Attention, Tenderness, and Determination (Sept 14)

Reading, Luke 15:1-10
Image, The Parable of the Lost Coin, Domenico Fetti (1589–1624)

​During our kid’s talk about baptism, we explored various imagery which helps communicate the reality of baptism. Our becoming part of the body of Christ, our being buried in Christ so that we can rise with him also, our light secured and enlivened in the fire of Christ’s light, our name being added to the great cloud of witnesses. The reading today carries two similar, potent images. The lost sheep and the lost coin, found and returned, the cause of much celebration.
 
Much comfort and hope has been gleaned from these most famous of stories. For in them, we see the attention, tenderness and determination of our God. This is a God not of averages but individuals. This is a God not content with rounding errors but who counts, knows, and delights in every hair on our head. The God who numbered the stars in the sky is as attentive to the human as the shepherd charged with the care of 100 sheep, as attentive to us in our billions as a woman to her 10 coins. These stories display the attention, tenderness, and determination of our God who knows when there is one who needs to be gathered, who knows where the lost will be found, and who celebrates their homecoming.
 
In theological speak, there is a term called the economy of salvation. The economy of salvation is used to describe the way in which God manages, or stewards, the salvation of the world. As an example, you might say, the economy of salvation is revealed in God’s decision to send the Son in love, or that the Spirit’s role in the economy of salvation is to awaken faith and understanding in the individual to the completed work of Christ. Baptism, even, can be part of the economy of salvation – not because it changes our status before God, but because as sacrament it points to the saving work of Christ and its effect in our common life. What we see, in parables such as those read today, is how different the economics of the economy of salvation are, from the economics of the world.  
 
By welcoming outsiders, the estranged and marginalised, Jesus risked not only his reputation, but the possible reception of his message. It was this welcome that brought about the grumbling that led to today’s parables. And the parables themselves attest to the deliberate attention paid to the few, the lost, the one amidst the many. None of these choices map onto the secure and prudent practices of worldly economics, all-to-ready to account for the odd lost coin or sheep, knowing that it is rarely worth the effort to retrieve.
 
And yet, time and again, Jesus teaches us that the kingdom of God is made known through an inversion of worldly values and expectations. Consider, for instance, the parable of the landowner who hires workers for his field at various points across the day. At the end of the day, the he gathers all the workers and pays each a day’s wage. Those who were there at the beginning grumbled at this wage parity. To which the landowner responds, Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” So the last will be first, and the first will be last.’ 
 
Or consider, for instance, the parable of the banquet, when those who received the first invitation to dine do not come, and so the host sends servants to the streets to gather all they can find, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.
 
The point is never order or longevity, deserving or protocol. For the joy is in the gathering up – is the bringing in of those outside, forgotten, and lost. It is in the inversion of the old order of things and replacing it with something sublime – the celebration over one found, the last being first, the hall filled with the good and bad. And the risk, as it was in for those grumbling at the beginning of today’s reading, as it will be for the older brother in the parable that follows the two we heard, as it is for those who went first to the fields, or turned down the invitation to feast, is to miss out on the celebration. Is to miss out on what is been made new in God’s attention, tenderness, and determination. To allow the economics and values of the world to rob us of the joy at something so strange and sublime as the attention, tenderness, and determination of God to fill God’s household with merriment, meaning, and fellowship. 
 
Because if we miss this celebration, if we grumble through what God is doing because it does not look like the logical or the prudent, if we scoff at the welcome of those so seldom welcomed, then we will miss what it is we are called to do. For as those who have received the grace of God and called to bear the fruit of the Spirit, we are called to live in response to God’s attention, tenderness and determination – to model it in our own life, to seek it in our community. For as the church we are called by God to organise ourselves after the economics of the economy of salvation.
 
This week you may have seen the story of Carlo Acutis, in the news for becoming the first millennial saint. Often what is first highlighted about Carlos’ life was his use of the internet to catalogue miracles and witness to the good news of the gospel (work he began at 11 years old). But what is also highlighted was that, between 11 and 15, Carlos was also known to go about Milan, giving out sleeping bags to the homeless, giving money from his allowance to the poor. When Carlos died, tragically from a rare cancer at age 15, his funeral was unexpectantly packed with a crowd of the poor and homeless from across Milan. His Priest remarked, “It became apparent that Carlo had befriended so many of these people.” What a witness to a life modelled on the attention, tenderness, and determination of God. One devoting gifts, passions, and time to the kind of upside-down economics of the kingdom of God which celebrates in the great gathering of the unexpected a testament to the nature of our God, who refuses to allow a one to be lost or forgotten. May our own days, our own community, be marked by such attention, tenderness, and determination.