Homily for 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time Luke 15: 1-10
‘As a small boy I have an image of my mother, standing frozen, while tears start falling slowly down her cheeks. A sixpence has been lost … you do not easily forget’. Richard Hoggart
We think it was part of her crown – maybe the only beautiful thing she possessed. In first century Israel, when a woman was married she was given ten coins, ten drachmas, as a dowry. These coins were then woven into a crown as a celebration gift. It would have been beautiful and precious beyond words.
Imagine, says Jesus, a poor woman losing a coin from her crown. Her one beautiful gift is now incomplete. What would she do?
Her heart would burn.
She would search.
Can you imagine, says Jesus, how this woman would feel? I’m not sure the powerful group of men with whom Jesus is speaking can be all that bothered to imagine how a poor woman feels.
But God can.
Jesus sees women who struggle to hold families and lives and pride together, on so little. He knows women whose knees, hands and hearts are worn out on factory floors, the homes of others, assembly lines, two or three buses to work. Jesus says that in His Kingdom, the poor (and women are always the poorest of the poor) are going to rule the world.
Christ is comparing God, to this woman. Why? Because that’s a truth about who God is, and what His heart is like. It yearns, it searches, it finds. What is God like? God is like this woman.
The accusation they throw at Jesus is this: why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? Why Jesus, do you contaminate your time with moral failures, losers, screw-ups, the prayerless, the addicted – people that no one wants, not even their own families? Why, Jesus?
Because they are part of God’s crown, says Jesus. Every human being is a gift that God cannot bear to lose.
You are an endangered species. God does not have another one of you. The deepest truth about your life is that you will always be wanted by God.
Someone who understood this was Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Mother Teresa had a horror of thinking that somebody –anybody – could imagine that they were unwanted. It’s the biggest lie anyone could ever tell you, the biggest lie that you could ever tell yourself.
We build a world that makes so many feel unwelcome, unwanted, redundant. To fight this cancer, Mother Teresa formed an army of nuns called ‘the missionaries of charity’; caritas – love – the Missionaries of love.
We all have that mission, that mission to bring love to the world, to our church, to our families. But that peace-work starts with us knowing – and I mean really knowing – that we are not lost. You might feel that you are, but God is very good at finding. Be still and know that He has found you.
Jesus gives us this morning a very feminine icon of God’s seeking-searching love. Spend some time with it this week. Hold it in your mind. You are not just loved, you are wanted. That’s the truth. Breathe it in, breathe it out. Let it disarm the toxic arsenal of anger and fear that we carry inside.
Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked any thing.
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
George Herbert
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