What have you been celebrating lately?

A birthday? Anniversary? Just getting out of the house? How about those kids off to school? Success!

These last two weeks I have been celebrating too. Three funerals and three weddings. That may seem strange to you, that a funeral is a celebration, but it is, a celebration of life.

I pledged a few years ago that as a pastor, if a person in the community wanted a Christian funeral, I would preside if that’s what they wanted. I don’t turn down funerals if I don’t have to, because I think people should be reminded of the hope we have in Jesus.

And weddings, well one was Sue’s niece, which we missed, but three of Sue’s sisters and brothers came to visit with us, and then of course Becky Cooper’s wedding last weekend, and Janelle McCombs yesterday. 

Celebrations come in all kinds of situation. Maybe you are having a big anniversary? Or maybe dropping of teenagers at college? Or maybe you have gotten a promotion, or retired, or have had a birthday bash!

All of it is wonderful and fun, particularly now that we can gather with family and friends and while we worry about Covid, we have figured out ways to gather while being careful.

Celebrations are at the very heart of God! God loves us and wants us to be ready for a celebration any time something amazing happens! Just like God does when what was lost is found. 
Jesus in Luke 15 tells three stories about things that are lost and then found, making clear God’s heartfelt joy when what has been lost is found. 

Because of the three stories here, Luke 15 is known as the bible’s “Lost and Found” department.

And each by themselves are great stories. 

But together they speak with amazing authority about Jesus’ essential theological understanding: God is jubilant when just one of his lost children comes home, and…

Here is the thing we are to grasp with all our hearts: We should be too!

Of course, to understand the three parables you have to understand the context in which Jesus told them. So, Luke makes sure we see and hear the story so our heads and more importantly, our hearts are open. 

Luke starts by telling us some essential information about the context of Jesus’ teaching here - that tax collectors and sinners were all crowding around him, listening to him teach.

That statement all by itself is pretty amazing, because let’s face it, having sinners lining up to listen to most preachers is pretty unusual. But then Jesus was amazing both as a teacher, and as a person representing God’s Kingdom. 

In most situations, most sinners, I think would find neither the message or the messenger very interesting or appealing. And I am not talking just about me, but most any preacher. 

Most preachers today are seen as unsafe, critical, abusive, uncaring, or simply off putting. Some of us are smarmy, others want something! 

We act sometimes as though we aren’t really interested in “sinners”, what they are dealing with, going through, and struggling with. 

Some preachers just see sinners as numbers, hoping that if they decide to come in, they can count them as converts. 

Then maybe the sinner is invited to stay, but only if they change. And if they don’t change are judged, and sometimes rejected. 

But in relationship to sinners, Jesus was different.

He was open, accepting, loving, and caring, and shockingly only judgmental when dealing with the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and other folks who somehow imagined themselves to be as holy as God. 

Pharisees and others somehow thought that God would judge them as being holy, keeping all the rules of the law, without understanding that they were already standing in God’s presence when standing before Jesus.

Luke even tells us, “So the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law of Moses started grumbling, “This man is friendly with sinners. He even eats with them.”

Imagine that, going to a party and eating with sinners!

Offering up a gift of wine to the bride and groom at their wedding. Wishing folks well who aren’t particularly religious and then caring for them as the opportunity arose.
Inviting them to sit at the table and talk. Enjoying a meal and a drink, and talking about how challenging real life is, and how hard it was to follow all those laws, and Jesus declaring that God’s loved them in spite of it all.

Sharing the good news of God’s love and forgiveness with them, even if they preferred to go off on a crazy misadventure, like the young man in Jesus third story in this chapter about the prodigal son. We’ll talk more about his next week.

Yet Jesus makes clear, three times, that God rejoices when any sinner comes home, just like a family and the whole community does when that lost sheep, or lost coin, or lost son is found.

That sheep meant everything to the shepherd, whose employment depended on it’s safety! That coin meant everything to that woman who was saving for her daughter’s doweries, a loss that meant one daughter would marry less well because of the loss.

And a father who could not bare the loss of his son, because as all parents know, each child is more precious than our own lives.

What Luke wants us to hear is Jesus plea in story that not only should we be searching and finding lost sinners, that lost brothers and sisters come home, we should rejoice and celebrate, just as the God of the universe does too. 

The good news! Amen.