Proper
19C September
15, 2019
Jeremiah 4:11-12,
22-28
Psalm 14
1 Timothy 1:12-17
Children,
do you have a favorite stuffed animal or soft blanket that you love? I invite
you to draw a picture on the sheet in your worship bags of yourself holding your
favorite soft toy. Be sure to read the words on the top of the sheet, too. [It says God loves me so much.] Adults, maybe you remember, as well, what your
beloved childhood comfort object looked like? Felt like? Smelled like? Hold that image in your mind.
My daughter had a cloth sheep as her comfort
object. Besides sleeping with it, she carried it around with her everywhere so
she could chew on the corner of its floppy ears. Luckily, her grandmother, who
had given her the sheep when she was born, had cleverly procured a “twin” sheep.
It was a mother’s dream--I could secretly switch the sheep out when one of them
got dirty or lost.
One fateful day, though, I brought my
toddler down to the basement laundry room with me. She was waking up from her
nap and was cuddling her sheep in her arms. There, in the pile of dirty
laundry, was the twin, peeking out from under some towels. She noticed it
before I did. My daughter looked at the sheep in her arms—she looked at the
sheep on the floor—and she looked back at the one she held. “One, Two,” she
counted. Her eyes lit up in delight, and she squealed with pleasure! It was
like Christmas and her birthday all rolled into one! What a celebrations! Grabbing both sheep, she
hugged them tightly and beamed. From then on, she and her sheep formed one family
in her mind. She had to carry them both wherever she went. She named them “Momi
‘n Peep,” and the three were inseparable. For her, safety looked like Momi ‘n
Peep. Joy felt like Momi ‘n Peep. The completeness of her toddler world
existed as Momi ‘n Peep. She no longer counted Momi plus Peep. They
weren’t two separate things. Instead, they became what counted in her life.
Around this time of year, we in the
church do an awful lot of counting. We worriedly count attendance; we carefully
count pledge cards; we anxiously count everything from the price of postage to committee
members to children in Sunday School. Counting can help us to feel in control
and on the ball. We use that strategy outside of church, as well. We count the mistakes that other people make
and compare them with the mistakes that we are making. We count the cool toys
or clothes that other people have and compare them with what is in our rooms. We
count the friends that others have and compare them with how many friends we
have. We count our money and our IRA. We count our grey hairs and wrinkles. We
count how much longer we have until we die.
All the time that we spend counting,
however, doesn’t give us new life. That’s what Jesus is trying to tell the
Pharisees in today’s Gospel. Any control that counting and comparing give us is
an illusion. Instead, what brings life is to know that we each count—that we
are someone in someone else’s eyes, that we are a beloved child of God, that we
have a meaningful place in this world. Do you ever feel like the lost coin? Squeezed
under a crack in the floor? Or have you lost a part of yourself that you long
to find? Or perhaps there is someone in this world that you take for granted?
Perhaps there is someone, or a group of people, that you have forgotten? Today’s
parable is about celebrating becoming whole again, in all of the ways that needs to happen.[1]
For God, we human beings belong
together in the divine embrace. We are Momi and Peep. We are one, and we
are each beloved. If one of us goes missing, God is inconsolable. When we hide
under our pile of dirty laundry, God will do anything to dig us out. God
wants to scoop us up in God’s arms and hold us, as tightly and as stubbornly as
my daughter held onto those two stuffed sheep. Just a glimpse of one of us
peeking out from under the shadows, makes God’s eyes light up with joy and
delight.
At the same time, God wants that love and delight
to flow through us into the world. Just as we count for God, God wants others
to count for us. In Christ, God’s grace is constantly pouring over us as freely
as the water flows over a tiny baby’s head in baptism. As soon as we let it, that
love will enter us and flow through us out into the world. To be “saved,” as
the author of the letter to Timothy shows us, is to let ourselves be given over
to God’s work in the world, the work of love, the work of making everyone
count. God blesses us so that we can bless one another. God forgives us so that
we can forgive one another. God transforms us so that we can transform the
lives of others.
Transforming lives, you might note, is
theme of our stewardship work that begins today. So let’s not expect to do that
hard work on our own, by counting and comparing. Let us instead show one
another that each and every soul counts, both in our building and out into the
world. I challenge us to approach the road ahead like Momi ‘n Peep,
carried in the arms of the One who loves us beyond all imagining.
