, extortion and resource-extraction means that people are being dispossessed of their family lands, they’re struggling to feed and protect their families…

And in the face of all this that is out of their control and that feels like chaos, the Pharisees have gotten hyperfocused on observing the fine points of the Law of Moses because that is within their control. And maybe God will keep them and their family safe because they’re one of the good ones, because they’ve proven themselves faithful, or obedient, or pure. I don’t worship idols, God; I’m not stained or contaminated by sin; I’ve been purged of my sin, my soul is clean indeed. Come on God, don’t you see that I’m more deserving than those…those sinners!?

And I wonder if that’s where Jesus would say—friends, that’s where you’ve taken the wrong turn; that’s where you get lost. You know your scripture, you know every jot and tittle in the law, but if you use that to try to prove yourself to God, you’ll never know the God who is coming towards you, arms open, rejoicing. 

If you use your goodness as a chip to play in a competition with others, you’ll never know the joy of witnessing another’s healing and liberation. And you’ll never experience God’s joy that these people who have been cast out because they don’t measure up in some way are being brought back in, reconnected to the social fabric.

Friends, we too live in chaotic, anxious, fearful times; times of political violence in all its overt and subtle forms. And of course all of us wish we could feel more in control, more secure. And I wonder if today Jesus is inviting us to ask ourselves where we are seeking security: by narrowing our focus to I, me, mine? By comparing ourselves with others, judging others who are wrong, whose fault this all is…?

Jesus invites us instead to seek security in a community where healing and liberation can be witnessed and celebrated, and to join in with that. I wonder if we could become that kind of community. The kind of community that helps us trust that regimes of domination are inherently unstable, and that the God of life is on the side of justice, and empowers us to act for justice—but maybe our first step is not to act; but to allow. This will not help us feel more in control; it requires a capacity for unknowing, for uncertainty, for surprise—in other words, faith. But maybe our first step is to allow ourselves to found, to be known, to be held in delight.

Amen.