Preached September 15th, 2013
Texts: Luke 15:1-10
1 Timothy 1:12-16
It started with a sign. It was a small, rectangular, “Help Wanted”
sign. Ragan noticed it in the window of
a bakery as she walked home from school one day. She had recently turned 16, and she wanted to
get her first job. So when she saw that
little sign in the bakery window, she immediately went in, filled out an
application, and was hired on the spot.
She didn’t actually have any bakery experience, so she started with
simple jobs. She swept up the floor and
cleaned the display cases. Then she
moved up to dipping the doughnuts in frosting and sprinkles. She started icing some of the cookies. And she liked what she was doing. But what she really loved the most was to
watch the cake decorator—her name was Nicole.
Ragan loved how Nicole could take something as simple as frosting—just
butter and sugar, basically, and transform it into words, swirls, flowers,
animals. . . anything the customer could dream up, Nicole could make.
Now, Nicole noticed Ragan watching her. And, even though Ragan had no experience with cake decorating, Nicole decided to take her under her wing. So again, she started with simple tasks. Ragan learned how to put the crumb layer of frosting on—the first layer that just evens everything out. Then she learned how to put on the smooth outside layer. Nicole taught her how to pipe different borders, how to write legibly with the liquid frosting, and then how to draw and pipe flowers with butter cream. And even though she had never done it before, Ragan was really good at decorating cakes. Very quickly, she and Nicole were making beautiful creations together. Customers were happy, word of mouth spread, and business was good.
But
there was one problem. Ragan wasn’t
happy. She was doing what she thought
she wanted to do—decorating cakes—and she was good at it. She was making beautiful cakes, and people
were happy with what she made. She was
even getting paid a pretty decent wage for a part time, high school job. But she had trouble sleeping at night. She was anxious, and she was irritable. Something just didn’t feel right. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was
exactly, but something was definitely wrong.
It
wasn’t that Ragan secretly disliked her job.
In fact, Ragan really loved her job.
First, of course, she loved the free pastries. But she also loved the chance to be artistic
and creative. She loved the smiles on
the customers’ faces when they saw what she made for them. She loved being able to tell that they loved
what she’d created. And Ragan loved it
too--she loved the borders and the flowers and the pictures that she made. And
that was her problem. As backwards as it
seems, the problem was that Ragan loved her creations.
As
our scripture readings this morning remind us, God loves her creations
too. Except of course, rather than our
scripture talking about cake, it reminds us that God loves us. Although, as a side note, I’m pretty sure God
loves cake too, because seriously, who doesn’t?
It’s tasty and it’s pretty. But
while love for cake might be based on those superficial characteristics, our
scripture is a clear reminder that God’s love for us is anything but superficial.
Let’s return to the text from 1 Timothy. Now, though 1 Timothy has the name “Paul” on it, Paul didn’t actually write the letter. 1 Timothy is what my New Testament professor called pseudoepigraphical, which is basically a seven syllable way of saying that it isn’t actually written by the person whose name is on it. It’s not exactly a forgery though. This was a common ancient practice—putting someone else’s name on a writing. It was done when the actual writer was writing from a specific school of thought, like Platonism, or as in our scripture reading, Pauline theology.
What
the real author of 1 Timothy, I’m going to call him pseudo-Paul, was trying to
do was translate Paul’s teaching to their own time and circumstances. I won’t get into how successful they were in
capturing what I believe to be authentic Paul, but what I will say is in the
section we read this morning, they are attempting to write the essence of who
Paul is, in order to establish a Paul like authority for everything else that
follows.
This
was kind of like Ragan filling out the application for her job at the. She listed her skills and qualifications to
be hired for the position. And, if
you’ve ever filled out a job application, you’re probably familiar with what
you put in those skills and qualifications sections: anything about you that
makes you look good. You put your most
successful project, the team you’re captain of with a winning record, your best
personality traits—whatever it takes to get across your certainty that you are
competent to take on the challenges of the job.
And so, this is logically what we’d expect in the section of the letter
where pseudo-Paul is trying to establish his authority. Perhaps pseudo-Paul would write about all the
communities of Jesus followers he’s established and the good work that they
do. Or maybe his best theological
insight. Anything to make him look good, right?
