The Lonely God
Luke 15:1-10 - 9/12/2004
There are more than 105 million parking spaces in America, and your vehicle has probably occupied quite a few of them. But which one?
That’s not a hard question while you are parked in your church lot, but what about a bigger lot, like Wal-Mart? Have you ever come out of the store and can’t remember where you parked your car?
Now think Disney World. The parking areas there include more than 46,000 slots, and every day, a good number of guests cannot remember in which one they left their car. Disney employees do what they can to help absent-minded visitors observe where they park. Each parking section has a Disney character name — Chip & Dale, Pluto, Goofy, Dopey, etc. — clearly identified with pictures. As guests board the trams that carry them into the park, the tram drivers tell the visitors what lot they are in and urge them to take note. Still, so many people fail to remember that Disney actually employs a small army called “the parking cast” whose job it is to reassure people and reunite them with their autos.
The parking cast! Can you believe it? And these employees use an array of tools, including perseverance, technology and clues they ask of the guests. For starters, Disney keeps track of when each lot fills. That way, if visitors can remember approximately when they arrived, they can narrow the search to specific lots. Disney workers also ask what visitors remember seeing en route to the parking lot. Often, Disney employees drive the lost individuals around in company vehicles, while the guests lean out the window, pushing the panic button on their key chains, hoping the car horn will sound off!
Through one means or another, Disney usually manages to reconnect guests with their vehicles, finding the lost and enabling park visitors to go on their way. And so the guests do, probably feeling that no matter which lot their car was actually discovered in, they had parked in Dopey.
We don’t know if the members of Disney’s parking cast have a favorite Bible passage, but the two little parables in today’s gospel are good candidates. Let’s look at this passage now, shall we? (READ LUKE 15:1-10) Shepherds and women simply are not hero material according to the religious and social norms of Jesus’ day, particularly to the extent that these two figures function in positions of servitude. And the stakes for outrage over such role models are heightened all the more by the consideration that the heroes of these parables are intended to represent God. To imply, as these parables do, that the shepherd and the woman are symbols of divine grace adds salt to the wound. Yet, it is exactly this God who works like a “dirty shepherd” or a “common housewife” that Jesus lifts up in teaching about the power of God’s mercy.
The parables of the Found Sheep and Found Coin feature two gracious acts of seeking, finding, and restoring the lost. Both are punctuated by a refrain of human rejoicing and heavenly joy. With these stories of losing and finding, it’s obvious why not only the Disney parking crew but also the overwhelmed guests might identify with them, but there is one point at which the parallels break down: Jesus indicated both the shepherd and the housewife are so thrilled at finding the lost that they need help to celebrate. Both call neighbors to gather for a party.
So how do you usually react when you finally locate some missing item? Like most of us, you’ve probably lost and then found not only coins, but keys, glasses, watches, pens, books, socks, slippers and a whole bunch of other things, but how often have you felt a party was justified when you found them?
So when Jesus asks, “Which one of you would not have a party?” a lot of us would confess that we would not.
The outcome in both of these parables actually seems unreal, and there are several reasons why:
For one thing, it’s difficult to identify with shepherds. Still, since a lot of us get attached to our pets, it’s not unreasonable to assume that the shepherd actually cared about the individual animals in his flock. In that case, the shepherd’s searching for the missing sheep was more than just trying to maintain the profitability of his flock. The finding of the lost sheep becomes a source of joy because the flock would otherwise feel incomplete to the shepherd.
So which pet owner of you, having lost your animal companion and then found it again, might not at least call your friends and tell them how happy you are?
Then, too, it takes effort to identify with people who have only a few things. We have dozens of pens, and if we misplace one, it’s no big deal. We just pick up another one. Even for gadgets where we don’t have extras, it is often easier to simply go buy another than to spend time searching for the wayward one. But that was not so in the first century. People owned far fewer things, and the lost silver coin in the parable was the equivalent of a full day’s pay.
Not only that, there was sentimental value to these ten coins. Palestinian women received ten silver coins as a wedding gift. Besides their monetary value, these coins were as special to the women as a wedding ring, so knowing that, you know how distressing it would be to lose one. Have you ever lost a piece of jewelry that wasn’t necessarily expensive but it had sentimental value to you? Maybe it was your Grandmother’s, or your husband scrimped and saved to buy it when you were first married and didn’t have much.
