"Savoring Redemption" September 15, 2013

Jeremiah 4:23-28 Luke 14: 34 – 15: 12 Last Sunday, Rally Day, our worship of God was accompanied by a marvelous new Organist; the anthem of the Choir was conducted by an incredible new Director, a daughter of the congregation demonstrated her maturity of voice and character by singing a piece from Leonard Bernstein's Mass, and immediately after worship at the encouragement of our Session we as The Church embraced an issue which has been divisive and lacking for over 50 years, and we boldly acted to begin a search for additional leadership. Yet in all these things, we responded like the person who endured surgery and chemo therapy and radiation. We were incredulous at announcements of being healthy, we await the dropping of the shoe, the falling of the ax. People of the 21st Century believe there is always going to be a calamity, we await the next catastrophe holding our breath. Had there not been flooding in Colorado and fires in New Jersey, I do not know what we would have done. Being Christian is not accomplishing miracles and waiting for punishment. Believing in God is not looking for blasphemy, judgment, and devastation. Believing in God, being Christian is identifying that we were lost, we do experience tragedy BUT ALSO we have hope! We believe in unmerited, unwarranted GRACE. We have read the parables of Luke 15 so often, that we hear of the one lost sheep, and we skip over the 99 who are safe, to search for the lost coin, because that will lead to the Prodigal Son who comes home and the Elder Brother who did not know he too was lost, because that will lead to the rich young man, and eventually to the Crucifixion. What I would tell you this morning, is that the purpose of the parable of the Lost Sheep is not to lead to finding Lost Money, building to the Lost Son, but just the reverse. The last several weeks we have listened as Jesus described the Great Wedding Feast that God has provided and we, ALL Humanity claimed to be too busy to celebrate. We started a new business, we purchased a new home, we started a new project, we fell in love, we purchased new golf clubs, so could not be bothered with something so banal as faith in God, I mean faith in God has been around since Moses and the 10 Commandments, since Abraham wandered the desert. Why would we stop what we are doing to celebrate faith, to celebrate what we believe? Then we heard challenge and logical questioning of Who among us would not stop before taking out a mortgage to question if we could ever repay it? Who would enter a war without trying diplomacy, without having an exit strategy, without considering the End game? Yet, as logical and reasoned as those questions, if we stay with the Biblical text, if we listen to Jesus, the conclusion to be drawn is WE are the ones who enter into wars without a plan for peace or forgiveness. We are seduced by building and assessed values without consideration of the cost and true worth to us. We are the ones who deny our own place at God's Table, and are shocked and embarrassed. The key to understanding faith, to understanding all these parables from Luke, to being Christian is two things: FIRST, every time the lost is found, Jesus describes a CELEBRATION of REDEMPTION. The Shepherd comes home with the sheep on his shoulders and throws a party. The woman who turned her house upside down searching, and lit every lamp, when she finds the lost coin, invites all her neighbors to rejoice with her for the lost is found. The Father who welcomes home the younger son, who had wished his father dead, not only celebrates his redemption, the father seeks out the father's elder son to share the celebration. Redemption is costly and painful. Redemption requires that we not move on to the next, searching and waiting for what next, but that we go back to claim and reclaim what was lost. Recently, I spoke with a man who had fought in Vietnam, who when he came back was spit upon and hit and shamed for having fought for his Country. The indignation and pain were still as fresh as the day his plane landed and he took off his uniform, because the soldier had never really come home. Twenty-five years ago, many who were here knew a co-pastorate was a mistake, but we allowed it to happen. When the dust cleared and the Interim was here, we discovered that twenty years before, horrible abuses had been allowed to happen and we had just moved on without prosecuting, without redemption, without acknowledgment, so during that Interim we as a church had to go back and reclaim what we lost to memory. September 11th happened twelve years ago. That night, here in this Sanctuary our community gathered as we listened to this description from Jeremiah 4. Prophesied thousands of years before, Jeremiah described Ground Zero, where because of the impact and the airplane fuel there was no life, no birds, no bodies, no sound. If in Genesis, at the story of Creation, we voiced with God: “It was Good” then here as everything was attacked and destroyed, we want and need to say “It was Bad, It was Very Bad.” But if a dozen years later, we live our lives in fear, then the terrorists won. If we look on anyone with a turban, or dressing differently, as being a terrorist, then the terrorists won. If we fear the future, if we still act with the hostility that anyone who is not for us must be against us, then the terrorists won. We need a V-E Day or a V-J Day, the End to the Great Depression and Celebration of Recovery, celebration of the present and future hope! We as a congregation, undertook great debt and dismantling of what we had had, in order to create one of the finest instruments for worship in Central New York, so that this church can provide the community as patrons of music and the arts. We have growing Choirs, with wonderful personal abilities and leadership who allow us to laugh and sing together. We have children in the church, babies being brought to Jesus, and children bringing their parents, and youths who are mounting with wings like Eagles, who run and do not grow weary. We are beginning a search to be far more and far different than we have been before. We need to envision this time in our lives, we need to envision coming to Church as a Great Celebration. We need to Hope and to believe in GRACE, savoring REDEMPTION. SECOND, for we said that to understand these parables from Luke, to be CHRISTIAN required two things: Second is that seemingly cast off phrase at the end of Chapter 14. “Salt is Good, but if Salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is fit neither for the land nor the dungheap, people throw it away.” Throughout all of these parables, “PEOPLE” has been synonymous with the world, society, those who do not believe. And “people” have thrown their faith in God, their faith in the Church, away. So how do we restore the taste to salt? As much as many of us today try to avoid Salt, at one point salt was used as a Fertilizer, and as a weed killer, Salt is used to melt the ice, to preserve food, to enhance taste... The Taste of Salt, Saltiness, Salt provides SAVOR... SAVIOR! Christian Faith is not just about accomplishments, or being members, or morality, or righteousness. Christian Faith comes back to the reality of The Savior. Christian Faith is acknowledgment that we cannot live life on our own. When given the choice: we will not show up at the banquet, we will wage wars without anticipating an end, without planning for Peace, without welcoming home the soldiers who fought for us, without recognizing the costs and values and intrinsic worth. Being Christian requires that the church be more than a Free Parking Lot and a Building for Community use. Being Christian requires that we claim to BE: The Church in this time and place. The recurrent phrase throughout the Bible is the reality that ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE WITH GOD! So when Salt has lost its saltness, when people (WE) have thrown away what we believe, and who we are, we still need to trust that All things are possible with God... God can use EVEN US. Without redemption, we are a people without hope, and we are far from Hopeless, we are a people of Grace, who have not received redemption because it was deserved but because we are loved by God.