The Prince of Peace. This is one of the names to describe Jesus. Yet, we often see Jesus criticizing the Pharisees and other local religious leaders in his time throughout the gospels. Today we see the Pharisees picking a fight with him. They accuse him of welcoming sinners and eating with them. In their mind, if one is truly a law-abiding religious person like themselves, one should neither welcome nor eat with sinners who are spiritually unclean. If one does so, that person will also become unclean. In the eyes of the Pharisees, Jesus, like sinners that he hangs out, is unclean. And they cannot accept the fact that he is gaining respect from people and becoming more popular than they are.
The Pharisees’ strategy to devalue Jesus’s ministry still works. In our society, we hear stuff like how important it is to hang out with those who have good family backgrounds, competitive credentials, wealth, and power in order to succeed. From this perspective, Jesus had no chance to succeed in this world. His ministry of welcoming sinners and eating with them, this act of loving them as God does did not get him political power of this world. Instead, what he got himself after all was the death sentence for political rebels: the crucifixion. How ironic it is that he died as a political rebel who never asked for political power! So, let’s not forget that the two parables that we hear this morning carry the on-going tension between Jesus and the Pharisees. The audience is not his friends or followers but his critics. Jesus is not merely teaching them what to do when they lose a sheep or a coin or how to manage when things get lost. Jesus is responding to their criticism of hanging out with the unclean and himself being unclean through these two parables. It seems the parables serve two purposes: 1) One is to show them why he welcomes sinners and eats with them. And 2) The other is to invite them to find themselves in the parables. I’ll first talk about how the parables show why Jesus does what he does, which doesn’t look right in the eyes of his critics. These two parables have the same storyline. There is something lost. They also share the same paradox. 1 is greater than 99 in the first parable. 1 is greater than 9 in the second parable. This is nonsense! But in the parables, it definitely is. Jesus says this very unconvincingly, “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds?” Logically speaking, if we lost one sheep, then it is better to give up on that one. We cannot leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness. We cannot afford to lose them all for the sake of that one lost sheep. It’s already a minus that one is lost but it is best not to lose any one of the ninety-nine. In this sense, Jesus is really not convincing. The second parable presents the same thing. In this case, we’re not abandoning the nine coins in the wilderness since they’re not going anywhere. They’re just coins. Thank God that they don’t move. But why would anyone waste money on throwing a party for finding the lost coin? If I do so, I end up losing that lost coin again by spending money on the party. Jesus is again really not convincing. How do we possibly think that these parables are the best way to answer his critics? First, let’s remember the world in the parables that Jesus describes is not of this world, but of the kingdom of God. Everything in God’s kingdom is upside down. In the kingdom of God, 1 is greater than 9 or 99 or even 999. The taller, the greater one is in this world, the further one is from the kingdom of God. The more sinner one is, the more mercy one receives from God as St Paul confesses in the second lesson. Jesus is seeing every single person through this paradoxical divine arithmetic. The lost one brings more joy than ninety-nine self-righteous persons who don’t believe they need repentance. So, why does Jesus hang out with sinners or lost ones? They bring more joy to God than the self-righteous Pharisees. Jesus is telling the Pharisees something like “Guys, people you call sinners bring more joy to God than you. You too better repent. Turn away from whatever you’ve been doing according your ego.” Why then are these so-called sinners more receptive to Jesus than the Pharisees? It’s kind of like the situation in the parables. Both sinners and the Pharisees have lost a sheep. They both share this absence of one thing. What they don’t share is that the Pharisees have 99 sheep and sinners don’t. Sinners have none but one that is lost. This is what makes a huge difference between them. I’m saying this metaphorically and figuratively but it is the reality of the Pharisees. They are blinded by what they possess in their world. They obey the Law. They have religious and political power. Unlike the Sadducees, they are patriotic, fighting against the Roman Empire. They receive respect and honor from others. They are righteous. Because they have everything, they do not see what they’re truly missing. On the other hand, the so-called sinners who are already labeled by those who have 99 can only see what they’re missing. They don’t even have any expectations to have 5 or 99 sheep. For them, finding one thing is enough. And Jesus is the one who finds them what’s lost in their lives. No wonder why they also welcome Jesus and would love to eat with him and hang out! Wouldn’t you want to be with someone who finds your company joyful? In telling these parables to the Pharisees, as I said earlier, Jesus is not simply explaining them why he would hang out with sinners. The reason why he welcomes and eats with them is is quite simple. Sinners are more receptive and open to Jesus and his teaching, and it brings joy to Jesus and God. This isn’t clearly the case with the Pharisees. Yet, he is also teaching the Pharisees with the parables to look into their hearts. It’s not that they are the ninety-nine sheep or the nine coins that are not lost. They also have lost one important thing in their lives that is worth more than what they have. They just don’t see it. They must find themselves lost. They must accept there’s something so essentially missing in their lives. Everything they have and all that they enjoy do not last forever. They come and go. This one thing which is being lost in their lives but found in sinners is only eternal. After all, the Pharisees become the lost sheep and the lost coin, not the sinners Jesus hangs out with. Then what is this one thing? The first verse of Psalm 14 which we recited this morning answers the question. “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” God is missing in the hearts of the Pharisees. This doesn’t mean God isn’t present. God is always and eternally present in every single person. What the fool believes is that there is no God in his heart. Pay attention to “in his heart.” This is opposite to Jesus’s teaching that the kingdom of God is within you, therefore God is within you and let God reside in your heart. In other words, we can say that the Pharisees are missing the Holy Spirit in their hearts. They do not look for her within themselves. They sincerely believe they have already found the Spirit and now possess her by keeping the Law. It’s like they are saying they have a god elsewhere outside themselves other than in their hearts. Don’t look for God outside, but only look into your innermost being. Jesus’s ministry is not only to let people know the kingdom of God is already present and very much existing in everyone’s hearts but also to show this kingdom of God in flesh, the Holy Spirit fully revealed as a human being. So when one encounters Jesus, one automatically meets the face of God in him and encounters the kingdom of God like his friends and those labeled as sinners. Yet, for this encounter with God to be real, one must sense and experience first within the deepest place of one’s being. St Paul’s question in the Book of Acts is still valid in our time and applies to us, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” More specifically, did you experience the Holy Spirit within yourselves when you became believers? When we truly did and still do, there’s this inner joy that we can feel. This joy is the joy that Jesus is talking about in the parables that there will be more joy in heaven and in the presence of the angels of God over one who finds oneself lost first and found the Holy Spirit in one’s innermost being. Can you sense this joy in your hearts right now? May God grant us mercy to discover the Holy Spirit who is eternally present in us and grant that the Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. |
Paul"...life up your love to that cloud [of unknowing]...let God draw your love up to that cloud...through the help of his grace, to forget every other thing." Archives
January 2025
|