SERMON FOR SEPTEMBER 15, 2019    FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST   TEXT: LUKE 15:1-10
     My daughter’s college advisor is a formidable woman. The product of one of UC Berkeley’s powerhouse doctoral programs, she is intelligent, forceful and sharp-edged. Just the kind of feminist scholar to inspire young women. My daughter adores her, and so last week, when the “academic goddess,” as she calls her, showed up in the restaurant where Lucy was tending bar, she was thrilled. She took a short break to greet her mentor. They chatted affably, and then Lucy mentioned that several other alums from the school were working at the restaurant as well. The academic goddess responded, “So that’s what a Mills College degree gets you.” Lucy was taken aback. She replied, “Well, we’re just doing our best to make a living.” Then she offered her good wishes for the semester and returned to her bar duties.
    Lucy told me about the incident a few days later. “Mom, what an elitist remark. It was like she said the worst things I think about myself — that my education was a waste and my life is going nowhere.” Once we separated the voice of my daughter’s inner critic from that of her advisor, I suggested to Lucy that the woman most likely did not intend to be either snide or rude, but even academic goddesses trip over their clay feet once in a while. I suspect she was socially at a loss when she encountered one of her advisees outside of the classroom or her office, especially as a paying customer in a restaurant where said advisee was pouring shots and mixing cocktails. Lucy agreed but pointed out that I wouldn’t have reacted that way if I ran into one of my students in a similar situation. “Ma, you would have spent some time at the bar chatting, had a drink, left a good tip. You can talk to anybody. I learned that from you. In fact, I made myself feel better by thinking that I may never have a UC Berkeley degree like my advisor but I already have better social skills.”  Nothing like a little salve of superiority to soothe the bruised ego!
     It’s always refreshing when your child offers a word of praise, but Lucy’s comment came back to haunt me as I read the Gospel for today. Yes, I can talk to anybody. Indeed, I tend to talk too much to all kinds of somebodies. But that is not the same as engaging them. And though I’m pretty good at keeping my clay feet out of my mouth in public, I know that elitist dismay to which Lucy’s advisor gave voice. That’s why I am in awe of Jesus’ social skills and at a loss as to how to imitate him.
     The issue of table fellowship is important in Luke’s Gospel. As David Lose points out, “[E]ating isn’t catching a quick bite at the local coffee house and moving on. Eating — that is, sharing table fellowship — is a mark of camaraderie, acceptance and friendship.” Two weeks ago we heard about Jesus attending a dinner at the home of a Pharisee. He cautions the guests about their choice of seats. Better to take a low place at the table so that the host can honor you by moving you further up the line, rather than starting high and risking a demotion. The Lord also gives his host a word of advice: “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind.  And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (Luke 14:12-14). Now today we move on to chapter 15 with its three parables about the “lost”: a sheep, a coin and a prodigal son and his brother. All of them end with celebration. The shepherd who recovers that wayward 100th sheep calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” The woman who has turned on all the lights and swiffered her house relentlessly calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” She likely spent the equivalent of what she recovered entertaining them. The father of those two conflicted sons throws a party when the younger one returns home — “[G]et the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate,” he commands his slaves. He tells his embittered firstborn, “But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.” Jesus addresses all three of these parables to the disgruntled leaders of his religious community, who raise the issue of table fellowship at the very beginning of the chapter: “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’”
     There are four categories in play in today’s text: sinners, righteous persons, the lost and the found. It is easy for us to dismiss Jesus’ opponents as hypocrites, since, after all, everyone is a sinner, but that is not Luke’s perspective. Tax collectors were corrupt; they colluded with the Roman Empire against their own people’s best interests and kept for themselves a cut of the money they extorted. They were roundly and justly despised. The sinners here are people whose transgressive behavior is habitual and blatant.  It’s public knowledge in the community, and one avoids their company for good reason, because when you lie down, or eat, with dogs, you are likely to get up with fleas. Moreover, for Luke the Pharisees and scribes are not suffering from delusions of grandeur. These righteous persons are not perfect, but they are decent. They strive to keep the law; they are committed and conscientious in their ethics and moral life. These are people like my parents, people like you. No wonder Jesus’ laissez-faire social behavior troubles them deeply.
      So here’s the catalogue of the Lord’s preferred table companions: Pharisees, scribes, lawyers and their peers; the poor and those disadvantaged in society because of disease or physical impairment; tax collectors and sinners. Now Jesus truly was someone who could talk to any- and everybody! And it isn’t just a matter of chatting affably; his acceptance of them is honest and intimate. I have spent time with people who are poor and homeless, with people on the margins of society because of illness. We have shared meals and made conversation. Yet in many ways we have experienced ourselves as well-intentioned foreigners. And the prospect of table fellowship with the tax collectors and sinners of our day — think of grifter politicians using their public office to enrich themselves or the Jeffrey Epsteins of this world. Hey, how about drinks and dinner with the big pharma dudes behind the opioid crisis? I just can’t imagine it. But it’s a chance Jesus has always been willing to take. 
     That brings us to the other two categories in today’s parables: the lost and the found. People who scorn human decency and those who take the moral life to heart — sinners and the righteous — the Lord pursues them both. We are lost to each other, limited by both our worst impulses and our better angels, unable to see a way forward on common ground. “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance,” Jesus assures his hearers. When those big ticket transgressors experience a change of heart and mend their ways, we have reason to celebrate on earth as they do in heaven. Yet the righteous, while not needing to take their lives in a wholly new direction, often require a course correction. It doesn’t take much to be paralyzed by outrage; it is easy to get lost in despair. “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 it?” Jesus asks. Well, I’m guessing none of us. But God gladly does. The Lord is tireless in pursuit of the lost and does not come back empty-handed. Amen.