Swept Up

 

for the September 9 Chapel Service at MTS

Swept Up

Luke 15:1,10 · Proper 19, Year C

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So he told them this parable: “Which one 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 he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”1

So I'm doing something this fall I've never done before. This week I registered to attend the reunion at Vanderbilt Divinity School. I started there in 1987 and earned my MDiv in 1990. I've been texting with old classmates this week and have been reflecting on those professors who, when I was a mere lad, shaped me in ways that even now I'm only coming to understand. It’s possible you’ll hear me wax nostalgic a little during this sermon.

Let us pray: Of all the words spoken today, may it be your living Word that remains. Give us the grace to receive it, and the charity to let all the other words slip away. Amen.2

Jesus is eating again. That’s how this starts.

It always starts with a grumble. Not a loud one. Not the kind that splits the room, but you hear it. You know what those 'church whispers' sound like, don't ya? It’s amazing how audible righteously indignant whispered consternation can be. A raised eyebrow. A slight shake of the head.

“He’s eating with the wrong people,” apparently. And the church  folks, the ones who come early and stay late and fill out their pledge cards, they notice.

“Can you believe the people he sits and eats with?”

What Jesus does next isn’t at all random.

It’s provoked in response to grumbling. The kind of murmuring that always shows up when God does something disorienting. Luke places it squarely in the context of table fellowship and holiness codes. The text says Jesus 'welcomes sinners and eats with them.' In Luke’s Gospel, that’s not just a description, it’s an accusation. And it’s Jesus’ mission strategy. Because in Luke, to eat with someone is to declare them part of your community. That’s why it’s dangerous. And that’s why the stories he tells next matter.

Now Jesus could’ve scolded them. Could’ve quoted a Psalm or two. Could’ve drawn a line in the dirt like he does sometimes.

But instead?

Instead, he tells stories. And not neat little fables. Stories that don’t quite sit right. Stories that mess with your categories.

Stories that don’t let you stay where you are.

There’s this one about a shepherd, see. One hundred sheep.

One goes missing.

Now, I wasn’t raised around livestock, but I’ve read enough commentaries to know that no shepherd in his right mind leaves ninety-nine sheep for one. The odds don’t make sense. I don't know what shepherd would leave the flock to find the one, but this one does.

And when he finds it, he doesn’t mutter, 'Finally.' He doesn’t lecture the sheep.

He throws it on his shoulders, joy and relief spilling out of him.

He gathers his friends. And throws a party.

And then there’s this woman. Loses a coin. Lights a lamp.

Sweeps the floor. Crawls around on her hands and knees.

You’d think she’d pocket it and move on.

But she calls her neighbors. Throws a party. For a coin.

David Buttrick was my homiletics professor. Of parables, he insisted they were not illustrations, but 'speech-events.' In Speaking Parables: A Homiletic Guide he writes:

“Parables are not illustrations. They are acts of speech that can overturn the world of hearers, dislodging fixed assumptions and evoking the new world of God’s reign.”3

That shepherd? He’s not acting rationally. He leaves a flock of ninety-nine, exposed and vulnerable, because one has wandered off. The math doesn’t work. But grace never did. It’s not about accounting. It’s about recovery.

Dr. Buttrick was a towering figure to we newbies in his class, not just intellectually but in presence. I remember him arriving just as class was due to start, and often a couple of minutes past when it was supposed to. He often wore the same red plaid shirt and khakis, always carrying a Styrofoam half full cup of coffee that had been on the warmer so long it could have been mistaken for molasses, with the smoke of the just extinguished cigarette swirling into a halo above him. His voice was gravelly, his eyes mischievous. And when he said something that undid tidy theology, he seemed to no small amount of glee in doing so.

In his class on the Parables of Jesus, I remember him addressing this story by asking, not as a throwaway line, but as a charge:

“If the sheep follow the shepherd, why didn’t they go with him?”4

Why didn’t they?

That question stayed with me. Still does.

I guess if you play faith safe, spending more time doing cost/benefit or SWOT analyses than holy boldness, we'd never go.

We'll hold down the fort. Keep the books. Wait for the one to come crawling back.

But the Gospel isn’t about waiting. It’s about going. About joining God in the search.

