Come Dine With Us Jesus: A Community of Sinners

How do you feel about being the lost sheep or being referred to as the lost coin?

The predominant interpretation of today’s Gospel and second reading is that Jesus eats with sinners and the lost are saved.

It seems to me that these interpretations have been so overplayed by preachers that the church has been partially misled.

Friends who are not church people have told me that they don’t go to church because they don’t want to be with either the self-righteous churchgoers or the thoroughly wounded churchgoers.

Why do they think this?

Take a look at the second reading. I am grateful that Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. Formerly a sinner, but now this lost sheep is amongst the chosen.

Is the church about the chosen?

I guess I think about church and who is called very differently.

When I took my vows as a Jesuit, I said these words – In the presence of the divine majesty, I recognize myself as a sinner and the words of the vow formula continued.

We Episcopalians do not often talk about sin, but sin is a reality of our lives and the communities in which we live. Not talking about sin does not make it go away. Surely some tele-evangelists have so sensationalized sin and the condemnation of humanity that their words and actions have made sin dis-credible.

As you know I have much experience as a hospital chaplain and have even spent some time as a prison chaplain. A number of years ago a spiritual director asked me, when you visit people in prison, “Who are you visiting?” Are you visiting a criminal with whom you have no relationship? Are you visiting somebody because you are suppose to visit the imprisoned? The spiritual director continued, do you see yourself in the prisoner? Me, as a prisoner? Absolutely not. I am a law abiding citizen.

My spiritual director disagreed with me. He believed that we all have the capacity within us to harm another. As a family systems therapist he was convinced that we all have triggers that if set-off we might do some horrible things. Of course most of us never have those triggers set-off. However, this series of questions and challenges has I think made me a more effective chaplain over the years.

I read a book a long time ago that I highly recommend to you. The book is called The Violence Within by psychologist Paul Tournier. All of his books are wonderful. He wrote in the seventies and eighties. His most powerful book was I think The Violence Within. It was through reading The Violence Within that I was able to begin an answer to my spiritual director. This particular spiritual director did not so much want to spend our time talking about perfecting the spiritual life through prayer or fasting. Rather this director wanted to bring people face to face with their frailty and vulnerability as persons and as sinners. He challenged his directees to see not only the face of Christ in the prisoner, but to see oneself in the prisoner. This spiritual director worked through every self-righteous defense that I had that wanted to avoid even a remote connection to the prisoner I visited as a chaplain. I was not alone as this man had other directees and he took the same approach with them too. I suspect if he had been a parish priest he would have worked through the defenses of his congregation too.

I am sure you would agree that it is easier to say “I am called by God, though I was once a…” You fill in the blank. However, can we like the prophets of old say that though weak and a sinner we were and are chosen to serve?

What is it that keeps us so defiantly apart from recognizing ourselves in the homeless, in the prisoner and in the public sinner?

I have become very suspicious of those who claim to be better than all of us as sinners. We need only look at the former Governor of New York, Andrew Spitzer, who was the most vigilant prosecutor on sex crimes and then he was removed from public office for the same offense. There is also the story of John Edwards. It would be too easy for us to say, oh those politicians, again distancing ourselves from their offenses. Indeed these two men presented themselves as better and were harsh on those who were less than perfect. It would be interesting if today they have a different heart towards others in their shoes.

When I took my vows as a Jesuit, I quarreled with my superiors over the choice of words, I recognize that I am a sinner. I thought what an odd thing to say, but now many years later, I see the wisdom of the Jesuits.

As a pastor and priest I know the human struggles that we all face to live a good life. I also know that the stakes and expectations of goodness are very high.

As a priest I cannot give absolution to those who come to me to share a sin, unless they are repentant and willing to repair their life and sin no more in this way. However, that is far less frequently a problem for me as a priest. The more common experience is the rejection of sin, so much so that we defiantly refuse to see the potential in ourselves of the most horrible sin of those we might meet in prison.

Yet we must come face to face with ourselves as sinners in need of God’s healing balm.

Here is a very different image of church that I quite like from Dostoevsky…

Church as “a communion of unmerged souls, where sinners and the righteous come together.”

Dante put it this way, “where there are the penitent and the unrepentant, the damned and the saved…”

Are we courageous enough to live in this kind of church community?

The church is not a community of mediocrity where anything goes. No a community of the penitent and unrepentant is an intentional community in process. It is a community that yearns and desires the healing balm of God. In such a community there are far more than one lost sheep. There are many lost sheep.

A few years ago when I was in Scotland we lived on a sheep farm for a week. Every day we watched the sheep travel as one community into pasture. The sheep dog kept them together. The young and the old, the babies and the working sheep, the white sheep and yes the black sheep too all stayed together.

Closer to home, at Blackstone’s Pizza in Sparks there is a picture of sheep. There are easily 20 white sheep in the picture and one black sheep. The picture gives a vivid image to the words, he is the black sheep of the family.

Again, I say to you who among us wants to be the lost coin or the lost sheep? Who wants to stand out and be different? Nobody, so we stay very close to the self-righteous. We just need to be careful that in staying close to the self-righteous that we do not deny that we are the sinners whom Jesus dines with every week at this rail.

This is not a realization that should give us an untrue need to condemn ourselves and make ourselves unworthy. Nor is the realization that should make us give into no attempts to live a life worthy of our calling as Paul says in Ephesians. No, our realization of being a sinner should as my former spiritual director advised me, make us more effective as ministers.

When you next meet a homeless person or a prisoner, maybe you will see yourself in that person. Not in their current state, perhaps, but also not out of the realm of possibility either. I think this kind of awareness at its best gives a sense of urgency about our life in Christ.

As I read the Gospel, Jesus has more joy over the one repentant sinner than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” If this is the case do any of our churches stand a chance with this kind of judgment?

The point of recognizing ourselves as sinners and in need of God’s mercy is to recognize our need as individuals and as a church for God. Many prisoners and homeless have met God up close in this way and they can say, I am a sinner in need of God’s mercy. The Gospel calls all of us to this kind of courage to claim our fragile humanity and to courageously name it.

Let me off you a model of this as a spiritual practice. I am sinner. It feels awkward and uncomfortable to say this. Yet I serve you as a priest as much out of my struggle with sin as out of my knowledge and desire of the good. As you prepare to go to another church, do you see yourself as better than others or do you see yourself as you are and as one in need of God’s mercy? You may not be ready to stand in front of this church and say you are a sinner. You might at least be ready to acknowledge to yourself that you are a sinner. Once you can then you can live with a sense of urgency to reform your life and you will be more compassionate with those who struggle to reform their life.

It is with this kind of bold clarity about ourselves that lets it be possible for us to bring hope to those whom we minister as they will see in us one who truly understands and empathizes with their struggles to be companions of Christ.

Come Jesus dine with us, a community of sinners.