(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on September 11, 2016, Proper 19)
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“This Fellow Welcomes Sinners and Eats with Them”
I wonder how we would feel if Jesus came to Gayton Road one Sunday morning, but instead of entering our doors, he sat outside the trailer next-door and shared the company of a solitary smoker, and occasionally spasms of laughter could be heard through our sanctuary doors. My guess is that we might feel just a smidgeon of what the Pharisees and scribes feel in today’s scripture.
What is it, exactly, that irks them so much about Jesus hanging out with the tax collectors and sinners? I imagine it was the little things, like hearing Jesus crack up at a tax collector’s joke, or seeing him smile when a pair of dirty hands passed him a loaf of bread. I imagine it was Jesus’ obvious joy that got under their skin the most. We can almost hear the disdain in their voice: “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them” (15:2).
Perhaps we can hear a little hurt, too.
“Rejoice with Me!”
I think Jesus hears the disdain and hurt in their voice. I think that’s the reason he responds with the stories of the lost sheep and the lost coin, stories that invite a response completely opposite to the grumbling of the Pharisees and the scribes. The point of these two parables is simple. There’s a party going on. Stop grumbling, get outside, and join it. Both parables end with the same invitation: “Rejoice with me, for I have found [what was] lost” (15:6, 9).
God’s kingdom party, Jesus suggests, cannot be contained by any four walls, no matter how sacred they are. Why? Because it is a search party. It is a party that happens outside the gates, rather than inside. It is a party that happens with the lost, rather than with the found. This party is yet another kingdom reversal, yet another kingdom wave that capsizes our safe and settled reality. According to the Pharisees and the scribes—who are the first century equivalent of good churchgoing folks like us—sinners deserve our disapproving glances. They deserve our finger-wagging reprimands. In this way, shame and guilt may eventually convict them of their sin and lead them home. Then, and only then, may they be admitted to the saintly celebrations.
But Jesus does quite the opposite of what we do. “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” He doesn’t finger-wag or frown on them.[1] Nor does he tap his foot and wait until they realize the error of their ways. He goes outside the walls of the righteous in order to be with them, not to correct them, but to bring the party to them—to befriend them, to love them, to sit at their tables (cf. 5:30; 7:34).
“This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
Seeing Sinners with Jesus:
Lost—and Homeward Bound
I wonder how Jesus saw sinners. Not once in the gospel of Luke does Jesus scold a sinner. But numerous times, he eats with them.[2] The way that he talks about them in today’s parables hints that Jesus saw wayward souls with more grace than our world does, and certainly with more grace than many religious folks do.
Generally speaking, people do not get lost on purpose. Much less so, coins and sheep. To figure sinners as a lost sheep and a lost coin, then, is to suggest that they are not willfully wicked people. They don’t get lost on purpose any more than do sheep or coins. I wonder, in fact, if by describing them as lost, Jesus is suggesting that they’re trying to get home. For what else is at the heart of sin but a mistaken attempt to find happiness, a misguided attempt to get home. By describing sinners as lost, Jesus graciously paints their hearts as homeward bound.
It reminds me of a suggestive quote by Scottish writer Bruce Marshall: “The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God.”[3]
Would Jesus Hold Your Protest Sign?
Speaking of brothels and…those sorts of places—I don’t know if you heard or read about a small group of men here in Richmond who were protesting strip clubs down in Shockhoe Bottom. They wanted the clubs to shut down, and so they stationed themselves outside with placards and well-intentioned arguments, trying to dissuade the clubs’ patrons. One man held a sign that read, “Lust hurts everyone.”[4]
Jesus would undoubtedly agree with that sign. But he would not be holding it. At least not on today’s evidence.
What would Jesus be doing?
“This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
This Gal Welcomes Dancers and Eats with Them
Yes, but what would that really look like? What does God’s search party look like inside a strip club?
I have a hunch it looks a little bit like what Lia Scholl, a Baptist minister in Richmond, has been doing. Lia visits strips clubs, wearing not a clerical collar but just plain jeans, bringing not posters and protests but “a gift” to the dancers, “a smile,” and “a compliment.” She tips, too.[5] She says that she is “called to build relationships with the dancers and to love the dancers.”[6]
This gal welcomes dancers and eats with them.
While some may grumble that she does not do enough to confront them in their sin, just as the religious folks grumbled about Jesus, she cares first and foremost about connecting with them rather than challenging their sin. She is part of God’s search party, a search that is also a party, a search that takes the party of God’s kingdom out into the world, where it welcomes sinners and eats with them.
