The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow.” If you spend enough time with holy Scripture, you will find that it pierces the veil between heaven and earth. In ordinary, random moments, the Holy Spirit draws an illuminating connection between the word of God and our lives.
So it was on Thursday when I opened the church doors around 8:45 a.m. for Morning Prayer, and I noticed what seemed to be a lifeless baby squirrel just at the entrance to the bell tower. My heart sank as I stared at the little creature, and I hoped that he hadn’t suffered. All through Morning Prayer the sad prospect of digging a grave for the squirrel loomed over me.
After Morning Prayer, I went to get a shovel from the retreat house tool shed, and when I arrived at the door to the church, I discovered that the squirrel had moved. It was alive! I was momentarily overjoyed, but soon, a new worry fell upon me. I thought the helpless creature might be injured, and I couldn’t imagine what rescue organization would want to help a squirrel. Throughout the scorching day, our parish administrator, Chris, and I checked in on the squirrel and provided water for it, hoping it would survive the oppressive heat and the threat of predators. As I went to sleep on Thursday night, I was still worrying about the squirrel, because I hadn’t seen it before Evening Prayer.
On Friday, I opened the tower doors again for Mass, and the squirrel was once again by the Tower doors. I knew that another day in brutal heat would be disastrous for it, but I didn’t know what to do. It was at this point that a kind parishioner came to the rescue. After calling many vets to no avail, she found one that would take in a squirrel. So, she rushed over to the church with a cat carrier and whisked the squirrel away to safety.
Although I don’t know why this little animal appeared at the door to our church, I suspect that its mother had died, perhaps near the doors of the church. The squirrel was lost, not knowing where to go or even how to survive. It was trying to find nourishment, but it didn’t know where to find it. And although the squirrel would occasionally wander off to the bushes, it would always find its way back to the same spot by the welcome sign to this church, as if it were the only familiar place it knew.
I have been reflecting on why I was so concerned about that squirrel and why the animal even made it into my prayers. It sounds silly to say it; and maybe you think it’s ridiculous. Why would this little creature, often considered a nuisance, compel the time, attention, and affection of two busy staff members and a parishioner? Why did my heart break for the little thing? And then I realized that our collective attempt to aid the animal was emblematic of an instinctive human urge to provide for the helpless, especially the abandoned and lost. I wonder if that’s because each of us knows what it’s like to be lost.
By Friday morning, the rescue of a baby squirrel, ordinarily considered yet one more wildlife nuisance, had intersected in my mind and heart with chapter 18 of Matthew’s Gospel. What’s not clear from today’s Gospel is that immediately before our passage, Jesus talks about how God always seeks out and finds the lost. God is like a shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine sheep to find the lost one, rejoicing when that sheep is brought back into the fold.
Jesus draws on this ancient Jewish imagery of God as a good shepherd to preface his instructions to the church in chapter 18, which is where we enter the Gospel today. Jesus’s words of wisdom to the church are concerned with accountability to one another and how to handle conflict and dissension. Go directly to the one who has wronged you, name the wrong, and seek forgiveness. And if it doesn’t work in private, broaden it to include more of the church. Finally, if you aren’t successful, take it to the whole church.
This isn’t shaming. It’s not revenge. It’s striving for forgiveness and reconciliation. It has to do with bringing the lost back home. Do you see what’s happening? Jesus is saying that the church can only be the church when her desire for forgiveness and reconciliation tries to replicate the tenacity and love of a God who always desires to bring us back to the sheepfold.
And this has everything to do with the community of the church. God said it in Genesis, and God says it again in Matthew 18 through the indirect words of Jesus: each of us is not meant to be alone. We are meant to be together. And the church is the place God has given us to find that community. However bizarre it may seem, my encounter with an abandoned squirrel at the door of this church emphasized for me the importance of being found. It reminded me that we are all lost sheep, or lost squirrels for that matter.
Why is it, then, that there are so many who believe that they don’t need the church? They look for community in all kinds of places, and while they may find some companionship there, they won’t find the community of which Jesus is speaking. The church is the place where we find our deepest meaning, because to be the church assumes that we are all accountable to one another. Jesus knows that if we try to go it alone, we’ll cling to our resentments. We’ll bind what shouldn’t be bound, and we’ll fail to loose that which should be loosed. Alone in our heads and in our private rooms, we’ll imagine that we’ve achieved forgiveness or reconciliation, but we won’t have sought them in the flesh. Apart from the church, we will scour the earth for bread that doesn’t nourish, because it will simply take our money and never satisfy. By ourselves and without the church’s community, we will demonize those with whom we disagree because we will refuse to look them in the eyes. Above all, in the community outside the church, we will be told that in our sinfulness we’re utterly alone and that we’re defined by our mistakes. Second chances are for wimps, and punishment equals justice.
But when we’re accountable to one another for our sins and faults, we find the greatest companionship of all, because our frailty is what binds us together. When we share the precious food of the Mass, we’re collectively made whole again by a God who simply wants us to accept his boundless love and who will never leave us abandoned at the door of the church.
The zinger is this: when Jesus says that God is like a shepherd who goes after the lost sheep, I know that the sheep is a sinner like me and you, but a sinner who is redeemed by the life and death of Jesus Christ. We’re not defined by our sins. The sheep is one who is often lost and doesn’t know it. It’s one who is hungry but doesn’t know where to find real food. Or maybe we could say, we are each like the little squirrel abandoned at the door to this church. When we are apart from the church, we’re like newborns without parents, not really knowing where to go or how to survive. But we’re not meant to be alone.
When two or three are gathered, God is there. Sure, God is with us in our private rooms and private prayers. But God reveals himself in an utterly profound way when we are gathered in this place, in God’s presence, before God’s altar, in the breaking open of Scripture and bread. Here we seek eternal food and forgiveness. Here we vow to find those among us who are lost.
That baby squirrel couldn’t have known that it had found the right place to be rescued. Whether you are new here or whether you have been here for ages, in this church, you will be found when you are lost. I can tell you that. In my short time here, I have been amazed at how lost sheep always arrive at our doors. Some have a past here, others are new. And when I myself have been lost, someone among us here always brings me home.
If two or three of us will not rest until a baby squirrel finds help, can you then imagine how present God is to us when we are lost? In the human hands of this church and of churches throughout the world, God brings home the lost. And this is why we need the church. This is why coming here, week after week, is the most important thing we can do in our lives.
The door to the church is the door to our true home. Outside the door, each of us may be regarded as little more than a nuisance, but inside the doors to this holy place, we’re loved beyond measure. Outside the doors we may starve for food, but inside we feast on the bread of heaven. Outside the doors, we’re defined by our frailties, but inside we’re loved into forgiveness and reconciliation. Outside the doors, we’re divided and scattered, but inside, we’re brought together into a fellowship that surpasses all understanding. And outside the doors, we imagine that we know what love is, but when we walk inside, we will be surprised by a love that we never knew was possible.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 10, 2023