God's Joy in reclaiming us from our errors

Geoffrey Piper's sermon from September 15th, 2013

The Church of Jesus Christ is less a hotel for saints than it is a hospital for sinners. (repeat)  Said in another way, the Church is not so much the Gathering of the Good as it is those on a lifelong journey to become better, with the Good Shepherd’s guidance and care.

The self-righteous, religious folks in Jesus day grumble about his indiscretion… in mingling with people who don’t measure up in their world. In a comment that they believe disqualifies Jesus as a spiritual guide, they mutter to one another: "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."

Jesus, aware of their disgruntled hostility, then tells them two stories to illustrate the natural, right, and celebrated recovery of something that--or someone, who--has been lost, and is then brought safely back. And then he gives them the moral of the stories: “I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

Almost nowhere in our American discourse will we hear the word “sinners” used, except in satire, or in dismissive ridicule of people who believe in classical Christian beliefs. But we have synonyms that all have the same power in our day as the concept of “sinners” in Jesus’ day. We speak, in the same sort of dismissive and derisive insider grumbling, of:

·      hopeless drunks

·      tree-hugging, liberal socialists

·      failures at business

·      tea-party conservatives

·      fundamentalist Christians

·      unfaithful spouses

·      welfare cheats

·      pompous windbags…

And you could augment the list of labels by which we reduce people to bleak caricatures of ruined humanity, based on some unsavory behavior that is not characteristic of our tight little group.

The zeal of the self-righteous to deride and denounce those who don’t measure up, and who don’t follow the rules that we follow, didn’t die with the Pharisees. It is alive and well in every generation.

And Jesus makes a pointed effort to jostle all of us out of that place of faith-based accusation, blame, criticism, reductive dismissal, and condemnation. He doesn’t want us to stay in that place of hostile judgment because it’s a lifeless place! It He doesn’t deny that there is a moral order, or that some of us do a better job than others of adhering to it. But he makes the case that God’s interest is always:

·      in retrieving those who have wandered off;

·      in re-establishing relationship with those who have said, “God is not there 
          for me;”

·      in healing what has become disfigured;

·      in reconciling those who have come to see one another as enemies. 

The compassion of God to reclaim and re-fashion what belongs to Him is always Christ’s central and powerful motive in the life of the Spirit

A few chapters further along in Luke’s gospel, we read of the tax-cheat, Zaccheus, who proves to be a poster boy for repentance and amendment of life. We read of Jesus inviting himself to dine with this notorious cheating tax-collector. “All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

In John’s gospel, Jesus says explicitly, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

Jesus’ mission statement is pretty clear. He comes to seek and to save the lost. We, his followers, must not regress to be that self-satisfied society whose primary goal is to reinforce our own respectability.

Most of you know that St. Gabriel’s hosts several Anonymous groups in our parish facility all through the week. What some of you may not know is how precisely their therapeutic approach is pure, distilled Christian spirituality. We can substitute almost any complex that impairs the quality of our lives—what holy scripture calls “sin,”—and see the Christian guidelines for spiritual restoration.

These are the original twelve steps as published by Alcoholics Anonymous:
 

1.    We admitted we were powerless over (alcohol, or whatever other destructive habit we can name)—that our lives had become unmanageable.

2.    Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3.    Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4.    Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5.    Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6.    Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7.    Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8.    Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9.    Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

As I read--for the first time--the AA “Big Book,” for further evidence of this Christian spiritual essence, I saw that more than half the book is the printed stories of transformation, what we call “our testimonies.” We learn spiritual truths best not by reading theories in self-help articles, but by discovering their compelling, transforming power in the lives of people around us. As you find your courage and your voice, you will bless others by telling of the ways you have discovered God’s determination to get through to you; God’s mercy in freeing your from your past; God’s acceptance of you as His beloved child.

So we can all rejoice that dozens of people are taking these steps seriously, and benefiting from them, in the building over there every day. But we can also rejoice that the Lamb of God, who came into the world to free us from the sin of the world, is honored in the center of our worship. His invitation is to lead every one of us in this way of restoration, this way of faith, of hope, of love, of freedom.

Let’s not be the grumbling, self-satisfied curmudgeons pointing fingers  from the balcony at Zaccheus, at the sinners, at those lost sheep. Let’s come to the party of God’s redeemed children. And let’s excel in bringing others along with us to meet this incredible, glorious host.