Pentecost                                       16 September 2007                                    Preached at ULC

Text:  Luke 15:1-10                      Title:  Why Do the Sinners Have All the Good Parties?

You know, no matter who you are and where you’re from, your language tends to reflect the environment you’re in.  When you work in a church in the upper Midwest, your language is different than if you work on a tobacco farm in the deep South or a brokerage in Boston.

For the last couple of years, I’ve been around soldiers at war.  I can tell you it was hot and dusty and dangerous, and that’s all true, but as far as the language goes, the only way to describe Iraq is an unholy cross between prison and deer camp.  How many of you have ever been to a deer camp?  How many to prison?  I didn’t think we’d get as many hands on that one.  You can imagine how guys talk in prison and deer camp, and that’s about how we talked.  So I’d walk up on guys all the time and they’d be saying, “Blankety blank blank blank”, and I was the one guy they thought they had to apologize to for the language, sort of like being a chaplain made me look like their mom in an Army uniform.  So they’d see me coming and they’d say, “Oh, flippin’ rippin’.  Sorry about the language, chaplain.”  And I’d say, “Well, you should be.  Knock it the blank off.”

You also learn in the Army to speak in acronyms.  Acronyms are part of modern life, with your HDTV and text message LOL and what not, but the military is just ridiculous.  Every day you hear conversations like, “Alpha 21, this is Alpha 6, we have 2 LNs at the ECP for QRF escort to DCP”, and the response comes back, “Roger, 6, read you LC.  ETA 5M.”  And unless you’ve been around for a while, you listen to this like, “Uhh, no comprende?”

One of the most frightening acronyms is one that’s pretty well known – MIA.  Actually, just about anything that ends in IA is pretty scary.  KIA?  WIA?  CIA?  Even Californ-ia, which nobody knows what that one stands for, just that it’s one of the scariest.  MIA is right in there.  MIA means “Missing In Action”.

I think every soldier understands the pure ice-in-the-gut terror of being alone, on your own, cut off from friendly forces, especially if you’re alone because you’re in the hands of the enemy.  For all the hundreds of thousands of troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are currently only 4 who are listed as missing/captured.  When one man goes missing, every available soldier in the area is retasked to try to find that MIA.

In today’s story from the Gospel, Jesus talks about a spiritual MIA, and he makes one thing very clear.  If you are ever in that situation, lost and alone, on your own and surrounded by spiritual enemies, he’s coming to find you and get you out safe.  The military has another acronym for that, SAR, search and rescue.  Only Jesus doesn’t use the military image, he uses the image of a lost sheep and a shepherd, and the shocking thing is that Jesus doesn’t send out a specially trained team.  He goes out himself and doesn’t come back in until the lost sheep is found.

That’s surprising because Search and Rescue is a dangerous job.  You can’t sit on the safety of the base and holler, “Soldier!  Soldier!  Come out, come out, wherever you are!”  And if you want to find lost sheep, you can’t just sit in the pen and say, “Baaahh!”  You have to go out in the wild, into danger and deserts and predators that kill the sheep and will kill you too if they get the chance.  Remember, this Jesus was eventually killed for trying to seek and to save his lost sheep.  For him to rescue that MIA was a suicide mission.

It is stunning that God himself says, “I’m the one who will go into danger to save the lost.”  Even though all the forces of Hell stand in the way, God himself is the one who takes the risk.

Last week in the adult bible study, Charles Amjad-Ali told us that what drew him to Christianity is the truth that God makes himself vulnerable.  Every other religion in the world starts with the power, the untouchable supremacy of God.  Christianity starts with a God who becomes vulnerable by choice, and he makes himself vulnerable by going out to look for the lost sheep.

That’s one surprise in this story, and the second is that he leaves 99 sheep behind to go find the one.  I said in SAR, every available soldier goes out.  That doesn’t mean you leave the base empty, with the gate wide open and billions of dollars of military hardware lying around.  You continue your mission and establish security first, then you go find the lost soldier.

Jesus says he’d leave the base behind, leave the 99 sheep unguarded to go find the one.

