Sermon: God's Strange Economics

Luke 15:1-10
God’s Strange Economics
James Sledge                                                                                     September 11, 2022

Cara B. Hochhalter,
A Parable - The Lost Sheep

 I imagine it must have been exhilarating to meet Jesus when he was walked the dusty roads of Palestine all those years ago. He must have had an incredible presence. We hear over and over how great crowds sought to hear him. There was just something about him. Luke says that people were astounded at his teaching, because he spoke with authority. Not only did Jesus do miracles, but people could tell that he was not like other rabbis, not like other teachers and religious leaders.

But for all the thrill of meeting this Jesus, it must have been deeply unsettling as well. You’d be hard pressed to realize it from looking at most churches, but Jesus had this tendency to upset folks, especially religious folks, those who were members of the established church of his day. “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees,” Jesus said on many occasions, which in our day might be more like “Woe to you pastors and elders, to you theologians and denominational leaders.” 

But as if that weren’t enough, Jesus had this infuriating habit of explaining what God was like with stories that featured some of the least godly sort of people. Samaritans, who were considered losers both on religious and ethnic grounds, shepherds, who were regarded as unsavory ruffians without morals or couth, and women, who were not even legally recognized as persons, all get lifted up by Jesus as models of the mercy and love of God. 

It happens in today’s reading from the Gospel. Jesus is hanging out with low life and riff raff, and the religious folks get offended. They know that Jesus is a religious man and so they complained about him. “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Jesus reaches out and extends hospitality to the very sort of people church folks look down on. No wonder religious leaders got upset.

Jesus responds to this with some of his stories, and of course he highlights a no-account shepherd and a woman, of all people, to exemplify the ways of God. “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.’”

Which one of you?... I don’t know about you, but I might have raised my hand if Jesus had been talking to me. “Wait a minute, Jesus. You can’t leave the flock alone in the wilderness. What if a lion or a wolf comes while you’re gone? Many could be killed, and the flock would be scattered all over the country side. You might never find lots of them. Sometimes economics require you to cut your losses, sad as that may be. And what’s with throwing a big party for friends and neighbors when you get back home. Come on. How much is one sheep worth. You’ll end up spending more than that on the party.”

But Jesus insists that God’s economics don’t work like ours. There are apparently no calculations about what a single sheep is worth. Instead, God is simply determined to find it. And there are no calculations about the cost of the party, no considering that the celebration might outweigh the worth of the sheep. God must celebrate. All the angels of heaven must celebrate. God’s joy at finding even one demands it, and any thoughts of God as divine accountant, tallying up plusses and minuses, are out the window.

The parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, along with the parable of the prodigal son which Jesus tells next, sound very different depending on where you are standing when you hear them. If you think of yourself as lost, then the parable is of immense comfort. God will go to any length to find you, to bring you back, even risking the flock on your account. What wonderful, good news, to be so loved and so desired by God.

But what if you don’t think of yourself as lost, if you are one of the good religious folks? Then the parable may sound a little less warm and fuzzy. Why is God lavishing all this love on other folks? What does Jesus mean by telling this story where those who behave themselves get left in the wilderness, get put at risk, so God can look for the lost one?

Has it ever struck you as a little bit odd that church folks so like these parables of the lost sheep and the prodigal son, parables which are meant as warnings to religious folks, to those who regularly attend worship and play by the rules. Now I suppose that all of us get a little lost now and then, and so it is nice to realize that God would come looking for us, would welcome us back into the fold no matter how foolish we had been. But I also wonder if we church types don’t miss something in the parable when we too easily identify with the lost sheep. I wonder if we don’t want to claim God’s love for ourselves without quite buying into God’s strange economics.

Leaving the flock at risk to look for the one lost sheep; throwing parties to celebrate the one who was found; expecting the folks who behaved all along, who didn’t wander off, to be just as excited about the one who is found; expecting them to come to the party and join the celebration, even though no party gets thrown for them; God’s economics are strange indeed.

God’s economics are hard for us to understand, even harder to buy into. I saw that play out vividly in the first church I served in Raleigh, NC. This church was in an older, suburban neighborhood, but the NC State campus was growing towards us, and developers built some new apartment complexes right on the edge of the neighborhood, very near the church.

Some of the leaders in the congregation wanted reach out to this new population, many of whom were people of color, and a proposal emerged to create an alternative styled worship service that might appeal to the younger, less churched people in those apartments. We even begin to think of calling an associate pastor to lead this initiative.

At some point we held an informal meeting for the congregation to discuss these ideas. After the hopes and plans had all be laid out, a respected pillar of the church got up to speak. He asked if there were other churches doing the sort of things being proposed. When told that there surely were, he said, “Well let those people in the apartments go there.” He then explained how we needed pay more attention to those who had built and long supported that congregation.

I was a bit stunned, but I probably shouldn’t have been. Churches have gotten very good over the centuries at caring for the 99 while often ignoring the one. It’s so much easier, so much safer, makes so much more sense according to the economics of our world.

But we are called to show God’s ways, Jesus’ ways, to the world around us. Our work as disciples is to practice and get better at the strange economics of God, and a lot of that has to do with how we treat the other, the outsider, the lost, the one who is not like us.

Today we gather for worship and in just a bit for a wonderful brunch in what we are calling Welcome Home Sunday. When we do worship and fellowship right, we are enacting the celebration that Jesus calls for when the one sheep is found, the party that a father throws for a returning prodigal son. Many of us are among the 99, are like the elder brother who is upset about the party for his no account brother. But when we do church right, we join in the party for the one, the banquet for the younger brother, thrilled to celebrate the victory of love that risks and reaches out to gather in the other, the outsider, the lost, the one not like us.

We rejoice and celebrate because Jesus seeks us, too, seeks to free us from the economics of scarcity that rule our world so that we love as he loves, as God loves. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!  Let us be new creations who risk and reach out for love. Let us make ready to join the joyous celebration.