The passages that form the foundation for this sermon are:  Amos 6:1a, 4-7; 1 Timothy 6:11-19, Luke 16:1-8, and Luke 16:19-31.

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This morning I want to both revisit last week’s gospel reading and tie it to the gospel reading for today.
I want to do this for two reasons.
First, it is always good, whenever possible, to look at scripture passages within their larger context.
Too often, we only look at the scripture at hand without reference to where it is found in the text.
As the saying goes, context is everything.
Second, if you remember from last week,
I tied the parable of the “unjust” steward, as it is commonly called,
to the idea of forgiveness.
But there is almost always more than one way to interpret Jesus’ parables and teaching,
and today’s sermon is an opportunity for us to examine the passage from last week from a different perspective.
So, let’s take one more look at this parable for a few minutes.

As I mentioned last week,
the first scripture lesson from Luke (Luke 16:1-8) is rather strange,
and it is especially disconcerting to hear Jesus tell it.
It seems as though Jesus is commending the dishonest actions of a businessman.
You remember the story, I am sure,
but let’s hear it again from a more contemporary perspective.

The notice came in the morning.
Word had leaked out that he had not done too well in the managing of his employer’s assets,
and now he had to turn over his books.
Naturally, he had experienced a few minutes of sheer panic.
His double-dealing would be discovered,
he had no doubt about that.
He was sure to be fired,
and a lawsuit would probably ensue as well.
And then what would he do?
As the passage says,
he wasn’t strong enough to do manual labor – like digging ditches,
and he was too proud to beg.

Suddenly, it came to him.
If he was going to be fired,
friends and allies would be essential.
He needed some protection, some insurance.
So the manager called in all the people who owed his boss money and told them to sit down.
He explained to them his predicament, and said,
“WE still have time, you know.
The books can still be changed,
but if we wait till tomorrow,
well, tomorrow will be too late.
Now what will you give me if I change them?”

Well, amounts were mentioned,
some haggling took place,
and affairs were finally settled.
One hundred barrels of olive oil was reduced to fifty.
A thousand bushels of wheat to only eight hundred.
Everything was done with pencils and erasers, of course,
and finally, the books were closed.
Everything had been dealt with in time.

And as a consequence of all his wheeling and dealing,
not only was the manager not fired,
but he was even commended by his boss for his ingenuity and shrewdness.

Now after telling this story,
which might very well have been based on a true story floating around Jerusalem at the time,
Jesus said that he really admired the presence of mind that the manager had.
He had not panicked,
He did not waste time crying over spilt milk,
but instead, he had taken immediate action.
Then Jesus asked his disciples, in effect,
“Why don’t you act like that manager when it comes to the affairs of the Kingdom of God I have given to you?”

Now this doesn’t mean Jesus thought we should act unfairly or unjustly.
No, what he meant was that we should act as quickly and efficiently as that manager did.
In effect Jesus is saying to his followers, then and now,
“Why don’t you do something?
Don’t just sit around and worry, or get into a tizzy, or panic,
or throw up your hands in disgust.
Do something.”
As Jesus would later add,
“We, the sons and daughters of light,
are sometimes so naive and unsophisticated when compared to the so-called business types or the crafty evil-doers who control the world.”

By telling the story about the unjust steward,
Jesus was reminding his disciples that in the world of business and industry,
people are concerned about the market and the marketability of their goods.
They worry about good management and labor production.
They look at current trends and plan strategies for the future.
They get concerned about the appearance of their product and they speak convincingly of its worth.
They do everything they can to make sure that they can turn a profit.
And in the more successful companies,
you will find that their employees are faithful,
at least publicly,
in their allegiance to the company and its product.

Now contrast these attitudes and behaviors with those found in the church.
Church members are more apt to criticize their church than praise it.
They are more likely to spend their free time finding fault than they are to coming up with solutions as to how the mission and ministry of Christ might be better carried out.
And in the church we spend hours in meetings and in activities that primarily benefit ourselves,
as if to avoid being engaged in more meaningful activities. . .
activities such as spreading to everyone we meet the good news of God’s love in Christ,
or getting your hands dirty from doing Christ’s work?