But he's not done with his stories. He's got another.

Jesus says: God is like a woman who sweeps.

Let that settle.

Not metaphorical. Not symbolic. A woman. In her home doing the menial tasks of daily living and calling it holy.

In her book The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and 'Women’s Work', Kathleen Norris reminds us:

“The repetitive tasks of everyday life are the very crucible in which holiness can be found. It is in the mundane and the repetitive, the monotonous, even the tedious, that we are transformed. The tasks of laundry, cleaning, cooking, and the like are not interruptions to prayer but the very place where prayer can be practiced and lived. The repetitive tasks of everyday life are the very crucible in which the contemplative life can be lived.”5

This isn’t just about finding something that was lost. It’s about whose hands are doing the finding. About where the Spirit chooses to move. In kitchens. In basements. In everyday acts of grace.

Maybe she lit that lamp because those ten coins were all she had to live on. Maybe the floor she swept wasn’t her own.

Maybe she had already lost too much in life to risk letting this go.

 

In this light, her action is not only practical, it is courageous.

Faithful. Political. And holy.

I think about Joretta Marshall, who, beyond Liston Mills, was unquestionably the professor who formed me most in the field of pastoral care and the theological impetus that drives it. She was my professor, field ed small group facilitator, if she offered a course I took it, and someone for whom I have deep admiration, affection, and respect. I have continued to learn from her over the years.

Marshall insisted that pastoral care is never abstract but always particular and attentive. In Counseling and Pastoral Care she writes:

“Pastoral care is attentive to the uniqueness of persons and their stories, and to the contexts of community and culture that shape their lives.”6

In that spirit, I would say: to offer care is to notice what is usually ignored — the unspoken grief, the unswept floor, the lost thing that matters deeply to the one who lost it.

When we sweep with intention, light lamps with hope, or refuse to stop searching, we’re not just tidying up. We’re practicing presence. We’re proclaiming that what others might dismiss is, in fact, holy.

This woman doesn’t just sweep, she liturgizes. She doesn’t just search, she hopes. She doesn’t wait for grace, she partners with it.

And when she finds what was lost? She throws a party.

That’s the scandal, isn’t it? Not just that God finds the lost. But that God rejoices more over the one who wandered Than the ninety-nine who stayed.

That God sings louder for the one who rolled away Than the ones who took attendance and stayed in line.

God throws a party. No doctrine check. No backstory exam. Just joy.

And then the invitations go out.

Recognizing there’s a third story in this chapter yet to be told, you may have heard of it, and in the story form of the day, I'm not giving all the answers, but I am leaving you with some questions.

Where are you in the story? Where is God? Are you the ninety-nine? Are you under the couch, covered in dust? Are you grumbling in the corner, arms folded?

In our comfort, the way of Jesus can be discomforting, can’t it?

Maybe you're part of a community like MTS, caught in a liminal season, a place between what has been and what is and what will be is not yet clear. But even here, we are called to embody our vision: to center scholarship that listens deeply, piety that seeks God in the dust, and justice that joins the search. Maybe the call right now isn't to have every answer, but to stay open to the stories that unsettle and reshape us.

So what are we doing? Staying put with the ninety-nine? Or lighting a lamp, sweeping the floor, and stepping into the search with God?

Maybe it’s time to get up off our 'Blessed Assurance,' and go after what matters to God.

Because this much I know: God is seeking. God is sweeping. God is rejoicing. And when the lost is found, you best believe the next thing you hear is the sound of God — swept away with laughter.

Footnotes

1.  Luke 15.1-10, NRSVUE.

2.  David Lowes Watson, Covenant Discipleship: Christian Formation through Mutual Accountability (Nashville: Discipleship Resources, 1991).

3.  David Buttrick, Speaking Parables: A Homiletic Guide (Louisville: WestminsterJohn Knox, 2000), 13–14.

4.  David Buttrick, Parables of Jesus, class notes, 1989.

5.  Kathleen Norris, The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and “Women’s Work” (New York: Paulist Press, 1998), 11–12.

6.  Joretta L. Marshall, Counseling and Pastoral Care (Nashville: Abingdon, 1998).