Imagine old Pastor Steve out on a youth trip in inner city Chicago with 100 students.  What would happen if I and my chaperons left 99 kids alone on the streets of Chicago to go looking for one who wandered off?  What would the parents of those 99 kids say?  “Oh, Pastor Steve, thank you for leaving our 99 kids alone on the streets of Chicago?  You’re so biblical?”  I don’t think so.  I think I’d hear some prison/deer camp language.

Jesus says, “If I have to, I’ll leave the 99 until I find and rescue that one wooly little MIA who is lost and alone.”

So that’s a second surprise, and the third surprise is perhaps the biggest of all.  When the shepherd finds that one lost sheep, he calls all his friends and has a party.  He rejoices.  He’s dancing in the streets when he finds this lost sheep.

Really?  I don’t know how this sheep got lost.  Maybe he just put his head down for a while and looked up and everyone was gone.  Maybe he was feeling angry at the other sheep and stomped off in a huff.  Like sheep are really something when they’re in a huff.  Maybe he got bored of being a sheep and snuck away so he could pretend to be a lion for a while.

No matter what his reasons, it was a dumb, dumb move to get lost.  Sheep aren’t the smartest animals anyway, and this lost sheep is in the bottom 1% of his class.

Sheep don’t have the skills to survive on their own.  What’s he going to do when he gets attacked?  Baah?  I’ll give you all my wool if you don’t hurt me?  And not only does he put himself in danger, he puts his shepherd in danger to come looking for him and the rest of the flock in danger while the shepherd’s away.  It’s a stupid, stupid move.

And the shepherd throws a party.  The shepherd is rejoicing.

Don’t you think you’d be a little disgusted with this sheep?  I know when kids in my youth group go wandering off without telling anybody where they are, I have a few choice words for them when I find them.  Maybe not deer camp words, but not happy words either.

Don’t you think that after looking up and down the desert all day long, you’d have a few choice words for the sheep that wandered away?  “What were you thinking, you dumb animal?  Don’t give me those big brown sheep eyes, you should know better than that!  Do you know what you put me through when I thought you were lost?  When we get home, you are grounded to your pen for a month, mister.”

The shepherd in this story has none of that.  No anger.  No lesson to teach the sheep.  Not even simple relief.  The shepherd is filled with joy.  He throws a party, invites his neighbors, dances his happy shepherd dance.

Then, after this whole story about the shepherd and the lost sheep, Jesus tells us the point of his story.  He just flat out tells us, and here it is.  There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous people who need no repentance.  There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who comes home than 99 people already there.

Why do sinners get all the best parties?  Why should the angels in heaven clap politely at the 99, then scream and bump chests when the repentant sinner arrives?

You know, the Bible doesn’t say why.  Not as a part of this story, anyway.  So you’re free to speculate.  Why do you think the rescued, repentant sinners get all the best parties?

Whatever the reason, Jesus says it like it’s a fact, because it is.  There is joy in heaven every time a single sinner is rescued and turns away from his sin.  The question is how does that affect you?  How does it matter to you today to know the angels in heaven are cheering when a single sinner repents?

Well, if you are that lost sheep, scared and alone, I hope it matters a lot, because we’re talking about the difference between life and death.  You know your sins, you know in your heart and mind you have wandered away from Jesus, even if you’re still coming to church and everything looks fine on the outside, you know inside that you are a long way from home.  You may wonder if Jesus even knows that you’re gone.

He does.  And he is not going to sit back and wait for you to find your way back so he can make you feel really guilty about your sin before he lets you back into his good graces.  He’s coming to save you, and when he does, all there will be is joy.

If you’re not feeling like one of the lost sheep today, you have a choice to make.  Jesus doesn’t tell this story to the lost sheep, after all.  He tells it to the Pharisees who are looking down their noses about the kind of people that Jesus is hanging around.  How are you going to feel when the lost sheep comes home to a party even though you’ve been there the whole time?  What are you going to do when you’ve been coming to church every Sunday and trying every day to do the right thing even when it’s hard, and Jesus throws a party for the deadbeat dad who finally started paying child support?  Are you going to grumble about a God who gives repentant sinners the best parties?  Or are you gonna relax and enjoy the party because you know what?  You’re invited too.  Amen.