Sacred Worth Matters

Introduction

For those who were also here last week, yes, you just heard mostly the same scripture passage, Luke 15: 1-31. Actually, on Wednesday when Jana was working on the bulletins she double-checked—I think she thought I’d made a typo!

But I promise it’s intentional. We’re working backwards through Luke’s lost and found chapter. There are three stories: lost and found sheep, lost and found coin, lost and found sons. The most famous is the story of the family, of course—the family with a father and two sons.

We’re taking these three weeks to look at these three stories, mostly the story of the Prodigal Son but also the sheep and the coin, as an important reminder for us all: a reminder of who and whose you are. You are beloved of God, and there is no power nor anything in all of creation that can separate you from that love.

The Oak Tree

Last week I shared this image with you all of an oak tree—specifically the oak tree Howard Thurman describes growing up with. That place of safety that he could lean back against and feel supported; a companion in whom he could confide, sharing the joys and the bruises upon his spirit.

What we do here, who we are here in this church matters a whole lot. It’s been my prayer that this church, this community of faith can be like that oak tree for you. And that each of us may find someone who needs an oak, who needs a community of love and support, to invite.

I spoke last week of how our communal practices, rooted in this steadfast belief in each of our inherent belovedness, inoculate ourselves and one another against the words and actions of bullies on the playground and bullies in powerful positions in our society. Words and actions which may wound, but which can never demean who and whose you are.

Who God Is

These Gospel stories—stories of Good News—here in Luke 15 answer a question Jesus’ accusers should have asked: the question about who God is, and about who we are.

God is like a love we can hardly imagine. A love like this ecstatic father who throws the most extravagant party he can when his wayward child returns. God’s care for us, especially when we’re lost, is like the woman who searches and searches until she finds her precious, lost coin. And when she finds what has been lost, she throws a block party with all her neighbors!

We Are Precious

Who we are may be just as important a reminder from these stories of lostness and foundness as who God is to us.

Who we are is God’s children—invaluably precious in God’s sight.

Over and over and over again the scriptures affirm this. Every writer of scripture, crafting an account of humanity’s creation and place in the universe, affirms our special relationship with God, our belovedness as children of the divine.

The psalmists write their songs about the intimate relationship we have with God, who formed us, knit us together, and knows our thoughts.

Jesus time and time again in the gospels is trying to help the disciples really understand and internalize just how much God cares for them—that God’s greatest desire is to give them the kingdom, and that in times of trouble God desires to gather her children like a hen gathers her brood under the safety of her wings.

And, as Jesus and Brian both taught, consider the birds! Reassurance that they get along alright, and God cares a whole lot more about you!

Howard Thurman writes:

"The core of the analysis of Jesus is that man is a child of God, the God of life that sustains all nature and guarantees all the intricacies of the life-process itself. Jesus suggests that it is quite unreasonable to assume that God, whose creative activity is expressed even in such details as the hairs of a man’s head, would exclude from this concern the life, the vital spirit, of the man himself."   

This quote comes from his book Jesus and the Disinherited. A book Thurman wrote reflecting deeply upon his own personal experience as a marginalized person, and drawing on the experiences of other similarly "disinherited" peoples looking towards Jesus as a source of spiritual and mental sustenance and even resistance. Speaking of these communities, of these disinherited people, Thurman goes on to say:

"The awareness of being a child of God tends to stabilize the ego and results in a new courage, fearlessness, and power."

Thurman’s grandmother Nancy was perhaps his most important spiritual guide and teacher, certainly early in life. Grandma Nancy, who had been enslaved, ensured that Howard and his siblings knew in an unshakable way this truth that they were God’s children. There in the early 1900s in Daytona, Florida, Nancy knew the harsh realities of life they would face, the constant degrading messages of racism and hatred. So she would repeat to them, time and time again, the messages of scripture, of faith: "You are God’s children!"

We Are of God

So, whether you see yourself more as the coin that simply rolled away, or the brother who chose to go away, or the brother who stayed and yet was estranged… these stories of being found once more by God who loves us so immensely reinforce for us this message that we are God’s children. God’s beloved. That we are precious.

But there is more to our being, and more to these stories.

In the beginning when God began to create the heavens and the earth, God created humankind in God’s own image, and breathed into us the breath of life. The divine breath. The spirit.

The same spirit that came down upon Jesus at his baptism, and on the day of Pentecost descended upon all believers; the same gift of spirit we celebrate at each person’s baptism.

Your face is the face of the divine, and within you dwells the Holy Spirit—affirmations time and time again from our scriptures.

Reflecting on these stories of becoming found again, we come to realize that they are reminders that there is something of God within ourselves. Thurman, reflecting on the story of the prodigal son, writes:

"...When [the son] came to himself, he came to his father. What that says is that when I come to the very center, the very core of myself, then I come face to face with God. That God is within me, that [God] is the very point of my being and my existence. … when Jesus insists that the door to the father of the prodigal son could not open until the boy opened it, down inside of him, that there is that of [humanity] which is God. Not a reflection of God, not some staggering accent of God, but that which is God."

There is an incredible agency for the son in this story. First, he has the agency to demand his inheritance early from his father. And then, he holds within himself the key to reconciliation and return to his father. Love—the love of his father—had already been at work within this child’s soul, laying the groundwork his whole life long. And in that love, the father had gifted his son some part of himself, so that one day the boy could see that within himself and come home.

In one of his later writings, Thurman again reflects on the nature of us human creatures, of the divine within ourselves. He writes:

"If you love somebody, you never give that person up. Isn’t it interesting how Jesus always insisted upon this, … Nothing that I can do can kill the God in me. Nothing. Nothing. Since I can’t destroy it, perhaps if I listen, if I can become still enough, I will hear it whisper to me the precise word I need to take away so much of my unhappiness and my misery and my pessimism about the nature of life and the meaning of my own life…."   

And isn’t that what the son in this story needed? The father had already given him all that he needed… even some of himself.

God has already given you all that you need—even some of the divine within each of us. And there is nothing you can do—let alone anything anyone else can do—to kill the God in you, or extinguish the spark of the divine, or blow the Spirit back out.

Conclusion

So… we come back to our "why." And to our practices. And to our Oak Trees.

How often, outside of church, is your humanity upheld and honored? How often is your belovedness seen and named? How often is your divine nature seen and acknowledged? I’m guessing for most of us, not very often.

In the 1940s Thurman knew that these affirmations were incredibly helpful for people’s mental health, especially for people suffering marginalization and oppression.

In the 21st century, we have scientific studies telling us how true that is—telling us things like how important it is for a young person to have even just one unrelated safe, affirming adult in their lives. The Trevor Project tells us that for LGBTQ+ youth, having that one affirming adult can reduce thoughts of self-harm by 40%!

And it’s not just kids and youth who benefit from having affirming, supportive, loving friends. You knew that already though.

• May we be like the oak tree: a strong, sure, supportive place to hold you up when you’re weary.

  
  

• May this church be like your own Grandma Nancy, repeating in you the messages of who and what you are, until you know them in your very core.

  
  

• May you feel celebrated like the woman’s coin in this church—celebrated far beyond what the world deems your worth.

  
  

• And may these affirmations of our faith strengthen and guide you—for there is work to be done, people in need, beloveds who need the reminders of their own Grandma Nancys.

  
  

And who knows, maybe that can be you this week.