Jesus is often accused of being a glutton, and one who chooses poor company for his feasts. This is the sort of accusation, or slander, one might expect from the grumblers or disgruntled. But the gospels do suggest that he saw a particular significance in meals and conviviality- even of sometimes of a sombre sort. There is, for example, no explicit explanation for the crucifixion; it’s meaning is left in a meal which magically down the centuries has been enough for Christians to somehow see, without-in my case, at least- knowing exactly how they see, what the crucifixion is all about save as a necessary preliminary to the resurrection. The two disciples walking to Emmaus are not convinced by the explanation of the scriptures; it is the evening meal and the breaking of bread which opens their eyes to what is happening.
In our gospel this morning, Jesus is again in trouble for eating with tax collectors and sinners and his answer to this criticism is not the obvious one, used elsewhere, that the doctor does not treat the healthy but seeks to heal the sick.
Instead, he tells two stories -actually, the first two of three stories which really need to be read together, because the story of the Prodigal Son, which follows our gospel this morning, completes the teaching. The feature common to all three stories is the festivity-on earth and in heaven- when the animal, thing or human who was lost is found again.
In the story of the prodigal son we follow the psychology of the son leading to his repentance; there is of course no psychology for the lost coin and very little in the case of the sheep, which may not have thought she was lost at all. Neither can be said to repent or change their minds (and note that the sheep has to be carried back and may perhaps have preferred to stay where she was rather than joining hers cousins in the “wilderness” where they were left). Nevertheless, inanimate and inarticulate, even unwilling, finding the coin and sheep is enough for rejoicing in heaven.
We must assume that the tax collectors and sinners who sought out Jesus, while they may not yet have changed their mind set, they may not yet have “repented”, yet they had taken the first step of opening their ears and minds to the Gospel. And as the story of the Prodigal Son makes clear, simply approaching his father is enough for the latter to rush out to greet him before the son has even had a chance to articulate his repentance. The tax collectors and sinners wanted to hear Jesus, and this was enough for them to be “found” and accepted at the feast. In contrast, the pharisees and Scribes had not been able to take even the first step of listening with open minds to what Jesus has to say.
There is, then, hope for even for the most obdurate; the coin and the sheep know no repentance, and yet even they, when they allow themselves to be found can join the heavenly feast.
For a short time, I attended a chapel, where the presiding priest gave the absolution before we had recited a confession, except this way round, the confession was no mere recitation but an opportunity genuinely to bring to mind the things we had got wrong in the knowledge that they had already been forgiven. Paradoxically, perhaps, I found this much more logical, meaningful, and indeed scriptural. But it is liturgically “irregular”
and elsewhere I have been told that it is not permitted. Such is the dead hand, the mortmain, of clerical authority.
There is another aspect to feasting. Being found necessarily presupposes belonging; the sheep is lost because she has become separated from the flock; commentators plausibly suggest the lost coin was part of a necklace as even now in the middle east – might be worn keeping an inheritance or a dowry safe, but also in danger of flying everywhere if the string breaks. The prodigal son’s problem was that he did not feel sufficiently that he belonged to a family.
The word used in for loss in all these parables normally means destroy or kill; something which is lost may be thought to be dead- gone forever. The loss in these stories threatens to be permanent, not mere temporary absence or misplacement. This apt because these stories are about absence from the kingdom of heaven, or as St John would say, deprivation of eternal life. The belonging which the loss implies is salvation- life at its full potential. That belonging is, as elsewhere, seen as a feast or festivity; the wedding feast or the banquet to which the beggars and outcasts are commanded to attend. It is a banquet and a life that we too are commanded to enjoy, and to do so we have only to be willing to accept the invitation. Doing so we shall see what life may really mean, eternal not in the sense of lasting forever, but being beyond the restrictions of time and space, and enabling us to achieve a Christlike existence, one which will want to share with others, by meeting their physical needs and thus releasing their spiritual potential. This is the feast from which Pharisees and scribes, then and now exclude themselves.
And today it’s the feast to which Hugo is invited; like a sheep or a coin, he does not know this but the invitation is effective all the same, ready to be r, with by the realised with the grace of God, gradually and sensitively by parents and god parents and all the rest of us.
Amen.