Sermon for Proper 19, Year C

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I don’t usually like to toot my own horn, but I’m going to make an exception in this case, because when it comes to the subject of getting lost, I am something of an expert. According to my extensive personal experience, there are at least three ways in which I tend to get lost.

First, I know where I am and where I want to be, but I don’t know how to get there. Physically speaking, this is a pretty common experience for a lot of people. This is why we have GPS—or in the old days, these funny little pieces of paper called maps. Of course, the hardest thing about maps was that you could never quite figure out how to fold them right. So by the end of it, you would need a map for figuring out how to fold a map.

Spiritually speaking, this is why we have our spiritual practices: prayer, meditation, the reading of Scripture, and, of course, the seven sacraments. These things are like a map for the spiritual journey that we are all on—a journey from self-centeredness to reality-centeredness, as philosopher John Hick calls it.

The second way of getting lost is when we know where we want to go and how to get there, but we don’t have a clear idea of where we actually are. Physically speaking, this reminds me of a photo I saw this week of a sign in the Salzburg airport that says, “Sorry, this is Austria, not Australia. Need help? Press the button.”

Spiritually speaking, this is like the scribes and Pharisees in today’s Gospel reading. They saw themselves as good, righteous, decent citizens, offended that Jesus was hanging out with tax collectors and sinners. In their inflated sense of self-righteousness, these religious leaders mistakenly believed that they were morally and spiritually superior to the people Jesus was choosing to spend time with. They forgot that they, too, were sinners who needed grace just as much as everybody else.

The third way of getting lost is when we know where we are and how we want to travel, but we have no idea—or the wrong idea—of where we’re going. This would be like somebody who sets out from Coldwater to travel to Rochester, New York, but ends up in Rochester, Minnesota.

Spiritually speaking, this reminds me of people who think that their religious lives are only about getting their ticket stamped for the afterlife instead of trying to make this world a better place. It also reminds me of people who think that the spiritual life is about gaining some kind of mystical knowledge that makes them superior to others. Finally, it reminds me of those so-called Christian nationalists who see their religion as a means through which they can gain power and thereby force their will or beliefs on others. These people might have a clear sense of who they are and how they are living, but their final goal is very different from what Jesus Christ envisioned as the ultimate purpose of the spiritual path he taught.

So then, these are just a few examples of the many ways in which I tend to get lost in life, both physically and spiritually.

The theme of getting lost figures rather prominently in today’s Gospel reading. Here we listen to Jesus tell two stories about things that got lost: a sheep and a coin. Both are stories Jesus told in response to the religious leaders of his day getting upset about the kind of people he was hanging out with.

The scribes and Pharisees were educated and observant people who cared deeply about their faith and about how they thought it ought to be practiced. In contemporary terms, they would be like clergy or seminary professors. The tax collectors and sinners, on the other hand, were somewhat less respectable in the eyes of polite society. They were the riff-raff, the outcasts—the freaks and the geeks, if you will. But even more than that, they were people who, in the eyes of their neighbors, were not just sketchy but actually scary.

If we were to search for modern equivalents that would have the same emotional impact tax collectors had on Jesus’ audience, we might have to replace tax collector with sex offender or meth cook or gang member. Tax collectors and sinners were a rough crowd not just because of how they looked, but because of how they lived. These were genuinely scary people to Jesus’ audience. So it makes sense that polite, upstanding citizens would be disturbed by Jesus’ choice to spend time with them.

The shocking part of the good news Jesus proclaimed is that God’s love extends even to these most despicable human beings. And Jesus doesn’t flinch from saying it.

What I would like us to notice is the emotional tone of the words. The text says that the Pharisees and scribes were grumbling, but the emotional term Jesus uses—no fewer than five times—is some variation of the word joy or rejoice. The shepherd rejoices when he finds the lost sheep. The phrase rejoice with me is repeated twice. Jesus says there is joy in heaven and among the angels at the finding of what was lost.

Modern psychologists tell us people need about 5.6 positive compliments to balance out each negative criticism in order to be emotionally healthy. In this passage, Jesus actually comes close to that, with five repetitions of joy compared to one mention of grumbling. That’s kind of cool.

What this tells us about how Jesus sees the world is that unconditional love is the foundational fact of all reality. And that fact can be a source of joy when we learn to embrace it for ourselves and for others.

But this is easier said than done. Many of us find it hard to accept the gift of unconditional love, because there’s nothing we did to earn or deserve it. That makes it harder to extend love to others, because we can hardly believe it for ourselves.

Jaye Brix, a trans woman and former pastor, points out:

Many of us were taught a theology that prioritizes retribution over transformation. It’s not about making things right; it’s about who deserves to be punished. Someone needs to pay. So, when someone who holds a theology of retribution hears the words, “You hurt me,” they don’t hear, “Let’s fix it.” They hear, “You are a bad person.”

The fear that accompanies this theology causes people to look for any way to avoid guilt, because in their world guilt doesn’t mean growth; it means punishment. And who among us hasn’t felt the fear that being wrong might lead to being unloved?

According to Jesus, this is not a fear we need to carry any longer, because the good news he proclaims is that love is the foundational fact of all reality—and it applies equally to each of us. Believing this good news, trusting in the foundational fact of love, frees us from the power of fear that turns guilt into shame.

I like to tell my kids when they mess up that regret is a wonderful teacher. It means you’ve grown as a human being. It means you care about what is right. If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t feel guilty. Guilt, then, is not a sign that you are a bad person, but actually a sign that you are a good person. The only kind of person who truly lives with no regrets is a psychopath.

Kindred in Christ, I want to encourage you this morning with the good news that all of us get lost—at some time or another, in one way or another. Therefore, none of us can claim moral superiority over anyone else. What we can do, because unconditional love is the foundational fact of our existence, is learn to practice the art of radical self-acceptance and then extend that acceptance to those around us—even people we don’t like, people we disagree with, and people who scare us.

If God is love, as Scripture says, then the single greatest act of worship we can offer is to find joy in accepting that love for ourselves and extending it to everyone else. This is the heart of the Gospel. It is who we are, and it is what we are called to do as Christians on this earth.

Amen.