"Hope Resurrected"

September 25, 2016
First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS
Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
Jeremiah 32: 1-3a, 6-15

PRAYER OF ILLUMINATION
The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah in the tenth year of King Zedekiah of Judah, which was the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar. Two thousand six hundred and four years later, we, too, wait for the word of God. And so today we pray for illumination, new light to break in to our own time. Will you pray with me?

Holy one, we come to you this morning as your people. Eager to hear your word resonating across the centuries. 

This morning, many of us are weary. Exhausted by the seemingly unending violence in our own midst. Wars that never cease. Violence at home and abroad. Human beings turned into hashtags. Each name painstakingly chosen by parents with love. Each person a unique being - fully known and fully beloved. 

These days, it seems there is hardly a break in the violence. Name after name. Story after story. We are under siege. Images of violence, hatred, fear that masquerades as power. 

Some of us in this room leave our homes each day wondering if we will be able to keep our bodies safe. Some of are physically ill from the stress of wondering how to protect those we love. Some of us have the privilege of checking out, pretending the horror that comes to us through our screens each day can't touch us. 

Holy Spirit whose name is love, descend upon us now. We, your people, come with hearts open, souls longing for a word of good news. As a people besieged by fear, violence, confusion, helplessness, anger - we need you. Send now your love to us. Fill us with hope, compassion, peace. Besiege our hearts with love and a thirst for justice. We are here. We are waiting. Amen. 

HYMN OF PREPARATION - "Spirit of the Living God"

We are here. We are waiting. Jeremiah was waiting, too.

It was the year 588 BCE, just one year before the fall of Jerusalem to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and the absolute exile of all the Israelites and Judeans from their homes. The Babylonians, had been steadily advancing towards Jerusalem for some time and in January of 588 their troops finally reached the exterior of the city and placed in under blockade. Jerusalem was under siege.

Siege comes from the latin verb “sedare” – to sit – because that’s exactly what you do under siege.

You sit.

And you worry. And you starve. And you sit. And you fear. And you thirst. And you sit. And you get sick. And you basically just wait for your captors or murderers to finally arrive.

That’s about all you can do. Because if you get to the point where your city is under siege, it’s pretty much just a matter of time until it’s all over. Especially if the folks that are surrounding your city are Babylonian. By this point, the Babylonian army had conquered all of the surrounding areas. There was no place to run, no place to hide. And they weren’t backing down anytime soon.

So the folks in Jerusalem sat. And waited. And wondered if the Babylonian army would simply carry them away, or kill them, or if they would simply die first, while sitting there.

Jeremiah did his sitting at court. He was imprisoned in the palace of King Zedekiah, which, as prisons go, wasn’t too shabby. It was certainly better than the dungeon he had been sitting in before being transferred to the palace.

Jeremiah was, as most prophets are, a bit of a trouble-maker. He had been counseling King Zedekiah and the other leaders for some time to just give it up already. “Give in. Turn yourselves over to Babylon and maybe they’ll go easy on you,” he said. But King Zedekiah wasn’t hearing it. He refused to surrender.

But all of that was later.

At this moment, in 588, Zedekiah was just a scared, proud king who didn’t want to believe anything Jeremiah had to say but kept him close anyway because he wasn’t quite sure who to listen to.

Now, how did Jeremiah get stuck in jail? At one point, perhaps a few months earlier, there had been a brief break in the siege and Jeremiah had tried to leave Jerusalem to go to his hometown, Anathoth, but had been stopped at the city gate. Since he already had a reputation as a trouble-maker, the guards arrested him on the suspicion that he was attempting to desert to the Babylonians. They beat him and threw him in a dungeon, where he sat until King Zedekiah transferred him to sit at the court.

At court he was at least able to eat and drink and be safe. And he was able to bend the ear of the king from time to time – even if the king didn’t listen. And he was still able to put on his prophet variety shows – acting out strange signs for anyone who would watch, attempting to give them a word from the Lord in a creative fashion.

Jeremiah was not the only prophet to do this charades-as-prophecy kind of thing, but he certainly comes to mind as one of the prophets that used it quite often. In this style, prophets acted things out as a symbolic way of delivering God’s word to the people. And Jeremiah did it well. Even in prison, he found a way to use his actions to give a word from the Lord. While the city was under siege, while the people were starving, while time was running out, Jeremiah did a bold and – most would say, utterly stupid – thing. He bought some property in his hometown of Anathoth.

