God’s abundant healing is available to all people, in all places, and can be experienced through worship.

Vicar Bristol Reading
The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 28 C
Texts: Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; Luke 17:11-19

This Gospel story about the ten lepers reveals so much about who God is in Christ – a powerful, compassionate, healing God.

The divine power in Jesus is so evident to the lepers, that they recognize it the minute they see him coming. Even from afar, they can tell that this is someone who can do miraculous things. They call out to Jesus, asking for mercy, and calling him “Master.” This term of respect acknowledges Jesus’ authority in a particular way: In Luke’s Gospel, the title “Master” is used by Jesus’ closest disciples. These ten sick people are strangers to Jesus, but they can see him for who he truly is. They know Jesus acts with the power of God.

And what does this one with divine authority do? He heals. He heals not just one of these people, not a few of them, but all ten – at once, with barely more than a word. It’s almost as though healing just overflows from who Jesus is, and it is generous enough to reach all ten of these people. There is no scarcity here. In the presence of Christ, there is healing in abundance.

And there is acceptance and mercy for people who have been marginalized.

Leprosy was, and still is, a disfiguring and stigmatized disease. Any illness was significant and dangerous in the ancient world, but a chronic, infectious illness like leprosy, would have been especially disruptive to the rhythms of work and family life. Lepers could end up isolated and shunned by others. But Jesus is willing to go to them and heal them.

And to really underscore that this is a display of radical compassion on Jesus’ part, Luke adds one more twist in the story. All ten lepers are healed and sent on their way, healthy, presumably able to be reintegrated into their community. But one leper has a particularly transformative experience and returns to praise Jesus. That leper, the text says, was a Samaritan.

This is a moment in the story at which the audience can gasp in surprise. Samaritans are classic outsider characters in Gospel stories. This man wasn’t just an outsider because of his illness, he’s twice an outsider because of his identity as a Samaritan. Even Jesus goes out of his way to mention that this guy is different. He asks, “Was none found to return and praise God except this foreigner?”

Now Samaritans weren’t from some distant region; Samaria was next to Galilee, where Jesus was from. But Samaritans had a different ethnic background, practiced different religious rituals, and acknowledged a different temple. This had caused centuries of conflict with Israelite Jews. So when we hear that, of all the healed lepers, it is this political, ethnic, and religious outsider who comes back to fall at the feet of Christ, it’s a surprise!

And it’s a reminder of how often Jesus crosses traditional boundaries to show compassion and mercy to all people, even people with whom he shouldn’t be interacting, even people who have long been considered foreign enemies. Luke wants us to hear that Christ’s healing is so abundant that it extends to everyone, even Samaritans.

Jesus says to the Samaritan: “Your faith has made you well.” In the narrative of Luke, Jesus says this phrase to people who are treated by society as outsiders, but who are healed and loved by God. He says it to a woman who was labeled “sinful” for her lifestyle, and scandalous for anointing Jesus’ feet with her hair. He says it to a woman who has been bleeding for more than a decade and can do little more than reach to touch the hem of Jesus’ cloak. He says it to a blind beggar who waits at the city gates, dependent solely on the assistance of passing strangers. And he says it to a Samaritan leper: “Your faith has made you well.”

Jesus doesn’t this to the disciples, or the temple priests, or the theological experts, or the patrons of the synagogue… But to the people who are sick or poor, people who are often invisible. But they’re not invisible to Jesus. Jesus sees them, and loves them, and makes them well, because the healing power of God is abundant towards all people.

This doesn’t just mean physical healing of illness or injury. There can be a soul-deep, transformative healing.

When the Samaritan leper came back to fall at the feet of Jesus, he had already been cleansed of his illness. And yet Jesus tells him his faith has made him well. His act of gratitude and praise before Christ brings an even-deeper degree of wholeness and wellness than the physical healing he has already experienced. Who can know what more needed healing in him? The burdens that other people bear are not always easy to see. But he knew, and Jesus knew. And something about being in a posture of worship made him more than clean… it made him well.

