Image: Dominico Fetti
Lost and found. Jeremiah’s “foolish … stupid children”. The psalmist’s song of the atheist fool. Timothy’s gratitude for the mercy of God. Jesus telling the stories of lost coins and sheep. Those are the dry bones of today’s lesson from holy scripture.
One group of the religious leaders of his day – the Pharisees, this time – were grumbling about Jesus. It seems that this is actually one of their favorite pastimes. They always seem to be grumbling about Jesus. This time, it was about the company he kept at dinner. Sinners and tax collectors. Imagine! Why would a Holy Man, a Teacher of Religion, associate with riff-raff?
My father used to warn: “You can’t choose your family but you can choose your friends. Like it or not, fair or unfair, you will be judged by the company you keep.”
As many of you know, I spent a week with my cousins who gathered in the Pacific North West to honor and celebrate the life of my last remaining aunt, Aunt Alice.
Well, we did that in grand style but we also shared lots of stories and memories – some of which had been lost to me in the sands of time, but were surprisingly easy to find once the memory banks were activated by good food, laughter and, perhaps, just a few sips of wine.
My cousin Fred – known in my childhood as “Junie” because he was a Junior and that’s what my grandmother called him – reminded me about one story in particular that I had almost forgotten. He had built what he called a “go cart”, which was really a prototype of the motorized vehicles we see at amusement parks today.
His go cart featured a wooden box in which my grandfather used to store potatoes. The frame was fashioned together with some pipes that had been tossed in the rubbish, along with some long-ago discarded wheels from our first bikes. A seat from . . . I think it was an old cushion.
Fred told me that he had checked out the whole thing with my grandfather for safety and had received his stamp of approval. So, the next thing was to take it out for a test drive.
Always the clever entrepreneur – even to this day – he brought it first to me to admire his handiwork. Which I did. I mean, I was very impressed at his accomplishment. A coat of paint and an appropriate name like “Wind Rider” or “Trail Blazer” and this thing would be the envy of the entire neighborhood.
Would I like to take it out for its first test drive? I had to shake myself to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. Would I – moi? – like to be the first one to drive it? I could hardly believe my ears! I wasn’t sure what I had done to deserve the honor but I certainly wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass me by.
Which was exactly what Fred was counting on. He, himself, was very nervous about the whole thing. I mean, he had had it safety-checked by my grandfather but still. If a wheel were going to pop off or the seat not hold, better to have someone else driving it, right?
So, it was set. I was to take it down our street – Renaud Street – at the place just before the crest of the small hill so that Fred could give me a good push and then let momentum carry me the rest of the way, cross the intersection of Jefferson Street to wherever it was that the momentum would carry me.
I was so excited and honored I could barely contain myself. I didn’t think about that intersection at the bottom of the hill. Neither did Fred. We were just both caught up in the excitement of test driving his amazing creation. Our heads were filled with the admiring looks and jealous glances of the kids in the neighborhood when they saw it.
That’s what I was thinking, anyway, as I got in – no helmet, of course, who wore helmets in those days, anyway? My grandmother, however, had come to the front of the house to water her hydrangeas and roses. Even now, if I close my eyes, I can almost hear her voice faintly in the background, calling my name. What I really heard was the anxiety in her voice. And suddenly, I was anxious.
Well, as the go-cart went down the crest of the hill, it did start to pick up speed at an alarming rate. It was going so fast that it started to rattle. I could feel my back teeth clenching in my mouth. That’s when I heard my grandmother yelling, “Elizabeth! Turn right! Turn right! Turn right into the Avila’s lot!”
And, that’s exactly what I did. At the intersection of Renaud and Jefferson St the Avila family had an empty lot where we used to play stick ball when they didn’t have family gatherings. I turned a hard right and turned right into the empty lot, my body bumping hard into the hard wood of the potato crate as it went over the dirt and grass.
When I finally came to a stop and looked up, I saw a car coming down Jefferson Street, approaching the intersection of Renaud. The driver looked angry. His fist was balled as it pumped the air and he yelled something that sounded like, “Stupid kids! You’re going to get yourself killed!”
The next thing I remember is my cousin Fred arriving just minutes before my grandmother who picked us both up by the ears and marched us back to the house where she sat us in the kitchen and gave us a what-for lecture about safety and common sense and “Well, if he told you to jump off the bridge, would you do that, too?”
Part of what was lost that
day was innocence. Blind trust was replaced by caution and careful consideration.
I was pretty shaken after that incident and pretty angry with my cousin for
putting me in that situation. It took a long time for me to trust again. Trust
myself. Trust my own judgement. And, trust others.
No wonder I had buried that
story.
Innocence was replaced by anger
and defensiveness that was always lying in wait, just under the surface, along
with the self-imposition of self-made rules. I didn’t want to be anyone’s fool
again, so I developed a kind of hardness that my anxiety could easily transform
to harshness and a kind of aloofness.
Don’t get too close to me, was my vibe,
unless I invite you in.
That eventually evolved into
being very careful about how I chose my friends. My father’s warning about
being judged by the company I kept suddenly hit a cord of truth. That whole
thing hit about the same time as pre-adolescence when kids naturally develop cliques
and posses and gangs. Some of that insider-outsider stuff can be pretty brutal
on fragile, developing egos.
The loss of innocence can be a devastating, life
altering event.
And then, we grow up, don’t we? Life presents us other challenges, other tests, that make test-driving a homemade go-cart down a hill look like, well, child’s play. In that testing, we learn something more about who we really are, not just the careful story our egos have to tell.
In that suffering, we learn compassion. In that compassion we learn kindness. In that kindness we learn to reach out and include others who have been considered the outcast and misfits of their culture.
That is what Jesus is trying to teach us in today’s gospel. He’s teaching the Rabbi’s – the teachers of his religion – as well as his disciples, about the value of every human being in the eyes of God. He’s saying, essentially, grow up! Open your eyes! See the value in all of God’s creation.
If God cares about lost sheep and lost coins, how much more does God care for you? How is your precious reputation going to be harmed by sharing a meal with tax collectors and those described as sinners?
That’s not to throw all caution to the wind but to understand God’s unconditional love for us. There’s a maturity that helps us tolerate differences and respect others without putting our lives at risk.
To that point: Today is the 21st Anniversary of what we’ve come to remember as 9/11. That was the day 19 young men hijacked three planes and killed 2,977 people at the World Trade Center in NYC, the Pentagon in Arlington, VA, and a field outside of Pittsburgh, PA.
9/11 stole our innocence as a people. It hardened us. Some of us became unrecognizable to each other. We willingly surrendered some of our constitutional rights in the name of freedom and something we called ‘patriotism’. We have forgotten some of our own history – what it really means to be a patriot – what it really means to be an American.
We have grown suspicious of those who look different or sound different or pray differently that we do. And, that process has slowly eroded common civility and has seriously damaged our ability to feel compassion for those who our society has always considered “lesser children of God.”
It's been 21 years. Time to grow up. Time to listen to the words of the Great Rabbi who has a lesson or two to teach us about who we are as children of God. Time to listen to “old family stories” of lost coins and lost sheep so we can remember not only WHO we are but WHOSE we are.
Next week, we’ll hear the story of the Prodigal Son and remember that all of us – each and every last one of us – are precious in the sight of God.
Lost and found. Coins. Sheep. Wayward children. Here’s the truth: like my grandmother calling to me on her front porch when I was headed for certain disaster, we are never really lost.
Turns out, the lost do not
find their way back to God any more than the lost sheep finds its shepherd or
the lost coin finds its mistress.
It's the other way around...God finds us.
Amen
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