The Deepest Kind of Joy
Luke 15:1-10

Tony Campolo, a teacher and a speaker, was in Honolulu for a conference but found himself up late, unable to sleep with the time difference from his home on the east coast. He ventured into an all-night diner at about 3 am, just about the time the local streetwalkers were finishing with their evening’s work. There were about 8 of the women, and one, named Agnes, was overheard telling another that the next day was her birthday.

After the women left, Tony Campolo leaned over the counter and asked the cook, “Hey do those women come here every night?” “Sure they do,” said the cook.

And so the two devised a plan. Campolo said he would bring a cake and he asked the cook to decorate the place a little bit, and they’d throw a party for Agnes.

24 hours later, the diner was decorated with streamers and balloons. A sign was taped to the mirror. A large assortment of street people had gathered. And when the 8 women returned for their usual coffee, everybody shouted, “Happy Birthday Agnes!”

Agnes was speechless. When the cake came out, she was frozen. “Blow out the candles!” somebody said. “Make a wish!” somebody else said. As she blew out the candles, people noticed that she was crying. It had been a long time since anyone had showed this kind of compassion.

“Well, aren’t you going to cut the cake?” they asked her. She finally found her words. “Please,” she said, “Could I just take the cake home with me?” And she took the cake and fled out the door. Everybody stood there, wondering what to do next.

Tony Campolo said, “I have another idea. Why don’t we say a prayer for Agnes?” And without waiting for an answer, he bowed his head and spoke words of blessing for her, that God would watch over her and bring her peace and save her from all that troubled her. After the amen, the cook said, “You didn’t tell me you were a minister. What kind of church do you serve?”

Campolo thought for a moment and then said this, “I guess I serve the kind of church that throws birthday parties for streetwalkers at 3:00 in the morning.”The cook then spoke the most poignant words of all. “No you don’t. There is no such church like that. I would join a church like that.”

Agnes needed a community, a spiritual home. So did the cook. So do I. I guess we all want that community that is a home for the heart – where we are accepted because God has found each of us and brought us into a community of love and service, precisely to welcome others in this company.

Jesus was familiar with off-limits places and the people there who were welcomed nowhere else. In the gospels, these people are called sinners. The term designated those who were outside the bounds of acceptable moral standards. They had broken the conventional codes of conduct – religious and moral. It’s important to know this because if not the Pharisees, who criticized Jesus, appear as stuff-shirts and straw men easy to dismiss. Actually, the Pharisees stand in a long-respected religious and moral tradition; they were fine decent human beings, leaders of their religious community not all that different from Presbyterian elders upholding community standards. If we miss that, we miss everything else.

Jesus behavior was as disturbing then as it he is now. He is disturbing because he persists in receiving those outside the moral bounds: lost, sinners; and not just receiving them in a passive way, but actually welcoming them, eating and drinking with them and inviting them to join the community of his disciples. When the unclean are invited to eat with the clean, people often get unsettled and confused for awhile because the world looks different when those on the bottom and those on the top sit down at table with one another.

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So what’s the Good News?

It’s a woman who won’t give up until she finds her lost coin. It is a God whose passion is to bring all the children home. It’s a company of disciples – sometimes called the church – who search, in the Spirit of this searching God – for those in the wilderness of life.

It’s a Shepherd that tends all the sheep in his care and is crazy enough to go looking for the one out of 100 who gets lost in the wilderness. Conventional economic wisdom says, one lost is understandable, and not a big loss. But not this shepherd, he will search and search and search until the one lost is found. Of course, there are those among the 99 who will say of the one who is lost: serves him right, he should have known better, it’s his own fault, bad choices at the critical times. What’s going to happen to us, while he is out looking for the lost?

I suppose that’s a reasonable question. But I think the church that more concerned for its self security than for those lost in the wilderness has forgotten the Shepherd who brings us all home and abandoned its central purpose.

We have spoken of hospitality as a core spiritual practice. For most of us it is a better word than evangelism. I think practicing authentic hospitality is more than cookies and coffee. It means modeling our ministry after the Good Shepherd who takes all the risks of love for the sake those who outside the fold. It means actively searching for those who have no place to call home with the same passion we would search for our own children if their faces were on a milk carton.

Perhaps you have been lost at one time or another. I have. If you haven’t then you know somebody who is just now. Maybe a family member, a co-worker, a roommate or a neighbor.

For instance, I wonder about the persons living double lives locked in self-loathing and fear that their real lives will be revealed and they will banished from their social networks, political parties, even their family. Many are wandering around living this murky double life, lost without a spiritual community where they might know the graciousness of a loving God who is searching for us all. The company of those who follow the Good Shepherd is looking for them to welcome them home.

Lost is not only about being in the wrong neighborhood without a GPS. It’s a spiritual condition, too. Like the one who lives in a secure home, with a decent bank account, a pleasant neighborhood, who can navigate the streets anywhere and yet returns home sad with nothing to say, loses himself in television with a drink or three, then gets up in the morning to do it all over again. He may not even know he is lost and that is the worst part of being lost.

To found by God is to be home. It is not to be perfect, or cured, or anything like that. It is to be home in a community of found folks rejoicing in the goodness of God. This is the purpose of the church to be spiritual community – a home for the heart – where folks can discover God and find a way to serve.

Here is the question: what if searching for those who have lost their way home, and welcoming them to God’s great party is central purpose?

After all is said and done,

the Gospel – the Good News –really is all about the joy of being found and welcomed home. It’s about God’s compassion for the hurting. It’s about God’s mercy for the fallen. It’s about God’s risky love for the lost.

The church that follows Jesus will not be content with just the 99 in the fold, but will always be searching near and far the one who is lost to welcome home.

What’s the good news? It’s all about rejoicing with the whole company of heaven and earth. In a word, it’s God’s party.