14^th Sunday after Pentecost

September 15, 2019

by Francis Thompson - 1859 - 1907

“Those strong feet…”

St. Luke 15:1-10

For four years I served on a pastoral team at St. Mark Lutheran Church in Storm Lake, Iowa.  The parish was about 8 blocks away from the Synod Office.  Bishop Miller was a member of the congregation. 

I would frequent the Synod office.  Several of our parishioners were on the staff.  We’d converse over coffee in the lower level of the Synod office.  Coffee breaks were often extended.  However, the staff knew when Bishop Miller arrived – they heard the sound of his feet.  His strong footsteps on the floor above meant that the shepherd, the bishop of the Synod was coming.

The sound of Bishop Miller’s strong feet might mean that he was searching for the staff.

Francis Thompson was an English poet and ascetic. [1859-1907] after attending college, he moved to London to become a writer, but in menial work, became addicted to opium, and was a street vagrant for years.

Thompson’s poem, ‘The Hound of Heaven’ – became a classic.

The Hound of Heaven

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him …

From those strong Feet

that followed, followed after…

Those strong feet…

St. Luke records ‘The Parables of the Lost’ in chapter 15.  We’ve heard these stories so many times that they just might have lost their edge.  There needs to be a fresh look and a fresh approach to these stories of the ‘Lost Sheep,’ and ‘The Lost Coin.’ 

The first step is to rename them.  By naming them Parables of the Lost we just may have missed the central point here. 

Jesus is having an ongoing argument and debate with the religious leaders about the nature of God.  The God of the religious leaders demands strict obedience and is concerned about ritual purity and sustaining equilibrium by enforcing ritual codes and laws.  One’s relationship to God is out of the covenant of the Law. 

Jesus on the other hand reveals a God of mercy.  God’s nature is best seen in God’s ongoing compassion for all God has made.  God delights in finding the lost.  God delights in healing and restoring relationships.  God delights in communities that are not broken but whole.  God finds joy in including all. 

So these parables are about the kind of God that Jesus reveals.  Let’s rename them:  ‘The Searching Shepherd’ and ‘The Sweeping Woman.’

99 verses 1!  This is a crazy ratio.  Jesus deliberately uses the story of a shepherd to reveal the nature of God.  Shepherds at the time of Jesus were low on the social totem pole.  Their work was dirty and disgusting.

A Jewish Midrash (commentary) on Psalm 23:1 – “The Lord is my Shepherd….” a 9^th century Rabbi by the name of Rabbi Jose bar Hanina comments:

“In the whole world you find no occupation more despised than that of a shepherd, who all his days walks about with his staff and his pouch.”

[Source:  Awaken: The Art of Imaginative Preaching, Pentecost 2, 2013, Year C, page 16)

So Jesus uses an example of a person who the religious leaders would find offensive – a Shepherd – the lowest of the low.  By the way, you might recall that Luke begins his Gospel with the Jesus’ birth narrative and angels announcing the Good News first to shepherds.

Here is a Shepherd who needs a course in math.  Leaving 99 sheep to find one!  Not a smart business proposition.  It is so extreme that it is laughable and people probably laughed:  “You’ve got to be kidding – crazy shepherd!”

Jesus reveals a God who will go to any extreme to welcome the repentant sinner.  And does not welcome begrudgingly, but with great celebration!

Can you religious leaders join in God’s delight?

In the story of the Sweeping Woman, here again – Jesus uses an outsider, a woman, as a picture of God.   Luke’s Gospel emphasizes God’s concern for raising the status of the oppressed.  Women were indeed considered property.  Women were indeed outsiders in a patriarchal society. 

Here again Jesus is going to the extreme and poking a stick in the eye of the religious leaders…whose emphasis on purity and exclusiveness is being challenged. 

Yes, God can be pictured not only as a Good Shepherd, but also as a Sweeping Woman.  Yet to this day segments of the church will not allow women to be pastors – they remain second class citizens in churches that claim to follow Jesus!

The lost coin was probably a drachma, worth the price of one sheep, or one-fifth the price of an ox.  Some commentators suggest that it may have part of a necklace.  The ten-coined necklace may have been a wedding gift. 

So, the missing coin is a part of a set.  The set is incomplete without it.  So when she finds it – the set is again complete and so she throws a party rejoicing once again in the wholeness of the set.

These two stories told by Jesus are indeed tongue in cheek almost in your face stories that reveal the nature of God.

Jesus reveals a God who searches until he finds…a God who sweeps until she sweeps up what God is looking for. 

All too often we emphasize the lost in these parables.  But a more nuanced message is that Jesus is telling us more about God in these stories than about repentant sinners. 

This is a God who chases after the beloved lost sheep.  Whose strong feet will not rest until they reach that one lost. 

This is a God who will not relent until she finds the lost coin.  God is ever searching for the lost ones because God’s creation is incomplete without them. 

The sheep fold is not whole with one lost sheep.  The necklace has lost its worth with one coin missing.

So God and the angels rejoice when the lost is found.  God loves a party and invites the religious leaders to rejoice in God’s grace and compassion.

You know what it is like to lose your keys or you wallet.  Then find them!  How relieved and happy you are!

Or maybe you lost your child in the mall when they were small.  Panic stricken you search and search and there is a relief in the heart when the lost is found.  Imagine God’s joy and relief at finding her lost creation.

God is like the hound of heaven out to find us, lapping at us.  God is the searching one.  And once God finds the lost, God delights as much as God delighted at the first creation – it is party time!

Sainted poet, preacher, professor, pastor – Gerhard Frost says it so well in his reflections on the Francis Thompson poem: 

Those Strong Feet

"I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

I fled Him down the arches of the years...

I hid from Him...from those strong feet

that followed, followed after..."

We are the questioning ones, we say,

searching, groping for our God.

But would that we could know ourselves

as God knows us--

fugitives, escapees, rebels,

the wanted ones, the longed for ones.

God is the questing one;

the gaunt and tireless one;

he calls and sends us to one another

to speak the wooing Word, the Name,

to break each habit of ingenious evasion,

and gently block all exits

from chastening love,

to listen for each footfall of those strong feet

that even now follow, follow after.

(Source: Journey of the Heart by Gehard Frost)

Shh!  Listen – do you hear them – those strong feet of God coming, chasing after us when we are lost...those strong feet catching up with us – and the voice calling us to turn and be embraced.

Amen

May be quoted with permission.

kennstorck@gmail.com