Eating With Sinners

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
September 12, 2004; 15th Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 19, Year C
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

Luke 15:1-10 ­ Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling andsaying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them." So he told them this parable:

"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.

"Or what woman 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.' Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

There was a hierarchy based on birth -- priests and Levites inherited their positions at the top of the purity ladder. Next below them were Israelites by birth. Below them, converts to Judaism. At the bottom, the illegitimate and those born with birth defects.

In our century, we think of the word "sinner" as a universal adjective. You'll hear someone say, "Well, after all, we're all sinners, aren't we?" You would never hear someone say that in Jesus' culture.

Those who followed the law were known as the righteous. They definitely were not sinners. Sinners were people who did not or could not follow the law. They were the unclean, the impure. Everything in the culture was divided upon that fault line -- the righteous and the sinners.

Some were sinners because of their behavior or their work. Tax collectors and shepherds were such despised professions that they were considered as outcasts, abject sinners.

Some were unclean because of their physical conditions -- lepers, eunuchs, or even people who were simply chronically ill, a sign of the absence of God's blessing. Deep poverty was a sign of impurity, because it was believed that wealth is a blessing from God, "The righteous will prosper," says the Bible. Men were more pure than women. All Gentiles were impure and unclean.

The primary difference between the two major renewal movements of first century Judaism was whether purity is best achieved by extending it into the whole of everyday life, the strategy of the Pharisees; or whether purity is best achieved by withdrawing from society into an isolated and controlled community, the strategy of the Essenes. That the purpose of religious life is purity was assumed by both to be true.

The Pharisees in particular sought to promote righteousness by observing a strict rule of table fellowship. A righteous person would never sit at table with a sinner. Never. Such an act communicated a public message of acceptance. The righteous observed careful rules about what may be eaten, how it may be prepared, and with whom it may be shared. One's religious faithfulness to God and to the law of Moses was most clearly identified with the fellowship at one's table. A sinner was best identified by his ostracism from the table of the righteous.

To say, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them" was to say "This fellow is a scandal and an abomination." Jesus intentional flaunting of the purity system was a revolutionary act of social subversion.

I've lived in a world like what I've just described. I'll bet you have too. Most of us learned about it around the sixth grade. In sixth grade you know your place in the hierarchy. Kids have ways of marking who is pure and who is impure. There are the elites and the untouchables. I tried to kiss up to a high school cheerleader hoping some of her shekinah would raise me from some of the low-geek status I occupied around that time of life. But it's a rigid system.

We learn that system. It sinks its roots deep into us. Even as adults most of us will avoid certain kinds of people, especially those untouchables, because we fear judgment by association.

But that's not the way Jesus behaved. He fearlessly ate with the Pharisees and the tax collectors, the pure and the outcast. If he were in Fayetteville today, we might see him at the Fayetteville Country Club as well as the Electric Cowboy.

One of the ways he subverted the system was that he universalized the word "sinner." He applied it to all so that its sting could be removed. We're all basically the same, he said. And God loves sinners. God will leave everything else behind to search without ceasing for every last one of us. That's one of the reasons I get frustrated with well-meaning Christians who seek to divide the world into saved and unsaved, the found and the lost. I can't imagine the God of Jesus losing even one sheep. I trust that God whom Jesus Christ points us to is so loving and so smart, that God will do everything, even the unimaginable, to make sure every last one of his creatures is eternally safe. I don't believe that God will fail.

God is into wholeness, not division. And Jesus works to bring everyone and everything to the table.

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Now let me shift gears a little bit and think about this from another angle. Sometime in our upbringing, maybe around those sensitive junior high days, most of us not only learned how to shame whole people, but most of us learned how to shame parts of ourselves. Or maybe we only repressed parts of ourselves. But what I am betting is that most of us have a few coins we have lost, a few of our own treasures that we have buried.

I have a friend who is very practical, skilled and competent. She was a business-woman who found early success. She then left the corporate world to raise a family. Since the kids have grown, she has returned to work and now runs an effective company with twenty-three employees working for her.

From her childhood, she's had some images in her mind. They would show up in her dreams occasionally. The images were symmetrical patterns of colors and shapes. Just recently, a friend encouraged her to try her hand at painting. She has no training. She's not skilled at drawing. But she got into the studio and felt something come forward from within. She freed something deep within her imagination, and on the paper emerged some beautiful mandalas. Her new exercise of painting has brought her joy and vitality. It's also been a spiritually energizing experience, and no wonder. Mandalas are symbols of wholeness in Hinduism and Buddhism. And if Jesus were here in Fayetteville today, I'll bet he would delight to sit at a table eating with Hindus and Buddhists and my friend, enjoying a lively conversation about mandalas

But of course Jesus is living in Fayetteville today. He is living in and through us. And he invites us to embrace the values of universal hospitality and wholeness that he revealed. He asks us to honor the little, the lost, the least and the last. To overcome our divisions of pure and impure, right and wrong. To eat with tax collectors and sinners. To embrace the shame-based parts of ourselves. To sweep the corners of our community and our psyches, and to find the lost treasures and rejoice. How wonderful it would be if the respectable people of Fayetteville would say of us as was said of Jesus, "Look at them. Those people welcome sinners and eat with them."

Yes, we do! Thanks be to God.