"Lost and Found Department" - Pentecost 14C

Exodus 32:7-14
Saint Luke 15:1-10

In the midst of what was a misty morning last Sunday thousands gathered on Northerly Island, the site of the former Meig’s Field, to do church.  Kind of.

Most of us  missed this.  I didn’t know about it until I saw the screaming headline in the Sun-Times on Monday.  It said: “Thousands See Kanye West Perform ‘Sunday Service.’”

“Sunday Service” is an outgrowth of something that began early this year in the home of West and his socially media savvy wife Kim Kardashian when they invited some of their “A-list” friends over to do church in a very different Hollywood way.   It is so different that all those attending this invite only “church” have to sign non disclosure agreements even though they readily share moments on Instagram.

“There’s no praying,” Kardashian told Jimmy Kimmel, on his late-night show. “There’s no sermon. There’s no word. It’s just music, and it’s just a feeling.”1

A very pricey feeling. 

According to The Chicago Tribune some of the free tickets given away by a local radio station were being listed on “Craigslist  . . .   with prices ranging from $100 to $300.”2 (We should be doing as well!)

Grace in this case was neither free nor was it gospel.

In a segment on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” The New Yorker Magazine’s Jia Tolentino said of West at a similar event: "He is the church . . .  he is the text of the sermon. It's his songs. He is the worship. He is creating a church in himself and selling it.  There's always this sense ... that he might worship God but never serve him. It's always seemed like God, in the end, would always serve him.”3

That kind of stuff will get you in trouble as it did for the Israelites when they we’re waiting for Moses to come down from the mountaintop with the Ten Commandments.

They had no idea what Moses was doing at the top of Mount Sinai they only knew that he was taking a long time to do it.  So they took off all their gold jewelry, melted it down and made it into a calf worthy of worship.  If the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob wouldn’t serve them they would find one that would.  They would create their own god.

They decided to turn their back on God who took them by the hand and led them out of slavery in the land of Egypt.  They decided that there had to be a god somewhere that would provide better provisions than just bread and birds.  They decided that they could make a god for themselves that would respond quicker to their needs.  They wanted a better god than the one they had so they made one.  And they worshiped it!

The real God is justifiably miffed and decides that the only thing that can be done with this stiff necked people is to wipe them out.

It is at this point, “Moses becomes a public relations agent for the divine.  ‘What will the Egyptians say about you, Lord?’ he wonders aloud to the Almighty.  It is as if Moses suggests that God has a reputation to keep, and destroying Israel would look bad”4 especially to the Egyptians.

I think the biggest temptation for God, in the midst of human rebellion, is to throw up God’s hands in despair and say: “All right then!  I will leave you alone!  I will leave you to your own devises.”

When that happens, we may look like the guy in the Lost and Found booth on today’s bulletin cover.  We’ll be sitting there with our initiative, our innocence, our perspective, our sense of humor, our capacity to change and even our strength to go on, all lost.  It isn’t a pretty sight when that happens.  And it almost never happens all at once.

Michael Yaconelli, in his book, Dangerous Wonder: The Adventure of Childlike Faith, tells the story of a farmer who tried to explain to him why cows sometimes find themselves lost in the middle of another farmer’s field.

A cow is nibbling on a tuft of grass in the middle of a field, moving from one tuft to the next.  Before you know it, she ends up at some grass next to the fence.  Noticing a nice clump of grass on the other side  . . .  the cow stumbles through an old tear  . . .  and finds herself outside.  “Cows don’t intend to get lost,” the farmer explained, “they just nibble their way to lostness.”5

The good news is that God never does leave us alone.  We may think God has.  We may feel God has.  However, even with the stiff-necked Children of Israel bowing down before a golden calf – a god of their own making – God decides to keep coming after us never willing to leave us all on our own.

The reoccurring story of the whole bible is about God who keeps looking for us when we “nibble our way to lostness.” 