What we have to remember is that, at this point, no one but NO ONE was buying or selling anything. The war and the siege had rendered money virtually useless. You didn’t go out in the morning to buy a macchiato at Starbucks and you most certainly didn’t go buying a house in the countryside. There was just no point. All that land in the countryside was already taken over by the Babylonians anyway, so what would be the point?

But Jeremiah said, “The word of the Lord came to me….”

His cousin, Hanamel, was going to come to Jerusalem and offer to sell him a field at Anathoth. And Jeremiah was to buy that field. That’s what God told him to do, so that’s what he did. And he did it in a very public way. He took that little free pen that they give you when you close on a house and he signed those hundreds of pages out in the open where everyone could see. And when he was done he photocopied the paperwork and put it in a safe where it would last forever.

He bought the filed as a sign of the word he had received from God: “Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”

In the midst of crisis, God promised that it wouldn’t last forever. And in the midst of crisis, God promises that it won’t last forever.

In the midst of violence and fear and racism and war and economic uncertainties and presidential elections that may keep us up at night, the Word of the Lord comes to us from 2600 years ago. And the Prophet Jeremiah speaks to us of resurrection.

Not the Resurrection of Christ. But Resurrection as a way of understanding the world. Resurrection as a total concept.

Resurrection, to me, is so much more than the way the earliest followers of Christ experienced the ongoing presence of Jesus after his death. Resurrection is a whole way of being, a way of seeing the world.

Resurrection is the understanding that there is always something more. Something beyond the way the current situation appears at a first glance.

Resurrection is believing that things may get worse first, but they will also get better.
It is that aphorism: “Everything will be okay in the end. If it isn’t okay, it’s not the end.”

Resurrection is understanding that the end may seem near, but a new beginning is always around the corner. Winter may be on its way, but spring will come. My brain and heart may be telling me things seem hopeless, but there is always hope to be found.

Resurrection calls to us in the midst of whatever sieges may come our way. As we sit and wait and worry and wonder and weep, we are not alone. God sits alongside us. When we look at the problems facing our world today and we start to feel hopeless and helpless and very, very small, we have to remember this:

Resurrection means that we worship a God who is too big to fail.

I don’t mean that God is some sort of really muscular, all-powerful dude floating around in the sky that throws around lightning bolts and zaps people to get them to do what he wants.

What I do mean is that God is too big to fail because God is a force of love and justice and hope and peace that cannot be stopped.

God is somehow within and beyond everything that exists. God is the More that we sense is behind all of the day-to-day worries. God has always been and will always be. God is, in all these ways and more, too big to fail.

And if we will but live our lives in such a way that recognizes our part in God’s existence, we, too can go beyond.

We can cease being pesky little prophets locked up in jail and become, instead, voices that echoes through the millennia. We can go beyond being “just a teacher,” “just a dad,” “just a secretary,” “just a doctor,” “just a farmer,” “just a daughter.”


We are already so much more than what we think we are. And it’s by tapping into the reality that we belong to this great-big-God that we become voices for hope in a hurting world. We can remind people that things may not always go the way we had hoped, but they will go on. Jeremiah didn’t get a return on his investment, but he did get to point the way to a day when things would make their way back to a “new normal.” Jeremiah became a voice of resurrection – and, 2,604 years later – his witness invites us to do the same.

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul…”

I believe the one we call Holy – this too-big-to-fail-God, this God of Resurrection – also goes by the name Hope. Hope perches in our souls and beckons us to listen to her sweet song. Hope sings out in the chillest land and on the strangest sea.

Emily Dickinson wrote that hope has never asked a crumb of her. Hope is somehow magically free for the taking. And although I believe Hope does pour herself out freely, I also believe Hope does one more thing.

Hope invites us to be involved. Hope invites us to buy a field at Anathoth. Hope beckons us to be a symbol of Resurrection to the world around us.

Hope is too big to fail and we are invited to tell that good news to the world.

"Stuck in the Middle with Jesus: Living Withing and Pushing Back Against Unjust Systems"

“Stuck in the Middle With Jesus: Living Within and Pushing Back Against Unjust Systems” 
Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS
September 18, 2016 - Luke 16:1-8a

Who wants to preach a sermon on this parable?!? I think it’s truly safe to say no one has any clue what it’s about or why it’s here. It only exists in Luke. There’s no real context for it. The author has just finished telling us three stories about things that are lost - the sheep, the coin, and the story of the Prodigal Son - and then moves straight on to this story about a rich man and his middle manager.

