Christ's Cherry Blur

Texts: Luke 15:1-10; Psalm 23

On Friday morning I happened to catch an interview with Canadian writer Anosh Irani about his latest novel “The Parcel.” [1]  It’s been 10 years in the making, set in the red light district of Mumbai, close to where he grew up. It unfolds the story of one sex-slave in particular, a young boy who faces rejection and spends the next 20 - 30 years trying to find home. At one point in the interview the question arises: with all the interviews, the research that’s gone into the writing of this book, why do fiction rather than non-fiction? “Because,” he says, “fiction is a beautiful way to get at a higher kind of truth. There’s a difference between fact and truth … factual information is what I learned when I did my research. But truth can be an emotional truth; it can be a spiritual truth. These are things you can arrive at through fiction. I love fiction for that.” As he speaks these words you can sense his smile, the sparkle in his eyes.

This morning we have Jesus the storyteller … the Way, the Truth and the Life, he’s forever telling stories! …forever wanting to engage us -- more of us … all of us. In this case sinners and tax collectors have gathered around, eager to listen to him. Pharisees and scribes are there too, keeping an appropriate disdainful distance … yet close enough for Jesus to hear their grumbling: “he welcomes sinners and eats with them.” He might have turned and told them off … or announced “we’re all sinners in need of the grace and mercy of God!“ but instead, he recognizes the perfect set-up for a story … for any and all who are there -- and here! -- who care to listen.

“Which one of you,” he begins, “having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, doesn’t leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?” And when he finds it, lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And upon coming home, calls together his friends and neighbours, “rejoice with me for I have found my sheep that was lost!”
Or what woman, having ten silver coins … if she loses one, doesn’t light a lamp, sweep the house, hunt high and low until she finds it … and when she does, she calls together her friends and neighbours: “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin I had lost!”

Which one of you? … well, to be honest, likely none of us!
Leave the 99 for the sake of 1? … better to cut our losses and take care of what we have.
And calling together friends and neighbours … isn’t that a little over the top … or a lot over the top! Hard to imagine such exuberance over a coin, a sheep?

Yet what would stir such an eruption of joy? What is so valuable that to lose it would send you to the ends of the earth searching …and to find it would make you mad with joy?
Is that where Jesus is taking us? Perhaps. It wouldn’t hurt to go there would it? … for all that it has to tell us about what we treasure.

And maybe there’s more. There’s always more.
Why these stories in response to the grumbling, the disdain, the criticism against Jesus for his identifying with the “wrong people”?

A few days ago, this reflection showed up in the daily devotional I receive on-line.[2]  It begins with this verse from John’s Gospel:

"I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." - John 10:10 KJV

From there, Matt goes on to say this:

I got poison ivy on the second day of vacation. The next day was full of email. My children bickered. It started to rain. I stepped barefoot on a Lego. I got two phone calls crowing about missed payments. Credit cards. They didn't say it, but they said it, "You'll never get your act together."

None of this surprised me. The rain kept coming. Badminton? A gin and tonic? I'd sooner wear a polo shirt with a popped collar. Summer is for suckers.

I felt bitter. And my bitterness was just delicious! I let it sit on my tongue. I savored the taste. I stoked my pique. I should have stayed at work. We should have stayed in the city. Nothing matters anyhow.

I jumped on my bike. There was a grass road behind the house. The rain stopped. The sun broke. The sky became all violet light just as the road became an orchard. I flew downhill, tight between two rows of cherry trees. The fruit was a blur of red. The trees a blur of green.

The wonders of Christ's cherry blur undid my disposition. He took my tasty bitterness and made it foul. I hit the brakes. I spit it out. What could I do next but drink his sweetness in? I drank. I mourned my own absurdity. I laughed out loud. It was all too beautiful.

In her poem "Orchard" H.D. prays, "You have flayed us with your blossoms / Spare us the beauty of fruit-trees." That prayer will always go unanswered. We can decide existence is a problem. There's plenty of evidence. We can confuse cynicism for wisdom. We'll get plenty of agreement. But God wants our joy. And she will not leave us alone. So we get the loveliness of fruit-trees, whether we want it or not.

Prayer
O God, strip off our sophistication. Cover us in loveliness. Amen.

There are so many ways we can be lost … lost to ourselves, lost to each other, lost in the woods, lost in the shuffle, lost in a world of noise, of ever accelerating change, lost in loneliness, in fear. In and beyond all of this, it is possible too, to be lost without knowing it … until something grabs us, stops us … returns us to our senses, to our rightful place … in God’s world where every creature, every blossom, every life is gift of God’s wildly creative outpouring … for the sake of abundant life … nothing more and nothing less!

Do you know the joy of being stopped … grabbed … found?
Of being swept up … gathered up … returned to your rightful place? Has it ever occurred to you God wants our JOY?

I know last Sunday a number of us, myself included, were pretty challenged by the story of the ‘Homeless Jesus’ … (there he is again, identifying with the so-called least). Knowing ourselves to be basically caring, hospitable people, it’s not easy realizing how ready we are to judge, feeling the limits to our generosity. And for some of us that’s not just how it is. For some of us that’s upsetting ...  disturbing … because there’s something powerful, something true, something ultimately right about Jesus’ way … and we’re not there. And we don’t know how or if we’ll ever find our way there.
In other words … we’re kind of lost.

Well in the way and wisdom of Jesus, how sweet is that! … for lost is the very quality that sets the search in motion! … our search and God’s.

The 23rd Psalm that we read together this morning -- that Psalm that for generations has steadied and carried and delivered people through some of the most distressing days of their lives -- right toward the end of that Psalm, you remember that line: “surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” A more accurate translation is “surely goodness and mercy shall pursue me” … like the woman who searched high and low UNTIL she found the coin; like the shepherd who risked everything UNTIL he found the sheep.

That's the promise that is ours to hold to … today, tomorrow, all the days of our life: we will never finally be lost to God … no matter how lost we are or how we got there. We will never finally be lost to God. She won’t leave us alone … so we get the loveliness of fruit trees, whether we like it or not!

Richard Rohr puts it this way … “The Holy Spirit is always for us, more than we are for ourselves, it seems. This gives us such hope -- now we do not have to do life all by ourselves, or even do life perfectly ‘right.’ Our life will be done unto us … as happened to Mary.”[3]

Which says to me there’s hope for us yet!
There is yet a ride through Christ’s cherry blur.
There’s more to come, and more to become of us.
And Joy!
God wants our joy!

1   interview with Anosh Irani, aired on CBC The Current, September 9, 2016 

2  Matt Fitzgerald, “Spare Us The Beauty of Fruit Trees,” posted on Still Speaking Daily Devotional, September 8, 2016

3  Richard Rohr, Falling Upward, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2011, p.92