Fill My Future with Vision

2025.02.16 | Fill My Future with Vision

Ashley Wai'olu Moore

Scripture reading: Luke 15:1-16, 20-32

Good morning beloved! May the peace of Christ be with you (and also with you).

Will you pray with me....
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In the gospels, we repeatedly find Jesus among the marginalized, stigmatized and untouchables of his society. In every instance we see him respond to them without fear and without hesitation despite the fact that those around him usually try to block such interactions. It would be easy to dismiss this by saying “Well he was God in human form, the deity amongst us – what did he have to fear?” But the gospels also show us that Jesus wept, that he suffered and died an excruciating human death by way of public execution. He lived in a human body. He understood the risks, but he wanted to show us how to love one another.

Turn to your neighbor and say “I am made in the image of God.”

At the beginning of today‘s gospel reading, we see those described as sinners coming near to listen to Jesus’ message while the religious authorities stand on the periphery grumbling about his welcoming of these outcasts. Jesus responds by telling three parables. It is clear that we are to understand these as metaphors for God’s grace.

• The lost coin -

o a) woman on her own

o b) probably could not afford to lose the $

• The sheep –

o a) wealthy shepherd

o b) could probably afford to lose 1 sheep

• The father and sons –

o a) the parent was willing to let the son go, despite wanting him to stay.

In all of these, the good news is that no matter how far astray we might wander, how low we might sink or how lost we become, that God will always welcome us back. In fact, though the word repentance is used in each example, the God figure in each story responds immediately, without hesitation and without prequalification (type of sheep, value of coin, son doesn’t have to PROVE himself). God comes looking for us and, like the song says, holds us close so we won’t let go. God restores us to our former state of grace and completely forgives our transgressions. What’s more, rejoicing and celebration ensue. And that is the great news of life in God’s economy!

But it’s difficult for us to conceive of such love. These days, most people would probably be grumbling like the brother in the story. “What about me? What am I chopped liver? Where is my reward for being faithful and present all these years? Doesn’t my life matter too?!” It’s as if he imagined himself in a competition, bartering his good works and loyalty for some final reward. Though he has tried to do all the right things and appear selfless, in this moment he reveals himself to be self righteous. Suddenly he is the one who is standing on the outside and feeling lost. But the parent’s love is unconditional, extraordinary grace. The parent goes out to find him and invite him in. He PLEADS with him. “All that I have is yours. But today let us celebrate our kin who was all but dead, who was lost but now is found.” Won’t you join us?

Jesus is turning the world on its head in these parables. He deconstructs the rules and conditionality of the world and shows us what grace looks like through God’s eyes. Those who were listening to Jesus speaking would have understood that a destitute Jew with no family, who tended to swine and coveted their food would be considered an outsider and a sinner like them. And the self- righteous brother? He is like the Pharisees and the scribes – doing the “right things” but without love in his heart. We must notice the irony in the fact that the outcasts were listening to Jesus while the religious authorities were grumbling.

God’s ways are not our ways. God’s ways are mysterious to us because they are not the ways of the world. This love seems unfair because it can’t be earned. This same radically loving God would later rejoice in taking Saul from being the sworn enemy of Jesus and persecutor of his followers and then converting him into Paul - Jesus’ great champion. God wants to bring all the sheep home. God’s ways are not our ways.

When Jesus was asked about the greatest commandments (Matt 22), he replied that all the law and prophets hang on two things: that we love God with all our heart, soul and mind and that we love our neighbor as ourselves. What keeps us from embracing this love?

Say to your neighbor “YOU are made in the image of God.”

In Luke 4:5-7 Jesus was tempted by the devil and the devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and said to him, “If you will worship me I will give to you all their glory and authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please.” If the governments and principalities were given to the devil, then it is little wonder that the ways of the world are so different than God’s. The world measures our value by who we eat with, associate with, by the cars we drive, the influence we wield and the power we amass over others. The worldly measure our value by how much we can improve their station, increase their wealth, build their empires or satisfy their lusts. It is self serving, selfishness that begets more selfishness, like an addiction that can never be fully quenched. And it is taught to us practically from infancy. In the world’s eyes, a life has value only if it can feed the machine. In the world’s eyes, the prodigal son who spent all his money and can no longer contribute, has outlived his usefulness and should just die already to make room for those who grow the machine.

