Just One

Text: Luke 15:1-10
Theme: “Just One”
The Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 12, 2010
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
The Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

+In the Name of Jesus+

Right smack dab in front of us this morning are the first ten verses of one of the great chapters of the Bible. It’s Luke fifteen, and it offers up three little stories Jesus Christ told to a smattering of people. I suppose you could call a smattering a group of people. But actually, there were two groups that comprised this smattering of folks that listened to Lord Jesus on that day. As far as the little stories are concerned (scholars call them parables), we get two out of the three this morning in Luke fifteen: the story of the lost sheep and the story of the lost coin. The shepherd didn’t lose two sheep; he lost just one. The woman didn’t lose two coins; she lost just one. The verse which follows our text, verse 11, gives us, arguably, the most famous of the Jesus stories: the story of the prodigal son. But that’s for another day.

I mentioned groups. Groups, I think you would agree, are so common-place that we rarely take notice. Or, if we do, we simply take them for granted as part of the warp and woof of life. Social propriety all but insists that we be part of one group or another. One group we didn’t join; we had no choice for we were born into it. I speak of that group we call the family. We find ourselves in other groups because we, like the others, signed up; we share a common interest with other peeps in the group. I use the word “group” as an all-encompassing term this morning. Sometimes we call groups clubs or leagues or fellowships or organizations and so forth. Here in the Presbyterian Church we call them committees. Someone once remarked that a camel is nothing but a horse put together by a committee.

One big group, a group we call the presbytery, met yesterday not far from beautiful downtown Tyler, Texas. I noted that there were smaller groups within that larger group of the presbytery. There was, for example, the Examinations Committee. At one point, they had me come up and share a few words and answer a few questions before the larger group. Then, the larger group voted to include me in their group. I’m part of that groupof ministers of Word and Sacrament officially now, because this group here extended the call!

Group, groups, and more groups! Does the world need more groups? You make the call. Maybe you’ll become part of a group – or, in our case, a committee – to decide that!

Well, we can sit back and relax this morning because we only need to think about two groups – the ones we’ve got in our reading. The first verse says “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him.” There’s your first group which is actually a combination of two groups. You have the tax collectors who, to put it mildly, were not exactly the most well-liked folks in Jesus’ day. Just as an aside, I have a good friend who works for the IRS. I asked him once, “When people ask what you do for a living, do you tell them?” He said, “Yep.” “Do you want to do that?” I countered. He said, “Nope.” Well, many of these tax collectors were Jewish people, but they were in cahoots with another group called the Roman government. Their Jewish kinsfolk thought that these tax collectors had sold out to the enemy. In a way, they were like non-violent mobsters who overcharged their subjects and then lined their pockets with the ill-gotten gains. They were often wealthy individuals who lived “large.”

Then you have the group that’s called the “sinners.” Someone says, “Well, we’re all sinners,” and that’s true. But what does the Bible mean when it says “sinners” in the context of this story? One commentary says this: “(Sinners were) notoriously evil people as well as those who either refused or lacked the time to follow the Mosaic law as interpreted by the teachers of the law. The term was commonly used of tax collectors, adulterers, robbers and the like.” A good Jews of Jesus’ day would look at this group – the “sinners” – as the riff-raff, the shady characters, the dregs of society. I’d go so far as to say the “sinners” were considered human debris; if you were even close to them, you got dirty – certainly morally and maybe even physically. They were called, back then, the “am ha eretz” which literally means the “people of the earth.”

Now enters the second group. Verse two says that “…Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” So we have a grumbling group of Pharisees and scribes. They were part of a larger group known at the time as the “haberim.” It was a religious club that sought to learn and practice the traditions, rules, and regulations that allowed you to be a Jewish person in good standing.

Here’s where things get really interesting. There was no love lost between this religious group and the tax collectors and sinners group. The harberim (the religious club) hated the la ha eretz (the people of the earth.) How intense was this hostility? There’s an ancient book called “The Babylonian Talmud” that records this – about what the religious club felt about the people of the earth: “Our Rabbis taught: Let a man always sell all he has and marry the daughter of a scholar….but let him not marry the daughter of an am ha eretz, because they are detestable.” One Rabbi, a certain Eleazar, said: An am har-arez (a person of the earth), it is permitted to stab him (even) on the Day of Atonement which falls on the Sabbath… .”

