I pay special attention whenever I read Gospel accounts of Jesus engaging with the guardians of religious orthodoxy, as he does in today’s passage from Luke.* The Gospels detail Jesus’ continuing challenge to the moral legalism of the nation’s religious authorities; and I, too, have a long-standing proclivity to being judgmental. I’ve been clear about this for quite a while: in a long-ago church Adult Ed class, I had to honestly admit that the person I most identified with in the Prodigal Son story was the morally-offended older brother. I imagine that this admission probably wasn’t as much a surprise to others as it was sobering for me. But no sense being judgmental about my tendency to be judgmental.
I know I’m not alone in this judgmental streak. In fact, it seems that a spirit of judgment is becoming a persistent sin of national public life as well as a personal failing for many. So I invite you to join me for a few moments in taking up roles as the murmuring religious figures in Luke’s story. Jesus is speaking to a group of men and women of dubious reputation, who are listening to him attentively. We religious experts are gathered near the back, emanating our disapproval of his hanging out with the moral riffraff.
Sensing this, Jesus tells twin stories–one about a lost, searched for, and then found sheep; and the other about a lost, searched for, and then found coin. “I tell you,” Jesus ends by saying, “there is joy in the presence of the angels whenever one lost soul repents.”
It takes a while before I get that’s he’s talking to us in the back, and issuing a challenge of sorts. He’s saying that these morally suspect folks standing right around us are the honorees at a heavenly celebration happening at this very moment. And furthermore, we religious experts could be celebrating this moment as well, if we weren’t so set on the right-and-wrong of things.
Well, that’s conceptually a beautiful picture, we mutter to each other, but that’s not the way it works. Nobody gets to live a life outside the laws of God and Scripture, and then just have a change of mind and then Voila!—a place of honor waiting in heaven. Instead, we pronounce assuredly, it’s about living a godly life.
Now coming back to the present moment: the choice seems pretty much the same today. Jesus is still pointing to a more joyful way to live. And it’s still true that “all” we have to do is set aside our own judgmental way long enough to get on the higher wavelength of the Holy One’s mercy, compassion, and just plain delight in all of us.
Whatever we do with that choice, we can’t say we weren’t invited!
-Jeanne Marcus, Bread of Life Church
