Grace and peace to all who seek to expand that grace and peace to God’s holy creation through the texts we will read this Sunday, that we may be vehicles of that grace and peace.

The three-part parable of the Found Sheep, the Found Coin, and the Found Son(s) is admittedly a set of metaphorical stories that address the indignant grumbling of the Pharisees and scribes when they see Jesus accepting the presence of “all the tax collectors and sinners (who) were coming near to listen to him”. Still, do the sheep and the coin have no value of their own besides being a convenient metaphor?

Let’s focus on the sheep that gets lost for a bit. “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?” Well, frankly, the answer to Jesus’ question is not obvious to the most casual observer. Many interpreters and preachers have appealed to the mindset of the Pharisees and scribes who assume a cost/benefit analysis which favors, and almost demands, the shepherd consider the cost of leaving ninety-nine sheep in the hand over the benefit of looking for a lost sheep in the bush - especially if there is no reasonable time limit or distance from the flock in which to carry out the search. The smart thing for the shepherd to do is cut his loss and not risk losing the flock by ignoring the dangers of the wilderness and taking off after 1% of his total assets. This makes perfect sense, unless, to the shepherd, the sheep is not just a financial asset. If the lost sheep is a creature with whom the shepherd has a relationship, then this kind of risky escapade makes more sense. If the shepherd has named the sheep instead of just attaching a numbered ear tag to it, then the search is understandable despite the risk to the flock.

Within the context of the grumbling Pharisees and scribes, Jesus is claiming that tax collectors and sinners have a value because God knows them and loves them, and being in their presence makes sense even if it offends those who see them as worthless traitors and despicable unbelievers. The joyful restoration of the flock is even worth the life of the Shepherd.

In the context of God’s holy creation, the shepherd’s search for the lost sheep demands that we see the value of that holy creation, even when it cannot be seen as a personal or financial asset. So, snail darters and tiny frogs may have enough value to God (and therefore to us) that preventing the destruction of a stream for some sort of construction may make sense. Valuing polar bears or kelp beds may be enough to put the brakes on climate change, even though they don’t show up on the spread sheet of a corporation. Acknowledging God’s delight in healthy oceans may be enough for us to take on the difficult and inconvenient tasks of replacing most of our plastics.

The Exodus text captures a moment when God is giving Moses the covenantal documents that will be the basis of God’s relationship with the people of Israel. God recognizes that for the relationship to work, Israel cannot cheat on God, must speak well of God, spend restful focused time with God, and can’t be terrible to each other. While God is etching the tablets with these covenantal “vows”, Israel is already having an affair with a golden calf. God is ready to kill the relationship and the people. Moses calls on God to be true to God’s own heart and to the commitment God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (flawed people in their own rights). God repents of the destruction, honors those promises and does not give up on Israel, just as God continues to honor the rainbow covenant with the earth and God’s judgment that all of creation is “very good”. We are called to honor those covenants and judgements as well.

In the 1 Timothy text, Paul explicitly names his past sins and is grateful that “I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief” and that “Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience as an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life.” Paul called himself a blasphemer and persecutor against Christ and the church. Paul’s actions had little impact on creation because he had no significant technical ability to be as destructive as we can be. Our blasphemies and persecutions include those against God’s holy creation because we do have the technical ability to cause serious damage to creation and are persistent in our (often uniformed, misinformed or uncaring) use of these abilities. As God’s people we need to be as devoted as God was with Paul to challenge the ignorance and unbelief of our sins against God’s holy creation. Let God’s mercy generate mercy in us for creation; let God’s caring forgiveness for our mistreatments of the earth generate deep care for the earth; let God’s patient mercy for our actions that evidence unbelief for God’s delightful ownership of the creation generate actions of belief that creation is to be honored, treasured and protected.

Psalm 51 begins with the heading “To the leader: A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.” This is actually verse 1 in the Hebrew text. Verse 4 reads, “Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgement.” I am going to take issue with David here, considering the context in that heading. It is clear to me that David has brutally sinned against Bathsheba as well. It is questionable to believe that taking her in marriage atones for that sin. Likewise, we often take David’s path and think that our sinful acts are against God alone. Our destructive uses of creation so that our lives may feel richer; so that our selfish passions may be satisfied are sins against creation itself as well against God. The “broken and contrite heart” and the “new and right spirit within me” that David longs for needs to include resolute action to care for the earth with unselfish energy and passion to restore and redeem what we have desecrated. Our victims need to be remembered as part of our confessions.