Of course, when it comes right down to it,

many of us would rather come up with excuses for not getting involved than actually do Christ’s work in the here and now.
But Jesus lets us know by this story that he isn’t about to accept our excuses for not taking any action.
Yes, the world is an evil place.
Yes, it is hard to live a Christian life.
Yes, it is even harder to try to reach out to others.
And Yes, many things you will try will just fail and you will fall flat on your face.
It is risky, time-consuming,
and sometimes doesn’t have much of a payoff.

But that doesn’t mean we can just quit and throw up our hands in disgust and say,
“I’ve tried and tried, nothing seems to work.”
It doesn’t mean we can sit back and remain content with what we’ve done.
It doesn’t mean we can stop trying.
No, Jesus lets us know that we should do all we can,
as quickly as we can.

You and I cannot escape from the evil of this world.
We cannot keep our hands clean,
but we are not allowed to keep them in our pockets either.
We must risk getting our hands a little dirty at times,
if our cleans hearts are to have any meaning.
It is as the writer of James says,
Faith without works is dead.
Clean hearts without dirty hands are worthless.

There are times when you have to get your hands dirty.
And be warned,
if you choose to keep your hands clean,
then you have to be ready to face the consequences.

Jesus points out these consequences in the second passage from Luke (Luke 16:19-31) for today.
It is the familiar story of Lazarus and the rich man.
Here we are told that the rich man spent his money lavishly and almost entirely upon himself.
He dressed in the best clothes and most up to date fashions.
He ate beautiful and filling gourmet meals – ten course dinners,
candlelight all over,
soft music in the background,
vintage wines.
He had it all.

Lazarus, on the other hand, had nothing.
Not even his health.
Poor, diseased, unclean,
Lazarus lay at the front gate to the rich man’s mansion every day,
hoping for a small handout,
a few coins,
a piece of bread.
Lazarus’ only company was the dogs that came to lick his sores.
He was all but invisible to everyone,
especially the rich man.
The rich man either could not or would not even acknowledge Lazarus’ presence.
After all, if he even looked at him with more than a cursory glance,
how could he have not been moved to do something,
anything to help.
(But then we do the same thing, do we not?
Walking by beggars – don’t look at them, don’t acknowledge them,
or they will mark you as a sucker and ask for your help.
That’s the last thing we want to happen, right?)

It was certainly the last thing the rich man wanted.
He didn’t see Lazarus because he didn’t want to see him.
And he didn’t want to see him because he didn’t want to get his hands dirty.
The rich man didn’t want to dirty his hands.
He did not take any action to improve the poor man’s lot.
Oh, he allowed him on his property,
he allowed him to search for food in the trash cans,
But the rich man didn’t really care for the life that was dying in the running sores of Lazarus.

And it was that lack of care that created the distance between the rich man and Lazarus,
and that distance grew every day,
even though they were almost always close by to each other.
And when they both died,
that distance separated them still.
The rich man had not wanted to dirty his hands,
And now even the tip of a finger dipped in water that he asked for was refused.
The distance had become too great.
Nothing could cross it anymore.

It is simple really,
this gospel we profess and even celebrate.
It is a call to have clean hearts and to love God,
tied to the call to dirty our hands by loving and caring for each other.

What is not so simple are the excuses,
the reasons,
the elaborate schemes we build to keep our hands clean.
But the fact is,
God will not accept any of our reasons, excuses or schemes.
God expects us to take action,
to roll up our sleeves and go about doing the good work of the gospel,
and if that means getting our hands dirty,
then so be it.

A passage from James illuminates this (This is from “The Message,”  James 2:14-17):
Dear friends, do you think you’ll get anywhere in this if you learn all
the right words but never do anything?
Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it?   For instance, you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say,
“Good morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ!
Be filled with the Holy Spirit!”
and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup-where does that get you?
Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?

