“What have we lost?”
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 19
15 September 2013
Saint Anne’s Episcopal Church
Fremont, California
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
Psalm 14
I Timothy 1:12-17
St. Luke 15:1-10
INI
Losing yourself (Umberto Eco)
I love reading, and one
of my favorite authors is Umberto Eco.
He was a professor of semeiotics (the study of symbol and meaning) at
the University of Bologna in Italy.
All of his books a filled with symbols known and unknown, popular and
arcane, arrogant and simple. Some
years ago I read his novel, The Mysterious Fire of Queen Loana. It is the story of a man who following
a stroke wakes up one day realizing that his has lost his sense of memory – to
a point. All that he has read, he
retains. It is his memory of
family and relations that has disappeared. Indeed, he cannot remember his own
name. The novel reports his efforts in gaining back his history, his family,
and really his sense of self. He
retires to his grandfather’s home in Solara, and in the attic of that home
discovers all the books, games, newspapers, and other materials that re-mind
him of his life before the stroke.
It is an
interesting notion, isn’t it; continuing to walk through life, but without the usual
reminders of what it is that you really are. It is this dilemma that Jeremiah approaches in the first
reading for this morning. In the
oracle that G-d speaks, we sense a familiar notion of loss: “For my people are
foolish, they do not know me…they have no understanding.” In this revelation, both G-d and prophet
plumb the depths of a nation’s loss.
Later on in the poem, G-d is still speaking the prophet’s thoughts; it
is as though creation itself had been lost. “I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light.” Does this sound familiar?
“In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the
earth – and the earth was without form or
shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters
– Then God said: Let there be light, and there was light.”
That light seemed to be
gone, and what Jeremiah is trying to tell us, through G-d’s voice and mouth, is
that even our very createdness can be lost. As we read the news these days about diminishing habitats
and resources, we can begin to understand such a profound loss – creation
itself. Yambo, the main character
of Eco’s novel has lost something dear – his very sense of self. Jeremiah wants us to think beyond that
to the total loss of G-d.
Losing things of Value
In the Gospel for today,
Jesus, countering the attitude of the Scribes and Pharisees about his seeming
loss of social values, “he welcomes sinners and eats with them,” offers three
parables about loss and value. Value
is relative, isn’t it: one sheep among a hundred, one coin among ten. It is in the third parable, which is
not a part of our reading this morning, that we begin to really count the
value. For in this parable it is
the loss of a son, a loss of the future and of promise – for that is what an
heir was. The prodigal son lost or
squandered the inheritance he demanded from his father, and the father
prodigally gave it away, not once, but twice when the spent son made a return
to his father’s house.
In yesterday’s New York Times there was a rather long
article about those who live in the so-called “Inland Empire” east of Los
Angeles, where housing values have impoverished people. Their tale is about value. One family, now living in a home with
termites and water damage, a home that is a quarter of what they used to have,
that home to them is of inestimable value. It is where they live and survive.
What have you lost? Anything? A loved one, a friend, a relationship? In order to understand both Jeremiah
and Jesus, this morning, we have to begin by counting the value of things. There is for us, whether we bring it
mind or not, a hierarchy of value in our life. For Yambo in Eco’s book there was the sincere desire to
regain all the value that was represented in a lived life. All of these memories and shared
experiences (shared with family and friends that are even more valuable) are
crucial to what we are and what we think ourselves to be. The perspective of someone who is
homeless, or mentally ill will be a different perception than ours – but they
will be of value.
Gaining Perspective – Losing God.
We need to go back to
Jeremiah again before we can understand what Jesus is trying to teach us. What Jeremiah sees in his society and
culture is a profound loss of G-d.
And before we diminish this loss by saying, “Oh, Jeremiah just didn’t
want them to lose their national identity – It was Israel’s G-d that was being
forgotten,” we need to understand something about Jeremiah and Isaiah and other
prophets of the period. They were
not so much interested in resuscitation of a lost nation and kingship. They had cast their eyes to a much
larger stage on which the G-d of Israel was working – G-d’s kindness measured
out to all the nations. That was
the thing of value. To lose G-d
was to lose the connection between Creator and Creation, the connectedness of
all created things – the human community.
Losing that sense of G-d,
that G-d is both Creator and Sustainer, that G-d binds us to one another,
losing that sense is what concerns Jesus.
Who are the sinners with whom he eats? Well, some of them were evil. The tax collectors represented the Roman oppression and
became wealthy because of it. How
different were they from the average citizen (even today) who did not care for
the poor, or from the poor who stole, or from the child who disobeyed her
parents? Augustine saw us all
bound together in sin. Jesus wants
the Scribes and Pharisees to see us all as bound together in our common value
before G-d.
Whom have you lost
here? Who used to enjoy your
fellowship at the Eucharist, and is no longer present with you in the Feast of
Thanksgiving? Who among you is
sick or lonely? Who among you has
lost the ability to say what their troubles really are? Whom have you lost to your fellowship
here simply because they don’t know you are here?
In a play Friday evening
by Word for Word at Z Space in San Francisco, the actors playing out a book by
Zona Gale, Friendship Village, tell the story of a Thanksgiving Dinner
in Friendship, Wisconsin. Caliope,
a town resident wants to have a Thanksgiving Dinner for “those who are sick or
poor” but soon realizes that no one like that exists in Friendship. Even so she convinces six other people
to contribute to the cause and assures them that there will be guests for the
dinner. At the end of the chapter
we realize that her “guests” were those she had asked to prepare for the
dinner. In the asking the reader
or the audience realizes that they were in deed the sick and the poor. Sometimes we lose the ability to detect
the poverty or illness of those around us.
There is a word that gets
lost in these parables and that word is found.
“When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders
and rejoices.”
“When she has found it, she calls together her
friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me.’”
“But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your
brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.”
Such a brazen thing I am doing, nagging
you about what you have perhaps lost.
It is a wrong tactic. What
I should be saying is “Find and Rejoice”!
That is why you are here – to find those who have been lost to others –
to rejoice at sons and daughters who might find this place a home. All of the symbols and actions that we
do here are capable of reminding others of the life that they may have
lost. Like Yambo, they can reclaim
the life G-d has graciously given them.
So who will it be? Whom will you invite? Over whom will you rejoice?
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