Celebration!

Luke 15:1-10
September 12, 2010 (24th Sunday in Ordinary Time)
Rev. Brett Hendrickson

1.  Did you know that just about every day is a good day for a party?  If you have trouble cutting loose and letting down your hair, if you need a pretty darn good reason to have any fun at all, then, boy, do I have some good news for you!  If you do even a little bit of searching around, you can find a reason to celebrate every single day.  For example, today, September 12, besides being both Commissioning Sunday and Grandparents’ Day, is also Chocolate Milkshake Day, National Video Games Day, and on the perhaps lest festive side of things, National Pet Memorial Day.  If these days don’t satisfy, we can probably get by with celebrating tomorrow, which is also Fortune Cookie Day, Uncle Sam Day, Positive Thinking Day and National Peanut Day! 
Of course, I remember with the rest of the nation the anniversary of September 11 and the tragedies of that day, but today I would rather get us back on track to celebrate.  Every Sunday morning is a great day to celebrate what God does for us. 

2.  The last few Sundays here at church have not been completely celebratory.  The scripture texts have been pretty tough on us.  Lately, in our lectionary readings Jesus has been hanging out with Pharisees, who totally get him down with their nit-picky legalism.  And then he’s with a crowd of followers, whom he normally has good words for, but last week he gave them some hard words.  He challenged the Pharisees’ social customs and unjust pecking order and he challenged the crowd of followers to commit themselves fully to his gospel.  But in the very next verse, in Luke chapter 15 verse 1, Jesus is back in his comfort zone:  he’s with tax collectors and sinners.  

Jesus knows who he’s with when he’s with tax collectors, prostitutes, moral reprobates, ne’er-do-wells, and the like.  These are the kind of people who know what a sin looks like.  They are intimately related with that place in human experience that today’s 12-step movement calls “rock bottom.” 

In today’s theologically-sophisticated Christian church, we are quick to point out that we are all sinners.  And so maybe we should imagine ourselves in this group close to Jesus.  Lord knows we’ve all had our own scrapes with sin, with bad mistakes, with regret.  That’s precisely why we start our worship services with a prayer of confession.  We acknowledge who we are and what we’ve done so that we can receive forgiveness and move on with our worship and thanksgiving. 

But on the other hand, these sorts of New Testament sinners might be out of our league.  In fact, Jesus makes clear that, not only have these people done some bad things, they are also on the edges of society.  They have been ostracized.  They are not welcome with the good people—the Pharisees, the regular folk—you and me. 

But on yet another hand, maybe we do belong with them, with these legendary New Testament outcasts—the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the ne’er-do-wells.  I say this because as Christians, we have made a commitment with Jesus Christ to welcome the stranger, to live with the outcast, to embrace a social reality that defies prejudice and division. 

In any case, whether we should be comforted by seeing ourselves in the group with which Jesus felt most comfortable—or whether we should be challenged by seeing ourselves amongst the holier-than-thou Pharisees, we all can recognize how awful it feels to be alone and lost. 

3.  In Jesus’ parables, there’s a little lost sheep and there is a little lost coin.  The way the stories are set up, it is clear that Jesus wants us to see ourselves in the sheep and in the coin.  We may not even know we are lost, though we probably do—what’s really at issue is that God, respectively the shepherd and the sweeping woman in the story, has lost us and wants to get us back. 

The main mover and shaker in these parables is God.  God moves to find and restore the lost one.  God leaves the other 99 sheep to find the one.  And God turns the house upside down to find the what was lost.  God is always coming to bring us back when we lose our way.

Methodist bishop Will Willimon remembers a story from Annie Dillard. 

Annie Dillard, the great American writer, tells in her book about her life growing up in Pittsburgh. She was a smart young woman. By the age of fifteen she’d read through all the books in the Carnegie Branch of the Pittsburgh Library near her home. And reading those books she decided that all this religion stuff is bunk and God doesn’t really exist. So she took it upon herself at age fifteen to show up at Shadyside Presbyterian Church and she said to her aging pastor, “I want my name off the roll. I don’t believe in God anymore.”

The pastor said, “Okay.”

Annie Dillard said, “You’re not going to try to argue me out of it?”

And he said, “No, no, no. You’re too smart for me. There’s no way I could argue you back in.”

So she said, “I want my name off the roll.”

He said, “It’s off the roll.”

She said, “Okay.” She walked out of the minister’s office and on her way down the hall she heard him mutter to himself out loud, “She’ll be back!” She wheeled around, went back into the office and she said, “What did I hear you say?”

He said, “Oh, I said I presumed that you’ll probably be back.”

And she said, “Look, this is my life. I live my life like I want to live my life. I’m not coming back!”

Well, Annie Dillard wrote in her life story, “As I write this I’m 48 years old and I’m back.”

The amazing truth of the gospel is just that.  God wants us back and will come get us no matter what.  No matter how far away you get, no matter how lost you become, no matter how turned around you are, God will stop everything to come and get you.  One person has said it this way, “To lose faith is to wander into that place where one can be found.” 

4.  And once the wanderer has been found, then God does the unexpected.  When the lost one is found, all the people, the sinners and the Pharisees, the insiders and the outsiders, are called out to party.  God doesn’t need any other reason to celebrate.  Nothing is more worthy of celebration than when one of God’s beloved is restored.  To the consternation of the holy and to the comfort of the sinner, God parties like there is no tomorrow when God finds us and brings us to safety.

Way back in 1980 (that’s 30 years ago, believe it or not!) the band Kool and the Gang had a huge hit in their song, “Celebration.”  You have most certainly heard this song—the lyrics of the first verse go like this:

There's a party goin' on right here
A celebration to last throughout the years
So bring your good times, and your laughter too
We gonna celebrate your party with you.

Yes, we should celebrate!  At the end of it all, today’s gospel does not invite the sinner to repent.  Instead, it invites the righteous to join the party when the community is restored. We once were lost, but now we’re found.  Once, we were gone, but now we’re here. So all together: let us bring our good times, and our laughter too.  We gonna celebrate this party with you.  Amen.