Of course, it’s not that our deeds or hard work will save us,
but, if our faith is real and alive,
then there will necessarily be some fruit, something real.
If our faith is alive and growing, if Jesus is our Lord,
then there is absolutely no way that our faith will not leak out into our living, our relationships and our goals,
for a living faith cannot be contained.

This all reminds me of a story that’s very similar in some ways to the parable Jesus told.
At the beginning of this tale we read:
“Marley was dead: to begin with.
There is no doubt whatever about that.
The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner.
Scrooge signed it.”

Of course, you know this story as Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol.”
Here is a story of a rich man who dies and is in torment.
Here is a story of someone coming back from the dead with a warning.
It’s not a resurrection story, it’s a ghost story;
it’s not the good Lazarus being sent back,
but the bad rich guy, Marley;
who has come from the land of the dead to warn someone who’s still alive.
And in his case, as you remember, Marley is dragging a chain.

“You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. “Tell me why?”

“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost.
“I made it link by link, and yard by yard;
I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.
Is its pattern strange to you?”

Scrooge trembled more and more.

“Or would you know,” pursued the Ghost, “the
weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself?
It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since.
It is a ponderous chain!”

“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, .

“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again.
“Mankind was my business.
The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance,
and benevolence, were, all, my business.
The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the
comprehensive ocean of my business!”

And so it was, and so it still is.
Our business, my friends, is twofold:
love God by living with clean and pure hearts,
and love each other and the world by getting our hands dirty.
Woe to us, if we do not do both.
As Amos states in today’s reading (Amos 6:1a, 4-7)
(This is my paraphrase.)

“Alas for those who are at ease in the dwelling place of God,
and for those who feel secure in holy places.
Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory,
and lounge on their couches,
and eat lambs from the flock, and calves from the stall;
who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp,
and like David improvise on instruments of music;
who drink wine from bowls,
and anoint themselves with the finest oils,
but are not grieved over the ruin of my people!”

As Pastor Edward F. Markquart, of Grace Lutheran Church in Seattle, Washington,put it:
“There is going to be a time in history, at the end of history,
when God is going to ask you:
“What did you do for Lazarus?”
You and I are going to be asked that question someday and hopefully we will not say, “
O, I gave him some crumbs from my table.
As I cleaned my table, he got the crumbs that were left.”

Markquart goes on to add that in l905 we received the classic interpretation of this parable in the person of Dr. Albert Schweitzer.
As some of you older folks may remember,
Albert Schweitzer was from England and he was enormously gifted.
He had degrees in music, medicine, and theology;
he could do almost everything and anything.
One day, Schweitzer came to church and heard a sermon preached about the parable, the rich man and Lazarus,
and his life was changed.
For him, the rich man was Europe; the poor man was Africa,
and he knew that he had to give his life to the poorest of people in central Africa.
Soon he left the safety of England for the heart of Africa,
and he gave his heart, soul, time and abilities to the poorest of the poor in central Africa.
Later on, Dr. Schweitzer would write the following words:
“We . . . are the rich people.
Out there . . . lies wretched Lazarus.
Just as the rich man sinned against Lazarus because of his lack of heart and compassion,
so the rich man would not put himself in Lazarus’ place.
Nor did the rich man let his conscience tell him what to do.
And so we . . . have sinned against the poorest of the world at our gates.”

But this morning I really don’t care about the life of Albert Schweitzer and what he did.
The questions are for you and me.
The questions are for you and me.
“What did you do for Lazarus?
What are you doing for Lazarus?”
And are you willing to get your hands dirty to help him?  [print_link]

Technorati tags: Clean Hearts, Dirty Hands. Sermon, Proper 21C, Ordinary 26C, Pentecost 18C Amos 6:1-7, 1 Timothy 6:11-19, Luke 16:1-8, Luke 16:19-31. the unjust steward, Lazarus, Dives, the rich man, Albert Schweitzer, Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge. Marley

Losers – Based on Luke 15:1-32

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Special thanks to my favorite theologian Robert Farrar Capon and his writings on this passage.  They heavily informed my work on the middle section about the shepherd searching for the lost sheep, the woman looking for her lost coin, and the two lost sons (otherwise known as the “Parable of the Prodigal Son”).

