| Note: No sermon is quite the same when you read it. You miss the inflections, the expression that you gain in the hearing. The words below are only a close approximation of the sermon, taken from handwritten notes. Nevertheless, the words (as best as can be deciphered!) are shared with you here. The Webmeister |
Sixteenth Sunday of Pentecost To rejoice over the coin or the sheep that was found, we must first lose it. To lose something is never easy, and yet that is a necessary part of our Christian life. I'm not sure if the Pharisees in today's Gospel who were angry about who Jesus was spending time with understood this very well. Maybe, like us sometimes, they thought they understood God, that they knew it all. But Jesus counters their false assurance with two stories this morning about losing things; in other words, telling the Pharisees they don't understand a thing. These two stories, about a lost sheep and a lost coin invite us to consider the strange paradox that sometimes the way God gives us things is by taking them away. A little over two weeks ago I stood in a darkened room alone with my mother at hospice. It was the evening, about 10:30 PM, and after a period of silence we began to talk. It was one of those rare conversations where the standard rules about what you should say to another person no longer applied. I knew that she would not live much longer and I also knew she would soon lose her ability to speak. And so I told her everything I needed to tell her. I told her I loved her, I thanked her for what a wonderful mother she was to me. I thanked her for her support, and for her love. And she said the same to me. The next day, my mother had lost some of her ability to speak. I realized how grateful I was to have had that conversation. We said everything that needed to be said. And so after died, I did not feel as if there was any unfinished business between us. I say all this still very much from a position of grief. I have lost my mother. To grieve for the loss of someone is very hard work. It drains you physically, mentally, and especially, spiritually. Losing something is never easy. But I am aware that there is also something deeply valuable in losing things. I believe that Jesus understood that losing things was a way in which we make room for God, and so he tells these stories about a lost coin and a lost sheep so that we might understand that in losing things, we really receive. When the shepherd loses one sheep, he leaves the group and finds the one lost sheep. When the woman loses a coin, she lights a lamp and searches all over her house until that coin is found. It seems that when things are lost that they take on more value. It is only when they are gone that we realize how much they meant to us. From the start of my mother's decline over a month ago, I made every intention to not be afraid of losing her. To not be afraid of the process of loss. It has been challenging: I've confronted loss in all of its ugliness. And in the upsurge of loss, questions and doubts and thoughts have all percolated to the surface. And I've allowed myself to entertain every single one of them. Going through this process, which I am still very much in the midst of, I have become aware that the certainty I was standing on was not certain. I have lost some of those deeply held beliefs I once treasured when I was younger. Maybe I lost them when I lost my mother. But in losing that certainty, I have received something greater, a sense of peace, a peace I cannot explain in all of this. A peace that some say passes all our understanding. If all of this sounds different from the message we hear preached in much of American mainline Christianity, with its focus on acquisition and prosperity, well, all I can say is, it is. I have learned in the past few weeks that much of Christianity is about finding God in loss. The author J.B. Phillips once wrote a book entitled "Your God is Too Small." I think what the title of that book means is that the way we understand God will always be inadequate. And so we must be willing to lose or to give away that certainty we cling onto, and in that surrender, in confronting loss in all of it's terrifying and scary means, we meet God. And so in order for me to receive faith, I must first lose it. We cannot rejoice over something found that have not first lost, whether that is a sheep or a coin or a parent. To receive, we must sometimes lose. As difficult as losing is, somehow through that process of loss, we meet God, and in receiving God, we receive everything. Amen. The Reverend James M. L. Grace September 16, 2007 *Past sermons may be found here. |
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