Perhaps you have experienced something like that: Being made well by a close encounter with God. Worshiping before the living God doesn’t necessarily take away bodily pain and illness, but entering into a sacred space, into loving community, into song and silence and prayer – that can be a balm for a weary and wounded soul. Some people describe worship as entering a “thin place.” This is an idea from Celtic Christian tradition that describes a time or space where the boundary between the physical and the spiritual is especially thin, a time or place where you can experience the holy, where you can draw close to God.

Of course, thin places aren’t always churches – and too many times, churches have been places of harm rather than safety. Churches have, unfortunately, come in between people and God’s abundant healing. But God’s presence extends far beyond the walls of any one church, just as God’s healing and compassion extend far beyond any one particular group of people.

No one is an outsider to the healing love of the Triune God, and no one can ever be outside that love.

There is nowhere that is so far that you can’t experience it. Even if you end up in Babylon, like the ancient Israelites to whom Jeremiah was writing. The prophet encourages the Israelite people to make a life in Babylon, a place that is far from their homeland. They are not there by choice but in exile; they are the foreigners. Still, Jeremiah says they should be as present as they can in that place. They won’t be able to go to their familiar places of worship, but God’s spirit is still with them right where they are. They can still worship, and they can still pray.
Jeremiah even tells them to pray for their new neighbors, to seek the welfare of their former enemies. Jeremiah understood that God’s love could extend even to people like the Babylonians, and God’s healing could be found even in a place like Babylon. God’s compassion is just that abundant: it is for everyone and in every place.

So if you are feeling far from home, lost and confused, remember that Holy Spirit is present with you right where you are. If you are feeling like you have been made an outsider, remember that Christ will cross boundaries to come close to you. If you are feeling like your soul is weary and needing rest, remember that you can always come into the healing love of God and be made well.

Amen.

Faith is trusting God’s power at work in your heart and life, which is always sufficient.

Vicar Bristol Reading
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 27 C
Texts: 2 Timothy 1:1-14, Luke 17:5-10

You have enough faith. If you’re worried that you don’t believe the things you’re supposed to believe, or you have too much doubt, or you’ve done too much wrong, or you’ve done too little right – I can tell you that, right now, just as you are, you have enough faith.

When the disciples ask Jesus to “increase their faith,” Jesus declines. Not because they don’t qualify somehow, or because he’s withholding more faith from them – but because the faith they have already is sufficient. Even if it’s tiny! Jesus picks one of the smallest things he can think of to drive this point home: if your faith is as tiny as a mustard seed, that’s enough.

Mustard seeds are famously small, but I don’t think that’s the only reason that Jesus picks a seed for this metaphor of faith. Seeds grow. They transform on a scale that’s miraculous. From something so tiny can come giant trees, sprawling shrubs, stretching vines. Seeds provide – they bring fruit and food. And seeds are alive. They contain a living thing. And that living thing can produce other living things, seeds that make plants that make more seeds that make more plants…

So if faith is like that, then even the tiniest kernel of faith can live and provide and grow. Despite Jesus’ seed metaphor, I imagine that you have still felt like your faith is fragile or inadequate at times.

Timothy, a leader in the early church, seems to have faced a crisis of faith like that, one that was emotionally difficult. In Paul’s letter to Timothy, we hear that Timothy has shed tears; he has felt ashamed and afraid. His faith has grown as dim as an ember. But Paul believes that Timothy’s faith can still be re-kindled.

