The readings this evening are about things and people who are lost
  • I was thinking about things that I have lost
  • One of the most frequent things I lost was this towel. [Hold up towel]

Some of you may remember Fr. John Barth
  • John and I lived together on Street 308, in an old wooden house, on the second floor
  • There was a lady who came with the house who washed clothes and did some light house keeping

She had an obsession with things being out in the sun
  • This was to kill the germs
  • This was when I first arrived in Cambodia and didn't know much language, but I got the idea this was to kill germs

I would take two or three showers a day and I would walk out of the shower and reach for the towel
  • It was gone
  • I would look out the window and my towel was downstairs, out on the line, to kill the germs

I would talk with her and try to explain
  • That I would really rather have the towel, even with the germs
  • As it was, while still wet, I had to put on my clothes, go get the towel, come back, dry off, and get dressed again

Also we had one knife in the house
  • In the morning I would use it to butter my toast
  • When I came home for lunch and wanted to use it for my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, THE knife would be gone
  • I would look out the window and down on the ground there was a basket with all the silverware in it, setting in the sun, killing germs

It was just a different mentality
  • Her ideas and expectations were just different from what I was looking for

In a lot of ways, religion is about a mentality
  • Trying to be in tune with the mind of God

That's the point of the gospel reading today
  • Actually the point of all the readings
  • This is one of those rare weekends when all three readings seemed focused on a common theme
  • The first and third always have a common link but often the second reading has a different focus

And today the three readings emphasize the mentality of Jesus
  • In the gospel, Jesus was reacting to a personal attack
  • People came up to him and said "How can you eat with these people? Why are you doing this?"
  • "It's not correct, it's not proper according to the Mosaic Law."

Jesus takes the opportunity to give these three little parables. He says:
  • Let me tell you what God is like.

The implication:
  • You have the wrong idea of God
  • Your mentality and God's mentality are very, very different
  • Let me try to show you what God is really like

And so he told these three stories about compassion

In the first story he has one sheep that wanders away and the shepherd leaves the 99 others

A few years ago I had the opportunity to take a sabbatical, and about ten days of it were in the Holy Land
  • We had the opportunity to see and talk to real shepherds there
  • We were all priests and were all curious
  • We asked the shepherd if he would leave 99 in the desert
  • "Heck, no!" was the response

I remember, too, when I was a kid and I would hear this gospel
  • In the United States, the translation that was used then and the priest preaching would speak of the coin as a dime
  • In United States money that is a small coin worth about ten cents, about 500 riel¹

I used to think: What's wrong with that lady?
  • The story says she sweeps the whole house, she's so diligent to find a dime
  • And I would think, Why?

But then I remember getting to that parable in a scripture class years later and the professor explained
  • That's the whole point
  • One sheep isn't worth risking the others
  • One dime isn't worth worrying about

But God worries about them
  • God goes after what is not very valuable in our mentality because it is very valuable in the eyes of God

That concern of God becomes even more poignant in the story of the Lost Son
  • The sheep and the coin didn't do anything wrong
  • The Lost Son did
  • But God offers the same welcome, the same compassion, is just as diligent in the search for that son

A calculating person would say it's not worth the risk to leave 99 in the desert
  • A calculating person would say it's not worth the effort to find that ten cents
  • The calculating person would say, this son who came back, he's not worth throwing a party for

But that's exactly the point
  • God is not calculating
  • God acts with the utmost love and compassion

God doesn't judge whether a person is worthy of compassion
  • Instead God demonstrates, God gives an example that love and compassion are not earned but freely given

Got makes that point very, very strongly in all three of those parables

In our way of thinking, it doesn't make any sense
  • But in God's way of thinking it makes a lot of sense
  • No one of us is insignificant to God
  • Each one of us is important, each one of us counts

In many Western cultures--I can speak for the United States--our training is to be calculating
  • We want to give people what they deserve
  • Part of that is a strong emphasis on human rights
  • The Americans with Disabilities Act was passed with the idea of giving people with disabilities what they deserve
  • That's a strong dynamic in some Western cultures

Again, it's the idea of a mentality

We work on the idea of promotions, rewards, bonuses
  • We look to be cost effective
  • What deserves to be done in this situation?

But in one sense, that is so foreign to the idea, the mentality of God
  • Jesus reveals the deep mercy at the heart of God
  • God wants what is lost to be restored, to be found

And God doesn't worry whether that person deserves it or not

Paul in the second reading uses himself as an example of this mercy of God
  • "I was a sinner, I was a persecutor"
  • "But I was mercifully treated by God."

He said "This saying is very trustworthy, that Christ Jesus came to save sinners.
  • Of these I am the foremost."

I am the example of this mercy of God
  • Not that I deserved it
  • But God gave it freely
  • He affirms the message of the gospel today

He shows that the method that Jesus uses is not based on justice and fairness
  • Not that God is against those
  • But God is guided more by mercy than by justice.

And St. Paul speaks about God's patience with him
  • Along with God's mercy, God's love, God's compassion

It's interesting: Paul's experience is somewhat ironical
  • The more he is aware of his sinfulness, the more he is aware of God's mercy

Some people would say Christianity is flawed because of the difference between what we say we believe and what we do
  • There is a big disconnect between those two

But on the other hand you can say that is exactly the point of Christianity
  • We say we believe, we say we want to be disciples, and so often we don't do that
  • And yet God loves us, God welcomes us back, God gives us mercy

That's the point of Christianity
  • God does that for us
  • And God calls us, if we are faithful disciples, to offer that to other people

Christianity is basically a struggle to live out a relationship
  • What we believe and what we profess, and then what we do doesn't always fit together
  • But we keep struggling to make what we do live up to what we believe

The point is not the value of things, not the value of people
  • The point is the people themselves
  • They are loved because they are God's creation, not because they have done what is right

I think that is important for us to remember and to put into practice in our dealing with others

What does this mean in our lives?

I think it means we have to look around in our world, our lives, our experience
  • Who are the people who are lost?

Who are the people who are off on the side
  • Who are off on the margins of my family, the people I work with?
  • At school who among my friends or my classmates are the people ignored or bullied?
  • Among my brothers and sisters, who are the ones who don't get treated the right way?
  • In a marriage, who is being neglected?
  • Among the children we encounter, among the people we work with, among the members of our staff, among the people we know who are different because of their accents or their ethnic origins or their country of origin or their sexual orientation, or who are different in any way at all...

  • Who are those who in a sense we have made to be lost?
  • Maybe we have pushed them out

And what will God think about that?
  • Remember, God doesn't say that you earn forgiveness, that you earn compassion, that you earn mercy
  • It's just freely given

All of these people we think: "Well, you know how THEY are..."
  • They don't have to earn our mercy
  • God gave mercy to us and said give it to them

That's the message of Jesus tonight
  • Not to wait until all these people who are on the margins deserve and earn mercy and forgiveness
  • But just to give it to them anyway

We have to show them who our God is and how our God works in our world

The End

¹ Cambodian money is called riel. The exchange rate is about 4000 riel to one US dollar.