The old testament lesson I read today is set at the time of the Exodus.
It is a story that reveals to us how God is called out of anger at his people, an anger that is fully justified; and is called to remember his purpose - his saving purpose, when he selected Abraham and Isaac and Jacob to father a great nation, a nation created to bear his word and his love to the entire world.
God's nature is to save - but God is also a holy God - a God of justice and truth and God - like us - is angered by unfaithfulness, by dishonesty, by people who abandon their values and act out of fear and greed.
So it was that God was mightily ticked off at his people Israel when after having delivered them from slavery in Egypt and from the army of Pharaoh at the Red Sea they grumbled and complained in the wilderness and then created their own god - a golden calf - an idol at the very moment that Moses was receiving the law on Mount Sinai.
God was angry, very angry - and he told Moses
"Go down at once - get off the mountain - for your people have been quick to turn aside - they are perverse and corrupt - and I am going to destroy them.."
Anger - anger like ours - right down to the fact that God did what we do, what a parent does when he or she is talking to their partner about a disobedient child - they disown their connection to the child... it is your child - not mine - your child that has fouled up, your child that is wrong.
"Go down at once Moses - for your people have been quick to turn aside."
Moses replies to God as a father might to a mother or a mother to father - he reminds God of his connection, of his relationship - of the fact that he created the people Israel -- saying to him:
"O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people... whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?"
And Moses then goes on to remind God of his purpose in calling Israel out of slavery and of his promises to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob; promises that included the fact that he would make them a great nation, and that he would work his saving grace to all the world through them.
Moses calls God to change his mind and to not destroy his people - And as we read - God does change his mind: - God does remember what he was about, - God does recall his relationship with his people, and he does not bring the disaster upon Israel that he had planned in his anger.
The purpose of God is a saving purpose my friends, and so ought our purpose be a saving purpose and that purpose we should have with everyone - not just with our children and those who are close to us.
Many of us I know get angry as God got angry at his people.
In our rage we vow destruction to those who have offended against us and those we love; and after a while we calm down - we remember on our own, or we are reminded by others, what is important in our relationship with the person we are angry at and of what is important to us in how we deal with them and with all those around us, and we, like God at Sinai, do relent and continue on - in a wiser way - a better way.
At least we often do this. But we do not always do so - do we?
Especially we do not relent, such is our sin, when we feel particularly justified in our anger - when we regard the other person or persons involved as somehow different than us, as not only not being related to us - but as being more evil or mean spirited than we are.
Consider the gospel lesson today. - a lesson in which Jesus tells two parables - the parable of the lost sheep - the one in a hundred that strays in the wilderness - and the parable of the lost coin - the one of ten that is misplaced somehow.
Jesus tells us in this lesson about the rejoicing that is done on earth and in heaven when the sheep is found - the coin located - the sinner saved; and Jesus tells us that - indeed he tells three parables - for he also goes on to tell the parable of the prodigal son, he tells us these parables not because we are stupid and can't understand that God rejoices when people are saved - but rather he tells the parables to remind his listeners what God's purpose is - and what our purpose is.
And we often need reminding don't we? - perhaps not every day - but often enough.
Recall the setting in which the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, and indeed the parable of the prodigal son, are told.
It says in chapter 15, verse 1 and two of today's reading from Luke -
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to Jesus to listen to him - those people are bad people my friends -- and the pharisees and the scribes (the good people - the people who obeyed God's law) were grumbling and saying "This fellow Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them."
The scribes and Pharisees - not all of them - but many of them - could not understand Jesus - they could not understand how he could associate with bad people and yet claim to be able to teach the word of God's purity - they could not understand how he could urge others to follow God's law - a law which demands that each and every person be holy as God is holy - and yet sit down to eat with sinners.
The scribes and pharisees were mystified by Jesus, - for he did not express the anger at the tax collectors and sinners that they had, - he did not show the fear of being contaminated by evil that they felt. - nor he did not demonstrate the holy rage that they felt and believed that he ought to have over the sinfulness of certain members of his audience.
And so Jesus reminds them - and them in particular of what is important, of what God is about - by telling them the parables we heard this morning.
I would like to tell you a parable as well - it is told by Henri Nouwen and it concerns an old man who used to meditate each day be the Ganges River in India.
One morning he saw a scorpion floating on the water. When the scorpion drifted near the old man he reached to rescue it but was stung by the scorpion. A bit later he tried again and was stung again, the bite swelling his hand painfully and giving him much pain. Another man passing by saw what was happening and yelled at the meditater, "Hey, stupid old man, what's wrong with you? Only a fool would risk his life for sake of an ugly, evil creature. Don't you know you could kill yourself trying to save that ungrateful scorpion?"
The old man calmly replied, "My friend, just it is in the scorpion's nature to sting, that does not change my nature to save."
It is in God's nature to save - because it is in God's nature to love.
God seeks the lost, heals the wounded, forgives the offender, and gives hope to those who are in despair.
It is what God does.
It matters not that we might be scorpions - that we might hurt him - God has made promises to us - and he keeps them.
That is what the story of the cross is all about.
Paul speaks of this in today's reading from First Timothy when he says:
The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinner
Our purpose - the purpose God calls us to - is to save as well: - to change our minds about the destruction we want to bring about when we feel hurt, - to relent of the anger we have,and to work to save others as God has saved us, us who are sinners no less than those whom we are angry at.
H.H. Staton in his book, "A Guide To the Parables of Jesus" tells the story of having been on an ocean liner headed to the Middle East.
Nine hundred miles out to sea a sail was sighted on the horizon. As the liner drew closer, the passengers saw that the boat - a small sloop flying a Turkish flag - had run up a distress signal and other flags asking for its position at sea. Through a faulty chronometer or immature navigation the small vessel had become lost. For nearly an hour the liner circled the little boat, giving its crew correct latitude and longitude. Naturally there was a great deal of interest in all the proceeding among the passengers of the liner. A boy of about 12 standing on the deck and watching all that was taking place remarked aloud to himself - "It's a big ocean to be lost in."
It is a big universe to be lost in too.
And we do get lost - we get mixed up and turned around. We despair, we make mistakes, we do evil to each other. And at times we incur the wrath of God and of man. And most deservedly so..
But while it is a big universe out there it is not a hostile one - at least not on God's part.
God's wrath does not last forever - indeed it barely lasts but a moment for God remembers who we are, what we are made of, and whose we are, and it is in his nature - even when dealing with scorpions - to seek the lost, to save the sinner and have compassion on those seek his shelter.
God offers to each one of us the opportunity to start over again, fresh each day. The question for us - who are made in his image is quite simply this - Should we do any less? If God can have a change of mind and relent of his anger - cannot we?
Praise be to God for his love and his faithfulness. AMEN
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