He reminds Timothy that his faith, tiny ember that it is, is not his own: Timothy has inherited this faith from his ancestors. Paul writes: “Your faith lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I’m sure, lives in you.” In other words, the tiny seed of faith is alive and growing. It was alive before Timothy, and now, it lives in him. Timothy doesn’t carry the burden of faith alone. Wise, courageous women (in this case) carried it before him, and now this treasure of the faith has been entrusted to him. Someday Timothy will pass it on to those who come after him, and those who come after them, and those who come after them…

Could Timothy ever have imagined that all of us would be sitting here today, recipients of the faith that was passed down from his grandmother? That tiny ember, that had almost gone out, still lives. Look, it is here, living even now, in this room, in us.

When we gather together in worship, we bring into this space the legacy of those Loises and Eunices who brought us up in the faith. They may not be literal, biological mothers and grandmothers – but you know who those people are in your life, those mothers and fathers and siblings of faith who nurtured you on your spiritual journey, who shared with you the precious good news of the Gospel, who reminded you when you were most afraid and ashamed: that you are loved; you are enough.

Now you are entrusted with the treasure. You are part of family tree of the faithful. You are called to tell others that they are loved, that they are enough. And the faith will keep living and growing, beyond our lifetimes.

We will see this in action this morning, when we baptize Abigail. This is part of the Lutheran tradition of baptizing young children. We don’t question whether or not little ones have “enough” faith, or believe the “right” things in order to be baptized – because this is God’s free gift, without qualification. One does not have to do anything to receive it. Babies can’t even walk themselves to the font! They get carried, by their mothers and grandmothers in faith. When we are baptized at any age, we are always carried, in a sense, to that moment by our mothers and grandmothers in faith. And no matter what happens in the lives of the baptized, the gift of God’s grace will always be there for them. Nothing can ever take it away.

Because God’s spirit is always at work in us, through our whole lives. Paul reminds Timothy of this also when he writes about the Holy Spirit that is “living in us.” The Spirit is always within us, guiding us and working through us. You don’t have to rely on your own strength; you can rely on the life-giving power of God that is already within you. You don’t have to worry about whether or not you have enough faith; you just have to trust the one who is at work in you. Faith is trusting that God’s work in you is sufficient.

However, trusting that God’s spirit is moving in our hearts and lives doesn’t mean that faithful living requires nothing of us. Paul describes discipleship as a “holy calling:” In response to God’s gift of grace, we are called to live Gospel-centered lives. That’s not always easy. Living out the radical compassion of the Gospel requires commitment, discipline, and sacrifice.

In the Luke passage we heard this morning, Jesus reminds the apostles of this: The Gospel life requires a willingness to serve without reward or repayment, to serve because it is the way God has told us we are to live. Jesus compares it to household slaves dutifully serving at the table of their master. They serve the meal first, before eating themselves.

It’s uncomfortable for us to hear that metaphor today. We know that a master-slave interaction is an unequal and coercive power dynamic, not a model relationship. It is troubling and confusing to hear this imagery used by Jesus. Yet we can still wrestle with the implications of his message.

The end of his short parable contains a surprising twist for the audience: Jesus puts his listeners in the role of the servants, not the master. The authority role is reserved for God. This metaphor is not about humans having power over other humans, but about faithful obedience to God. And God is not the same kind of master that humans would be. When Jesus speaks of the “kingdom of God,” we understand that he is describing God’s reign of complete mercy and justice. That is in contrast to earthly kingdoms over which humans reign. Similarly, when Jesus speaks of being “slaves” to God, that is in contrast to human systems of slavery. God is always liberating. Obedience to the way of the Gospel is never oppressive, even if it is difficult. It is always life-giving.

We don’t serve God and one another because we think it will gain us reward. We serve because it is the way of life that Christ showed us – Christ, who himself became a servant out of love for the world [Philippians 2:7]. We don’t have to wonder whether a master like that would invite us to sit down at the table and share a meal. The table of the Triune God is open to all, always, and the meal is ready. That’s what we celebrate each time we share communion.

