5 November 2015 - finders keepers

The tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus,
but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying,
“This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” 

Do we make comparisons like the Pharisees do? Do we make judgments about who is deserving of God's blessing? Do we find it off-putting when people who aren't holy receive favors from God? Do we see lost sheep that we would prefer to stay lost?

Why then do you judge your brother or sister?
Or you, why do you look down on your brother or sister?
For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God;

Such judgment is based on the pretense that we're somehow better than those lost sheep. There is no one in the world who Jesus doesn't want to welcome. But there are many people who have done such horrible things such that, if we saw them in the Confession line, we would have difficulty accepting them even after that. We judge them, imagining that we are better. Yet without grace we are no different. 

We doubt the power of the mercy of God to change hearts as lost as these. We think that Jesus associating with people like them will hurt his reputation rather than change their hearts. But all of of stand in need of the mercy of God. All of us approach the same seat of judgment. And the mercy of Jesus is strong enough to bring back any lost sheep. His persistance is sufficient to find even the most well hidden of lost coins.

Brothers and sisters:
None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself.
For if we live, we live for the Lord,
and if we die, we die for the Lord;
so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.
For this is why Christ died and came to life,
that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.

We sometimes feel like we're left in the desert when we see a particularly lost sheep receive special favors.

“What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them
would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert
and go after the lost one until he finds it?

But we should trust the shepherd. The celebration when he returns with this sheep will be filled with greater joy than was possible before he left on the search. We may feel as though we were left in the desert, but really we are the elder son when the father sacrifices the fattened calf for the return of the prodigal:

And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours (cf. Luk. 15:31).

It is our selfishness that makes it seem like a desert when the focus of Jesus seems to be more on finding the lost sheep and less on us. Instead, sustained by grace, by all that the father has, we ought to join him on the search. We too should have no purpose greater than to seek and save the lost (cf. Luk. 19:10).

I believe that I shall see the bounty of the LORD
in the land of the living.
Wait for the LORD with courage;
be stouthearted, and wait for the LORD.