9 - 15 - 19 Readings & Sermon

The first lesson today is from Jeremiah.

At that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem, a hot wind comes from me out of the bare heights in the desert toward my poor people, not to winnow or cleanse, a wind too strong for that.

Now it is I who speak in judgment against them.

For my people are foolish, they do not know me.

They are stupid children that have no understanding.

They are skilled in doing evil, but do not know how to do good.

I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void, and to the heavens, and they had no light.

I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro.

I looked, and lo, there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled.

I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins before the Lord, before his fierce anger.

For thus says the Lord, the whole land shall be a desolation, yet I will not make a full end.

Because of this the earth shall mourn, and the heavens above grow black, for I have spoken, I have proposed, I have not relented, nor will I turn back.

The word of the Lord.

But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.

But for that very reason I receive mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example of those who would come to believe in him for eternal life.

To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.

Amen.

Thanks.

The word of the Lord.

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus, and the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, This fellow welcomes sinners and ease with them.

So Jesus 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 shoulder 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 have no need of repentance.

Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it.

When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.

Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

Amen.

Please go ahead and be seated.

Good morning.

That was pretty tepid.

Good morning.

Hey, thank you for that warm greeting.

It's so great to be with you.

My name is Steve Capper.

I serve as the vicar and executive director of Lord of the Streets, which is a special evangelistic mission of the Diocese of Texas.

Another way to say it is we are a church of and for the homeless.

And the only such mission of the diocese designated for that ministry, though there are multiple ministries to the homeless around the diocese.

I've been there a little over four years.

It's not where I thought I would be at this time.

But I must tell you that when I drove up this morning here to St.

Thomas and saw all of the tents on the lawn, I was pretty sure this must be Homeless Sunday, and you welcomed all the homeless to your lawn.

Then I saw the Cub Scouts or Boy Scouts or whoever they were.

But I felt right at home when I saw the tents because a lot of our folks find themselves residing in tents or lean twos or not nearly anything quite so luxurious under the freeway overpasses throughout our city.

I've been thinking a lot lately about return on investment.

I've been thinking about that because some of you could say, gosh, he's an old guy to be doing all of this, and the fact of the matter is I'm a pretty old guy.

And I didn't do what all financial planners talk about, and that is if you'll start thinking about retirement when you're really younger adults, you might actually be prepared for it when you get to the time that you stop.

I used to kid, I have a definition of retired, and that is I'm tired again.

That's retired.

But I came late to the game of thinking about what's going to happen in the future.

So I got introduced to this term, return on investment.

Most of you are familiar with return on investment.

Return on the investment is I put something in and then I get good bang for my buck, right?

I put it someplace that my money is going to make money.

Return on investment begs the question: well, what is a good ROI, return on investment?

And uh when we first got together with a financial planner, my wife of 45 years and I, I was 12 when we got married.

Uh when we first got together with a financial planner, the financial planner said, What's your risk tolerance?

Well, I thought my risk tolerance was pretty high, but not necessarily when it came to money.

In other words, I didn't want to risk putting good money and having bad returns.

So they determined risk tolerance.

And uh, based on the risk tolerance and based on the research that I did, someplace in the area of 12% return on investment is considered moderately good.

And uh we also soon figured out that no matter how much we put in, there wasn't going to be enough if I retired at 65.

So I'm trying to lobby the church to let me work till I'm 94.

And then I'll have enough money for the next four years.

All right?

So 8 to 12 percent was moderately good.

And uh and and moderately good you could somewhat anticipate with moderate risk.

Now, uh, if you really wanted a good return, your risk tolerance had better be higher, right?

So I got introduced to return on investment.

Uh return on investment is something that became really prominent even in the business community.

But different people have different ways of looking at it.

There was a man named Deming who was an advisor to Japan after World War II.

Some of you may be familiar with him.

After Japan was decimated in World War II, the question was: are they so vulnerable that they'll be influenced by all kinds of factors, including resentment and bitterness?

Or is there a way to invest both thought capital and some other means to help Japan rebuild?

And Deming was the primary advisor.

And his encouragement to companies was not to just look at return on investment in terms of the amount of money that a company could make, especially a company that was involved in the manufacturing of goods.

Instead, Deming said, look in terms of the social returns on investment.

You build the kind of plants, you make a commitment to the kind of quality products that your basic return on investment that you prioritize above all else.

You have to make some profit to stay in business.

But the highest return on investment you want is the quality of your products, give you a good name, and it also provides that you can have sustainable employment for people that you treat as family.

Well, most of us in this room, most of you are a little bit younger than I am, some of you are a little bit older, will remember the time when the envy of the capitalist world in terms of quality of products was Japan.

How many of you drive a Japanese automobile?

Why?

Because the reputation for excellence.

And the more excellent the product, the longer people could be employed.

In the United States, we left that because return on investment went from what kind of a deposit or impact could the money invested in manufacturing make for the laborer as well as the consumers, and shifted to what's the rate of return for those who will invest in the stock.

And so now we have companies that are more interested in selling off components of a company, even if it means the eradication of jobs, because they're driven by stock investors who want greater than 12% return.