So instead of hearing this parable as a reminder that we are worthless slaves, it can be a reminder that we are devoted servants in God’s kingdom, living out our commitment to the Gospel as a “holy calling.” If ever we feel that we are inadequate for the tasks of discipleship, we can remember that it doesn’t depend on our own power, but on God’s power working through us. And God will never give up on that work in us, no matter how dim our faith feels from time to time, because in God’s sight we are always enough. We continue living as faithful people because God has always been faithful to us – just as God was faithful to the generations who came before us and will be faithful to the generations who will come after us.

God, and God’s servants, human and angelic, will defeat all the powers of evil. Just not in the way you might have thought.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The feast of St. Michael and All Angels
Text: Revelation 12:7-12

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

“Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and immortal: surrounded by evil and bordered by death we appeal to you.”

These words open our Eucharistic prayer each week in October and November. As the Church Year draws to a close and our seasons in the north move toward dying and the end of growth, the lectionary focuses more on life in the end times, on evil and good and God’s place in that.

We’re starting this prayer a week earlier this year. Today, the 29th of September, the Church celebrates God’s angelic messengers, those spiritual beings who work for God’s good in a world surrounded by evil and bordered by death. It’s good to remember them as we approach the Table of God’s welcoming grace. And all year, at each Eucharist, in the Great Thanksgiving an invitation is sung to the faithful to join “all the choirs of angels” in singing praise to the thrice-holy and ever-living God.

You don’t have to believe in little devils clothed in red with pitchforks and horns to comprehend, even in our scientific age, that there are powers of evil at work that cause evil far greater than can be accounted for by just bad human decisions. Institutions have collective powers, mobs attain a collective mind and do horrifying things. Even a nation, as we’ve learned to our deep grief, can collectively become an agent of evil even if the majority are trying to do good and love neighbor.

So today we celebrate that the complexity and beauty of God’s creation includes spiritual powers who serve God, who work for good. You don’t have to believe in fat little half-naked cherubs with too-small wings to comprehend, even in our scientific age, the possibility of God’s grace in having spiritual servants to help God and to help humans in our need. To work for God against evil, and rejoice when the lost are found.

But listen carefully to how God’s servants, angelic and human, actually defeat evil.

The great war in heaven John speaks of in his Revelation today can evoke all sorts of blood-lust unseemly to those who follow the Prince of Peace. It’s a great temptation for Christians.

The disciples, despite Jesus’ warnings, weren’t prepared for the idea of a suffering and dying Messiah. That the Incarnate God-with-us would reveal the depths of God’s love for the creation by dying in humiliation, revealing what true love that heals all things looks like, isn’t just surprising to us. Jesus’ intimate followers also were shocked.

But their problem, and ours as well, is that after the resurrection, it’s tempting to view the cross as just a temporary setback, well put in our rear-view mirror. We didn’t see that coming, but we understand: the Messiah wouldn’t drive out Rome with armies. But now that he’s risen, surely we’re back in business. Surely now we can start dreaming of the time Christ will return and really clean house. Drive the devils out of heaven, wipe evil from the earth, rule over all things.

But that completely misses the point of the cross.

God’s dying and rising love is the only way God will heal all things. If Jesus wouldn’t use twelve legions of angels to defend himself in Gethsemane, he’s not saving those angelic armies for a future pitched battle with flaming swords against the powers of evil.

Just as the disciples were wrong when, after Easter, they asked Jesus if now he would restore Israel and drive out Rome, so, too, we are wrong if we think that God will change plans and now start using power and force to drive evil from this world. We need to stop expecting God, or the angels, to dramatically or powerfully or magically or militarily defeat evil for us.

It turns out, we need to see how John sees this ultimate victory in his Revelation. It’s not what you think you just heard. He talks today about a war between Michael and God’s angels and the great Rebel and his angels. But listen to what he actually says defeats the powers of evil forever:

John saw this future: God’s angels conquer Satan by the blood of the Lamb.

That’s the great war. God’s angels simply point to the blood of the Lamb of God. The sacrifice of God’s Son, the great outpouring of self-giving love by the Triune God on behalf of the creation.