It might be helpful for a moment to get your Bible out and turn to Luke 16. The full passage that the folks from the Revised Common Lectionary selected includes verses 1-13 and ends with that delightful quip about how we cannot have two masters and must choose between serving God and serving wealth. Although that’s a fun bit to preach on, I decided instead to focus on the parable portion, which actually ends after the first part of verse 8. After that, the author of Luke gives a couple of guesses at what in the world this story might mean (“for the children of this generation”….etc. etc.) and then launches into this somewhat disjointed collection of pithy Jesus-sayings beginning with verse 10 and ending with verse 18.

Here’s how I imagine this got created: whoever wrote this gospel was perhaps sitting around with a bunch of post it notes and other scraps of paper. Good material that needed to find a home somewhere in the gospel. There was this odd little story about a rich man and one of his employees who was charged with squandering his wealth. And since the story of the Prodigal Son also included those themes, the author thought this might be a good place for it. Boom. Done.

Now I know I frequently stand up here and say, “Whew. This is a hard passage,” but, truly, this one? Almost incomprehensible. What I want to do today is just deal with the actual parable, which is why I had us only read through the beginning of verse 8.

There was a very wealthy man. Get a picture of him in your head. Think of him as a one-percenter. Very wealthy. And he had a midlevel manager who helped him manage all his money. I’m sure he probably had lots of them, actually, but the story is about just this one. Midlevel guy found himself in trouble because suddenly he was accused of mismanaging funds.

Rich guy called midlevel guy into his office, closed the door, asked him to take a seat and said, “Son, what’s this I hear about your behavior? I’m concerned. And I need to see all the files for your accounts on my desk by noon. Or else.”

Midlevel guy says to himself, “What will I do? I’m really in trouble here. If I lose this job, how will I support my family? I’m not strong enough to do physical labor and I certainly don't want to beg. Have you seen this economy? How will I find work?”

What happens next is interesting because in the original Greek it’s actually unclear whether this is happening now or in the past. Our English translation says he has a lightbulb moment and hatches a plan: “Here’s what I'll do. I'll go back to the clients and cut them a deal. A really great deal. And then they'll love me. And when I'm thrown out at least I'll have some allies who might take care of me.”

Now in the Greek, it seems as though he MIGHT actually be talking here about something that’s already happened. As in, maybe what he’s in trouble for is cutting these clients a deal in the past. (SOURCE) And I think that’s a really interesting thing to ponder because it makes me wonder a bit about just what this bland midlevel guy that I’ve been envisioning in my mind has been up to. It makes me wonder if I’ve stereotyped and misjudged him. Maybe he’s a bit edgier than I initially thought. A Robin Hood of sorts.

Either way, the deals are made. And the clients are likely very thankful for the reduction in their debts. Especially since, in this system, their debts were probably ridiculous. Think payday loans, think pre-2008 predatory housing loans. This was an unjust economic system set up to put more money in the pockets of the rich by taking advantage of those who had the least. I know, I know, it’s a foreign concept to those of us living in more enlightened times.

The twist comes at the end: rich guy discovers what midlevel manager has done and gives him a big pat on the back. I imagine him calling him back into his office and pouring him a drink.“Sit, sit,” he says with a smile. Midlevel manager sits cautiously on the edge of the chair, unsure of what’s about to happen. To his shock, the rich man says, “I’m impressed. You’re clever. I can’t say I would have thought of it myself. Well done.”

And that’s it. Scene. We don’t know what happens next. Does he get to keep his job? Does the rich guy have a change of heart? We have no idea.

With no real context for this parable, we could read almost anything into it. Is it a parable about economic insecurity? Taking care of yourself when the going gets tough? Making friends in unusual places? The anxiety that comes with working without a safety net?

It could be all of these things. And more. One of the stories I hear in this parable is a story about what it looks like to live within and push back against an unjust system. This parable is sometimes called “The Parable of the Dishonest Manager” which I find to be a little funny, because how, precisely, can one be dishonest in a system that is already totally corrupt? An economic system that exists to continually put money into the already fat pockets of the rich, at the expense of the poor is fundamentally dishonest. Full stop. I wonder if Jesus was being a little cheeky when he referred to the midlevel manager as “dishonest” when he’s actually doing a kind thing within a corrupt system.

