Sermon 204 Jan 19, 2025: Ezk 34:11-16; Col 1:11-20; Lk 15:1-10 “The Good Shepherd” [lost and found]

As preached by Brother Luke

Holy Wisdom Church

 

         When traveling did you ever lose your luggage? Your flight went one way and your luggage another? Getting it back can be both frustrating and time consuming. If you’re lucky the airline might deliver your found luggage to your door. In the worst case it might be lost forever. If the contents are really important to you, you will expend whatever energy is necessary to recover your luggage.

         It would be hard to miss the theme of today’s scripture readings. The Good Shepherd. And yet, what is the Good Shepherd? Even though I now live in rural upstate New York, I have no personal experience of farming and so for me the image of the Good Shepherd is only based on stories not on practical experience. But Jesus was speaking to people of a largely agrarian society who were quite familiar with the image of a good shepherd to which today’s scripture points. The Good Shepherd cares for his or her flock, for its safety and well-being. And the sheep know the shepherd’s voice. They know when they are safe.

The most important quality that runs through both of these stories is not so much about rounding up sheep but seeking out what is lost. The woman is searching for a lost coin, and in her life, the sum it represents is a major portion of her financial well-being. So, the lost sheep and the lost coin represent something of value, a value so great, in the image of the lost sheep, that the other 99 can be left behind while searching for the one lost.

If a lost sheep can be valued that high, the value of a human being is higher still. But of course, Jesus’ stories aren’t really about sheep and coins, they are about our relationship with God. Think of the 99 sheep as on one side of an equation and the lost sheep on the other side. Both sides of the equation are encompassed in the one reality that is God. The 99 are aware and secure in their sense of being with and in God while the lost sheep has lost that connection. Nothing is outside of God. However, the lost sheep, which could be any one of us, may be aimlessly walking in the dark. God is seeking to bring that lost soul back into the light of divine love to enable it to see once again it's communion with God. We may know when we are lost. But do we know when we are found?

Many spiritual writers, including the church fathers, speak about how we are to live in God and God in us. The 99 sheep are like those with God and the one gone astray is sought out by God to be brought back into the fold with the others who are already with God. The Good Shepherd and the Thrifty Housewife represent a loving God seeking what is lost. 

Those who are lost are not really lost but rather have gone astray and God is drawing them back. Jesus is telling his listeners how strong God’s desire is to bring back those who have lost connection with their true identity of being a special part of God’s creation: that is, sons and daughters of God. The message of Jesus’ stories is: do not despair, the situation is not hopeless. God is always seeking to bring all of us more closely into communion with him.

 

[We may intellectually perceive this but do we really feel it? I have experienced this in what some may think is an odd way. As I was pondering this, an unusual image began to emerge which I would like share with you. The image was not so much about understanding our relationship with God, but rather trying to image what it feels like. Bear with me for a moment.

         I invite you to close your eyes. With your eyes closed, rest quietly with the feeling of who you are. Not what you look like or what you might dream about or even what you think you might now see, but rather just rest with the present feeling of who you are. I am distinct from my physical reality. I am sensing my presence without actually feeling anything tangible or palpable. But I notice that I am real and living and aware of my distinctiveness. Whatever that sense is, it makes me aware of who I am. Then remember the name of God: I am. 

Now open your eyes. This little experiment is simply trying to give us a deeper sense of experiencing God in us and we in God. The very thing that Christ is imaging in these stories.]

 

Bringing back what is lost is God’s perspective. Being found, is our human perspective. When we speak of being in God and God in us, we might also say that where we meet God is when we really can feel God’s presence so closely that we truly sense that the “I am” of God and the “I am” of each human being truly occupy the same space, or rather, the same all-encompassing reality. That’s when we are found, when we finally sense being within God and God within us.

         Then truly, Christ is in our midst! 

Homily for the Circumcision (Lk 2:21-23, 39-40)

 As preached by Brother Christopher
Holy Wisdom Church

 

Today is the feast of the Circumcision – the immediate follow-up to the Nativity – which commemorates Jesus being formally stamped as a member of God’s chosen people, the one through whom humanity would be saved. For it is also the feast of the name of Jesus, the name the angel gave to Mary at the Annunciation and which now defines his mission: ‘God saves’. So taken together, today is a feast of identity, a feast whose mystery we enter into every time we utter the name of Jesus in faith and love.

Yet I have to admit that I was struck several days ago when we celebrated the feast of St Stephen, the protomartyr, who was put to death because he had the temerity to confront the high priest and the entire Sanhedrin with their inauthenticity, showing that there was nothing automatic about circumcision and that it only had real meaning to the extent that they followed God’s lead. Remember what he said? “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always oppose the Holy Spirit...” Little wonder why he was soon under a pile of stones. For Stephen, circumcision quite obviously didn’t accomplish what it was supposed to signify.

          Which leads one to ask, ‘so why did Jesus get circumcised? What is the deeper meaning of him submitting to a procedure that would soon become obsolete as the definitive sign of being part of the chosen people? I believe it points to a deeper mystery that is taking place. In submitting to the law of circumcision it marks a transition: that Jesus is the fullness and completion of the Old Covenant, that by having this marked on his body as an infant, it will be completed and brought to fulfillment on the cross. And his resurrection will usher in a new age, a new covenant in which physical circumcision will no longer be a legal requirement for being part of God’s people, but which will now be transformed into a spiritual requirement that applies to Jew and Gentile alike. 

          I think it’s fair to say that this isn’t a ploy to let us get off easy. For submitting to a true spiritual circumcision is about the total stripping of the old person, consecrating and sanctifying our bodies as part of this transformation. It’s a process that takes place over the course of our lives. And this is not gender specific. Spiritual circumcision applies to all of us, male and female alike, because above all, what it’s pointing to is circumcision of the heart. It is our heart – whose depths include all our thoughts, feelings, desires... everything that is not in synch with our dedication and love for God. That is what must be excised and left behind. That can’t happen without a lot of personal effort combined with grace. But that’s what we’re called to.

          Today marks the beginning of a new year. While it is not the beginning of the liturgical year, psychologically it represents a new opportunity to turn the page of our tired habits and compromises. Let’s receive it as the gift that it is.