The center of John’s Revelation is the Lamb who was killed and now lives and is adored, because the Lamb, the vulnerable and victorious Christ, is God’s ultimate and only plan. If evil is going to be defeated, John says, the only thing that will do it is the self-giving love of God at the cross. And that will end it for good.

John saw this future, too: it is the word of their testimony that conquers the powers of evil.

That’s how the armies of angels use the blood of the Lamb to defeat evil. They testify to it. They witness to the utter love of God for all things that caused the God of life and creation to offer everything, even the life of the Son of God, to win back the creation.

And it’s not just the testimony of the angels, but also that of the hosts robed in white around the throne John has already seen. Those faithful who witnessed by their lives to the love of God in Christ, who are gathered in heaven. The word of their testimony is critical to the defeat of evil, pointing to the blood of the Lamb as the end of all evil’s power.

And John saw this future: they win because they didn’t cling to life, even in the face of death, and evil could not stand against such trust.

Both angels and we who are mortal, we who are filled with Christ, who love as Christ, defeat evil when we don’t cling to life, even in the face of death. When we don’t worry about the cost of following but follow the heart of God that beats in us in our baptism, no matter the cost. When we don’t make decisions out of fear and anxiety over what might happen to us but out of the love the Spirit of God pours into our hearts. When we bear God’s vulnerable, sacrificial love in our own lives and words and bodies, and so witness to how God will defeat evil.

Rejoice today: God is working against the powers of evil, human and otherwise, that surround and assail us and all the world.

Just know that the battle isn’t what you thought it would be, and the victory has already begun at the cross. It’s a strange kind of victory, certainly unexpected.

But Jesus would have you focus less on demons being defeated, just as he says to the disciples today, and more on rejoicing that your name is written in heaven. Your life is bound up in God’s eternal love. Your hopes for the world to be free of evil and to be a place of hope and life for all God’s creatures and all God’s creation are found in this dying and rising love that not only writes your name in heaven but the names of every living thing.

Against such love – from the Triune God, from God’s angels, and now from you and all God’s children – what chance do any powers of evil have?

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

If you’re lost but don’t know it, Jesus has a story for you, and a hope, and a promise.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 25 C
Text: Luke 16:1-13

Note: In many ways this sermon follows directly on last week’s sermon, “Found,” from 15 September 2019, and that sermon might be a helpful introduction to this one. – JGC

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

But what if you’re lost, but you don’t know it?

Jesus actually tells five parables about the lost being found. Today we’re continuing in the same scene from last week, even if someone centuries ago said a new chapter starts here. The same players are still here: Jesus, a group of people on the margins who are drawn to him, a group of religious leaders who are offended that Jesus welcomes those marginalized folks, and a group of Jesus’ disciples.

In response to the religious criticism, “you welcome sinners and eat with them,” Jesus told the leaders three parables, about lost, precious things. A lost sheep, a lost coin, and two lost sons. (We only heard the first two last week.) And in these parables, except for the coin, the lost ones eventually knew it. We assume the sheep realized it couldn’t get home, wherever it was lost. The brothers had to learn it. The younger brother figured it out in the muck of a pigsty. The older brother figured it out when the resentment over his life and his belief that he wasn’t loved overwhelmed him in anger.

Now, Luke says, Jesus turns to his disciples to tell a fourth parable. And unlike last week’s parables, a key problem today is that no one in this parable thinks they’re lost. And everyone is.

Listen to this, my followers, Jesus says. Listen.

In this strange story, everyone is dishonest. Everyone.

The owner is dishonest, because he knows his manager has cheated him, and all he can do is chuckle in admiration at his self-serving dishonesty? The manager’s dishonest. He squandered property he was supposed to steward, and when caught, doubled down and squandered more, hoping to entice one of his bosses’ debtors to give him a job. And those debtors are dishonest, delightedly agreeing to cheat their creditor by as much as half of what they owed.