In this unjust economic system, the midlevel manager is vulnerable. Just as the debtors at the bottom of the pyramid are vulnerable. There are no safety nets if they lose their jobs or suddenly find themselves out of favor with the elite. The exorbitant interest rates? They aren’t evidence of a broken system. They are evidence of the system working as it’s intended to work.

So when the midlevel manager exercises the authority he has to push back against that system? That’s huge. Whether he’s doing it to buck the system or simply because he’s watching out for himself, he is pushing back. He is dismantling things “as they are” and using what power he has to move into a different realm.

Earlier this week I read an article about a tactic female White House staffers have been using for past eight years. (SOURCE) When the Obama administration began, the women who were a part of his staff noticed that they frequently overlooked in meetings. Women like Anita Dunn and Susan Rice talk about how they intentionally banded together and used an amplification strategy to shift the system. When they were in meetings together, one woman would repeat what another had said if it had been overlooked. And she would be sure to use her name, giving her credit. Over time, this strategy of amplification worked. The men in the room started to hear women’s voices and more women were even brought to the table.

This strategy of amplification is brilliant, isn’t it? And one of the things I love about it is that it’s positive. The women's worked together, lifting one another up, trusting that their female colleagues would do the same for them in return. They could have, instead, seen their female colleagues as competitors and worked to climb over them. But they didn’t. Instead, they pushed back against culture where competition reigns and embraced a culture where victories are shared.

Thirty-three years ago, Audre Lorde wrote about her experience of being invited to present at a major conference. She was called late in the game and discovered she was really asked to be token. She felt that the organizers realized they needed a Black lesbian voice, but she was certainly the only Black lesbian who was present. In this essay Lorde shares this gem, “...the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” (SOURCE)

One of the things I love about this parable is that the midlevel manager, living and working in a corrupt system, chooses to opt out of the acceptable rules of the game. He knows, inherently, that he is at risk. And he chooses to form unlikely partnerships across class lines to not only ensure his own safety, but subvert the system entirely. He does not use the “master’s tools” to dismantle the master’s house. Instead, he reaches out in generosity of spirit, seeking ways that both he and those who are less privileged that he is can work together to create safety nets.

Paolo Freire was a Brazilian educator and philosopher. His work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, was published in Portuguese in 1968 and translated into English two years later. His words, from nearly 50 years ago are as relevant today as they’ve ever been: “It is necessary that the weakness of the powerless is transformed into a force capable of announcing justice. For this to happen, a total denouncement of fatalism is necessary. We are transformative beings and not beings for accommodation.”

We are transformative beings and not beings for accommodation.

That’s the good news I see in this bizarre little parable this week. We are all, in one way or another midlevel managers. We have some power but not absolute power. It is tempting to stay in our own little bubble, thinking  of the ways we are better off than some people and looking to the ways we might continue to climb.

But Jesus shocks us out of our complacency with this parable, insisting that there is another way. We were created to transform the world, not accommodate and merely survive within unjust systems. How might we follow the midlevel manager’s lead, seeking unlikely allies, finding ways to simultaneously care for ourselves and those who may be more marginalized, and creatively challenging unjust systems?

As is the case with most parables, there are fewer answers than there are questions. So we sit with the questions.

"Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God"

Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS
September 11, 2016 - Luke 15:1-10

I want to introduce you to Pikachu. Now he’s a little guy, made out of cheap plastic, not gold, so you might be surprised to hear that he cost $125. How can this be? Well, here’s what happened. A few weeks ago, we came home from Feast and Festival on Sunday night. Our dog, Sweetpea, was hanging out in the living room. Most of the time, there are at least 20 toys laying on the floor of our living room, but we had cleaned earlier that day, so the floor was clean. Our kids started to round up their various Pokemon toys and when they couldn't find Pikachu, we became convinced that Sweetpea must have eaten him, because he had last been seen on our coffee table….right by where Sweetpea was hanging out when we came home.

David turned the house upside down looking for this toy. He looked everywhere. We moved furniture. We took apart couches. We swept. We looked in trash cans. We searched everywhere. When we couldn't find it, David finally took Sweetpea to the emergency room on campus at about midnight. The flat rate for any kind of emergency room visit is $125. We knew this and surely didn’t want to pay it but we were very worried that spikey little Pikachu would hurt our dear dog if she had swallowed him. They said they didn't think she had swallowed anything and to keep an eye on her.

