“Lost”
Rev. Richard Feyen
recorded on 3 Nov 2013
FIRST READING: An Excerpt from Pauli Murray: Selected Sermons and Writings
(Pauli Murray was the first African American woman ordained in the Episcopal Church)
“To be a Christian, to follow Jesus Christ, means to be self-giving, pouring out love upon others even when they are unlovely and unlovable. And this is the hardest part of our faith. We were not made to live alone. We were made to live in community. And it is in community that we come in conflict with others. It is easy to respond to those who love and cherish us. It is much harder to see Jesus Christ in those who dislike us, who even hate and despise us, or try to hurt us. It is difficult to be gentle with those who are unkind, who say and do harmful things about us and to us. Yet, the hard truth is that this is the only way. For when we respond with resentment and retaliation, the greatest damage is not what we do to others, but what we do to ourselves — by cutting ourselves off from God’s love, by alienating ourselves from a sense of community, and winding up feeling lost and alone.”
SECOND READING: Luke 19:1-10 (from Eugene Peterson’s The Message)
Then Jesus entered and walked through Jericho. There was a man there, his name Zacchaeus, the head tax man and quite rich. He wanted desperately to see Jesus, but the crowd was in his way – he was a short man and couldn’t see over the crowd. So he ran on ahead and climbed up in a sycamore tree so he could see Jesus when he came by. When Jesus got to the tree, he looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, hurry down. Today is my day to be a guest in your home.” Zacchaeus scrambled out of the tree, hardly believing his good luck, delighted to take Jesus home with him. Everyone who saw the incident was indignant and grumped, “What business does he have getting cozy with this crook?” Zacchaeus just stood there, a little stunned. He stammered apologetically, “Master, I give away half my income to the poor – and if I’m caught cheating, I pay four times the damages.” Jesus said, “Today is salvation day in this home! Here he is: Zacchaeus, son of Abraham! For the Son of Man came to find and restore the lost.”
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There probably is not a person here who hasn’t, at one time or another, been approached by a stranger on a street corner or at a highway rest area, in a coffee shop or a Laundromat, and been asked, “Are you saved?”
The first time in my life that I recall encountering someone who asked that kind question, had a profound and very lasting impact on me. The question, though posed to me, was not even about me. I was sixteen. My father had been killed in a car accident; it was the middle of summer, and we had been at the cottage up in Michigan. The family had gathered at the house in Wheaton to await my sister’s arrival (she was out of the country as an exchange student in Ecuador) and it took a couple of days to get in touch with her, and then several more days for her to get back. We had a lot of time to wait.
One of those afternoons I was out driving, just to get out of the house and be distracted for a few hours. While I was out, I picked up a friend who had been hitchhiking. He was pretty shocked to see me. He had, just the day before, read in the local paper that Richard Feyen had been killed in an automobile accident, and of course thought it was me. When I explained what happened, he took my arm, looked at me in all earnestness and said . . . “Was he saved? Because you know, if he was, then everything is alright.”
Well, I didn’t feel that everything was going to be alright . . . and I couldn’t wait to get my hitchhiking buddy to his destination. My father was dead and I had just helped my mother pick out the casket and make all the arrangements. I had heard a number of people already tell me I was “the man of the house now” – and this insensitive friend was insinuating that my dad may be in hell! And, to add insult to injury … people in the church were telling me that it was all part of God’s grand plan!
That was not going to be a God I wanted anything to do with!
But here’s the thing … as much as we may not appreciate those who approach us in parking lots and airports and ask, “Are you saved?” – we do have to acknowledge that there is an element of “saving grace” involved in our Judeo-Christian heritage. Christianity is about being saved . . . we can’t escape that. What we have to do is understand and interpret it in the way that it is meant to be interpreted, the way I believe Jesus meant to teach it.
The very name Christian suggests it has something to do with saving. ‘Christos’ means “savior”, or “the one who saves”. It is what Jesus came to be known as in his day; so it became as a name – “Jesus the Saving One” – it’s like saying John Richardson (Richard’s son) – Richard Bakker (he was the baker) – Peggy Waterman (somewhere in Peggy’s ancestry there was one who carried water); surnames were originally descriptions of what people did or where they lived or who their father was . . . Jesus Christos . . . Jesus the Saving One. The real issue is how that is to be interpreted – Jesus saved people from a life of oppression by a religious institution that took (exceedingly) literally everything that had been written in the sacred texts! Sound familiar?
We can also take it back to Moses, who set people free from oppression and slavery. He freed the Hebrew people from slavery to an Egyptian Pharaoh. Set free from that oppressive state of affairs, the people embarked on a path to self-rule, or for them it was God rule (community). Israel means the “People of God” or, it could be said, “The People of the Sacred Way”. It was an authority that came to them in the making of rules by which to live in community. They were rules that would guide their relationships and dictate how to live. They were rules that eventually got expanded on and written in more detail, and then enforced with a strictness that left no room for advancements of thought or individual circumstances. Those were the Hebrew Scriptures.
Then… along came Jesus.
The people, drawn together to live in community with one another, thoughtful people who sought ways to be together in ways that really meant something; were now given the reasoning behind the law and it was the one law which superseded all others.
It was the law of neighbor-love.
It was a teaching that involved pouring out love on the unlovable and ostracized of society. It was a selfless way of being that lifted people out of meaninglessness and turned them to a life of helping others; “saving” others from their own lives of meaninglessness by showing them that caring for others leads to a better life for all people.
Time after time Jesus “saves” people from being set apart and isolated by society. He released the lepers from their life of isolation. He recognized the Samaritan woman as a valued individual. He gave life to people on lifeless paths. He freed the man at Bethsaida from a lifetime of waiting for others. He recognized the invisible and turned the stranger into a friend. He took his era’s invisible population and put them front and center. He taught people to find meaning in helping others. Jesus turned to Zaccheaus and said to him and the people criticizing Jesus, “Today is salvation day in this home! Here he is, Zacchaeus, son of Abraham! For the Son of Man came to find and restore the lost.” Jesus saved people from aimlessness and separation by bringing outsiders into the community and empowering them to become one with all.
Phillip Gulley, Quaker minister and author, writes, “The future of Christianity will rest in our ability to make our spiritual boundaries more porous, welcome the wisdom of other faiths, and borrow the best from other spiritual traditions, even as we share with them the stories and insights of Christianity.”
Our role today, as followers who long to “seek and save” as Jesus did, is to take on a larger task of opening the doors between the faiths. We ought to be examining and appreciating those things that have separated us from others and find ways to break down today’s walls between ourselves and other faith traditions thereby leading the way as the “Saving Ones”, the Christians who, like Jesus, sought to restore relationships and pave the way to better interfaith dialogue.
Rather than staking stronger positions and building higher standards and setting ourselves further apart, we – as Christians – from Progressives and mainliners to the Evangelical right, ought to be appreciating the sacred spiritual truths in all teachings and finding ways to eliminate the separations, and together be the “Saving Ones”.
There is real HOPE in that kind of a message.
There is true community building in that work.
There is a saving message in that longing to be One with all that is, and with our God.
Hope offers that kind of message.
Hope truly brings that Christ – Spirit to the world around us.
AMEN.
