If Grace Is The Base….And It Is!

QUESTION: What makes God happy?

Luke 15:1-10
Now all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’
3 So he told them this parable: 4‘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? 5When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” 7Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.
8 ‘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? 9When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” 10Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’

What makes God happy?
So often the message that people hear coming from Christian pulpits and churches is that God is happy when God’s people are doing God’s will. God is happy when God’s people are doing God-pleasing things. Certainly that is true and the Bible makes that truth clear over and over again, especially when one reads the story of the people wandering in the wilderness under Moses leadership. God delights when God’s people order their priorities to God’s priorities: focusing their worship on God, treating one another with the love with which God has treated them, caring for the poor and needy, bearing clear witness of God’s trustworthiness. In a word, God is pleased when God’s people are righteous.
However, in this Gospel lesson, we find out that what God delights in even more is something else, and that is when one who is not righteous, is back in the in the flock. God is even most thrilled when one who has wandered away from God’s care or fallen through the cracks is back in God’s embrace. “More joy in heaven…more joy in the presence of the angels…over one sinner who repents.”
The key to God’s joy, Jesus says, is repentance, and repentance is something that seems to be something that we, not God does. Literally, the Greek word for repentance means “to change one’s mind, or way of thinking”. Sometimes folks say that can be said that repentance is “turning around, or turning back, people hear Christians telling others to do just that, turn back from their wondering ways. Such a proclamation, of course, carries no divine grace, but is a word of judgment. “Turn or burn!”
So, to clarify what repentance truly is, Jesus follows these two short parables with a longer and clearer one, the parable of the prodigal son. Some scholars believe that a better title for this parable is “The Prodigal Father”, as prodigal means extravagant. In fact, this parable is an illustration of Jesus’s previous sayings about what makes God really happy. God delights in the righteous who stay, but God really pulls out all the stops when one who has wandered away is returned to the father’s embrace.
When I read this longer parable, I find the most important sentence to be, “when he came to himself”, because in this sentence Jesus magnifies the power of God’s grace in our lives. Notice, that when the runaway son was least righteous, something popped into his mind; the depth of his father’s love that he knew the father’s servants received. Therefore, it was not the wayward son’s ability to draw on his own power to bring him back to the father (he was in a pit of his own making out of which he could not pull himself out), but it was the pull of the father’s merciful love that reached that son in his pit and pulled him back. Repentance, you see, is not something that we accomplish by our own strength and will, but rather is accomplished by God whose love extends as far as we might go, and brings us back. And the more amazing thing that this wayward son discovered is, that the Father’s love is even greater than he thought it was, for when the father spotted him from afar, the father ran to meet him…to embrace him…and not to treat him with the loving care for a servant, but to treat him with the extravagant care for a son. And of course, that is who he was. (“When he came to himself.”)
The power that enables repentance comes from God, a God who seeks and sweeps and stretches to gather up a “sinner” and bring that sinner home. Hmmm…isn’t that what a Bungee Cord does?
So what is God’s word of grace to us in these two short parables? It isn’t that God is calling us, like a mother ringing a dinner bell, to come back home. Instead it is that God comes to get us…get us when we are too weak to move, too far down in a hole to pull ourselves out, too overwhelmed and deafened by the noise of suffering and guilt…God comes to get us with the reach of his love and bring us back home.
So, consider when you come upon someone who is feeding swine and knee deep in pig manure, the thing to do is not to yell at that person, “Hey, get out of that mess and follow me.”, but instead jump into that mess, as Jesus does, take hold of that person and with the power of Christ’s love pull that person out. And when that happens…when we are caked in pig manure and come out smelling like a pig…God is really happy!