Now, when you hear that, I don't know what happens to you, but I find myself working with people who are unemployed and many of whom have some skills, but not enough to take traditional jobs, wishing that the Japanese model of return on investment was more prominent in our nation than simply what's the latest stock market index.

Why do I talk about all of this?

Because I think God has a perspective on return on investment, and it's not very similar to our understanding of what is the minimum that we want to see come out of it.

So Jesus tells two stories in today's gospel.

In the one story, there's a 10% return on investment.

A woman has 10 coins, loses one of them, does everything she can to search for it, does not wait for it to find its way back to her, doesn't pray to St.

Jude, the saint of lost items, for it to magically appear in her dresser drawer.

Maybe it was there all along, we don't know.

What we know is she went to extraordinary efforts to go and look for a lost coin.

10% of her assets were missing.

So she went searching, and Jesus said, that's the way God is.

Then Jesus had that other story.

A man had a hundred sheep, which was moderate wealth for an agrarian society.

One goes astray.

Jesus says, that one leaves the 99.

By the way, this is not a very popular gospel in churches when a rector, associate rector, or anybody else says, hey, we ought to go ahead and give thanks for the people who are here and spend our focus on those who aren't here.

And people say, why would you do that?

And then they would say, Well, because Jesus talked about it.

Well, I don't care what Jesus said.

I want the focus here.

Give thanks for me to be here.

Jesus said, leaves the 99, which means making them somewhat vulnerable, goes searches for the one, and when finding the one, wherever it wandered off to, puts that stinking thing around his shoulders.

Anybody been around sheep?

Puts that stinking thing around his shoulders, which means he smells like what when he gets home?

And brings it home and then calls everybody together before he showers.

And says, rejoice with me.

I got a 1% return.

I'm sorry, what how much return?

One out of a hundred.

Now the gospels tell us, and First Timothy reminds us, Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

Among the sinners and the nation of Israel, out of all of the religious Jews, tax collectors and sinners, people who weren't following God's ways in every realm of their life, were attracted to Jesus.

They felt like they could come to him.

So if out of the religious community of Jews, maybe the tax collectors and the sinners were even less than 1%.

And Jesus welcomed them and chose to spend time with them.

Among the sinners of Israel shortly after Jesus' death and resurrection, there was one particular religious zealot who had all of the rules of religion and all of the rituals down pat, but he had completely missed the relationship end of things.

And Jesus, instead of being repulsed by him, went searching for him and found him.

And he gave up the religious rituals and all of the rules and emphasized a relationship with God and relationship with others, and his name was Saul, the Apostle Paul.

Good return on the investment.

There was a young man arrested during the regime of Joseph Stalin simply for suspicion of wrongdoing.

He himself had no idea why he was put in a frozen wasteland prison in a gulag, but he was bitter.

He was convinced he had done nothing to deserve it.

When he was there, another gentleman who was a prisoner there befriended him and shared with him from his meager portions of bread and broth and took the opportunity to talk to him about the God of the Bible who came to seek and to save those who were lost.

This young man was convinced he wasn't lost, he had been unjustly imprisoned, and in fact he would inwardly protest his own innocence that he didn't need a rescuer because he had never broken any laws, either civil or religious.

But after a period of a couple of years, this young man realized one night how he was poisoned in his soul and was full of hate and resentment.

And in a moment of clarity, he realized how many choices he had made, either of attitude or actions that violated human decency, even if he didn't ever murder.

He had nonetheless been unkind with words and actions.

And he realized in that moment two things.

He realized that in fact he did need forgiveness, and he needed somebody who could change him from what was likely to be the same pattern of life in the future.

And the second thing he realized was when he looked at his friend, he wanted the ability to have peace in the midst of adverse circumstances and hope for a future, even if circumstances didn't change just like that guy.

So in the quiet of his cell, he simply turned and made a very unorthodox prayer.

God, I'm here.

I want to be home.

His friend, who had shared with him the good news, died.

He was killed by the guards.

But this young man made a determination that in whatever way he could, he would never stop telling the story of a God of grace, a God of justice, but of mercy.

And he did.

For when he got out, Alexander Solzhenitsun continued to tell the story through his writings and his speakings, that no matter how much was wrong in the world, there was one who could make individuals in society right.

At Lord of the Streets, I have no idea whether any of the homeless that we seek instead of waiting for them to come to us, I have no idea whether any of them will ever be an Apostle Paul or an Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

I have no idea.

What I do know is this.

If even one of them comes home back to the heart of God, realizing that they are of eternal worth and there can be peace in the present and hope for the future, if even one of them comes home and takes a chance that the Christian community will actually become for them a family, either a family for the first time or a family restored that was lost years before?

If even one of them comes to believe that they are of eternal worth and they have contributions to make so that they're not just receiving, but they're giving.

And I would prefer to be a glad celebrant at that party rather than excusing myself because I had judged them at fault for having gotten themselves lost.

And even if they're a smelly sheep, I don't want to be offended by their odor.

I'd rather be at the party.

And I'd rather be rejoicing with the Lord.

It cost him everything.

And yet, the Bible also tells us that it was for the joy on the other side of the cross.

For the joy set before me endured the pain of seeking dissemination.