Sermon on Luke 15:1-10

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Our readings from Exodus and from Luke show us what seem like two unsettlingly different sides of God.

In Exodus, God was angry—ready to smite the newly-freed Hebrews and start over, creating a new nation from Moses. That doesn’t sound like the God of mercy and love that I know.

Then in Luke, Jesus told some parables that illustrate different behavior from God. In them,a shepherd and a woman rejoiced over what had been lost. The familiar parable of the prodigal son follows these, which also shows a father rejoicing over a son who had been lost.

The religious leaders had grumbledbecause Jesus ate with “tax collectors and sinners,” so Jesus told them these parables, which show that God rejoices over finding what had been lost.

Those who had been lost—like maybe the lost Hebrews who had made an idol to put their trust in, because they were too anxious that Moses might not come back down the mountain after being gone for forty days? They seem like they were pretty lost.

So, does God rejoice over the lost or become overwhelmed with anger? These readings seem to contradict each other when it comes to God’s character. What is God actually like?

We can find a clue in our reading from Deuteronomy from last week.

God framed the giving of the Law after the Exodus as a choice between life and death. God wanted the Hebrews to choose what was life-giving: a covenant, a trusting relationship with God.

God was angry that the Hebrews so quickly created a substitute lower-case god, a golden calf with no life or power. They had just been freed from hundreds of years of enslavement. God had worked wonders on their behalf, even tearing the Red Sea in two so they would have safe passage to freedom as God’s people. And now, mere weeks later, they lost their trust in God.

Anger is an understandable reaction to that, though it’s distressing to think that God was inclined to wipe them out.

But God returned to Godself when Moses gave a reminder of God’s character. God “brought [the Hebrews] out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand.” God swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by God’s own self that their descendants would multiply “like the stars of heaven” and that they would inherit the land God promised them.

God had done great things for these people and had made promises to their ancestors. Moses reminded God that God had been faithful to them and had promised to continue to be faithful.

Faithfulness is God’s character. Inviting people into what is life-giving is God’s character. Love is God’s character.

We see that character in our Luke reading. Jesus illustrated beautifully and repeatedly that God rejoices when people choose life in God. These “tax collectors and sinners” were choosing life by choosing to spend time with Jesus and live into the Beloved Community that Jesus was fostering.

They could choose life because God’s grace had found them. God loved them and sought them out. They didn’t have to pass a test or quit their jobs or change their behavior before sitting with Jesus. They didn’t earn their place at Jesus’ table—none of us do. Jesus rejoiced at their very existence.

The final parable ends with the older brother refusing to join the party for his prodigal younger brother and his father reminding him of how much he values him too, not just the younger brother.

Itends without telling whether the older brother went in to celebrate.

The religious leaders who were complaining about Jesus’ company were like the older brother who was unwilling to celebrate the “wrong” kind of person. It was up to them to write the ending of the parable. Were they willing to associate with the “wrong” kind of people for Jesus’ sake?

Not only were tax collectors known for skimming off the top for themselves, but they were also collaborators with the Romans.They were hated for being greedy and crooked and for contributing to the occupation of their land by the Roman Empire.

Jewish people in the first century understood the word “sinners” differently from us. We recognize that we’re all simultaneously saints and sinners. We mess up all the time, hurting ourselves and others, and we completely depend on God’s grace and forgiveness.

But in the first century, according to New Testament professor Greg Carey, the word “sinners” meant people who “so habitually transgress the ways of God that they are sinners in need of repentance.” They were so consistently removed from the life-giving way of life that it would take a serious change of behavior to realign with it.

Still, it required an element of human judgment from the religious leaders to decide who was a “sinner” and who wasn’t. We humans excel at judging one another. “Tax collector” was an objective identity, but even then, the religious leaders complained that Jesus hung out with them, which condemns their very presence as unseemly.

But Jesus himself didn’t require those “tax collectors and sinners” to change their ways before spending time with them. He rejoiced that they wanted to be near him.

The religious leaders, on the other hand, missed out on time with Jesus because they wouldn’t mingle with those socially unfit people.

Jesus, instead of calling them out on their judgmental behavior, started to tell stories, stories about things that were lost and then found. And then about an older brother who wouldn’t join the party because he was so upset about his habitually transgressing brother getting celebrated.

Just as the father invited his elder son into the party, Jesus was inviting the religious leaders to reevaluate their understanding of who was on the outside—who was irredeemably lost and immoral—and just join the party already.

We too can get distracted from simply rejoicing in God’s presence.

We can be like the Hebrews and forget God’s past faithfulness, instead putting our trust in idols that aren’t life-giving for us.

We can become overly concerned with fitting in, changing ourselves to who we think others want us to be, instead of seeking the sense of belonging that comes when we’re seen and valued as the beloved children of God we are.

We can seek the security of wealth and status, putting our trust in retirement accounts, security systems, insurance, and knowing the “right” people, instead of trusting God to provide and keep us secure.

We can create an idol out of a political party, a golden donkey or elephant, and forget that the Reign of God doesn’t fit into any one box but brings communion, abundance, and belovedness that the world cannot understand and human beings can’t create on our own.

And also, we can be like the religious leaders in our story: concerned with the image our social circle projects, unwilling to associate with those we deem on the outside. We put others in boxes or label them as the wrong type of person instead of seeing everyone through God’s eyes.

Our God, whose character is faithful, life-giving, and loving, saved us all by grace without us doing a single thing to be worthy of it and instead doing many things that make us unworthy of it. God recognized our lostness and didn’t rest until we were found safe in God’s hands.

God set a place for us that we’ll never earn. It’s out of gratitude for that inclusion and belonging that we can set down our judgment, our categories, and our labels that keep us from recognizing the face of God in everyone we meet.It’s only because of God’s grace that we can choose what is life-giving for us and the world we live in.

God rejoices that you are found by God’s love. This table is set for you. You belong here, and so does everyone else. Thank God!