The next day, while I was at work. I got a text from David with a photo,”Here's the $125 Pikachu,” he said. The toy was, of course, in the one place we hadn't thought to look.

We all have stories like this, right? When you lose something of value (or in our case, maybe not of much value, but something you still really need to find) you’ll go to great lengths to get it back. Jesus knew this. That’s why, when he told these two parables about lost items being found he said, essentially, “Now, it’s no big deal that the shepherd went looking for the one lost sheep or the woman went looking for her lost coin. We’d all do the same, wouldn’t we?”

When something or someone matters to us and they go missing, we don’t rest until we find them.

It doesn't seem too unusual to me that Jesus tells a parable where God keeps searching and searching for those who are lost. Of course God wants to find those who are lost. Just like our family wanted to find Pikachu. We all want to find things that are of value to us.

But what intrigues me about this parable is what the lost sheep and coin are supposed to represent: sinners. The people of value to God are sinners.

This parable begins and ends with sinners. The Pharisees are grumbling because Jesus keeps hanging out with sinners. “Why do you keep welcoming them and eating with them?” they wonder.

Jesus answers with two parables. In the first, he says, “Which of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until you find it?” And the second parable is similar, “What woman, having ten tiny Pokemon toys, if she loses one, doesn't light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?” Oh, wait. I’m sorry. I went a little off on that one. The woman had ten silver coins, not Pokemon. But you get the picture.

The picture is of a shepherd going out of his way to find the one sheep that’s wandered off. The picture is of a woman painstakingly turning over her whole house, living up couch cushions, emptying out trash cans looking for her lost coin.

And the point of it all is the rejoicing that happens when the lost sheep and the lost coin are found. Jesus says, “I tell you, there is joy in the presence of angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

It’s a story about sinners. And their value to God.

I don't know if you think of yourself as a sinner. I’m pretty sure that the Pharisees who were giving Jesus a hard time did not think of themselves as sinners. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been giving him a hard time for hanging out with them.

Me? Sometimes I'm aware of my sinfulness and other times, not so much. Now you may be feeling a little squirmy because I’m talking about sin. That’s okay. It’s church. We can talk about hard stuff. I want to note that I realize some of you have something truly akin to PTSD when it comes to sin language because you’ve been in churches where you were beaten over the soul with it, churches where you were literally abused and traumatized. Don’t worry. We are going to tread carefully and I promise you there will be no spiritual violence.

Here’s something that it important to know while we’re talking about this difficult subject: what I’m about to share about sin is not necessarily true. By that, I mean that it doesn't have to be your truth. It is my experience, my testimony. It may not ring true for you and that’s okay. We don't all have the same testimony. By sharing mine, I hope to help you ponder yours. And if you feel brave enough to then share yours with a friend or family member or with me, we will be thankful because you will have given us a gift. And we will learn and grow because of your testimony.

I am a sinner. It’s true. Somedays I remember this and other days I don’t. If I’m being totally honest, sometimes I get so caught up in the day-to-day-ness of my life - going to the grocery store, checking my emails, picking up kids, looking for missing Pikachus - that I don't make time to take stock at all. It’s not that I think of myself as sin-free, it’s just that I don't think about how I’m doing at all.

But then I have other days, like the day this past week when I was reading this passage and I ask myself, “Okay, so who am I in this story?” And it hit me like a ton of bricks: I’m the sinner. I'm the lost sheep. The lost coin.

I, too, have sinned and fall short of who God dreams for me to be. If I’m really being honest, I can think of several instances each day. The time when I walk past the person who is asking for money on the street because I am in a hurry. The time when I'm impatient with those I love. The selfish choices I make with my financial resources, simply because I can.  All the millions of little acts of selfishness - choosing convenience over kindness, myself over others, the easy road over the more difficult path of true love. I sin every day.

