Luke 15:1-10
Proper 19 (24) - Year C
Let’s see, Chapter 14 ended with “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”
Now, Chapter 15 opens, “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him.”
Just taking those at face-value it might seem as though the folks structurally left out of the religious power loop were the ones best able to listen.
Presuming so, who are the folks who will be listening best in your realm of influence?
If you just run with a religious crowd there may not be anyone, including yourself, who can listen to transformational rejoicing. If everything is aligned, the scriptures and creeds all cohere with no discrepancies, and G*D is in charge—what is there to listen to? Isn’t it just a waste of praise time?
When it comes to the lost, there is no time to lose. Listen for a cry. Find.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/09/luke-151-10.html
There is an old question about whether or not there is enough evidence to convict us as a student of Jesus? That is not always a helpful way to find out if we are continuing to grow in faith, hope, and love as much of life is unmeasurable. However it does give a jumping off place to have us listen in about what grumbling is going on regarding our living.
In this passage the issue is Jesus' associating with those convicted by the community as sinners.
In your life the issue is your participation in __________.
Does that change day by day and so you can't identify anything? Is there a repeating pattern that helps you see where your gift of prophecy is being applied? Clarity about this matter is important as it points us in the direction of our call or use of our gifts.
Thank you grumblers against me. You have aided my journey. I can be more diligent in searching for that which brings joy in another (sheep/sinner) and for myself (poor/sinner).
Having given thanks, it is back to the search - the journey.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/september2004.html
When we wander [MISSING URL]
This link looks at how far different groups of lost people wander from their last known point. We might try applying that model to the work of the church trying to locate the lost. What criteria do you think would be important for tracking folks down?
Supposing that we might develop a model for finding lost folks (whether or not they are already church members and regularly attending worship), this article suggests that this kind of probability setting works half the time (in a quarter of instances folks wander farther than expected and another quarter don't get that far).
Still this holds out hope that we might do a better job of finding folks (and thus being more joyful, more of the time).
We would still need to figure out what to do with folks after they are found and how to go about a search the next time they are lost (this is a life-long process of periodically being lost from others and from ourselves).
There is another old saw that suggests that if you find yourself lost, just sit tight so a patterned search can find you. There may indeed be lots of lost folks just sitting around waiting to be found, but my suspicion is that a dynamic net will do better with what I take to be more the case - active lost folks looking for their own way out. How do we better travel together so the last time we looked and noticed someone missing doesn't get to be such a long time and their distance from us not exponentially increase over time?
These issues are are important in an easily fractured world where the religious "let's go back" folks and the religious "let's go on" folks seem to draw further apart from one another. How do we find our common joy of finding and being found? How do we find our common joy? period.
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Wesley (Blogger)
It is probably worth noting, in the previous article, that there are times we go searching for a lost person and it turns out they are not lost.
We probably need to do some significant work on our definition of "lost." We may be barking up the wrong tree in this and many other instances. Being sure is not a substitute for being real.
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Phil (Reader)
"Things" get lost. It is the nature of life. Relationships, hopes, possibilities, passion for living. In the church arena where we are prone to speak of lost "souls" it is instead the "soul" of the church which may be in danger of getting lost in the clutter of small thinking, narrow proclamations of the Kingdom and an unhealthy obsession with protecting ourselves.
We might do well to announce in our Calls to Worship an invitation to re-encounter that which has been lost in each of us.
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Wesley (Blogger)
Phil -
Great idea. I'd appreciate seeing a model for this. I was currently tracking down the start of Sunday School as a focus for an invitation to our gathering.
My first thought is to recognize we gather as folks who are less than we might be as we have lost parts of ourselves. We rub parts away from one another with our expectations and we ignore parts of ourselves to please others. And yet we gather in expectation that we might recognize and reclaim our loss.
This leads me to questions about whether this is an announcement, a common report said in unison, a call and response, or a drama. Each of these would call for different language and structure. My own questions stymie me and so a model will really be helpful.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/september2004.html
All is G*D's, presumably, and all is intended to be found whole - worth a party.
It is possible to see a lost sheep as both lost and mine and intended to stay lost. A Scapegoat sent to the wilderness is an example of this. Its lostness is its vocation. Finding this lost one is counterproductive because it brings the sins we sent away back again. To walk away from a congregation and leave it in a wilderness is to acknowledge sin abides and is our problem - is not deniable or identifiable as being on one person or group that is unacknowledged. Here we might begin to think it acceptable to not go and look for lost Iraqis or illegal aliens or ... that "Americans" might be safe. However, the illusion of safety is, when looked at from the location of the "Shepherd", is just that - an illusion.
The 99 % are in a wilderness too deep to be seen as wilderness while they ignore or affirm through tortured logic the inevitability or fate of another deemed more lost.
If the Pharisees and scribes thought their grumbling might bring Jesus to his senses and see the error of his ways - you ought to turn some of those coming to you away and not associate with them - they got a story that essentially says, "Oh yeah? Well I not only welcome these you call lost, but I deliberately leave you behind and go in search of them. Remember what I said about hating family to find G*D? Well, you are family in this case and I am continuing to search for G*D beyond your illusionary boundaries. And, guess what, I am finding real rejoicing in this search."
Not only are people being lost away from families, individuals from congregations, but tithes as well. Suppose the tenth coin was lost in the "Lord's House". How might we dare to search for the results of sacrificial giving to see that it is not lost? Dare we question what is done with it and reclaim it?
Whether lost in an empty place or a holy place, being found is a celebratory event.
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anticipated
celebration
motivates
openness
patience
mercy