Do you remember how you felt when it was found? I do. Jesus is saying here that this is how the angels feel when just one repentant sinner is saved. Each individual is precious to God.
The final reason why the outcome of these parables hardly makes sense to us is that it’s not easy to identify with God. But that’s whom these two parables are really about. After each of them, Jesus gives the moral of the story, stating that the repentance of a lone sinner is the occasion for great joy in heaven.
I’ll tell you, it used to upset me when I read the 7th verse: There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance. Why? Well, it didn’t seem fair to me that a person who lived a life of sin their whole lives, didn’t know Jesus and if they did--from when they went to Sunday school as kids, but now did whatever they wanted to without seeming consequence—it didn’t seem fair that there would be more joy in heaven over that person, when they did come to Jesus, than the people who never left the faith. And how about those people who profess Jesus as their savior on their death beds? It’s one thing to know they get to go to heaven right alongside me, but for heaven to rejoice?? Look at it another way. Jeffrey Dahmer, who was probably the most gruesome serial killer who ever lived, came to know Christ while he was in prison. Can you really picture all the celebration of God and Jesus and the angels for Jeffrey, more celebration than for you who have lived a righteous life, never left the faith you were brought up in? How does that feel? Who can say why, after all the members of the human race God has created, God experiences such exhilaration over the conversion of a single individual. But scientists are learning some things about the nature of joy that help us understand why it especially arises when the found is not an animal or an item or a vehicle but a human.
Scientists say that both electrical and chemical stimulation of the brain have significant impact on moods. That includes the effect of such naturally occurring chemicals as dopamine, endorphins, serotonin and oxytocin. But in each case, the result is not happiness.
But pioneering neuroscientists have figured out that our brains do not store information from the environment as if they were recording devices. Rather the experiences we have in life trigger neural activity in the brain. Since we are all wired differently, we can’t always feel what another person is feeling. They actually have a name for that: lonely brains.
Here is where joy comes in. Although we can’t completely be of one mind with others, any time we can overcome the natural barrier between our self and others through cooperation and shared activities that result in trust, friendship, community or partnership, we feel joy.
While it is always foolish to say we know the mind of God, such verses as Isaiah 43:21 — “the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise” — and Revelation 4:11 — “For you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created” — as well as the image of God as a jilted lover in Hosea at least suggest a Creator who is lonely for his created ones.
So, when even a single sinner turns to God in trust, God experiences joy, and there is a party in heaven! Jesus confirms that with these two parables.
And since the sinner found is the other participant in that new relationship of trust, he or she experiences the joy as well.
The guests who have lost their cars in the Disney World lots are, in some ways, more lost than their cars. They approach the parking cast members, saying, “We don’t know where we parked. We don’t know what kind of car we drove. We don’t know what to do.” But those parking attendants, like the good shepherd and homemaker, purposefully go about their work of helping the lost to become found.
Jesus let us know with these parables that God goes about the business of seeking us just as purposefully. That is great news for us whether we are parked solidly or wandering around, wondering where we are. God looks for us because it is his great joy to find us.
And when God finds us, there is a party in heaven.
PLEASE PRAY WITH ME: God, let us hear your joy and gladness. Hide your face from our sins, and blot out all our iniquities. Do not cast us away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from us. Restore to us the joy of your salvation, and sustain in us a willing spirit. Amen. (Based on Psalm 51:1-12.)
BENEDICTION:
God looks for us with enthusiasm — and then throws a party when we are found. Let us go about the world with a party attitude, knowing nothing can save us from His love. Amen.
Children's Sermon
Open a box full of puzzle pieces in front of the children, and ask them if they like to put together puzzles that make beautiful pictures. Ask them if they have ever put a puzzle together, and then discovered that a piece was missing. Find out if they felt frustrated, disappointed, or angry. Ask if they have gone searching for the lost puzzle piece, and then invite them to raise their hands if they were happy to find the missing piece. Point out that we all feel joy when a missing piece is found, because we are thrilled that the puzzle can be complete. Explain that Jesus likes to look for things that are lost — he is like a shepherd who leaves 99 safe sheep in order to go find one sheep who is lost, or like a woman who spends all her time looking for a missing coin, instead of just holding on to the coins in her pocket (Luke 15:3-10). Stress that Jesus searches for people who are lost just like we look hard for missing puzzle pieces. Close by saying that Jesus wants everyone to be found, because he knows that if anyone is missing, then the beautiful picture he is making will not be complete.
