Day of the Church Year: 14th Sunday after Pentecost
Scripture Passage: Luke 15:1-10
In the 1980s when my dad was serving as pastor in a congregation in a small northwestern Minnesota town, a woodworker in the congregation made him a sign that read “Sinners Only.” Delighted, my father put it up in his office and in the office of the next church he served and in the next. Today, it sits in the office of my parents’ home. Every time someone walked in the door of my dad’s office, this sign would greet them. Sinners Only.
We Lutherans are a bit gloomy about human nature compared to other Christians. Martin Luther, whose writings and ministry ground the Lutheran tradition, was a rare combination of pessimist and optimist. A reformer who believed in the capacity of God’s people to change and grow by the power of the Holy Spirit. And an opinionated, gut-troubled cynic totally convicted by God’s law and convinced of his unworthiness before God. Upon reading the Apostle Paul’s letters to the Christians in Rome and Galatia, Luther concluded that we are bound to sin and cannot free ourselves, that no matter how hard we try, humans will never be perfect, that we will never fulfill the law of God, at least not on our own.
This would have been news to the Pharisees and scribes in today’s Jesus story. For they are keen to fulfill the law, to rigorously observe the letter of the law, to come as close to perfect as humanly possible—and they consider perfection possible. As ancient Jewish religious leaders, the Pharisees and scribes rigorously debate and study Old Testament law. I’m sure it seems natural to them, therefore, when they look at the wide swath of humanity in their communities, that they categorize certain people as sinners. Indeed, all four gospels use the word “sinners” to describe groups of people usually loved by Jesus but despised and stigmatized by others. Some sinners live with chronic illness or disability, medical conditions seen in that historical moment as a result of sin. Some sinners work as prostitutes. Some sinners are demon-ridden or fail to follow the sabbath or commit adultery. The Pharisees and the scribes are, quite decidedly, not sinners, wink wink. The gospel writer Luke tells us that tax collectors and sinners are coming to listen to Jesus, and the Pharisees and scribes grumble about Jesus, saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Nice people, religious people, good people do not share meals with sinners and certainly do not open their lives to sinners. So Jesus’ true blue nature is neither nice nor religious nor good, at least according to the Pharisees and scribes.
We, of course, hold a different view. Jesus is our paragon of niceness, religion, and goodness. And the lesson here is obvious, right?: to be like Jesus, we welcome sinners and eat with them. To be like Jesus, we go to specific places where sinners gather, maybe bars or strip clubs or Grace Lutheran Church and we dare to sit at tables with sinners and eat, a sign of acceptance. We dare to sit down and listen to and love people who are not perfect, whose lives are full of contradictions, whose intentions are not always pure. Wait now. That’s all of us. Right? Aren’t all of our lives full of contradictions? Can any of us claim to have pure intentions all the time? Are any of us perfect? Sinners Only in the church, right?
Really, the joke’s on the Pharisees and the scribes. The possibility does not enter their minds that they could be the sinners Jesus welcomes, that Jesus comes to heal and free them, that Jesus comes to forgive them. But the irony is not lost on us. When Jesus tells the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, the crowds gathered around aren’t really lost. Maybe that’s the story others tell them, but the reality is different: the crowds know they are in need. They are following Jesus for that reason. They are hanging on his words. They are eager to learn and be fed, to be forgiven and healed. And because they know they need healing, they are not lost. But the Pharisees and scribes, the ones who think they’re perfect, the ones who cannot be convinced of their need, they are like the lost sheep and the lost coin, the ones God scurries after in wild pursuit. Of course, Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them, with us, with all of us sinners—the ones who know we are sinners and the ones who are lost in our own self-righteousness and judgment.
This story today is meant for the Pharisees and the scribes, not for the crowds of vulnerable people who follow Jesus all over the Galilean countryside. And this story today is meant for those of us who, when we read about the lost sheep, assume it’s somebody else.
But doesn’t Jesus command us, through this story, to go and rescue that lost sheep and to sweep and find that lost coin? We so easily read ourselves into stories where Jesus proclaims God’s saving love and rescue. We so easily cast ourselves in the role of savior when, really, the savior is always Jesus. When we mistake our role as savior, we risk pitying those we encounter. We risk seeing those we help as less than us. We risk inflating our own egos. Jesus calls us to serve all people, following his example, and calls us to strive for justice and peace in all the earth, but we do so alongside our community working together for the sake of the common good, cognizant that we too have needs we are trying to meet.
Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them. Thank God! Because around here, it’s Sinners Only. And as Jesus tells the Pharisees and scribes, God will go after us even on our worst day and carry us home. Thanks be to God! Amen.