Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 24], rcl yr c, 2022
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; Psalm 14; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10
I did a bit of camping this summer. We went to Blue Lake, Ontario. It was a beautiful lake, with a beautiful beach, and I spent most of my time sleeping, reading, cooking and eating, and swimming.
My summers used to be spent working a bit harder than that, though they were spent very close to Blue Lake, on Shoal Lake, Ontario. I worked at a children’s summer camp, and because the camp of my youth was on an island, we had a number of different strategies to deal with things like food waste. For a few summers we had pigs, pigs who ate most of the food picky campers would leave on their plate.
And it being a camp on a shoestring budget, a largely juvenile maintenance crew (to which I belonged) had to build the pigpen, a largely juvenile maintenance crew that knew very little about things like building pigpens, pigpens that, as it might be guessed, weren’t actually all that well-built for doing things like keeping the pigs inside their pen.
And when I was there, a pig did indeed escape, running away overnight into a forest full of other animals that were neither vegetarian nor particularly friendly towards pigs. So this was bad. An escaped pig was kind of a big deal. And we couldn’t find it.
Eventually the pig did two slightly miraculous things. 1. it didn’t get eaten by a wild pork-loving animal, and 2. it changed its mind, showing up a couple of mornings later outside the pigpen. And soon enough it was back in the pen, and there was much rejoicing, because the pig that was lost was found again, and there would be much bacon at the end of the season.
Thankfully, the pig had obviously learnt its lesson, right? It had repented of all its wandering ways, and came back to the fold of its own accord, and it would never run away again. Right? Well no, a few days later, there was a pig missing. The same stupid pig had found another way out of the pen.
I mean, didn’t it learn its lesson? Hadn’t that darned pig finally learned a better way? To stay home in the pen with those pigs who knew so much better? Nope. That wasn’t the way it was for that one lost pig. It was the sort of pig bound to try and run away again. And again. And again.
Episcopal theologian Robert Farrar Capon loved to point out that we often read parables of grace in such a way that makes us think that by the end of the story, there is no more need for any more grace. Take the parable of the lost sheep, for example. We love to hear about the lost sheep, how the poor little sheep is found by Jesus the Good Shepherd, and how the little lost sheep is returned to the fold. And we usually leave it there, assuming that the poor dumb little sheep is just a bit smarter now, smart enough not to ever run away again.
But Capon liked to ask us to imagine the next day, when the little dumb sheep is actually still the same little dumb sheep, asking, is it more likely that the lost sheep is going to suddenly get a better sense of direction? Or is it more likely that tomorrow, that little sheep is going to look just a little beyond the rest of the flock, where the grass will most certainly look that much yummier? Isn’t it most likely that the little dumb sheep will think to itself, “I’ll just go over there for a second.” Doing the same dumb thing, getting lost again.
Which is really most likely?
The point here isn’t cynical; the point isn’t that people never change. It’s rather a point about the grace of God, and how hard it is to accept that the grace of God is such that even the dumbest little sheep, the ones that, as soon as they are back in the fold, back in the arms of their saviour, are almost immediately in need of that same grace once again, and are still nevertheless sought out by a Lord who will always forgive, always restore, always seek out the lost and the lonely. And not because any of us deserve it. But because we don’t.
There is judgment here, but not, perhaps, where we most expect it. But it’s not a judgment against the perpetually lost; it’s a judgment against those who judge. Against those who would extend God’s mercy, but only so far. It’s a judgement against the 99 who would say, “ok little sheep, you’ve been lost once, and that’s already not all that good. But we can let that slide. But then there was the time when you fell into a gulley? And then when you got caught in the thistle? And then the time you just slept in too late? Do you really think that nice shepherd is going to keep going after you?”
But the logic of the parables, taken as a whole, is that the ones subject to judgment are the ones who would limit the grace of God: the 99 that just can’t imagine God being THAT gracious to that perpetually lost sheep.
But the truth is quite different, isn’t it. Not only do we all need the grace of God—that we are all mired in sin in such a way that we all do, indeed, continue to need the forgiveness of God, the restoration of God, the friendship of God; but also that the grace of God is such that there is never a turning away, not of God from us, no matter how often we may need God’s grace, God’s embrace, and God’s restoration to the fulness of life in him.
The Revd Dr Preston Parsons