Irresponsible Discipleship (3rd Sunday in Lent; Luke 15:1-32; March 19, 2017)

Irresponsible Discipleship

3^rd Sunday in Lent
Luke 15:1-32
March 19, 2017

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

Jesus had this amazing way of crossing people’s expectations. He behaved, if the Word of God is anything to go by, in ways that ran counter to the way prudent people were supposed to behave. Jesus didn’t seem to have any view of the larger picture, no view of the greater good. For Jesus the old Vulcan saying--"The good of the many outweighs the good of the one."--made no sense at all.

Imagine a suburban pastor who, when the Staff-Parish Relations Committee met, was nowhere to be found. Instead, it was discovered a couple of days later, she had spent the evening passing out blankets to homeless folks down by the river and, when she ran out of blankets, she decided to sit and talk for a while and somehow it had turned into a worship service, complete with communion. And, yes, they even used real wine.

Or imagine if, when the Special Funds Treasurer gave his report, it was found that he had taken money intended for re-roofing the building and instead had used it to hire crews to bring the homes of poor people up to code in the towns around Decorah.

This was the sort of stuff that Jesus did. It baffled his friends and infuriated his enemies. Or maybe it infuriated his friends and baffled his enemies. His friends couldn't explain what Jesus was up to or why it made any sense. His enemies used the things he did in an attempt to discredit him. And Jesus got tired of it, so he told three stories. They are called, incorrectly in my view, the parables of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Prodigal Son. They should be called the parables of the Crazy Shepherd, the Crazy Matron, and the Crazy Father. But, whatever they are called, they added up to a really long reading. I'm only going to preach on the first two and I will leave third to you as an exercise.

So we have before us two stories: the story of a crazy shepherd and the story of the crazy mistress of a household. And in these two cases, what makes these stories work is that they raise the deep theological question, "Say what?"

First we have the story of the shepherd who abandons his flock and leaves them to the mercy of thieves and predators to go look for the one sheep who has wandered off. Let’s simply say that when sheep are grazed in open country where they can wander off and where there are wolves or wild dogs or bandits, the story Jesus tells is very unlikely. “Which one of you,” he asks, “does not abandon the ninety-nine?” And the answer is, “None of us! Do you think we’re stupid?”

Finding lost sheep is the work, not of shepherds, but of the shepherd’s dogs. It would be stupid, irresponsible and any other word you can think of for a shepherd to abandon the whole flock for the sake of one sheep. That shepherd is crazy.

But Jesus tells this story to justify the way he behaves.

The next story tells of the mistress of a household who searches for a lost coin. The story tells us that she had ten coins. These were drachmas, silver coins like the one pictured on the cover of the bulletin. Ten drachmas would have amounted to a thousand or perhaps twelve hundred dollars in purchasing power. A woman who had a thousand dollars in cash laying about the house was not the sort of woman who would have been at all familiar with the operating end of a broom. A woman who owned ten drachmas had slaves to do the sweeping. And anyway if a woman like that had lost a drachma, her first assumption would have been that one of the slaves had stolen it and she would have called for a whip, not a broom. Women of that standing did not do housework. She would have considered herself very much above that sort of work. So, when the matron in our story picked up a broom and swept the house there can be only one conclusion: that matron was crazy.

But Jesus tells this story to justify the way he behaves. Before he acts for someone’s welfare—to heal or deliver, or simply to bless with his presence—Jesus doesn’t stop to figure out whether or not he’s supposed to be associating with the person he’s trying to help. He never stops to consider the big picture, which means of course that Jesus was crazy, too.

He’s the pastor who shows up a half-hour late for a staff meeting, leaving the other highly paid staff members twiddling their thumbs—well, no one twiddles their thumbs any more, but you get what I mean. Jesus is the chef who lets every dish burn but gets the salad just right.

Jesus doesn’t go for the percentages. He’s the gambler who draws to an inside straight. He’s the investor about to retire who puts his entire portfolio into an initial public offer. He’s the golfer who hits her ball through the tree instead of around it.

Jesus puts his efforts into the hard cases, the long-shots, the unlikely. That’s crazy. Jesus spends his time with tax collectors and sinners, people who were poles apart from the sort of life he was calling people to live.

While he was doing that there were already a lot of pretty good people around him—people like us—people who, with a little help here and little push there, could become really good people. This would have been the safe bet. It would have gotten the biggest bang for the buck. It would have been a good investment; it would have made good business sense.

But that wasn’t Jesus’ way. He invested his time with those who were too poor to be peasants even, with the social outcasts and the despised.

I guess he never heard that church should be run like a business. He never heard that we need to be careful not to offend. He never heard that we need to take care of our limited resources. He never heard that we need to be wary about new ventures and new ministries. We have to analyze the costs and the benefits and the possible risks if things don’t turn out the way we hope. He never heard that we’re supposed to be very cautious. Like I said, Jesus is crazy.

We seem to be hard-wired against risk-taking, in the name, of course, of being good stewards. When we use the word stewardship in our committee meetings we usually mean something like “careful and prudent management.” In that sense at least, Jesus knows nothing and cares even less for “stewardship.” He was the sort of person who would risk social disgrace to pick up a broom and sweep his own floor in search of a lost coin. He was the sort of person who would leave ninety-nine sheep and go off in search of that one lost sheep.

Jesus justifies foolish risk-taking in the name of healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and welcoming the stranger. In a few chapters, in fact, Jesus will take the biggest risk of all: he will walk unarmed into Jerusalem and demand—in God’s name—an end to business as usual.

Right now, in this service in this reading, Jesus challenges us with these stories to join him in behaving in these foolish and imprudent and even crazy ways.

It’s unlikely that we’ll will do that. Or, at least, I wouldn’t bet a great deal on it: it wouldn’t be the safe bet. We’ll go home and be careful. We’ll be careful in our spending. We’ll be careful in our public behavior. We’ll be careful at work.

But in and around our prudent decisions, our careful spending, our cautious actions, that crazy Jesus whispers in our ears. He tells a couple of stories. One is a story about a shepherd who abandons his flock and the other is a story about a rich woman who picks up a broom. He asks the question, “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until you find it?”

And maybe, in the chorus of voices answering insider our heads, “Why, none of us! Do you think we’re stupid?” there’ll be one or two voices that answer, “Maybe it isn’t a smart idea, maybe it’s foolish and fiscally irresponsible, but I think I would. I would go looking for the lost sheep. Because I’d rather follow Jesus and be foolish than be smart and prudent and cautious and careful and miss that chance.”

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