The machine, the addiction of consumerism and the money driving all of it are idols. But idols can be anything. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing that seem harmless enough, promising comfort, prosperity and tranquility but quietly and steadily consume our souls. They consume our humanity because they do so at the expense of others. They are the things that we allow to prevent us from loving God and neighbors first. The ways of the world are judgment, division, and exclusion. The things that disrupt Agape love and instead breed the inward, self centered, inward focus that causes us not to act when fellow humans are suffering. Martin Luther called this “Incurvatus in se”, the great sin of being curved inward on oneself instead of outward toward God and others. In his writings on vocation, Luther said God needs us to be God’s hands in the world. He said that becoming aware that our neighbor has need is the same as being commanded by God to attend to that need. For we are to be Christ to one another, selfless and compassionate even unto death if need be. Luther based this on the gospel of John 13 where Jesus gives the final commandment - that we love one another just as he loved us. “By this,” he says” everyone will recognize that you are my disciples.”

Of course, these days the world’s machine has given us electronic tools to drown out and hide the perspectives of others. We increasingly get our information through the internet and are provided with ways of filtering out opinions which differ from ours, stories of human suffering which upset us and news from cultures we don’t want to hear about. We can tailor our news feeds so that we only see what we want to see. Thus, we increasingly see players on the international and national stages who seem to be living in completely different realities and only talk past each other. We’ve created houses of mirrors that only reflect ourselves back to us. We have become our own idols. This is the “incurvatus in se” of the digital age. We have sought to make the world over in our own image. And when something we don’t want to hear about doesmanage to break through, the response we see is increasingly reminiscent of the prodigal brother - “what about me?”

And yet – in an instant – all of this can disappear! In New York a few years ago, an 18 wheeler’s brakes failed and the truck plowed into 10 cars. A woman was trapped in a car that burst into flame. Without hesitation, a bunch of people jumped out of their cars and raced over to rescue her from the burning vehicle. One person used a fire extinguisher to douse the flames while several others managed to free her from the wreckage. Amazingly, she was unharmed.

We’ve seen other such instances on the news. Like the trapped motorcyclist who was saved by a bunch of bystanders who lifted a burning car off of him. We also see stories like this in the wake of natural disasters or in the aftermath of terrorist attacks. In an instant, people can look beyond everything else and just see each other as human beings in need and race to their aid without a second thought. It gives me great hope that our instinctive response in such situations is to help one another. In these moments I believe we see each other as God sees us. Not as this or that, not as other, but as members of the flock, as children of the creator. For we are spiritual beings having a human experience. We are beings of light, wrapped in a physical covering that is merely a vehicle for our journey. We are powerful creations made by the Divine, but placed in finite bodies that are soft, fragile and meek. Imagine if we could channel those impulses in less extreme circumstances? Even in our everyday lives? That is the vision of God’s kin-dom I want to lean into. That is the economy I want to invest in.

Look at your neighbor and say “you are a child of God.”

As a person who lives in a liminal space, continuously positioned at multiple intersections of identity, I know full well what it means to have to fight for my right to become a complete human being. For the sake of those who don’t know, I am a mixed race, Two Spirit, intersexed being who was assigned one gender at birth only to later reject it and transition into another gender as an adult. My family is a clash of cultural and political identities. In order to become who I am I have had to struggle to find myself without having many of the traditional moorings. So I would never seek to deny anyone else of their identity, their voice or their story. Indeed, I have long been an ally and partner in the struggles of many.

But I also recognize that real conversation has become an endangered species in public discourse. Where once there was at least an interest in the greater good, People now talk past one another and increasingly decline to get involved in anything that doesn’t affect them directly.

So today I want to challenge us to remember how God sees us and to begin building bridges across the chasms that the world opens at our feet / in order to keep us divided. While it definitely remains important to give voice to our unique experiences, we also need to lift up and name our shared humanity to remind ourselves that there is no other. There is only us, the children made in the image of God.

And if theologians like Anselm had been correct in positing that humans are hopeless sinners utterly incapable of change, then Jesus would not have spent so much time and effort trying to teach us how to love one another. As we have seen in times of crisis, it’s something that’s possible. It’s something that resides in us, that we can aspire to and can achieve. While the powers that be are trying to turn us against one another and tear down the institutions created to help and protect people, we are called to, and can become, God’s hands co-creating the kin-dom of heaven on earth.

Open the eyes of our hearts, Lord. Fill our minds with the vision of Your kin-dom to come. Help us answer Your call to radical, agape love and resist the world’s attempts to divide us. In love and light, remind us that we are all part of you, that we belong to You and to each other. And let us live into Jesus’ economy, building that future where resources are shared and there is enough for all.

Amen.