They’re all playing by the rules of the world’s game, Jesus says. They know the rules and they play it well. Get what you can for yourself, throw ethics out the window if you have to. Don’t worry about harming others, you take care of you. Vote for politicians who pander to you rather than those who want all to do well. Ignore your neighbor’s problems because they’re not yours. That’s the game, and they think they’re winning it.

But Jesus says, they’re actually surrounded by wolves, they’re stuck in the pigsty, they’re deeply lost. They just don’t know it. The world’s game they’re supposedly winning is a game of death.

This is what Jesus turns from the leaders to tell the disciples.

It’s as if he thinks they’re the ones in trouble. The lost ones who don’t know it. He’s worried.

These followers have been with him a long time, have heard a lot about living as a child of God, a child of the light, as Jesus says today. But as his impending death looms ever closer, Jesus sees they’re still not getting the challenges of following the way of God’s reign, the way of the children of light.

I’ve told you, he says to them (as we’ve heard all summer and fall), to count the cost before following me, don’t start this project if you can’t finish. But I don’t think you’ve counted at all. I’ve told you, don’t start plowing if you’re going to look back, but your rows are like a toddler’s drawing, lines and circles everywhere. I’ve told you to stay awake for God’s coming in your life, and you’re sleeping through all this. I’ve warned you about building silos for the gain you hope to get, as if you’re in control, and your wealth will protect you, but you’re still playing that game.

You want to keep playing the world’s game and only partly follow me? he says. Fine, but this story is what that game looks like. And if you want that, then you have to trust the world to bring you to whatever eternal homes their game gets you. The fifth parable, about a rich man who ignores a poor man outside his door for years, shows that the eternal homes of the world’s game are, well, suboptimal.

But you do know the way of the children of light, he tells his disciples.

You’ve heard it all, Jesus says, and this summer and fall, so have we. Children of light go into the ditch to help those thrown aside like highway trash. Children of God go into the world declaring God’s peace on all they meet, with their lives and their words showing God’s reign has begun. Children of light, of God’s reign, live out that God’s grace overrides the law, offer healing even when some find it inappropriate or wrong. And most of all, children of light, children of God, are lost ones who are found and who then rejoice in seeking and finding all God’s lost ones, all the time.

Life as a child of light is a very different game than what these dishonest creeps in my story live, Jesus says, because it’s not a game. It’s life, and it’s joy, and it’s peace, and it’s fulfillment.

But it’s hard. And if you don’t want that, Jesus says, if you still want to keep your hand in the world’s game, you’re actually lost, in the pigsty, and the tragedy is, you don’t even know it.

But, . . .  if after hearing this story, now for the first time you realize you’re lost, trapped in the world’s game, know this, too: you will be found.

That’s the glory of Jesus’ grace, the welcome of the Triune God he comes to bring. Jesus wants his disciples to be found; today’s parable was meant to shake them up a little to see it. To come to the realization of the younger brother in the pigsty and the elder brother outside the welcome-home party. Jesus, God’s Christ, wants to find you and bring you home into God’s love.

He was a little worried you might not think you were one of the lost ones. Hence this story.

But now here’s the question arising out of your joy at being found: what’s next? In these first four parables, Jesus leaves that open. That sheep might get lost again. Maybe the woman always loses her coins or her keys. We don’t know if either brother goes on to live in contentment and peace in his father’s love. And as far as we know, today’s cheaters just keep cheating.

But now that you know God finds you, wants to bring you into the light and love of God, what’s next for you? Will you still hold back and try to stay in the world’s game, just in case? Will you go back to the pigsty or simmer in your resentment, or whatever it is that got you lost, and pretend you’re just fine?

Just remember, Jesus says, the world’s game ends in the woods with wolves, in the pigsty, in being outside the party. The world’s path ends in eternal homes that aren’t anywhere you want to spend eternity.