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We are, all of us, losers.
We are, all of us, in the process of either losing something or getting lost ourselves.
We are always losing things of value:
friendships of the past,
our loved ones through betrayal, divorce and death,
our children to adulthood (though they never really go away… right?),
and ultimately, we lose our lives to deteriorating health and bodily decay.
Some people even lose their faith -
a tragedy strikes too close to home and heart -
and they lose their religion.

Of course, we lose less important things too.
Our keys, books, important documents . . .
Have you ever lost your car in a large parking lot?
We are losers; even the most successful of us.
Oh, we may be proud of our accomplishments.
We may have even done a thing or two to garner attention or recognition.
But we are still losers nonetheless.

Over time, some of the more observant of us, have noticed this.
Michael Jordan, considered by many to be the paragon of winning, once said,
“I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career.
I have lost almost 300 games.
26 times I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot . . . and missed.
And I have failed over and over and over again in my life.”

In Philippians 3, Paul the apostle tells us that:
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh,
I have more: circumcised on the eighth day,
a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin,
a Hebrew born of Hebrews;  as to the law, a Pharisee;
as to zeal, a persecutor of the church;
as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
Yet whatever gains I had,
these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.
More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things,
and I regard them as rubbish (the more accurate word here is actually “dung”)
I regard them as dung, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him

Like Paul, I could brag a little about my accomplishments if I wanted to.
Three college degrees,
a member of numerous  honor societies,
I am a published writer,
I have won numerous scholarships, awards, certificates of merit,
and I have had a somewhat successful 20 year career in ministry.
But does any of this make me any less of a loser?
No, it doesn’t, for I too have failed at so many things in my life.

And how about you?
What are your accomplishments, achievements, and good deeds?
And do any of these things make you any less of a loser?
No, unfortunately they do not.
As another has said,
when we stand before God, all our righteousness is but filthy rags.
And Martin Luther, the great reformer, put it this way,
in his last written words before his death:
“We are all beggars; this is true.”
And what are beggars, if not the ultimate losers?
I guess it is fortunate for us that God loves losers.
That God loves those of us who are lost,
and he will stop at nothing to find us.

“I want you to imagine that you have one hundred sheep and that you lose one of them,”
Jesus says to the very religious people who have gathered around him.
“Now if you had done that, wouldn’t you go look for the lost one until you find it?”
Well, what’s the real answer to that question?
The real answer to that question is “of course not.”
Nobody in his right mind in the sheep business with one hundred sheep,
and who loses one, leaves the ninety-nine to the wolves and the coyotes,
and goes chasing off after one.
You cut your losses, forget about the lost sheep, and go on with the 99.
So Jesus’ question is perverse, odd and ironic.
Who among you wouldn’t go out and do this?
Well, no one would; no one would go out and do this sort of thing.

And as if that was not enough, Jesus goes on,
“And when you find that one lost sheep, what do you do next?
Well, I’ll tell you what I would do.
I would put the sheep on my shoulder,
and then notice what Jesus says here,
he doesn’t say, “And I will go back to the ninety-nine and give the little sheep back to his mother sheep,”
or something else like that.
No, what Jesus says is that he puts the lost sheep on his shoulders and goes to his house.
He goes home.
In this parable, Jesus never goes back to the ninety-nine sheep.

You see, as Bible scholar Robert Capon points out, the 99 sheep are a set-up.
Jesus has divided the flock into one sheep and 99 sheep,
but he’s not trying to make two different groups representing humankind -
you know, 99 who don’t get lost, and one who does.
No, the real meaning of the one and the 99 is that the one lost sheep represents the whole human race as it really is,
and the 99 “found” sheep who never get lost are the whole human race as we think we are.
That’s why the 99 sheep are ultimately unimportant in this story.
The one lost sheep, the one loser sheep, stands for all of us,
and this means that the only thing the shepherd-God, the God character – is interested in,
is going after the lost,
and, if necessary,
the shepherd will go out of the sheep ranching business to find the lost.
Further, this means that God will even go out of the God business,
out of the business of being the kind of God we turn God into –
the bookkeeper God,
a kind of  divine Santa Claus in the sky who’s keeping records on everybody, naughty and nice,
and if you aren’t nice, he’s not going to bother with you anymore.
That’s the business God leaves behind when he goes after the lost because he only wants to come and find sinners . . . losers, in other words.
He doesn’t want anything or anyone else.