Wrong,
of course. As we read, instead of trying
to make himself look good, pseudo-Paul takes the opposite course of
action. He writes about all the bad
things he’s done in his life. He was a
blasphemer, a persecutor, he was violent and ignorant. Not exactly the best qualifications. It’s like listing the test that you failed,
the promotion that you didn’t get, and the project that fell flat on a job
application or a resume. Just like love
being Ragan’s problem, this seems backwards too. And then, as if that wasn’t enough of
backwards for the morning, pseudo-Paul flips us once again.
If
you put your worst qualities on a job application, you don’t expect to get
hired. So, based on the qualifications
that pseudo-Paul lists, we would expect some kind of rejection to follow. But that isn’t the case. Instead, of rejection, Paul receives mercy,
grace, faith, and love. He gets Jesus,
as our more evangelical brothers and sisters would say. And here’s the kicker—it isn’t just in spite
of his awful qualifications that he receives all these wonderful gifts through
God in Christ. It’s through them. Through all Paul’s faults and failings, Jesus
works in him, and through him.
Ragan’s
problem was that she couldn’t stand for her beautiful cake creations to be
destroyed. Our wonderful blessing is
that God can’t stand for us to be destroyed either. But sin threatens to destroy us—things like
Paul lists, our own ignorance, the actions we regret taking or not taking, the
way we participate in the sin of our society.
Though we may be uncomfortable talking about it, sin does affect us. It wears on us, and on others. And without God’s help, sin would eat us up
and ultimately destroy us.
Ragan eventually had to quit her job at the bakery because she couldn't stand for her creations to be destroyed. But God never, never quits on us. So God rescues us from the mouth of
destruction, again and again. In our
Luke reading, Jesus describes what this looks like. And again, this scripture reading is full of
things that seem radically backwards. Jesus
tells us that God feels like a shepherd, who has lost one out of 100
sheep. The logical thing to do would be
to take care of the 99 that are left.
But instead, God searches out the one lost sheep—that would be us, the
lost sheep—because God cannot bear to have us destroyed by whatever wild forces
of sin are out there.
Jesus
tells us that God is like a woman, who has ten silver coins and has lost one,
and instead of assuming the lost coin—we’re a coin in this one—will show up
eventually, or that it’s only one out of ten so it doesn’t matter, God lights a
lamp, sweeps the whole house, and searches us out. And then, God has a party when we’re found.
And
these parables from Jesus aren’t just about God searching us out to satisfy
some kind of compulsion to have all the sheep or all the coins together. Jesus very pointedly uses parables that
incorporate an element of love.
Shepherds and sheep in ancient times had a relationship like some people
have relationships with their pets today.
The shepherd loved the sheep.
They talked to them, they sang to them, they protected them, and they
would even risk their lives for the sheep.
The shepherd really would go back after one lost sheep because they knew
that sheep because they cared about that sheep.
And when the shepherd found that lost sheep, they wouldn’t just drag it
back to the rest. They would scoop it up
in their arms and carry it back to the rest of the herd on their shoulders.
And
yes, the woman with the lost coin, this parable too has an element of
love. Ten isn’t an accidental number of
coins. Ten silver coins made up the
bridal head-dress in ancient times.
These ten coins would be scrimped and saved for, and after the wedding,
they couldn’t be take away, even if the woman, her husband, or the family were
deeply in debt. They were almost like a
wedding ring today, and the woman almost certainly would have had a
sentimental, loving attachment to them like many people have to their wedding
rings today.
God seeks us out and saves us from what would otherwise eat us up because God loves us. And God’s love for us means that God can’t let a single one of us go. It means that God can’t bear for us to be eaten up, hurt, destroyed. And it means that when sin does start nibbling on us when we fail, and fall short, and look more like Paul the persecutor than Paul the spreader of the Gospel, when our cakey-selves start to crumble, God in Christ rescues us, cleans us up, maybe puts a fresh layer of frosting on us, and calls us beloved still.
And,
to take it one step further, it means that we’re called to do the same thing
that God does to us, or at least our best imitation. We are called to accept rather than judge, to
forgive rather than holding grudges, and to welcome even the most unlikely and
rough looking people into our lives with open arms. Who are we to judge when it is only because
of our Baker’s loving hands that we’ve not crumbles ourselves?
There
are a lot of us beloved cakes out here.
And the powers of sin in the world are hungry. So let us give thanks--God cannot and will
not let us be eaten up.
