Foretaste Of The Sermon To Come

A little nibble of the Revised Common Lectionary

Sunday’s scriptures are Psalm 51, 1 Timothy 2:1-7, and Luke 15:1-10.

Psalm 51 is such a beautiful and reassuring promise. We often recite it responsively on Ash Wednesday, soiled with the ashes that remind us of our sin while the words that pour from King David’s broken heart wash us clean with God’s mercy.

This week’s Gospel gives us two stories of God’s unrelenting and undeserved mercy. In the first story, a sheep has wandered, lost and exhausted, and its shepherd leaves his flock to seek out the stray. When he finds it, he puts the spent sheep on his shoulders and carries it back to the flock. In the same vein, a woman loses a coin and goes through her whole house looking for it, not stopping until she finds it.

Of course the searcher in both stories is God.

But how much more does our searching God rejoice when he finally meets one of his beloved human children where she is? She might be lost in the wilderness, or hiding in a filthy corner buried in addiction. God doesn’t care the conditions he finds his lost child in — he wades right into the brambles, muck, clutter and dust to find her. He meets the murdering rapist King David where he is, David stunned by his horrendous sin; In fact, he meets all of humanity where we are by becoming human and performing the biggest search of all: finding the lost, ministering to the prisoner, to the poor in spirit, and to the one who thinks he’s lost his faith. He meets us daily wherever we are and in whatever condition we are and repents us. He removes us from our wallow and lifts our gaze to the cross where he cleans us up. And there is a great party in Heaven when he carries us on his shoulders back to our community in Christ.