Now, there’s a flipside to this hostility. The am ha eretz, the people of the land, didn’t exactly like the haberim, the religious club, either. Another Rabbi by the name of Akiba said: “When I was an am ha-arez I said ‘I would that I had a scholar (before me), and I would maul him like an ass…. .”In any case, we get the idea that civility between these two groups was a rare commodity. Right smack dab in the middle of them both was Jesus Christ. Would he be a mediator?

A better question is this: was Jesus haberim or ha eretz? Was he part of the religious group or the people of the land group? Good questions, but meanwhile the religious group was grumbling. Another translation says they were “murmuring” amongst themselves. “They said, of Jesus, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Welcoming a sinner was one thing. Welcoming sinners – en masse -- was worse. But going out and having dinner with them was unimaginably bad. When the religious group saw that, they would have concluded: “This Rabbi, Jesus, who is supposed to be one of us, is aligning himself with the riff-raff. He’s eating with them. He’s ritually unclean. He’s dirty. He’s acting like he’s a member of that group. Horror of horrors! Maybe he IS a member of that group!” A number of years ago, a pop singer by the name of Joane Osborne sang: “What if God were one of us, just a slob like one of us, just a stranger on the bus trying to find His way home?”
Jesus, as is His way, told a story to the religious group: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost. Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”

There is a way to look at this story of the lost sheep economically. Back in the last six months of 2008, the stock portfolio of many people took a huge hit. Some folks lost nearly 40% of their market value. Alongside Jesus’ story, the sheep owner who had one hundred sheep, only lost one 1%. Hey, that happens every day. You win some; you lose some. You play the market, you’ll gain it back eventually; everything’s cyclical. No use crying over spilled milk. Make sure you take care of what you’ve got. Forget about losing 1%; there’s no big deal about losing one little lamb. That happens every day.

In Jesus’ day, the shepherds were at the bottom rung of the economic totem pole. If one of a hundred sheep were lost, it would have been risky business to leave the ninety nine behind and go running after just one. Not only did you have the riff-raff, dirty job of a shepherd which was bad enough, you also didn’t have smarts. You left the other ninety nine to fend for themselves. Some would call that a needless, idiotic risk.

Lets say you found that lost sheep. You’d be excited as all get-out. But would you call your friends and neighbors to celebrate with you? That would be an admission that you were, indeed, not the brightest star in the sky or the sharpest knife in the drawer. For one thing, you lost a sheep. That’s bad. But secondly, you left the others to fend for themselves. That’s worse. Rejoice over that? For crying out loud, I’d be embarrassed.

All of these thoughts, in so many words, had to have been going through the minds of the haberim, the religious club, as Jesus told the story. Then, in what had to be the rhetorical equivalent of a bomb going off, Jesus gets to the point of the story: “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”
Stated differently: “Listen, harberim group. There will be more joy in heaven over just one member of the ha eretz group who repents, than ninety-nine of you haberim who act as though you never need to repent.” Oh, the haberim the got the message.
But Jesus, who likens himself to the dirty dumb shepherd who lost the dirty dumb sheep, isn’t finished yet. He has another story. He goes on to liken himself to an absent-minded woman. “Or what woman,” He says, “…having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.”
Okay, you have ten coins, or, drachmas – as the Greek says. Ten drachmas was essentially a two-week paycheck for a middle-to-upper class family in Jesus’ time. Furthermore, it says the woman had the money. It almost sounds like an allowance from the husband. All told, it appears they were more upper than middle class. Once more, lets look at the economics from our point of view. Take a one hundred thousand dollar a year salary – after taxes. That means, in American dollars, that your two week pay is four thousand one hundred sixteen dollars – again, after taxes and FICA and all of that are taken out. Now, the woman lost one coin of the ten. That’s 10%. 10% of $4166 is $416.00. That, for some of you might amount to a car payment. For some of you, that’s a lot of money. Others might say, “Ouch. Losing that hurts a little, but we’ll manage.”