Or, Jesus says, you could stay in the light, even though it’s a challenging way to live, and live in God’s reign, even though it looks like a harder path than the world’s path. You could be found, and live in joy.

Before you decide, remember that Luke has more story to tell you.

It’s not just the warnings we’ve heard from Luke about how hard following God’s way is, or the joy of what children of light are like. Luke is the only evangelist to tell the Pentecost story, the only one to write a sequel. Because Luke believes what happened after Easter is also deeply important for your life today, as much as the story of Jesus that led to Easter.

That story tells of Jesus, the Son of God, filled with the Holy Spirit from conception onward, Spirit-empowered to do wondrous things, even rise from the dead. But Luke says, wait: there’s something else you should know. Pentecost means you all will be filled with the Spirit just like Jesus.

All the things Jesus did, all that God’s Spirit-filled children do, finding the lost, going into the ditches, proclaiming and living peace, all that is yours to do with the power of God’s Spirit in you. The way of light, the way of God, is your gift from God’s Spirit, so you are able to live it.

And that, Luke says, that’s the book of Acts. And that’s your life!

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

No matter how lost you are, and in what ways, God will find you.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 24 C
Text: Luke 15:1-10

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

“This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

“Sinners.” That’s all they saw.

This isn’t like saying “we’re all sinners.” These leaders saw some people as different from everyone else. These who came to hear Jesus aren’t named, identified by gender or occupation (except the tax collectors), or anything else. Whatever they’ve done, they’re publicly shamed enough in the eyes of their community that the title “sinners” is the only thing their leaders see, the only thing that matters.

But Jesus welcomes them. Eats with them. That’s his problem. If he’s supposed to be a godly teacher, showing God’s reign, if he’s supposed to be this great rabbi the crowds adore, how can he publicly welcome people whose worth is seen only as “sinners,” share a meal with them?

Well, Jesus sees them differently. He looks at these folks and sees “precious.” “Beloved.” “Children of God,” not “sinners.” Yes, he sees whatever sin it is they’ve done, that they’ve found themselves apart from God and apart from community. They’re people who are lost in one way or another.

But since Jesus sees “precious” and “beloved” when he looks at them, his only goal is to find those lost precious ones, welcome them, and, as the face of the Triune God for the world, love them back home to God, even if he has to give his life to do it.

But the leaders can’t see as Jesus sees. So he tells them stories.

Stories of precious, beloved, lost things. One sheep out of a hundred. One coin out of ten. Two beloved sons, in the familiar story from this chapter we didn’t hear today, both lost, both desperately loved.

Two stories reveal God’s love as ridiculous and foolish. No shepherd worth anything would abandon ninety-nine sheep to wolves and wilderness to seek a lost one. Cut your losses and be glad you still have ninety-nine. No father would be so generous with love to two sons, forgiving both of great things, giving all he had to both, without strings or accountability.

Jesus says open your eyes and see that God loves you with the same foolish, ridiculous, senseless love.

The middle story needs more attention. It’s very different. This woman’s desire to find the coin isn’t ridiculous or foolish; she can ill afford to lose any of what little she has. And, unlike the sheep and the sons, you can’t take a moral lesson from the coin. It didn’t get itself lost, it’s inanimate. It can’t find its way home, it’s inanimate. All it can do is be found.

Jesus says open your eyes and see that you are so vital, so important to God, God can’t afford to lose you. And you need do nothing to be found. God is looking for you under every dresser and bed, behind every couch, inside every cupboard, and won’t stop until you are found.

This is hard for the leaders to hear, maybe because they fear not being good enough themselves.

Some of God’s beloved, God’s precious ones, want to do good, feel in their bones they must be perfect, to please God. They follow the rules as best they can, and are deeply judging of others who don’t seem to care as much or try as hard. But that judgment only masks this fear: the time in the dark of night when the voices in your head say, “You messed up today, you’re not good enough. You never will be.”

