Sermon: Ready to Party

Luke 15:1-10

Ready to Party

James Sledge                                                                                       September 15, 2019

I suppose it is a nearly universal experience, wondering if you made the cut. Did I get the job? Did I make the team? Did I get into the sorority or fraternity? Did I get accepted into my top college? Did I get invited to the big party? I’m sure you can think of other examples.

This experience seems to be woven into the very fabric of nature. Evolution is driven by the “survival of the fittest.” And it is hard not to hear value judgements in terms such as “the fittest” or “successful predator.” They are the better species.

These sort of value judgments make their way into popular thought. People experiencing poverty or homelessness are often assumed to have failed in some way. They’ve not worked hard enough or failed to apply themselves. Their predicament is similar to not making the team, landing a good job, or getting into a good college. It is the result of some failure to be good enough, to try hard enough, to be smart enough, and so on.

Religion picks it up, too. The so-called Protestant work ethic grew from the idea that hard work which bore financial success was a sign of God’s favor. At the very least this implies that poverty is a sign of God’s disfavor.

Surely each of us is shaped in some way by living in a world where such ideas are so prevalent. How can we not feel that we have failed to measure up in some way when we don’t get that top job, get rejected by that college, or don’t make the requisite income?

And for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, the pressures to measure up, to get into a top school, climb the career ladder, be rich enough, pretty enough, and so on, seem to have intensified in recent decades. Such pressures feed worries and anxieties, driving everything from overscheduled kids to workers who don’t use their vacation time.

If you’re well versed in the teachings of Jesus, you might think that Christians wouldn’t buy into such thinking. But Christian faith gets practiced and lived out in human, religious institutions. And we humans are prone to think that God’s value judgments are not so different from ours.

And so religion too often looks like one more version of measuring up. Am I good enough? Do I believe the correct things? Have I done what is required for God to love me?

This takes many different forms. For some, believing that Jesus is their personal Lord and Savior guarantees them a ticket to heaven. For others, certain prayer or meditation practices must be learned well enough to provide the promised spiritual fulfillment. For still others, religion becomes a way to spiritualize the correct political beliefs, be they conservative or liberal.

The other day, I saw a Facebook post that read, “If right now you find yourself struggling with organized religion, know this: So did Jesus.” In the gospels, Jesus’ most frequent critics are leaders of organized religion. Most of them are not evil people. They are trying hard to do what they think God wants. But Jesus does not operate by their understanding of the rules, and he does not agree with their value judgments about who does and doesn’t measure up.

In our gospel reading, Jesus is hanging  out with some most undesirable folks. Their failures are much more serious than not making the team or getting into a great college. Some of them are tax collectors, not a civil service job in Jesus’ day. In Roman occupied Judea, tax collecting was state-sponsored, criminal corruption. Tax collectors were Jews who collaborated with the Romans, using Roman military might to shake down their neighbors. They could legally keep for themselves anything they collected over the amount that went to Rome, and many grew quite wealthy through this shakedown racket.

Not that their wealth gained them much in the way of status. They were despised, for good reason. Yet Jesus welcomes them. Understandably, this upsets the religious leaders. Jesus claims to be a religious man, a rabbi. Why would he be so friendly with those who not only fail to measure up, but who willfully violate God’s law?

Jesus responds as he so often does, by telling stories, in this case parables of a lost sheep, a lost coin, and one we didn’t hear, a lost son, typically called the prodigal son.

Parables are not exact. They’re not regulations with clear “Do this,” or “Don’t do that.” They’re stories, and they sound different depending on where you stand when you hear them.

If you fear that you are lost, that you don’t measure up and are not enough, these stories may be incredibly liberating reminders that God’s embrace, God’s favor, God’s love for you has nothing to do with hitting any of the marks our culture finds significant. God’s love overflows even for those who are willfully disobedient.

But if you’re the good religious sort, like some of us here today, these stories may sound different. They speak of a God who has an especially soft spot for the lost, the wayward, the outsider, those the world and religion imagine are somehow not enough; a God who perpetually has the champagne on ice, always ready to celebrate, to party, even when we good, religious sorts find such partying terribly inappropriate.

If you are worried that you don’t measure up in some way, that you are somehow not good enough or rich enough or successful enough or pretty enough or thin enough or smart enough or any of all those other enoughs our culture demands you measure yourself by, know that Jesus, that God sees you as a beloved child.

But Jesus doesn’t tell his stories to those who fear they are not enough. He simply hangs out with them, eats and drinks with them, parties with them. Jesus tells his parables to good, religious folks who think they probably are good enough, and who are certain that they are a lot better than those Jesus is hanging out with.

For them, Jesus’ parables ask the poignant question, “Will you come to the party?” They’re invited, even though the party is not for them. It’s for the lost, the wayward, those the world imagines not good enough. But the good, religious folk are invited. We’re all invited.

Turns out that being part of God’s new day, joining in with what Jesus is bringing, means, at least in part, being ready to party. And very often, it means being ready to party with those you didn’t think should be on the guest list but who turn out to be the guests of honor.

All praise and glory to the God who in Jesus is turning the world upside down, and who invites us the be a part of the new thing he is doing.