Speaking of cars, for you drivers out there, how many of you have lost – or misplaced – your car keys? If you did and found them, I bet there was one of two reactions. First, you were upset at yourself because your keys are right there where you put them and you just forgot to look there! Second, once you found them, you breathed a huge sigh of relief and had a short blast of euphoria.

Now, the woman in the story didn’t lose car keys obviously. But she did lose the one drachma, the one coin, or, in our terms, the four hundred sixteen bucks. Here’s an interesting side note. Back then they didn’t have hardwood floors or Berber carpeting. They were dirt floors; they were dusty floors. That accounts for the fact that she swept the house -- literally swept the dirt on the ground -- for this one coin little coin. So she was somewhat absent-minded for losing it. Then she comes off kind of manic in her attempts to find it.

So we have a sheep, a lost sheep, just one sheep in story number one. Similarly, we have a coin, a lost coin, just one coin in story number two. But a sheep, if lost, might possibly find its way back. It could get up, look around, listen for the voice of the shepherd one would think. But a guy by the name of Ken Bailey thinks differently. He wrote a book on these stories, and he makes an interesting point about a lost sheep. He writes:

My shepherd friends of Lebanon and Palestine tell me that a sheep once lost is terrified. It sits down, usually in as sheltered a place as is immediately available and starts shaking and bleating. When found it is in such a state of nervous collapse that it cannot stand or be made to stand. It cannot walk or be led, nor will it respond to the shepherd’s well-known call. If it is to be restored to the fold the shepherd must carry it on his two shoulders

Unlike the lost sheep, the lost coin is an inanimate object. It can’t shake and bleat; it can’t collapse or stand; it cannot walk or be led. It still has economic value, but it’s dead; it’s lifeless. It can only be found.

I started talking about groups this morning. When I look out from the FPC pulpit here, I see a group of people of which I’m a part too. Compared to today’s stories from Jesus, which group are we more like? Are we like the haberim – proud of our religion or our Presbyterianism or our church-going or our cherished points of view be they more liberal, more moderate, or more conservative? Or are we more like the ha eretz -- people who have tried to live up to a standard but have fallen short again and again; or folks who are only too aware of what their lives are and what they are not before a holy God; or people who are lost and hope to be found and just want to fit in; or folks that don’t even know they’re lost but are, and, once found, are going to know a joy like nothing else?

But forget about those groups now and think of this. What if there were just one of you today who feels lost; who feels dead to God, dead to the world, dead to others; who is beaten down by what their lives have become; who questions the use of everything; who feels less than zero?

Assuming there is one (and I believe there is), all I ask of you is this: consider the value a dirty, dumb shepherd placed on just one lost sheep. He went out – to heck with the risk! – and brought that sheep home. Then he throws a party. Consider the value an absent-minded, manic woman placed on just one lost coin. She lit a lamp, swept the floor, stopped at nothing until she found it. Then she throws a party. That’s not group dynamics. That’s the value of just one. That’s the value God places on you – the God who did not spare His own Son, but gave him for us all.
The haberim murmured and grumbled at Jesus that day. They said, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” One translation says, “This man is a friend of sinners and eats with them.”Isn’t it ironic that one of the most beautiful names for Jesus came first from the lips of His enemies!

His name was Henry Francis Lyte. He was just one man. He died in his early 50s from tuberculosis. When he was a growing boy, his father abandoned the family, left him and placed him in a Northern Ireland boarding school, and never saw him again. His mother and younger sister moved to London where they both died very young. As I said, in the end, he was just one man.

Later in life, and exactly two weeks before he died, he wrote a little prayer that has become a classic in our treasury of hymns. Perhaps he was thinking of the family he had lost, as the life was slipping out of him, when he prayed to God:

Abide with me! Fast falls he even-tide;
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me!

Come not in terrors, as the King of kings,
But kind and good, with healing in Thy wings;
Tears for all woes, a heart for every plea.
Come, Friend of sinners, thus abide with me.
What more is there to say – for that one man and for us all -- but Amen!