And these individual acts are just one level. They don't even begin to get at the ways I participate in whole systems that cause damage to God’s beloved children and this planet we share. Four times a year, I pay my estimated income tax. Sometimes I do it without much thought, just another item on the to do list. Sometimes I do stop and actually feel troubled, knowing how some of those dollars are used...and how they aren't used. Once, many years ago now, I actually went so far as to send in a note with my taxes saying I didn't want them to use any of my dollars for the war in Iraq. But mostly? Mostly I just pay them because that’s the easy thing to do. And, of course, those taxes - that tangible representation of my participation in this shared society - DO get used for many good things. It’s complicated, this business of being a nation together, isn’t it?

My ancestors have been in this part of the country for a very long time. Some of my people came over from Switzerland in the early 1700s. They settled in what eventually became Maryland. Did they own enslaved people? I don't know. But maybe. What I do know is that sometime in the late 1800s, one of them came out west to the area that would eventually be known as Kansas. Named for some of the people who had inhabited this land for generations...until people like my great-great-grandfather came and claimed this land as if it rightfully belonged to them. I know that extended family members also eventually settled in Colorado, Idaho, Oklahoma...all places where they would have taken land that had previously belonged to indigenous people.

Do I feel guilty about this? Guilt is not the right word. I have no control over this. It’s just who I am and I can’t change it. But I understand how, through my very existence as a white person in this nation I am steeped in sin. I have been given things that I have not earned. I am still given things I have not earned every single day. And it’s not right. It’s not okay. It’s sin and I am a participant, whether I want to be or not.

These are just some of the ways I am aware of sin in my own life. Yours will be different. Or perhaps you don't claim the label of sinner at all. Maybe you’re sitting there thinking, “Oh, mine are so much worse than that. I could never say my sins out loud.” Please note that this is not an exhaustive list of my own sins. We don't have time for that.

The thing that really grabs me about this passage, though, is not that it reminds me that I’m a sinner. The thing that grabs me is how it ends. Jesus says that it ends with joy. The joy of God when a sinner repents.

This passage is not primarily about what it means to be a sinner. This passage is about what it looks like when a sinner repents. The word “repent” is not really a great translation of the Greek, which is metanoia. If I were going to translate metanoia I might use something more like breakdown. Metanoia is a complete and total change. A visual representation might be what happens when you heat glass at an extremely high temperature and it oozes and melts into something unrecognizable only to be reformed into an entirely different creation. It’s a breakdown followed by a rebuilding.

In English, the word repent seems to be too much about how we feel. Maybe you’ve heard someone say that repentance is when you feel sorry for what you’ve done and you say you’ll try to do better. I don’t think that's quite it. Metanoia doesn't seem to be so concerned with how someone feels. It’s concerned with what someone does.

An example from my own life: I am lucky enough to have a retirement account. I am embarrassed to admit that I have not done due diligence in making sure that my funds are invested in companies that share my values. This is partially because I’m too lazy to figure that out, partially because I'm not sure if many companies like that exist, and primarily because if I'm really being honest? I want my retirement account to make some money so I can retire someday.

Do I feel badly that I have made these choices? Yes. Do I want to stand up here and say, “I want to do better?” Yes. If I say, “I'm sorry and I'm going to try and do better,” have I repented? No.

Metanoia, true repentance, would consist of spending less time feeling badly about my choices and, instead, actually taking my money out of these investments and making different choices. It would consist of actually changing my behavior, not just thinking about it.

Jesus says that when a sinner makes that choice. When a sinner changes behavior and transforms their life in some way to live more fully into harmony with who God dreams for them to be….when that happens, the angels rejoice. Of course they do! Because this is a big deal! An even bigger deal than my husband finding that darn Pikachu that was lost. When a person not only realizes they have sinned AND decides to do something about it AND actually makes real, tangible choices that put them on a course towards living differently? That’s a huge deal. A HUGE DEAL. It’s worth an angel party. Maybe even more than one angel party.

And that’s why Jesus doesn't seem to be very bothered by the haters who chastise him for hanging out with sinners. Jesus is willing to take the heat because he really wants people to know that another way is possible. He wants them to know that no matter what happens, God still seeks us. God values us. God wants us to be found. God wants us to know that repentance - the real stuff, the life-altering kind - is always possible. No matter what we’ve done. No matter how messed up the world becomes. Choosing to walk more fully in the God’s ways of grace and love and justice is always an option for us.

And on the days when we don’t much care? On the days when we forget to even notice the choices we are making? On the days when we are too miserable, too distracted, too tired, too scared, too selfish to make different choices? God is still out there looking. God never stops looking and God never stops preparing the next party.