Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

Luke 15:10

"This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them," they say, disdain in their voice.

It must make him hurt inside. It's not his word; it's not how he thinks of people.

But he has to use it here, for he's accused by the religious elite of hanging out with them, of welcoming and eating with sinners.

And a terrible thing that was, too. Then as now, one was known by the company one keeps, and his company upset the folks who cared only about ceremonial righteousness.

The religious pros who believed that righteousness - right standing with God and others - comes from what you eat and wear, and not from inside your heart.

I suspect the company he kept - that is, the sinners themselves - couldn't have cared less about what the religious types thought of them. My guess is that most of them were too busy trying to keep their heads above water, trying to keep the creditors at bay, or to keep their children fed, to care much about what anybody thought about them. They didn't have that luxury.

In our day the religious professionals who care more about ceremonial righteousness still seem to dominate the conversation, don't they? The language of sin and repentance is alive and well in religious circles. Go to a Presbytery meeting, for example, or even General Assembly, and you'll hear hints of it.

For reasons that I find hard to understand a few ministers and elders in our own denomination can look out at a room full of 500 or 5000 people and they can see every single one of them, every single one of us, not, first, as lost sheep - not as people who might be afraid, trapped in the dark and terrified, not as people in need of a shepherd. No, they see us as sinners, "unclean" people who need to get right with God.

Of course today's religious elite would likely be quick to cite this text as justification for their dim view of the human race.

But if they spent a little time trying to discern the meaning of the text and a little less time trying to advance their own point of view, they might be surprised to discover the text isn't primarily about sinners or even about sheep.

It is primarily about God. A God who is somehow willing to come and look for us when we lose our way, a God who behaves like a shepherd, who won't give up on us until we are found.

Now you might think that's about the best news ever, the kind of thing that would attract a crowd. Indeed, that seems to be exactly what has happened here. People tend to not to enjoy hearing that they are dirty, worthless sinners.

They do, by contrast, love hearing that they are beautiful even when they don't feel like they are. People love hearing that they have value even when they don't feel like they do. They love hearing that God will go to virtually any length to find them when they feel lost and afraid.

Which is doubtless why crowds followed him everywhere.

The only problem with that idea is that shepherds had a terrible reputation back in those days. Shepherding was apparently a disreputable trade. As one commentary put it, the rabbis of the day deemed shepherds to be on a par with "camel drivers, sailors, gamblers with dice and tax collectors" ( New Interpreters Bible , Vol. IX, pg. 296).

And maybe that is exactly the point. The radical, boundary-breaking point about God.

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?

It's not a rhetorical question. He's really asking it. Which shepherd in his right mind would jeopardize the health and safety of 99% of his flock to go after one stray sheep?

I'm sure his listeners were terrified to admit this, thinking that it was somehow the wrong answer, but the truth is that no one would do that. No shepherd anywhere would do something so foolish as that. In the real world, a world full of wolves and thieves, a shepherd who would put the safety of his entire flock at risk in the hope of finding one wayward lamb wouldn't last a day in his profession.

Probably deep in their hearts the priests knew they wouldn't do it either. They wouldn't risk the health and well-being of their flocks; they wouldn't leave their congregations unattended when there are so many hucksters about to go out and try to save one homeless person.

It makes no sense. Nobody would do it.

Nobody but God that is. The God whom Jesus knows. The God whom Jesus was born to reveal. God the gambler with dice. God who's willing to take extravagant risks to find you in the dark.

What is rhetorical here, I think, is the 99 sheep.

Take any room full of 100 people - a sanctuary, a restaurant, a classroom - and you'll never find a crowd of that size in which everyone has it all together, all at the same time.

The truth is that at some point or another in our life's journey every single one of us in this room has wandered off the path. Every single one of us has found ourselves on the edge of a cliff; found ourselves tangled up in brambles from which we could not get free, cold, alone and stranded; found ourselves defenseless, staring down some hungry wolves who are waiting to pounce.

A cancer diagnosis. A broken marriage. A failed business. A heart attack. A car accident. None of us is exempt from being a lost sheep at some point in our lives.

That's why he's having dinner with the outcastes. Because they are us and we need him.

That's what the word means, by the way. "Sinner" actually means outcastes. And it's Jesus' favorite crowd.

It's also why he tells them to repent. For as you may recall, the word repent originally was not a tent-meeting, revival kind of word. The word repent simply means to turn around, or even more specifically, it means to change your mind.

So repent! Stop buying into this idea that you're outsiders , Jesus says with his words and with his presence among them. You belong in the center of God's own heart. You belong in the center of God's own community, God's own people. You belong right here.

Repent! Stop buying into what the culture says about you, or what the church or maybe even you're family says about you. You're not a loser. You're not a dirty, miserable sinner. You are a child of God. You are fearfully and beautifully and wonderfully made, just as you are.

Repent! Stop believing what the voices in your own head are saying about you, that you don't look right; that you're not the right size or shape; that you're too old to be worthy of God's love, or anyone else's.

Repent and change your mind!

What's sad is that in the wrong hands this is a text about sin and guilt. It's a text that has been used to bully people and manipulate them.

The good news, though, is that in the hands of hands of Jesus this story is ultimately about joy. Did you notice that? Did you hear it?

Joy, joy, joy, rejoice, rejoice! Just so, I tell you, he says, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. Five times he says it!

Every time one of you who believes you're not worthy of God's love repents, every time one of you who believes you deserve to be an outcaste, every time one of you changes your mind and starts believing the truth about yourselves, that you have worth and value, there is joy in heaven.

Every time one of you who is lost, who has run into a dark place and can't find your way home, every time one of you is found by God, lets yourself be found by God, there is joy in heaven.

Every time one of you who dwells in deep darkness repents, that is, steps into the light, gets free from addiction, free from self-loathing, free from the desire to harm yourself, free from the belief that you are a worm who does not belong, there is rejoicing in heaven.

Every time, every time, every time. Now and always.

That's good enough news to attract a crowd. But he doesn't stop there. When it's hard for you , he suggests, when you wander off the path of life and find yourself in the valley of the shadow of death, God will come looking for you, like a shepherd who's willing to gamble his whole flock just to find you!

I wish I could stop there - probably some of you wish that too! - but nowadays it's not enough just to say such things. More and more these days people want to know how does this happen? How exactly does God come looking for us? I want empirical proof!

The truth is I can't give you that. I don't know how God comes looking for us any more than I know how my body changes spaghetti into energy (or more and more in my case, how my body changes ice cream into fat!)

I don't know how God shepherds us any more than I know how satellite tv works. I just trust it and believe it.

I don't how God comes to find us any more than I know why people are compelled to visit us when we are sick or why they cook casseroles for us when grief comes breaking through our levies like a flood.

I don't know how or why God comes to find us any more than I know why people volunteer for Room in the Inn just so they can spend a night sleeping on a cot in the company of homeless women.

I don't how or why God comes to find us any more than I know why someone who could be out on the golf course would, instead, volunteer to sit with and comfort victims of domestic violence as they go through the painful process of facing their abuser in court.

I don't know how or why God comes to find us any more than I know why able bodied young men and women are willing to give up a day of their lives to move two older ladies into a new home in assisted living where they are safer and well looked after. Or why they come to visit when one of them lies dying quietly on her bed.

I don't know how or why God comes to find us when we are lost. I just know that God does.

Amen