Proper 19 Sermon

In the name Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Let us pray, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” Psalm 19:14

There is a speech that I had to memorize in middle school. It was written by a famous Civil Rights activist, The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. His legacy has touched the lives of many Americans and his witness has opened the door for many Americans oppressed simply because of the color of their skin. Listen to part of speech:

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
...
This is our hope...1”

This is our hope. It is our hope that one day, that one day, our social distinctions and classifications will not matter. It is our hope that our “children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” It is our hope that one’s identity will not be found in the human things of this world but in the love for one another.

But right now it is only hope and not reality. For thousands upon thousands of years humanity has oppressed a group (or groups of people) simply because of a human classification. These classifications range from cultural identity, money, race, sinner...

Sinner. Now that is a strange classification. What is even stranger is to think about oppressing Sinners. It doesn’t make much sense in our Christian mindset when we think about it today (because our concept of a sinner is that we all sin and therefore we are all sinners by its definition) but what did it mean to oppress a sinner in Jesus’ day?

Throughout the scriptures we hear about this dualism of Righteous and Unrighteous/Sinner. A biblical definition of Righteous is someone who fears and loves God; who follows God’s commands; who places God above all things. We know there were “righteous people” or so called “righteous people.” However, it is still unclear how righteous an individual had to be in order to be consider righteous. Did someone only need a drop of righteousness to make he or she righteous or was there more too it? Did one drop of sin make someone a sinner?

How one determined their status of righteousness was through the law. An individual was deemed righteous by obeying all the laws. A truly righteous person kept the law of God and an unrighteous person, a sinner, was someone who did not keep the law (whether was on purpose or not on purpose). The law does guide us into God’s will but it also shows us that we cannot follow it all the time. We have a bondage to the ways of sin and not the way of God. The overall intent of the law is to assist us in following God but it gives us ammunition to oppress those who are not following the law--who are not one us. In Jesus’ day, if the law was misinterpreted, it can forbid God’s grace to be shown because only a strict adherence to the law was acceptable.

This is the situation Jesus has been placed in. He was eating a meal with sinners (tax collectors, prostitutes, the poor, the sick, the blind, the lame) instead of with the great leaders of the synagogue and temple--not with the elite of the community. Sound familiar? “Mommy, Jesus isn’t playing with me. He is playing with THOSE people.” It sounds very childish but this was (and maybe even remains) the mindset of us all. These leaders felt as they were more privileged than the sinners--than the outcasts of the society.

The leaders described in this passage felt as though they deserved God more than the sinners. The leaders believed they were the only ones privileged to God’s love. If Jesus was the messiah, than they should have their needs cared for first because they were the best. But Jesus does not do this. Jesus does not go to the leaders but to the people forgotten by the world and cares for them.

This makes no sense to the Pharisees and even to us today. Why would the Messiah, the anointed one, the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, the one foretold by prophets for centuries would choose to eat not with the elite--not with the ones who have power to convince the masses--but with the sinners? Why would God care about the sinners? Why not go to powerful and proclaim “Ta da I’m here?”

But God has always cared about the sinners. God has always cared more about God’s people, particularly the outcasts--the last, lost, lost, least, lifeless--than about laws. Actually, the law of God was originally intended to ensure the well being of all God’s people--not just the elite and powerful.

The parables Jesus told to the crowd reminds us that God is the one who would leave behind the large group of sheep to go out and find the one sheep who went a strayed. That God is the one who throw a party after God finds a single coin--a party that cost more than what the coin was ever worth. These parables reveal that God has always done the unthinkable. God always goes after the one lost soul, God always throws the biggest parties. God choose to die on a cross so that we might live.

The elite feel that they deserve God more than the rest of the world but Jesus says no. Robert Jensen, retired professor at LTSG writes, “Whenever you want to draw a line to mark who is outside the kingdom and who is inside, always remember: Jesus is on the other side of the line. Jesus is always with the outsiders." This particular group of Pharisees questioning Jesus’ actions were denying the kingdom of God to a group of people simply because they could not obey the law. They wanted to deny God’s kingdom, God’s love, to a group of people because they are not good enough, because they are not rich enough, because they are not the right color. But Jesus came to reveal what God has always been about--grace and love for all people. Jesus came to reveal the great joy God still has and has always had for us.

What does it mean to have a sinner repent and all of heaven rejoice but the rest of world stays silent? Will we be able to look past someone’s status and simply love them as God loves that person? Will we be able love simply out of love with no strings attached as God loves us? Will we be able to rejoice when just one repents? Will we be able to look past someone’s skin color, religion, economic status, job status, someone’s social identity and see them for who they really are? When we follow in Jesus’ example and love one another, yes even those who are not like us, we will experience this great joy God has over one sinner who repents. Maybe when we let this happen, “when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, [black and white], Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics,” (Muslims and Christians, Northern and Southern, rich and poor, Democrats and Republicans, Europeans and Americans, the entire world, all of us) “we will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old [African American] spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”2

In the name Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Endnotes
1 http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm
2 http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm