Luke 15:1-7
September 7, 2025
“Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ So he told them this parable: ‘Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.’”
*********************************
Next
year will be this church’s 200th anniversary. There was a group of Methodists meeting off
and on in Valley Forge by around 1811, but it was in 1826 that they formally
organized in Phoenixville. So I was
reading through a book published by Howard Peters (of 47 Nutt Rd.) in 1926: “100
Years of Methodism in Phoenixville”.
He describes a furor caused by one of my predecessors. It’s a little unclear as written, but it
seems to me that the preacher one Sunday spoke out against naming people who
refused to endorse the temperance movement.
(What we would today call “doxing”.)
Mind you, alcohol abuse was a severe problem then. It still is, but the scale was wider at the
time, and the churches were trying to get a handle on things, even going so far
as to start using unfermented grape juice at communion – a controversial step,
but one that allowed people addicted to alcohol to take the sacrament without
either shaming them or endangering their sobriety. That’s why we still do that.
This
is how Mr. Peters tells the story:
“In the case of Wythes, in “Pennypacker’s Annals of
Phoenixville,” several pages are devoted to a controversy which was caused by a
sermon which was preached on June 14, 1845, by Rev. Jos. Wythes, on the evils
of intemperance [so far, so good: our guy is preaching against substance abuse],
in which he condemned the habit indulged in by opponents of the cause [the
anti-temperance people], of using opprobious [sic] language in referring
to individuals by name.”
In other words, he wasn’t going to get down to the
level of personal attacks on specific people, even if the other folks were
doing that. Apparently there were enough
temperance people in the congregation who wanted him to do that, or who took
not calling people out individually for not supporting the Temperance Movement
itself, that the service got out of hand.
Peters continues,
“A clergyman of another denomination being present was
called upon at the close of the meeting who argued against the position taken
by Wythes.”
So Wythes tried to demonstrate he wasn’t arguing for drunkenness
by calling for people to sign onto a public pledge of abstinence, which many
did, but he became a target nonetheless.
“On the 23rd of August a temperance meeting
was held in the neighborhood, addressed by Rev. John Chambers, a noted
Philadelphia preacher, who spoke of Wythes as an opponent of the cause and a ‘fit
minister of Hell.’”
Then there were peacemaking moves over the next month
or two, but Peters was still writing about it 76 years later, during
Prohibition.
Now,
I’m not here to open old wounds or to inflict new ones. I will say, though, that I can hear in all of
this the voice of people murmuring behind Jesus back, and saying,
“This fellow welcomes
sinners and eats with them.”
When the tax collectors and sinners were seeking Jesus
out to hear what he had to say, why would you want to turn them away? People were coming to him to find a way out
of the smoke and haze and bleariness of troubled lives into the fresh air of
God’s love. Why create an atmosphere so empty
of grace that no one can breathe without choking on accusation?
It’s
hard enough for anybody to turn around and admit they have traveled far down a
road that is not God’s road and to start back in the other direction. That’s called “repentance” and it’s not easy
to begin with, let alone with people looking on and pointing fingers and naming
names. There is a deep courage that is
needed for anyone to say, “I have been wrong and have hurt others,” and the
fear of a response – especially when totally justified – the fear of a response
that expresses the deep hurt that they have inflicted can keep someone from
taking that first step back toward where they should have been all along. So they stay in a terrible place where their
conscience burns within them or in pride they double down on the destructive
ways, and the devastation takes them down in the end.
Who
are we, too, if we make it any harder for someone who has been wrong to stay
wrong? (Assuming here that we are right,
and setting aside the words in Romans 3:23 that say, “all have sinned and
fall short of the glory of God.”) Or
have we also become so hardened that we cannot see the possibility of renewal
through the work of Jesus on the cross and of his Spirit in the human
heart? It’s only one step from saying, “Even
God cannot save you,” to saying, “Even God cannot save me.” That’s just another dead-end not worth going
down.
When
God steps in to soften the hardened heart, not to recognize that or at the very
least allow it as a possibility, puts us all at risk. Do not get drawn into that. I saw a video clip recently that showed a man
sitting down on a couch, rubbing his eyes and wringing his hands. His wife walked into the room and quietly set
a coffee cup on the table next to him and turned away without saying anything. As she was leaving the room he said, “I need
to tell you that I am sorry I spoke so harshly yesterday. I didn’t need to do that and it shouldn’t
have happened.”
“Do you really mean that?”
she said.
He answered, “Yes,” and
she leaned over and picked up the untouched coffee cup.
“I need to get you a
different cup of coffee.”
Somewhere there must be an
ancient document with a version of Luke’s gospel that says, “Now all the tax
collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling
and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ And Jesus said
to them, ‘Yeah, no kidding. Pull up a
seat.’”
No comments:
Post a Comment