Ninety-nine righteous – Lent IV, 4 March 2016

Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. (Luke 15:7)

So, in Jesus’s kingdom it’s counter-intuitive.  The most disadvantageous thing you can be is righteous -- even if you are in an overwhelming majority of people who see themselves that way.  Martin Luther realised that one day, in a burst of inspiration which radically changed his life, and changed western Christianity.  After years of trying his hardest to be righteous, sincerely striving to do what he believed God required -- and generally failing – it dawned on him, in the writings of St Paul, that God was not seeing Martin Luther in the way he was seeing himself. 

Jesus makes this remark about what gives pleasure in heaven, to explain the parable of the lost sheep, and the parable of the lost coin.  It is the one that is lost that is the issue, that is occupying God’s attention.  Then Jesus goes right on with the best-known parable of the lost son, the so-called prodigal son.  The boy’s older brother speaks eloquently for the 99 righteous:  All these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command…  He believes he has earned his status, by what he has done and by who he is.  He is probably right.  Most righteous people are not self-righteous hypocrites.  The chances are they, or we, are genuinely good and sincere people, possibly also generous and hospitable.

The father however is preoccupied with the younger son who has turned around and come home, humbled and penniless.  The shepherd has carried the lost sheep home, on his back, rejoicing.  The woman has run out to her friends and neighbours to tell them, I have found the coin that I had lost. 

So there is something we need to understand about God.  It is not what we thought.  If recognising and rewarding virtue and achievement is what we expected, then we are out of luck.  God, whom Jesus called Father, is somehow absent from the prizegiving, watching instead for the one who has got lost, the one who has made stupid mistakes, all his own fault, getting what he deserves, the one who has been told 100 times…  It’s not the sins and errors and calamities that are counted, but the µετανοια, the turning around, choosing mercy and change.

Pope Francis has declared the Year of Mercy.  The title of his book is, The Name of God is Mercy.  Auckland minister Mike Riddell writes: Mercy is an incisive scalpel that divides religion from faith, piety from pity, judgement from compassion.  The song of the angels, Jesus informs us, is not so much about all the righteous – it is much more about the one who is turning around.