A lot of religious folks get hung up on joining God’s search party. They’d prefer it to be more of a search crusade, a quest on which we annihilate sin and then gather in whatever’s left. Their motto is “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” My guess is that the Pharisees and the scribes said the same thing. But Jesus doesn’t make that distinction. This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them. He doesn’t say, “I love you—but only once you’ve repented.”
“Love the sinner, hate the sin” is a nice theory, as it allows us to maintain our disgust for a person’s behavior, but in practice it allows hate to contaminate our love. Jesus simply loves the person. He’s not blind to the sin. If anything, he sees it more clearly than we do. He sees it for what it is, for what it means. He sees a heart that is lost, which is to say, a heart that is homeward bound and needful of love.
The Church’s Biggest Mistake?
I wonder how the Pharisees and scribes responded to Jesus’ parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin. I wonder how most religious folks respond today. My guess is that they might fixate on that bit at the end, where Jesus explains the meaning of the story, where he talks about the joy in heaven when one sinner repents. “Exactly!” they might cry. “Jesus, listen to your own story,” they might say. “What matters is that sinners repent first. Only then can we really share the joyful welcome of God’s kingdom with them. We need to get them to repent of their sin before we can rejoice with them.”
But in saying this, they would be making the same mistake that the church has made through the years. In fact, I believe it’s the biggest mistake that the church makes: mistaking itself for God. In the parables, it is God who finds the sheep and the coin; it is God who restores the lost to the fold. It is God who leads the search party and God who changes the way of wayward hearts. If anyone is getting the sinners to repent, it is God, not us.
Our part in the story, according to the parables, is simple. We are to share the joy of God’s kingdom. We are to welcome sinners and eat with them.
The Chicken and the Egg,
Or Joy and Repentance
Now we could decide to constrain our joy, to hold it in for the moment that a lost person walks through our church doors, the moment when God brings the search party home. But I read the story a little bit differently than that. Remember what the people are saying about Jesus?
“This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
Jesus takes the party outside to the people who are lost. He smiles on them. Maybe gives them a small gift, notices something awesome about them and compliments them on it. Makes them to feel welcome right where they are. In a word, he shares God’s joy with them—right where they are.
And here’s the sneaking suspicion that I cannot get rid of. I wonder if we’ve been getting it wrong all this time, thinking repentance comes before joy. If Jesus’ life is anything to go by, it looks like the joy of the party comes first, and then repentance. In fact, could it be that our joy is precisely what leads the lost to repentance?
A “Search Party” Worthy of the Name
And that’s why I think that God’s search party is literally a “search party,” the “search party” par excellence. It gives a fuller meaning to the phrase “search party” than the phrase itself ever knew it had. It is not merely a search that becomes a party, a moralizing quest that only allows the party to begin once everyone’s returned home and cleaned up. It is both a search and a party at the very same time.
“This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
Jesus is taking the party to them, and like the shepherd and the woman, he invites us to share his joy. The kingdom of God takes us on a search party to the very people whom we are quickest to judge. Instead of judging them, Jesus shares his joy with them. This fellow welcomes them and eats with them, embraces them and loves them, and all while they are still sinners, all while they are lost. And who knows…perhaps it is this joy that leads them home. And perhaps if we share this joy, it will lead us, who are also sinners, home too.
Prayer
Friend of sinners,
Whose table is found
Not only inside these walls
But wherever sinners are welcomed—
Lead us not to judge
But to rejoice.
May we seek the lost
And bring your party to them,
Until all are found in your love.
Amen.
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[1] If anything, he reserves this behavior for the righteous and the religious.
[2] Greg Carey, “Commentary on Luke 15:1-10,” http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=674, accessed September 7, 2016.
[3] Bruce Marshall, The World, the Flesh, and Father Smith (Garden City, N. Y.: Image, 1957), 114.
[4] Melissa Hipolit, “Christian Group Protests ‘the Devil’ Inside Richmond Strip Club,” http://wtvr.com/2016/04/08/club-rouge-protest/, accessed September 7, 2016.
[5] Lia Scholl, “The Borders I Cross,” http://www.bpfna.org/about-us/news/2015/05/11/the-borders-i-cross.1501062, accessed September 7, 2016.
[6] Interview between Michel Martin and Lia Scholl, “Getting Dancers from Poles to Pulpits,” http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17495976, accessed September 7, 2016.
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