If you ever feel like this, if this is where you get lost and afraid, know this: you are God’s beloved, no matter how perfect or imperfect you are. And God promises you: you will be found.

Now, some of God’s precious ones believe they’re not worthy of being loved.

These dear children of God are convinced they simply don’t have value compared to other people. Some have a deep-rooted sense of worthlessness, or a sense that no one truly loves them, that they have no significance. Others fear being seen as incompetent and then dismissed. The fear in the dark of night for these isn’t that you haven’t done perfectly, but that ultimately it doesn’t matter, since you don’t matter.

If you ever feel like this, if this is where you get lost and afraid, know this: you are God’s precious one, you matter to God, you have value and worth. And God promises you: you will be found.

Some of God’s beloved children fear they are alone, unnoticed.

This is a little like those others, but different. These dear ones feel outside everyone else, as if they don’t belong anywhere. They wonder if anyone is there who will help them when they’re lost, support them when they need it. They’re always on the outside, looking in. The fear in the dark of night for these is that if they somehow disappeared, or didn’t show up, no one would notice, no one would come looking.

If you ever feel like this, if this is where you get lost and afraid, know this: you are God’s beloved, and God sees you where you are, notices your every breath, every hair on your head; you belong to God. And God promises you: you will be found.

And some of God’s precious ones feel trapped and unfulfilled, or controlled by others, or by life itself.

These dear ones don’t feel they have choices over their life, too many things are out of control, or they’re stuck and can’t get out. Some experience others trying to control and direct them, and they have no say. The fear in the dark of night for these is that desperate sense of feeling in a trap, unable to move or decide or be free.

If you ever feel like this, if this is where you get lost and afraid, know this: you are God’s precious one, and you are free. God is your strength, and will take you by the hand and help you find the path to life. And God promises you: you will be found.

And there’s another flock of God’s beloved, who often aren’t seen.

There are those dear children of God, some in this room today, many in our world, who do not experience the world the way the majority do because in one way or another they are different. In our culture, different isn’t welcomed. Some of these are ones who have had even the Church, followers of Christ, condemn them as outside of God’s love because of who they are and who they love. And some are ones who because of the color of their skin or the gender they present to the world, whether female or another way, are treated differently and unjustly, unlike those who are white and those who present male. All these dear children have systems of oppression built up over centuries to keep them lost. Centuries of Church theology, or a broken criminal justice system, or unjust wages and benefits, or hidden barriers to where people are permitted to live, systems like these, and others, crush God’s beloved children.

Their fear isn’t just in the dark of night, it’s a daily struggle to live, to be noticed, to be treated as significant and valued and loved and worthy.

If you are one of these children, if this is where you are lost and afraid, know this: you are God’s precious one, and beloved, and God sees you and loves you. And God promises you: you will be found.

“Can you see each other as I see you?” Jesus asks.

If you can hear that you are precious and beloved, that God will tirelessly seek you and find you, pour out everything in that love, can you believe that, and find peace?

And then, and this is Jesus’ deepest hope, will you become part of God’s search team? God will find and bring home into God’s love and grace all God’s precious and beloved children. But God needs arms that can hug, hands that can hold, voices that can both comfort and advocate, hearts that can love. God needs a search team that can see children of God, not sinners, or categories. God needs people so confident they are found and loved they can’t imagine anyone not knowing that, can’t tolerate having a single beloved of God be lost. Ninety-nine percent isn’t good enough for God. God needs search teams who believe the same thing, who are willing to risk everything, just like God.

Because the Triune God came among us as a human being for one thing only: to welcome sinners and eat with them. Until no one is lost, no one is afraid in the dark, all are found and brought home into the abiding love of God that has been waiting for them for so long.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Note: Thanks to the writers and composers of the musical Dear Evan Hansen, for the structural idea and the thought of repeating the refrain, “you will be found.”