Published in 2019, Crazy Talk: Stories Jesus Told is Crackers & Grape Juice’s attempt to preach on the parables of Jesus. We offer these sermons to preachers and teachers to aid them in preaching and teaching this week’s gospel reading in the Revised Common Lectionary.
This week I did something I never do. I reread all the old sermons Iʼve written on todayʼs text. If the files on my floppy disks and USB drives are correct, then this is the fourth time Iʼve had to preach on these parables from Luke 15.
The first time was in Charlottesville, at a small Methodist church behind the Downtown Mall: Hinton Ave. UMC. The church was only a few miles from my dorm, but it could not have been further away from the life I knew on campus. It was literally on the other side of the tracks, near the public housing complex and the Salvation Army kitchen.
It was the kind of church that was always an offering plate or two away from financial ruin, where the janitorʼs first duty every morning was to paint over a fresh coat of vandalism and where the sanctuary smelled of varnish and black mold.
The outside stairwell of the church smelled of booze and piss. Homeless men slept in the stairs at night, and dealers lingered by the stairs during the day. It was the kind of church where on Sunday mornings undocumented workers and welfare mothers and poor whites would sit alongside the few remaining blue-haired matriarchs whoʼd founded the church.
I was still a college student then, 19 or 20. I knew the pastor, Edward, from a summer camp where I had worked. He often guilted me into attending worship at Hinton.
One spring Edward asked me to fill in for him in the pulpit.
Without really knowing what I was doing, I did.
Now, I was still a new Christian at that point; it had been only recently that faith had “found” me. It hadn’t been that long ago that Iʼd been steeped in doubts and questions. I could
remember what it was like to have life blow past me because I was trying so hard to run away from God. I knew what it felt like: to feel pain where others said they felt the presence of God. I knew what it felt like to be lost.
And so, did everyone in that congregation.
So back then, the first time I stepped into the pulpit armed with this scripture—with who I was and who they were—it was good news all the way.
When they heard the Pharisees grumble about how Jesus chose to spend all his time with sinners and outcasts, they smiled, and they nodded their heads and they said “amen” because that meant them.
When we heard the parable of the lost sheep, it was each one of us. I was the poor, tuckered out lamb, draped across my redeemerʼs shoulders.
I was the one so full of gratitude and relief that Iʼd been found that I vowed to never wander from him again. I was the silver coin lying in some dark corner of my life until the good woman who will not give up on me sweeps me into the light.
They were stories about me. They were stories about each one of us there than morning, and they were good news.
We sang “Amazing Grace” to close out the service, and we sang it with gusto. Some cried. Some men, normally too cool to sing along, sang it with the quiet plaintiveness of Ralph Stanley.
Some women raised their arms to heaven and praised God in Spanish and others knelt over the altar rail as if they were falling safely into their own beds.
And as they left that morning one man even told me that if it wasn’t for my earring and unruly beard I could be a preacher someday.
It was different the second time.
The second time I carried these parables into the pulpit it was at a small Methodist church in Jersey. I was older. I was no longer a new Christian, and my “lost” years were further behind me. Rather than a one-shot deal, I preached at this church every week. Instead of being a guest preacher, I was the one who wore
the robe. They were the first people to call me “pastor” and they referred to themselves as my “flock.”
They were good people. There were only about 40 of them, but they kept that tiny church going even though the odds were against them. The bills were always paid. Vacation Bible School was always offered to the community. Repairs were never put off.
And because they were my flock, I knew them.
I knew who read scripture to the shut-ins on Mondays. I knew who taught Bible study at the prison on Friday afternoons. I knew who took in foster kids, who cashed in a chunk of their retirement to replace the roof and who volunteered at the AIDS clinic in Trenton. I knew who responded faster than the EMTs when there was a death in the congregation.
They were good people. They were faithful and devoted and they cared about their church. And I cared about them. I think that’s why I didn’t much like these parables the second time around.
Of course, I could’ve just dusted it off, printed it out and preached that same sermon from Charlottesville. But there wasn’t a lost sheep or a lost coin or a lost son in that congregation. They were the flock.
They were the ones who’d never wandered off and gotten themselves lost. Theyʼd never strayed very far. They didnʼt need finding because they loved their Shepherd and they always had, and they had always worked to stay close to him.
The second time around I read this scripture in a whole new way, and I didnʼt like it. I mean ... this is no way to shepherd a flock, abandoning the 99 to fend for themselves while you chase after the one who keeps straying and pursuing their own whims and may not even want to be found.
What was I supposed to say?
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