Rejoice with Me (Sermon)

“Rejoice with Me”

Luke 15:1-10

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

9/11/16

        

“And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling…”

         Pharisees and scribes are always grumbling. Always complaining about someone. They always seem so sure that they have not only the ability to discern the sheep from the goats, but the right to judge between them. And they have no doubt that they are sheep – the ones to whom joy and blessedness belong. Being stingy with these gifts, the scribes and Pharisees must believe that to share something of value is to forfeit the benefit to which they feel entitled. Isn’t that a cold and joyless blessedness?

         “Margaret” was very bright, very well-read, and well-spoken. She and her husband had retired to North Carolina and brought their two grown, un-launched sons with them. Of the four, only Margaret participated in church. I loved to watch her while I preached. When I said something funny, she’d beam. If she found something challenging, she’d crease her brow in thoughtful reflection. And when I went on too long, or said something carelessly, or said something stupid, she would cringe with her whole body. She cringed a lot back then.

         Agreeing on many things, Margaret and I were pretty good friends. She was, however, a bit more broadminded than some in that congregation could appreciate. Moreover, she came from New Jersey.

One year the nominating committee asked Margaret to serve as an elder. She eagerly accepted the nomination. On the day of the vote, I was blindsided by a nomination from the floor. A long-time member of the congregation was added to the slate. When the vote was over, he was on session. Margaret was not.

I will never forget the profound disappointment and utter embarrassment that darkened Margaret’s face when the results were announced. I, too, felt surprised and betrayed by the entirely legal but flagrant piracy that cast Margaret to the margins of the church community. To her enduring credit, about a year later, she returned. Apparently, while the experience wounded and humiliated Margaret, it did not steal her joy – at least not permanently.

It seems to me now that Margaret does not represent the one lost sheep. No, she represents the ninety-nine sheep left in the wilderness while the shepherd goes in search of the one who is lost. While Margaret recovered from a kind of crucifixion carried out by an ignorance that followed the letter but not the spirit of the Book of Order, the congregation, like lost a sheep wandered willfully astray of grace. Like a lost coin, the congregation rolled haphazardly into some dark corner of the house.

The community, part of it, anyway, had been Judased by the illusion of living in wholeness without embracing the fullness of God’s presence. Looking back on that painful experience, I think Margaret’s return was her acceptance of God’s invitation to “Rejoice with me, for I have found [what was] lost.”

When she returned, Margaret brought a full complement of smiles, creases, and cringes with her. She brought her joy with her. And she brought it to share with, to bless once again the very people who had refused to recognize it as a gift from God.

In the west, the Church is shrinking. It is losing its privileged status. Even worse, having snuggled with wealth and power too closely and too long, the Church has virtually lost its identity in Christ. Until very recently, a majority of American Christians was taught, in ways both subtle and overt, that national citizenship and church membership were basically synonymous.

Many active Christians my age and older desperately miss the vibrancy of yesteryear. And while there was a vibrancy, it seems to me that we often equated numbers with liveliness and health. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to need folding chairs in the aisles on Sunday mornings. I would love for the youth room to need open windows on a Sunday night in January just to keep the inside air fresh. And indeed, this congregation is moving forward with plans to renovate and expand our building in response to an increasing need for space. Many of us find that encouraging and exciting. And I think that as Jonesborough Presbyterian moves forward in our effort, we would do well to imagine ourselves not as the flock to whom lost sheep are being returned, but as one of the lost sheep being restored.

If the Church is to experience renewal, I think we have to begin with confession. I think we have to admit that we have mistaken the height of steeples for depth of faith. We have mistaken cultural influence for spiritual vitality, budgetary abundance for communal wholeness. We have mistaken the commotion of busyness for the shimmering wonder of joy.

In many ways we have, I think, lost our capacity for joy. But remember, joy is so much more than happiness and contentment. Joy is the blessing borne of a circumstance-defying commitment to hope. The nature of both joy and blessedness is such that they cannot be experienced by anyone who would withhold them from others. Paradoxically, blessedness also comes as the gift of sharing sorrow, pain, and disappointment. Indeed, joy may never be so abundant as when sharing our tears and fears.

If the word joy gets misunderstood, the word blessed gets abused in our first-world context. We tend to claim blessedness when enjoying comfort and advantage, but we are never blessed simply by having something of value. Authentic blessedness comes as the gift of sharing that valuable thing. When and if we build an addition, Jonesborough Presbyterian cannot claim blessedness simply by the fact that it exists. Any true blessedness we experience will be in direct proportion to how we use and offer it for the well-being of the creation.

Brothers and sisters, in these trying, often scary days, we can circle our wagons. We can try to control things, or to retreat to a past that will never come again. To experience genuine and lasting renewal, however, I think we must listen first for God’s searching voice, calling us back to the way of Jesus. And to me that means the way of welcoming and risky grace, the way of healing mercy. It means following the way of holy mystery in a culture withered by fear of the unknown, a culture divided by angry condemnations of the other, a culture awash in simplistic, tweetable certainties.

But what if God is stirring about the dust and the mud once again? What if even now God is breathing into the creation brand new life and possibility? If this is happening, and I think it is, we are lost sheep being returned to the fold, and we are the fold being dared to hear God saying to us, “Rejoice with me!”

Re-joice! Recognize and share new joy!

This is our calling: To join Jesus, Margaret, and so many others in giving brand new thanks and praise to the ever new and renewing God.