You, Too!

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Sermon for the 17th Sunday after Pentecost1 11 September 2016

Emmanuel Church, Greenwood (The Rev.) Christopher Garcia

You, Too! This applies to you, too. The bit about leaving the 99 to go look for the one sheep? Jesus would do that for you, too. The bit about the one missing coin, sweeping until it’s found, and then throwing a party? Jesus wants to do that for you, too. This all is about you, too. I think that for many of us, this central reality, this essential truth, that God loves us unconditionally, unreservedly, undeservedly, but absolutely and always and no exceptions, whatsoever, this is the hardest reality of Christianity to believe. Miracles? Well, OK. Resurrection? If you say so. Bread and wine become body and blood? Sure. Part of the package. We taste and see every week. But God loves me, really loves me, enough to pursue me when I go astray? Me? Hold on a minute. Really? Yes. Really. This applies to you. Thank God, this applies to me. God loves us, loves you, loves me, enough to pursue us no matter what. God yearns for you. God wants you. God worries about you. God will stop at nothing to bring you home. Hold on to that truth for a minute. Savor it. God will stop at nothing to bring you home. Chew on that. Nothing you can ever do, nothing you ever did, puts you beyond the reach of God’s love. Nothing you ever did, nothing you can ever do, will separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Nothing. Nothing. Yes, this applies to you. I am amazed at how many people, good people, will tell me, either explicitly or implicitly, “Well, that can’t really mean me. If you really knew me, you would know that I am a bad person. I have done wicked things.”

Revised Common Lectionary Proper 19 (Track 2), Year C. Exodus 32:7-14; Psalm 51:1-11; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10. “O God, because without you we are not able to please you, mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.” 1

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Fine. God knows. Yes, God cares. Doing bad things grieves God’s heart, just as when your kids do something bad, it grieves your heart. But God loves you. God’s love for you is bigger, more triumphant, more powerful, than all of that bad. 9 time greater. 99 times greater. 999 times greater. You. God wants you. God desires you. God loves you. No matter what. No matter what. Most of us find it easier to face our own depravity, own our own brokenness, as hard as that is, we find it easier to get stuck in our own bad, rather than move on to God love. God’s love is truly super-human. God’s love is bigger, better, freer, purer, than any love that you or I can ever feel or ever know. Because God’s love is so huge, so amazing, so beyond us, many of us have a hard time believing it. Trusting it. Recognizing it. Understanding that it applies to me, too. Accepting that it applies to you, too. No matter what. Think about it. Rational shepherds don’t leave 99 sheep to search for one lost sheep. Rational, thinking, smart shepherds keep an eagle eye over the 99, and they write off their loses. Fortunately, God is not like that. God never writes anyone off. No matter what. God values the one lost sheep as much each of the other 99 other ones, and pursues all of them. Every one of us. A God who works on the same sense of fairness that you or I have might say to the people in Israel, “fine. You want to worship an image of a calf? So be it. Try that out. See how much salvation you can get from an idol.” But fortunately, the story does not end there. God’s justice is not your justice or my justice. God’s love is not your love or my love. God’s mercy is not my mercy or our mercy. God’s love remembers, “I will multiply your descendents like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to those descendents, and they shall inherit it, forever.” Once we begin to trust in God’s unconditional love, everything changes. Once we accept the unfailing truth that God’s loves us, God loves you, God loves me, no matter what, we look at the world differently. We look at God differently. We look at ourselves differently. We look at each other differently. When God looks at you and at me, God looks with eyes of love, because God’s very nature is to love, is love. God cannot look but in love. Knowing that love is always flowing from God to each one of us should make God infinitely

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more approachable. We know that we will be met in love, met with love, so we can be less guarded, less defensive. We can be more of our truer selves, who God really meant us to be, because God already knows the real you, the real me, the hidden, scared you and me inside each one of us, and loves who we are. We can afford to let our guards down, because no matter who we are, because God will find us acceptable, already finds us acceptable, and loves us and welcomes us home, rejoicing over you and over me. Because we know that God loves us like that, we can let go of misconceptions that God is some angry dictator, or a vengeful, cruel, judge. A God who loves us intimately, loves instinctually, loves us unfailingly, also cannot be some sort of detached, distant, doddery old grandfather type, benevolent but really impotent. No, God is involved, and present, pursuing us in love, reaching out in love, urgently, ardently, wanting to relate to us every moment of every day. This truth about God’s love is truth for every man, woman, and child who ever was and ever will be. The lost one out of 100, or lost one out of ten, is everyone. God’s love pursues everyone. God’s love is intended for everyone. So we must meet everyone who comes though our doors with love – whether they have been coming here for years, or this is their first Sunday with us. God’s love is for everyone. God’s love is for everyone. Not just those who walk through our doors. God’s love is for everyone. Your neighbor. The person at work or at school or at the health club who is a little bit odd, or a lot odd, and who no one likes. In God’s calculus, that person is just as important as the cool kids, just as loved as the in crowd, just as valued as everyone else. That is why at each baptism we renew our promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves, and respect the dignity of every human being. God love applies to them, too. Love came first – so everyone is invited. As important as these implications are – and they are important - I want to go back to where I started. Hold on to this truth. This gospel passage is about you. God’s love applies to you. God always has loved you. God always will love you. You. Yes, you. Amen.