We know why all the tax collectors and sinners were coming to hear Jesus. It was because they got a hearing from him. Their lives, their stories, and their hopes, their failures mattered to him. With him they would get a hearing so they came to hear him. Of course there are always those who grumble at the notion of those left behind getting a hearing. For us the safety net often really means our safety, having pigeonholed people in safe convenient categories. From early on to now we have learned to put people in boxes - from geeks, nerds, and greasers, retards, rejects to red states and blue states we learn to round up people into herds for interpretive, political, and social convenience. So you can well imagine the response rate was pretty high to the invitation to come to the party where adjectives were not turned to nouns so that that people thought they had the skinny on you by just knowing your skin color, place of origin, income or political affiliation. Of course that is when the party begins - when we are not a herd but people who need to laugh and love, leap and live, recover and be redeemed. So, those who engage in the usual round up and corral people behind the fence, having caught them in their nets in a way that Jesus was not talking about, crumble at the notion of the red state and the blue, the Palestinian and Israeli, the special ed and the advance placement parents, the addicted and those addicted to achieving, sitting at the same table just as folks. Who knows what might break out here if the walls are broken down: a party, peace, and the promise of the kingdom?
So Jesus tells this story for those who don’t get it so that they can get with each other and get with it. He tells them a story about how a coin can go missing and how sheep can wonder off of their own accord. As familiar as this was to his listeners, the stories sound crazy on first hearing. Do people really invite in others to celebrate like they do in these stories? Now when the TV remote goes missing in our house and what was lost is found I sort of look around in hopes that nobody notices how stupidly I have behaved, tossing pillows around, pulling cushions off the sofa, accusing others of being part of some sort of international conspiracy to thwart my fun, refusing to simply walk over to the TV to turn it on until this modern convenience is found, madly asking Barbara “Where did you put the remote?” The day does not begin well if I cannot find my favorite coffee mug. I tend to withhold my love and laughter until the almighty comes across with my mug. Do I really want to invite the neighborhood in so that they know what a creature of habit I am? When things go missing or wonder off in our household it is not a pretty sight.
Jesus had his tongue in cheek when he told this story. Which one of you does not leave the ninety-nine out in the open and go after the one? Excuse me, none of us do that if we are in are right mind. Rather than go after the tax right off less we loose the others. We celebrate a 3.4% unemployment rate and count it a gift from the gods as the best we can do, count on the revenue from our liquor stores even though you can count on it that a good amount of that income will come from those lost in a alcoholic fog, entertain the notion of balancing our state budget by counting on the imbalance in some people’s lives that leaves them taking chances on gambling rather than taking life as a gift. Not only do we not go after the one we often seek to profit from them.
The woman with the broom seems even more obsessive-compulsive than the shepherd with the crook. She throws a party for the neighborhood, spending farm more than the coin was worth in celebrating that she found the coin in the first place. Do you want her to be in charge of your finances? I would not be letting her near my checkbook. This seems to be voodoo economics of the first order. It is as crazy as the shepherd who goes after the one leaving the insurance company to take care of the ninety-nine. Check please. For the most part we want to check out on this. People like this will spend us into the ground.
Jesus says there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than ninety-nine who don’t need to and it seems that the angels are also into the voodoo economics getting their kick out of a 1% return. Anyone getting interest in the bank lately would like to tell these angels a thing or two.
But these stories are about going after whatever it is that gets the party going. That happens less when we get interest than when we take interest in each other. Just who is it that does the repenting here. As cute as sheep are, they do not repent. They keep wondering off and as much as I expect that some day someone will apologize for my remote going missing it is I who need to do the repenting of making everybody else’s life miserable until I get back in my groove. In the story it is the shepherd who moves beyond just seeing a herd and cutting his loses. He moves beyond calculation to connection and caring about one sheep with which he has relation more than calculation. This sheep will not be left behind. Now THAT is when the party begins! When, it is relation more than calculation that matters people get found. You stop seeing the herd for the individual stories. When life is less about getting interest and more about taking interest in one another the party begins. You see less the advance placement student than the student who might wonder if the attention they get is more about what they can do in the head than who they are in their heart of hearts or the one with the good looks who has their ticket in life punched and wonders whether anyone will get a good look at what is on their insides. You see the child who has gotten a label early on, wondering what they can expect now that no one expects much of them. Or the party begins when waiting in line at the airport you see the women with the veil and baggy cloths and all the bags and two kids in tow and you see a mom traveling in a strange land needing some help more than you see a potential terrorist. You make a tentative gesture of help and that day relation wins over calculation: the party begins.
As much as I would like to beat my remote control silly senseless for failing to give me remote control over my world I can assure you that inanimate objects do not repent. It is I who needs to do the repenting. There is plenty of joy in heaven when you repent of thinking you knows anything about the world when you knows nothing of a three foot high child who stands before a twenty-four foot high wall. It is barrier that a child sees that has just come crashing through his Palestinian neighborhood guarded by Israeli tanks and he wonders what he has done to cause them to come and to take a way the view of the mountain. He cries because it is the mountain that one day he wanted to climb because he thought he might see heaven from up there. When you repent of thinking that you know anything of the world with out knowing how the world now looks to the child then there is joy in heaven for that is when the party that we are all invited to begins. When you take an interest in that child you will know that that child knows that the twenty-four foot high wall was paid for by us. All he knows about America is that they have taken his mountain and stairway to heaven away. When you have found this child and have found a place for him in your heart then there is joy in heaven and there is a party on earth. Once you were lost and now you are found.
We normally put the obsessive behavior we see in these stories under the heading of neurosis. Given the fact that both of the characters in these stories behave in ways that are so obviously dysfunctional and that simple throw all economic sense out the window, what other explanation can we come up with for their behavior? They are neurotics. Surely some talk therapy will help and if not that surely in this age, certainly in this age, there will be some medication to get them back into the herd: get them back to trying to be everywhere without really being there, get them back to trusting more in getting interest than in taking interest in anyone so that they will not lose remote control. We can fix them rather than have them go after the brokenness of the world. We can do that. Of course there will be no joy in heaven, no party on earth and it will turn out that only the angels will be sad at the loss.
© 2004 R. Craig MacCreary
9:39:27 PM 
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