Jesus ends this story with one last statement:
“I say to you that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”
This is the proof that every human being is found in the one lost sheep.
After all, have you ever met any of those ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance?
No, you haven’t; there aren’t any.
In fact, there isn’t one in the whole world.
So this proves the set-up that Jesus is only interested in finding the lost;
that God, in Christ, is only interested in searching for losers.

Now after the lost sheep, Jesus follows up with the parable of the lost coin,
and here the God character is a woman,
and a very strange woman at that, if you ask me
(and here, I have to admit that as a man, women have always been strange to me).
If the shepherd is crazy to go chase one sheep and leave 99 alone in the wilderness,
this woman is even worse.
Jesus says this woman has ten silver dollars,
and every morning she gets up, takes a look at them,
perhaps she even polishes them,
and then she puts them back down again until the next day.
But when she gets up one morning,
she discovers that one of her silver dollars is missing.
So, what does this crazy woman do?
She puts her entire life on hold.
She searches and searches and searches,
turning her life and her house upside until she finds the one lousy, lost coin.

And what does she do when she finds it?
Well, she gets on the phone to her friends and her neighbors and says,
“Come on over, I’m going to have a party. I found my lost coin.”
A party?  Just because she found a lost coin?
A party that will cost much more to host than the silly coin she has found?
Yeah, right!

But in a way this woman and her actions prove something.
In the lost sheep, you can develop some pity for the poor, little lost sheep.
You can feel bad, you know, that it’s injured or hurt or fearful and all that.
But you can’t work up any pity for a lost coin.
A lost coin doesn’t even knows it’s lost.
The point is that what these two parables put together say is that what governs God’s behavior to us is not our sins, and it’s not our problems. . . it’s his need to find us.
These parables are all about the need of the finder to find,
not about the need of the lost to be found.

And nowhere is this clearer than in the last parable in Luke 15,
in which we have 2 lost sons and three great big losers.
In this story, which you all know, the youngest of two sons comes up to his dad and says,
“Dad, you know that will you have . . . Can you do me a favor?
I don’t really want to hang around until you die to get what’s coming to me,
so could you act like you’re dead now and give me my inheritance today?
Can you imagine?
But guess what?  The father does it.
He gives the younger son his inheritance in cash,
and he gives the rest of what he has, including the ranch, to the older brother,
and then the father retires to his rocking chair on the front porch.

So the younger son takes the money and goes to Europe.
He spends it on wine, women, and song;  he blows all his money.,
And when his money is gone, he ends up slopping pigs,
and so bad is he that he is tempted to join them at the feeding trough.
Then one day a light bulb comes on in the dark recesses of his mind,
and he thinks to himself,
“You know what, my father’s servants eat better than I do.
I’m going to go home, and say,
‘Father, I’ve sinned against heaven and against you.
I’m not worthy to be your son; make me a hired servant.’”

And this is what he does.
But even before he has a chance to walk in the front door,
his dad runs off the front porch and meets him on the road,
almost a mile from the house.
And then before he gets his rehearsed confession out of his mouth,
the father forgives him everything and orders a party for his wayward son.
After all, “My son was dead, and he’s alive, he was lost, now he’s found.”
And so they have a party, and there’s music and dancing and singing and eating.
Then Jesus brings in the other lost son.
He’s the ninety-nine; he’s the nine other coins in the box.
He thinks he’s already found;
in fact, he believes that he has never even been lost.
This boy comes in from the fields,
and he’s starts right in with the whining and complaining:
“All these years I have been such a good boy,
I’ve done everything you ever asked me to do,
I’ve done one wonderful thing after another,
and you never even gave me a goat to have a party with my friends.
But when this son of yours,
who has wasted his money on whores,
comes home, then you give him the fatted calf.”
And he won’t go in and join the celebration.

