The Prime Directive

I Timothy 1:12-17, Luke 15:1-10

9/16/07

This past Tuesday was the sixth anniversary date of 9/11, a terrible day we will never forget.  The morning of that day, I woke up to an e-mail from an 80-year-old Japanese teacher who is also my friend.  He wanted me to know he was thinking of me and all Americans on the anniversary of the day he referred to as “the worst day for Americans.”  That e-mail took me back to the shock and horror of that day.  For a while we were so overwhelmed by the terrible loss of life and thoughts about what kind of evil motivated such killing that we could not think of how to go forward.  We began to see pictures then of the breadth of the destruction not only at the Twin Towers in New York but at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and at the Pennsylvania crash site. We prayed for the families of the lost, the rescue workers who served so valiantly. Our government established the Department of Homeland Security, and we debated about the constitutionality of its practices.  The families of the victims and others struggled to find a way to rebuild at the site of the Twin Towers in such a way that would honor the dead.  Some still don’t agree with the plan, but the work of rebuilding has begun.  That said, it also must he said that the map to the future is still very uncertain for many.

I thought our Scripture lessons for this week were very timely, because the Letter of I Timothy was written against the backdrop of a dark and threatening world.  We don’t know if it was written in Rome or Ephesus, for both cities were likely candidates as a place where there was considerable infighting and violence between religious sects.  We do know this to be a prison letter. The introductory words, “I thank God who has given me strength,” are strikingly different from Paul’s typical greeting thanking God for the Christians he is writing.  This change suggests a change in Paul’s situation -- a change that calls for greater strength.  As the author continues to write, he affirms God’s presence in the midst of all the swirling uncertainly. 

Before Paul met Jesus, he was one person. Now he was another. Before, he had lashed out at the Christian community; now he worked for it, prayed for it and would, in the end, give his life for it.  Paul states that his change came about because of his relationship with Jesus Christ; he had found his place in the world. Paul said that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” 

On the old TV show “Star Trek,” they often talked of the Prime Directive, which was non-interference with other worlds. They were to do nothing that might change the development of the foreign worlds in which they visited. This is quite the opposite of the Prime Directive of God, which is to bring about a changed world through the saving of sinners in Jesus Christ. God was and is not content to allow the status quo to continue or to play out, but God wants to bless human beings with new life and new direction that moves them from hatred and destruction, as Paul had displayed toward the Christians, to people of faith and love. Because Paul had experienced God’s grace and forgiveness and had become a new person, he took on a new mission, a new prime directive, and that was to reach out to the lost and help them know the love and grace of God.

The Gospel lesson continues the theme of being lost.  A shepherd leaves 99 sheep so that he can search for the one sheep that was missing from his flock.  In the other case, a woman had lost one of her silver coins. Though she has nine others, the lost one must be found. Thus, the lights came on, and the broom was taken from the closet, and a careful search was made.  Each one was important. The setting for these two parables is that Jesus was speaking, and tax collectors and sinners had gathered around him. The scribes and Pharisees criticized Jesus for the company he was keeping and stated, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

If we look at these parables in the context of the Gospel of Luke, we see that there is more going on here that individual salvation. The shepherd searches and finds the one lost sheep so that it can be restored to the herd.  So that the 99 who were safe and the one that was lost could be brought together to be the 100 – the whole herd.  Eastern thought, which influenced Luke’s ideas, and the theology of Jesus often used numbers in symbolic ways.  “One” and “one hundred” meant “everyone” – no one is excluded.  These were also numbers that held up the idea of perfection. 

Let’s think again about the setting in which Jesus choose to teach these parables about the lost. These remarks provide Jesus with an occasion to talk about restoring those outside, those lost to the whole. In other words, Jesus was saying that we are all important to God and that God wants us to be together in God’s love. God longs for the day when “every knee shall bow and tongue confess. ...” It is not just the teachers and lawyers of the church that are worthy of God, but all of us … even the tax collector and the sinners. God welcomes them not only to his family but also to his table, as Jesus did in God’s name.  These parables about the energy a shepherd had in searching for his lost sheep and about a woman who diligently searches for her lost coin, in the context of Luke’s Gospel, call us to consider who exactly we see as God’s children and, indeed, our own brothers and sisters in Christ.

The theme of this year’s annual conference in Roanoke and our district conference is “Let’s Get Growing.”  During annual conference, the youth had a time on the stage.  They played loud Christian rock, and they had a video background to make it more exciting.  What surprised us most was when they all left the stage to go out into the delegation and take the hands of all kinds of different people and bring them to the stage.  They brought people of all different ages and races.  All these people joined them in dancing to their crazy music on stage.  It was this wonderful diversity that our youth prayed would be the church of the future. They wanted all 100 sheep. They wanted all 10 coins.  They wanted us to grow together, as does God.   

In his book “Take the Next Step,” Lovett Weems, a professor at Wesley Seminary, talks about our map to the future as a people of faith.  He said one way is to make an all-encompassing vision, and define the steps it will take to arrive at that vision. The other is to simply take a first step that you are able to take right now. After that step is taken, God will call you to a greater step and a larger mission.  As an example, he told the story of a small United Methodist church in a rural area.  One day, a young woman with a baby in her arms came to church.  During the service, the baby became fussy, and the young woman went in and out of the service several times to try to quiet the baby down.  Toward the end of the service, an older woman came and sat beside her and took a fan out of the pew rack and began to fan the baby saying, “Maybe this will help.”  After the service, she told the young woman how glad she was that she and her baby had come to worship at their church and invited her to come back soon.  After the service, the woman went out and bought a rocking chair and placed it behind the last pew, and the next Sunday she told the ushers to point out the rocker to the young woman if she returned. She did return with a friend who also had a baby with her. The young woman and her friend took turns using the rocker.  After the service, the women went to the trustees and said, “Now it’s time for you to get into the act.”  So the trustees met and voted to buy several more rocking chairs.  Now there is a row of rocking chairs at the back of the church, and on most Sundays, they are all filled.  This church was an older-member congregation and never imagined that they would be in ministry to a growing group of young mothers with infant children. But they answered God’s call to do just that!   In a confusing world filled with more and more reasons not to build new relationships and not to take risks, they did.  They found a map to the future in God’s love.

This passage leaves us with the question, “What is the Prime Directive of our lives?”  In the midst of our chaotic lives and the rather frightening world in which we live, who are we and where are we heading?  

What is our Prime Directive?  It is the same as all those faithful Christians who have gone before us.  Our Prime Directive is given in the example of Jesus Christ, to seek out the lost, to welcome sinners, to share the love of God, which radically changes people and societies.