Christ Episcopal Church
September 15, 2013
19 Proper C
Most of my elementary school years were spent living in a bedroom community of New York City. The years were the mid-1960's, after the Cuban Missile Crisis and during the Vietnam War and the middle of the Cold War. Every month, the fire alarm bell would ring and we would have the typical fire drill where everyone left the building in an orderly fashion and went outside until the bell rang indicating that we could go back inside. There was nothing particularly scary about these drills, and we got out of class for a few minutes, which was all good. But, perhaps because of our location near New York City, and certainly because of the era in which we lived, we also had air raid drills. These were not so much fun and were a lot more scary. Instead of going outside, we all went to the cafeteria, an indoor room with no windows, and got down on our knees and put our heads on the floor with our hands clasped behind our head. The whole school was in one place, and even as a 6 year old I was skeptical that this exercise would save us if we were bombed. But the unthinkable never happened. Once we moved to Arkansas, air raid drills became part of our past since no one seemed too worried that Little Rock would be bombed by the enemy.
But then, some 35 years later, on September 11, 2001, the unthinkable did happen and the world came to a grinding halt. The images Jeremiah uses this morning are eerily similar to the pictures on the television on the day of 9/11 and for days and weeks there after. "I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void; and to the heavens and they had no light. I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking, and the hills moved to and fro...I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins." While Jeremiah is looking to a future in which the Babylonians will destroy the people and land of Judah because they have fallen away from their covenant with God, those words also seem to describe the devastation in the wake of 9/11.
When we feel threatened, when we suffer great loss and are made supremely aware of our vulnerability, we look for things that make us feel secure and in control. I can tell you that on 9/11, I was at the bank making sure that I had cash on hand in case the economy crumbled. I was at the gas station in case there was no more gas to be had the next day. The only reason I was not at the grocery store was because I had been the day before. I can rationalize that these were practical matters that needed to be attended to as precautions against what might happen. And, in a sense that was true.. But the truth is that getting cash and filling the car made me feel more secure. I felt a whole lot better doing something tangible and concrete, trusting in the ATM and the gas pump to keep me safe, rather than putting my trust in the God who created me. On a national scale, for the last 12 years we have felt better by doing something tangible and concrete as well, some of which were also practical matters that had to be tended to as a result of the attacks, and much of which was our way of making ourselves feel like we had regained that which we lost.
Unfortunately, one of the side effects of relying on the tangible and concrete to keep us safe is that there are only so many tangible and concrete resources to go around. There is only so much gas in the pump or cash in the machine or milk at the grocery, or only so many economic resources to support war and health care and education. Our tendency is to get competitive, each person for him or herself, until we find ourselves more fractured than ever in the midst of our loss.
Jeremiah’s charge against the people of Judah was essentially that in times of vulnerability and loss, they had turned from God to worship the tangible and concrete things that they thought would bring them security. If they worshiped foreign gods, then perhaps the people of those gods would not attack them. If they amassed wealth at the expense of the poor, perhaps they would have security. If they misused other people to gain power and strength, perhaps nothing bad would happen to them. The end result of their efforts to gain security and prevent vulnerability is that the people of God were fractured. God’s anger at those God loved the most was that in times of trouble the people turned away from God toward the tangible and the concrete for the comfort those things could not really provide, and as a result God’s people were broken and divided.
Jesus tells us two parables this morning about loss: the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the lost coin. In both parables, something of some value is missing. In the first parable, the shepherd makes the rather absurd decision to leave the 99 sheep to their own devices and go after the one missing sheep. When he finds the sheep and returns it to the fold, he rejoices greatly, even calling his friends and neighbors and saying "Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost." Likewise, when the woman who is searching for her coin finally finds it, she to calls her friends and neighbors and says "Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I lost." In both cases, the return of something of relatively small value is celebrated by a great party. And in both cases, reference is made to the rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents.
Jesus seems to be making a rather large leap from the finding of a lost sheep or coin to the rejoicing in heaven over a sinner who repents. After all, neither a sheep nor a coin is capable of repentance. The sheep just wandered off, as sheep are prone to do, and no telling how the coin got lost, but it obviously wasn’t the coins’ fault. So, Jesus must be up to something else here. Both the sheep and the coin were part of a larger whole. There were 100 sheep and 10 coins, both nice round numbers that indicate completeness. When the sheep goes missing and the coin turns up lost, that whole is fractured. It is not just that the sheep is missing, but that the community is broken. It is not just that one little coin is missing, but that the nine are not complete without it. When the sheep is returned and the coin is found and restored to the others, the 100 and the 10 are complete again. And there is great rejoicing, both on earth and in heaven, rejoicing not only that the individual sheep and coin were found, but rejoicing that what was broken is now whole.
The reality is that we cannot fix what is broken by breaking it some more. We cannot find what is lost by losing more. Jeremiah and Jesus both call us, in times of uncertainty, loss, and vulnerability, whatever the cause, to look for ways to create wholeness, to find what was lost by acting like the people of God we were created to be. Eventually God will say to Jeremiah "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." There is great rejoicing in the heavens when we actually live like people who belong to God and work to make the broken whole again.
Amen.
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