So what does the father, the God character in the story, do?
He goes out - like the shepherd, like the woman - to seek the lost.
Remember, it’s all about the need of the finder to find.
He all but begs his oldest boy to join the party,
to forget about his anger and his sense of fairness and justice.
to stop being so lost himself and to just get found.
And that is where the story ends.

And what does the eldest son do?
We don’t know.
Because Jesus ended in story in such a way that it doesn’t ever really end.
For 2000 years this story has been read in the church,
and every year people read it in the Bible over and over again, endlessly.
And for 2000 years, this story has never, ever ended.
The father always seeks the lost son,
whether it’s the prodigal or the stay at home “good” boy.
The father will always seek the lost.

And in the final analysis that is why this is the consummate “loser” story.
Certainly the prodigal son is a loser.
He has lost everything, even his dignity.
He is a disgrace, a failure, who has to crawl back home,
all the while choking on the big mess of crow he has to eat in order to do so.
Even his attempt at repentance is a joke.
There’s not a sincere word in it.
No, all he wants is to get out of the jam he is in.

The older boy is no less a loser, however.
This boy loves to keep score.
He loves to make sure that he will always get his fair share.
He has an overdeveloped sense of justice,
he is consumed with unforgiveness,
and he would rather stand outside and pout and complain and give his Dad a hard time than go inside the house and party and welcome home his only brother, who had been all but dead to him.
Now I want to know,
What kind of person doesn’t join in a good old fashioned party?
What kind of person doesn’t rejoice and celebrate when occasion calls for it.
I’ll tell you what kind of person doesn’t . . . a loser.

And that brings us to the biggest loser of all in this story:
the old man, the father.
This man has been told by his son that he was as good as dead to him,
and yet he spends the better part of every day sitting on the porch staring off into the distance,
hoping against hope that his ingrate of a son will one day return home.
Talk about a loser.
His son has all but cursed him,
he has left and forsaken him,
and he has taken his Dad for everything he has,
And yet there the father is, searching the horizon . . . waiting, watching.
It’s sad . . . pathetic really.
This father, this stand-in for God,
who is as big a loser, an even bigger loser, than his children ever dared to be.

This father is God, and God is the father, the divine loser,
who, in Jesus, gives away the farm and forsakes his heavenly glory and power so that he can look for and search out the losers of this world.
Losers, who I might add would just as soon spit in his face and nail him to a tree as to look at him.
And yet there he is, the biggest loser of all time,
suspended between heaven and earth,
blood dripping down his forehead into his eyes,
hands and feet pierced by spikes,
his back a bloody pulp from the Roman whip,
and still he is  looking down the road,
scanning the horizon, for his wayward children,
the very ones who have done this to him,
waiting for them to come home.
Forgive them, he says.

Now I ask you,
what kind of shepherd, what kind of father, what kind of God acts like that?
Our good shepherd does, that’s who.
Our heavenly father does.
Our God in Christ does.
He became a loser himself for the sake of all us losers.
That’s how much he loves losers and the lost.

“Show me a good loser,” a man once said not long ago, “and I will show you a real loser.”
Martina Navratilova once said that the person who remarked, “It’s not whether you win or lose that counts,” probably lost.
And Vince Lombardi asked,
“If it doesn’t matter who wins or loses, then why do they keep score?”
Media mogul Ted Turner has called Christianity a religion for losers.
What Mr. Turner and his fellow winners do not understand is that they and we are all losers in the sight of God.
But even more important than that,
what he and they and we need to know most of all it this:
The only people our loser God can save are losers,
people who know that they are losers and that they are among the lost.
Amen.  [print_link]

Technorati tags: sermon, lectionary, Proper 19C, Ordinary 24C, Pentecost 16C, losers, lost, Luke 15:11-32