That’s what Jesus is trying to get across to those who grumble in today’s gospel. 

They complain that Jesus is breaking bread with “sinners and tax collectors” two groups that the religious would just as well tell to “get lost.”  They had no use for these people.  Not only would they wouldn’t eat with them they wouldn’t even talk to them. 

Jesus is telling them that these are exactly the people God wants because God never gives up on any – including Pharisees or scribes – who wander away.

Jesus underscores this by casting as the heros in his story two groups that were especially looked down upon by his society – a woman and a shepherd. 

Shepherds were generally considered to be poor social outcasts.  Women [were thought to be second  class citizens] relegated to the margins of society.  So Jesus is illustrating the nature of the kingdom of God with two persons from the margins.  People who work hard to find one sheep or one lost coin are probably poor people ... who search for that which is lost with a kind of desperation.6

Now that’s an image of God.  God doesn’t give up but God searches in desperation!  God is like a shepherd who will search over every hill and valley looking for any of us when we go astray.  God is like a woman who will sweep every corner of her house until what she is looking for is found.

And when we are found God doesn’t just lead the sheep back into the fold but God throws a party out of all proportion.  God doesn’t just throw the coin into her loose change bowl but invites her neighbors and friends to a party that would make even the Hollywood elite jealous.

We might make God as angry as the Children of Israel with their gold cow, or the shepherd at the sheep, or the woman at herself for losing the coin  but God doesn’t stop there.  God never stops looking.  

Speaking of those who go searching for God at a Kanye West “Sunday Service”Gia Tolentino says:

"There's so much ambient hunger and desperation in so many aspects of our culture right now. The need, I'm sure is sincere. What kind of made me sad about watching it was it's just, 'Is this the thing that will fill it?' I'm not sure. It seems like the incorrect answer to an extremely real hunger."7

There had to have been a real hunger among those who ventured out on a misty and cold morning to attend a “Sunday Service” led by and for Kanye West.  

What West and his like tries to convince us that we can live our lives on our own, the authors of our own fate and the creators of our own gods.  That leaves us lost in the “lost and found department.”

Jesus, on the other hand,  portrays God lovingly reaching out, seeking, intruding, and saving us from ourselves.

When we are embraced by Jesus we discover that we are no longer lost but have been found by the very one we have been looking for. God has been looking for us all along and we have been found by none other than Jesus Christ our Lord who declares that, as far as he is concerned, we don’t have to visit the lost and found department ever again.

May this be true not only for all of us but for all of God wandering children.

____________
 
1. Gia Tolentino. (2019).  “Kanye West's Sunday Service is Full of Longing and Self-promotion.” The New Yorker. [online] Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/kanye-wests-sunday-service-is-full-of-longing-and-self-promotion [Accessed 14 Sep. 2019].

2. Jessi Roti. “Kanye West Brings His Gospel to Northerly Island.” The Chicago Tribune, September 9, 2019, Morning edition, sec. 4. http://digitaledition.chicagotribune.com/html5/desktop/production/default.aspx?&edid=a5a127e3-f02c-4747-a3eb-3df69b78a108.

3.  Audie Cornish and Cala Christina. “At Kanye West's Sunday Service, 'He Is The Church'.” All Things Considered. NPR, April 25, 2019. https://www.npr.org/2019/04/25/717219251/at-kanye-wests-sunday-service-he-is-the-church.

4. Joseph L. Clifford,“Exodus 32:7-14. Commentary 1: Connecting the Reading with Scripture.” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship 3 (Louisville:Westminister/John Knox Press, 1989), p. 304–5.

5. Michael Yanconelli, Dangerous Wonder: The Adventure of Childlike Faith. Colorado Springs, CO: Navpress, 1998.

6. William H. Willimon, “More God Than We Want.” Pulpit Resource, vol. 32, no. 3 (2001): 45–48.

7, Cornish and Christina, loc.cit.