Ninety-Nine
Luke 15:1-10
September 12, 2010
He could have been the program speaker at the Food and Fun Club, so energizing and fascinating was the slide show and presentation of Professor Samuel Lieu. He was showing in rapid fire photos of the evidence of Syrian Christians, merchants and missionaries, who made it to a number of places in China in the 7th century and onward, one of the hidden stories of the Christian movement. There were grave markers as well as tall stele or pillars with Near Eastern script in the middle of the Middle Kingdom, but the most intriguing photo was of the lintel over top of the doorway of an old unimpressive building used as a church. Etched into the wood was a sheep, a not untypical symbol for a Christian church. Except that there were no sheep in this part of China. Plenty of fish, but people had no idea what a sheep was supposed to be. But they were Christians, a unique flock, and no matter what, they were sheep.
When Jesus responds to the nattering of the Pharisees about all the tax-collectors and sinners he associates and eats with by sending them off hunting for the one lost sheep, it is apparent that we are all sheep - even when we have no clue what a sheep is.
This is not a parable that separates the sheep from the goats - there were no goats used in the making of this parable. Instead, it’s about the number 99 and when you hear it counted out, where do you count yourself in that number? Are you one of the majority, or are you one of the minority, that in some places and times may actually be the numerical majority? South Africa in the era of apartheid immediately comes historically to mind for most of us.
Jesus is telling this parable to two quite different audiences: to the Pharisees who were surely numbering 99; and to the tax-collectors and various sinners who felt fortunate to be considered the one. Actually, there is a third audience and that is you and me and all other Christians and seekers who have heard this parable for millennia and around the Christian world today are hearing it once more. We are invited to be two audiences at once, to listen to ourselves with both ears on both sides of the story.
If this were a movie, it would open with the indistinct sounds of mumbling at a public gathering, some laughing, and here and there the whispered phrase that is intended to be heard loud and clear, “He associates with these tax-collectors and sinners and even eats with them.” The CRA and IRS and Her Majesty’s Revenue have never been and probably never will be popular folk and if one of them is at your party, notice how the tone of conversation changes once his/her identity is out. Tax-collectors in the first century collected taxes either for Herod or for the Romans, with a little bit more or less on the side for themselves. So they were traitors and scum as far as the good citizens of an occupied nation were concerned. The sinners that Luke keeps mentioning were probably just plain poor people who had no education, no real knowledge of the religious foundations of that Jewish society, and so were continually behaving in the wrong way. We still have some of those people around, don’t we?
It’s not helpful to be stuck on the Gospel’s specific descriptions of these awful sinners because human society is always hard at work changing the definitions and job descriptions. Clarence Jordan in his Cotton Patch Version of the New Testament, translated geographically and culturally into the ways of the Jim Crow South, described it in a startling way. “And the white church people and Sunday school teachers were raising cain, saying, ‘This fellow associates with black people and eats with them.’” Colour is still an issue, but has been expanded exponentially around the world, and in one sense is no longer just a matter of race. You may be a Canadian citizen, but there are loud mumblings out there on the chat lines and YouTube that people not of Anglo-Saxon heritage are not “real Canadians” and never will be. This is anachronistic, but isn’t it obvious listening to the news and reading all the papers who Jesus would be hanging around with today?
I am not going to name one, because, ironically, our world has become so complex as a result of better communications that there are countless more peoples and groups we can look down upon and hate and discriminate than Jesus ever had a chance to do. We are endowed today with a rich and varied choice of hatreds. I have lived in a number of places and visited many others, not unlike many of you, but as a minister you need to quickly get a hold of the tenor and spirit of the community. One of the first things I listen for is: who do you hate? I mean that generalized, somewhat irrational and sweeping condemnation of a particular ethnic group or race or nationality. Everywhere I go people seem to hate someone different, and over time who they hate changes or is simply added to. We can always hate more people. The folk of Dog River reflexively spit upon the ground at the mention of someone from Wullerton. Nobody knows why and that’s the norm.
Jesus tells about the joy of finding lost sheep and lost coins in order to change the way we identify the world, to change the whole process of our hating and loving. Most of the time you and I are part of the ninety-nine, the majority, the privileged, and that is also the case if our 99 is a minority. It does not get us anywhere - except where we are today - to believe that Jesus was championing the minority of one against the majority of ninety-nine. Make no mistake, Jesus knew that in God’s eyes the one lost sheep is worth all of our love and respect. However, we have painted ourselves into moral corners believing that the One is fundamentally in opposition to the oppressive power of the Ninety-Nine, and that the Ninety-Nine perceive the One as an aberration. It’s a great way to keep stoking the fires of hate.
Jesus was talking to the Pharisees, “You are the ninety-nine, and you do not need any help. The purpose of our love is to help the one lost sheep and find the one lost coin and realize that’s why God has called us.” Clarence Jordan translates Jesus’ conclusion to them this way: “I’m telling you, in the same way there’ll be more joy among the spiritually sensitive ones over a single ‘outsider’ who reshapes his life than over the ninety-nine ‘righteous’ people who don’t need to change their ways.”
To the tax-collectors and sinners, the black folk of the South, the Muslims, the gays, the immigrants from every part of the world, he said, “Don’t you go believing the propaganda the ninety-nine keep spitting out on you that you’re worthless and a failure at their way of life. You are a human being created by God, just like them.”
In our media age, I can imagine Jesus looking at the eyes-downcast Pharisees in one segment, then turning to those conspicuous consumers of sin who are now looking up at him amazed with smiles slowly forming. And then Jesus turns directly to the camera, “And as for you who are reading this parable, I don’t know what camp you fall into, but let me reassure you - you are all lost sheep. That was a little tongue-in-cheek when I said that there are ninety-nine righteous people who don’t need to change their ways, who need no repentance. Aren’t you human too? There is plenty of joy awaiting you too when you are found, just like your fellow lost sheep. Perhaps your turn to be lost and found hasn’t come up yet, but the Gospel is that you have many more people who are like you when you are found than those who are different.”
When we sing it, we all sing it all together, not just the sinners, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a sheep like me. I once was lost, but now am found, ‘twas blind but now I see.”
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan