"Why is there such rejoicing over one sinner who repents" -- The Senior Sermon of Celia Ellery '05 from the Diocese of Northwest Texas, preached in Christ Chapel on September 16, 2004

Text: Luke 15:1-10 ("The Lost Sheep" & "The Lost Coin)

Not long ago, I found myself in a hospital emergency room, this time not during CPE, but for myself, having developed an allergic reaction to medication I was taking. After finally getting back to the emergency ward, a row of examining tables with curtains drawn between them for "privacy," I was shown to a table at the end of the room and sat down uncomfortably with my legs dangling off the side. They must have thought I wasn't too ill if they put me in the corner, I thought. After I had examined all the ceiling tiles in my part of the room, my eyes fell to the floor and focused instead on a pair of worn house slippers, just visible underneath the curtain in front of me.

The slippers must have been pink at one time, but now had a gray tint, faded and frayed. As I looked closer, I noticed they were attached to a woman, one whose legs were also well worn, swollen, deeply veined. This was a person on her feet a lot. When she spoke to the person on that examining table, her voice was raspy and deep, a smoker's voice, but a loving voice, one who obviously cared deeply for the other one in that place. She asked if the other one was comfortable, and jokingly reminded that other one of the last time they were here, only two weeks ago. Try as I might to avoid hearing what was going on, because I knew it was none of my business, there I sat, a captive audience. Short of hopping off the table and stuffing cotton in my ears, there was nothing I could do to avoid hearing what was going on one table over.

Gradually, the other person in the room, the one on the table, began to speak, and it became clear that these two were mother and daughter, the younger woman calling the older one "Momma." They began to carry on a light-hearted conversation about goofy family members, probably an on-going conversation-an awkward male cousin going out for the football team again, a divorced aunt who had dyed her hair for the umpteenth time, her no-good boyfriend spending all his time working on a car to enter in the county stock car races. Several minutes of this comfortable banter passed, and then I heard heavy footsteps approaching from the hall. The doctor? I perked up. No-these heavy shoes stopped at the table next door, where mother and daughter were talking.

I heard the curtain at the foot of the table slide back, and the daughter gasped, "Daddy, you're here!"

A man's voice mumbled a greeting.

After an awkward pause, the mother said, "Honey, I'm going to the cafeteria to get you something. It's been too long since you had something to eat, and your blood sugar will get too low if you don't eat."

"Okay, Momma," said the young woman. The house slippers vanished.

"Daddy, I'm so glad you came!" said the daughter cheerfully.

Mumbling from Daddy was the response. The work boots stayed at the foot of the bed.

"What's that Daddy?" she asked.

"I said how are you doin'?" came the sharp reply.

"I'm just fine, Daddy. (PAUSE) How are you, Daddy?"

"Okay."

Silence.

"I love you, Daddy."

More silence.

"I'm sorry, Daddy."

Silence again.

This final silence became deafening. I didn't think I could stand it. Should I do something, I thought? Should I say something? I longed to jump down from the table, throw back the curtain, and simultaneously give her a hug while slapping him silly. "TELL HER YOU LOVE HER, YOU IDIOT! TELL HER YOU'RE NOT MAD AT HER, AND THAT IT'S GOING TO BE OKAY!" I was in the next room, separated by a curtain, but even so, I was closer to her than her own father, who was standing in the room right beside her.

I don't know what happened with the family next to me in the emergency room that day. I'll never know, I guess. My prayer was that all the members of this family would come to know how the grace of God works, and it is nothing like this earthly parent's response to his child.

God's love isn't conditional. God is not a dysfunctional parent, withholding love unless we say we're sorry and repent. If these parables teach us anything, it is that God's love for us doesn't depend on our getting it right. Grace comes looking for us, especially when we get it wrong and lose our way.

Most people don't get lost on purpose. I don't usually set out in the morning to make as many mistakes as possible during the day, although there have been days that it seemed that way. But wrong turns and mistakes are part of life, especially when we are overly concerned with having our own way.

I believe that this is the failure Jesus is talking about in the gospel when He tells the parables of the lost sheep and lost coin. Like the mumbling father in my story, or the murmuring Israelites in the desert, or the grumbling Pharisees in this passage, being lost may mean not just a loss of orientation, of losing one's bearings, but the stronger meaning of the Greek word for lost, (APOL' UMEE), means desolation or destruction. Here, it may refer to spiritual desolation. The Pharisees are so concerned with outward appearances (after all, Jesus has just eaten with them in the previous chapter), so oriented toward themselves that they are spiritually desolate and don't even realize it. From that desolate location, they can only respond with denial and anger when confronted with the truth of their situation.

But denial and anger are not the way back. Repentance, as Jesus reminds them, is the proper way. Repentance (ME-TAN-OH-EH'-OH) literally means turning around, changing one's mind and heart and returning to God, who has been there from the beginning, and who initiates the process of reconciliation. Confessing our failures, asking for forgiveness, and expressing an intention to change, or what the Prayer Book calls Amendment of Life, is the process by which we are reconciled to others and to God. But if our necks are so stiff that they can't be turned, reconciliation in this life is nearly impossible. We do have to be willing to be found, after all. But it is reassuring to know that however far we have strayed from God, however lost we seem, God will spare no expense to find us, not even sparing God's own Son, to carry us home shoulder-high, as the poet A.E. Housman puts it, carried by one whose burden is light.

Perhaps it was the reversal of roles that I found so appalling in the father/daughter encounter in the emergency room. The daughter seemed to be trying to carry the whole burden of repentance and forgiveness for the family, in addition to her own physical illness. That's quite a load to carry. The weight of the separation between father and daughter in the emergency room was as palpable and unbearable as the curtain that separated us from each other. What happened to that father that made it so difficult for him to say he loved his daughter when she reached out to him? What kind of healing really needed to take place before all three people could find and be found by each other? God longs to find and embrace daughter, mother, and father and to help them find not only each other, but also to find their own true selves.

The good news of Jesus Christ is that there is always the potential for great joy at the tearing down of the curtains that separate, at the finding of what was lost.

With the intensity of a worker in New York City who has spent long days and sleepless nights sifting through the rubble of the World Trade Center, searching amid the destruction for the treasures of people's lives, so it is with God. With the tenacity of a woman who cleans the whole house to find a coin, or a shepherd who leaves the whole herd to find one gone astray, so God searches us out, and will not rest until all of God's children are found, they and we are that precious to God.

Through the person of Jesus Christ . . . at whose death the curtain of the Temple, the curtain of separation between us and God was torn in two… God comes to another kind of table here at the Eucharist and speaks to us through bread and wine what that earthly father could not tell his daughter: that we are loved, God is not mad at us, and that everything will be okay. We who were lost have been found. And there is great joy in heaven at our return. Thanks be to God. Amen.