A reflection on the lectionary readings for the fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
These short parables follow on the heels of what we read last week about finding our identity in God and counting the cost of being a disciple. Jesus doesn’t coerce or manipulate others to follow him. He doesn’t paint a false picture of a world without challenges or struggles. Jesus speaks the truth of living in the Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven and lets us decide for ourselves. It isn’t that God is indifferent. It is God’s desire that every person be in loving relationship with God. To truly enable humans to love God, God gave us the freewill to choose God or not because Love requires choice. Love cannot be demanded or controlled or coerced. People aren’t shamed or guilted into loving God as Jesus shows us in flesh and blood how to love.
In the first of the two parables we read today, the shepherd seems willing to risk the entire flock for one. But that’s the human point of view. The Kingdom point of view says everyone one is worth searching for. As always, we have to read this in light of all that Jesus teaches us. The one who has wandered from the shepherd is loved just as much as each of those who remained. Love, life in God’s Kingdom, isn’t a competition. God loves all whom God has made. We don’t earn or qualify for God’s love. God loves.
Jesus goes on to tell of a woman who goes to great lengths to find one of ten lost coins. The story is set up the same way as the shepherd and one sheep story. The woman represents God and we are the coins. At the end of the story, Jesus himself interprets the story as a glimpse into the Kingdom: the angels rejoice each time a human being changes their way of thinking, each time one of us turns toward God’s Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven and follows Jesus. This is repentance – to reorient our way of thinking and living to God’s Way, the Kingdom Way, to change our hearts and minds so we are open to the transforming love of God.
It is God who seeks us out. It is God who became one of us to show us in flesh and blood what it is to live in God’s Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven. We are the sheep worth venturing out into the wilderness for, the coin worth moving the furniture to sweep for. We are each and all invaluable to God because God loves us.
The true cost of a life following Jesus and learning to live as God intends life for us to be is God’s life. The God who made us and searches for us relentlessly, who became one of us, gave God’s life so that we could remember who and Whose we are. The gift is offered to us and we have to give up our culture’s and history’s ideas of what life is for to receive it. Our purpose on this earth isn’t power or money or prestige or domination. For those in power and with the most money and status, that is a high price indeed, but nothing compared to what God has done for us. Our purpose on this earth is to love God, our neighbors, and ourselves.
Following Jesus costs us everything not because God wants us to have nothing but because the life we are made for is not the life the world tells us to construct for ourselves. The life we are made to live here and now is life in healthy relationship with God, each other, and ourselves. To be a disciple is to live the whole of our life following Jesus – our work, our play, our relationships, our politics, our money, every part of our life.
The economy of God’s Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven isn’t built with money or possessions or power or status. God creates God’s Kingdom with love and relationship. There’s no score keeping or bottom lines or investors or people in power to please. There is only love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And the more we offer these gifts to others the more there is for everyone.
The only appropriate response to God’s gift of life is to give our whole life to participating with God in bringing about the Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven. And we do this in community with each other. Because without others, love can’t exist. We are most fully human when we are other focused and not self-centered. Life in God’s Kingdom isn’t a competition to get the most or be better than others but a collaboration to bring about the fruits of love for everyone.
Our current culture is overflowing with hate and violence and we must keep our hearts and minds oriented toward God, toward Love. Neither Love nor the empathy love inspires is conditional. Jesus tells us to love both our neighbor and our enemy. Empathy means we remember that the Divine Image is in every human being, not just those we like or are like us. Unconditional love and empathy do not, however, require unconditional acceptance of harmful words and behaviors. We can have empathy for those causing harm and hold them accountable for the harm they cause. This is how loving community works together with God to shine the light of love so we all stay oriented toward God.
In those moments when we forget who and Whose we are and wander away, God still seeks us and invites us back to the Kingdom path following Jesus. Love as God loves doesn’t guilt or shame us into compliance. God doesn’t seek to punish or harm us to prove how bad we are. God is with us as we may face consequences of the sins of humans, our own and others, and God loves us into the everlasting life of the Kingdom here and now and for all eternity.
The cost for this life is our life given back to the God who made us to be in relationship. And all of heaven rejoices when we turn around and allow Holy Spirit to reorient our hearts and minds toward God. The grace of our Lord overflows for all of us with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Mother Nancy's Coffee Thoughts 