Amazing grace! how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.
Other than the tune, I’ve never been quite sure why the first verse of that hymn is so popular. How many of us revel in our lost-ness or our wretchedness? Do you think of yourself as a wretch? Perhaps if you do, you don’t admit it. A friend of mine who turns 90 this year said recently, “My eyes are bad, my hearing is bad, I’ve got some balance and heart problems, but other than that I’m fine!” Frankly, I don’t see any wretches out there. Maybe you’re not feeling so hot this morning, maybe your marriage is a little shaky, maybe you’re mortgaged up to your eyeballs, but no wretches.
What about lost? I don’t see anybody who’s lost. You found your way here. You know your way back to where you live. You know how to get down to Chicago. You know how to get to school. And yet whenever we sing Amazing Grace, everybody’s a lost wretch, and with enthusiasm! So maybe appearances aside, there is something within that acknowledges our need for God.
The parable of the lost sheep which is the centerpiece of our gospel this morning is also not what it appears to be. Well, it is and it isn’t. What it is not is a picture of what shepherds in Jesus’ day would do. Jesus says, “Which one of you, having 100 sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the 99 in the wilderness and go after the one who is lost until he finds it?” The answer? Not one shepherd would leave the 99 to go find the one lost sheep. If he does, he’s foolish because he would risk the safekeeping of the other 99—not to mention his livelihood. And so the point is not how we would act, but how God would act. The point is that God would go to any length to save the one lost sheep. Jesus would go to any length to save the one lost sheep. Furthermore, there’s a kind of reverse numbers thing going on here, because far from one in 100 who’s lost, it’s really about 99 who are lost. Jesus is saying that all of us need to be found. Jesus is saying that all of us have a need for God’s grace and God’s love.
One of the remarkable stories about Church growth is that of St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City. Some of you know that church. Our choir went there a few years ago to sing. It is a grand Romanesque structure on Park Avenue right next to the Waldorf Astoria and the Rector is a priest named Bill Tully. The Rev. Kit Carlson comments:
When Bill Tully came to be Rector of St. Bartholomew’s, it was a huge, expensive dinosaur of a church built by the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, guarded by ushers in morning coats, supported by a huge endowment and pew rents. Except that now the endowment was gone and the ushers were scaring away more people than they were welcoming. That was ten years ago, and St. Bart’s has had a remarkable turnaround and Bill Tully’s core principles about what it means to be “Church” speak to us:
Radical welcome—Church exists for the person who hasn’t found it yet. We are in business not for ourselves but for the next person in the door. And any and all are welcome to join the community, no matter who they are, how much money they make, whom they love, or what they believe.
Belong before belief—faith does not come easy in this faithless culture, and many people are wary of Christians and their message. It needs to be O.K. for someone to work out the questions of their faith while worshiping and living in community with the parish.
Loose at the edges, solid at the core—the poorest membranes of a radical welcome do not change the core of the faith, an ancient tradition grounded in the proclamation that Jesus is Lord, and that we are called to follow him as our master and savior.
The opposite of “church” is “sect”—a sect is like a club with people who are “in” and “out” with secret knowledge that only insiders can share, with codes and “secret handshakes” that communicate who is a member and who is an outsider. Church exists to be Christ’s body in the world. It loves. It gives. It welcomes. It worships. It changes things and it changes people.
The world is a desperate place, a lonely place, a hungry place. Church is profoundly countercultural. It says, “God intends your wholeness. God is giving you a new family. God longs to feed you.” So many people are longing for Church. Not a “church,” but The Church, rich in tradition and ancient and welcoming and transforming.
Sir John Newton, author of Amazing Grace, was right. I once was lost, but right here, right now, in this church, I am found.
