Exodus 32:7-14
Luke 15:1-10
A pastor discovered a cat stuck high in a tree in his backyard. He tried everything to coax the animal down, including a saucer of milk. Nothing worked. The tree, although it was tall, was not very sturdy and so there was no chance of climbing all the way to the top to rescue the cat.
After mulling over the situation, the pastor attached a rope about halfway up the tree and tied the other end to his pickup truck. His plan was to slowly bend the tree until the top was close enough to the ground that he could he reach the cat.
Slowly, carefully, he eased the truck forward, checking every few feet on his progress as the tree bent lower. He nearly got the cat within reach when the rope broke. The tree snapped back in place with tremendous force. As the pastor looked on in horror, the cat sailed high into the sky and clear out of sight.
While shopping at the grocery store at the end of the week, he ran into one of his parishioners, who was loading some cat food into her cart. Knowing that the woman had always hated cats, he asked her what she was doing.
“Well, pastor,” she said. “My daughter has been begging and begging for a cat and I told her absolutely not. She kept begging and finally I said, “The only way you’re getting a cat is if God himself delivers it.” The girl took that as a hopeful sign and began praying for God to send her a cat.
“Sure enough, last Monday I was out in the backyard with her when this cat flew into the yard right out of the sky. Hey, if God wants that badly for her to have a cat, who am I to take it away from her?”
Alright, I’m skeptical about this story, but I know strange things happen in this world. For arguments sake, let’s accept the story as told. It brings up an interesting theological discussion: what does God control, and what does God know?
There are two common points of view on this:
1. God controls everything that happens in this world.
That is basically the claim of predestination. God not only knows everything that will happen before it happens, but has actually arranged for things to happen as they do. God life planned for you down to the smallest detail long before you were born.
Advocates of this view cite Psalm 139:16—“All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
I don’t have a lot of patience for that kind of talk. Looking at this story, according to this view, God decided many centuries ago that at this moment in time, he would coax a cat into a tree, gave a pastor the crazy idea to hook up the ropes, then cut loose the rope so the cat would go flying across the town into the yard of this little girl who was praying for God to send her a cat.
The reason I have no patience for this is that anyone who would purposely do something like that to a cat is a weird guy with a warped sense of humor, and I see nothing in the Bible to suggest that God is like that.
Possibility two is that, while God does not control everything that happens because of the gift of free will, God knows everything that will happen.
Scriptural backing for this, oddly enough, comes from one verse before the previous one I quoted: verse 15 of Psalm 139: “When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.”
This seems to be the majority Christian view at the moment. According to this, God was well aware that the girl would ask for a cat, and may even have exercised some influence to make sure that it happened, but that most of the details just happened by chance, in just the way God knew they would happen.
I can sympathize with this view because we have often been taught that God is omniscient, God knows everything. But I have to reject this view because it makes me feel sorry for God, and I cannot imagine God is a person who wants or needs my pity.
Suppose it were true that God knows everything that is going to happen. What a dull, joyless existence! A life without any drama, in which everything plays out according to a script that you memorize well ahead of time. No spontaneity, no surprise. In our world, we call that living in a rut.
Today’s Bible readings show a very different understanding of God. Unlike the other two views, it is not based on cherry-picked verses taken out of context, but rather on a consistent theme found throughout the Bible. This view is that God can be, and often is, totally surprised by what happens in the world. According to this view, God was as surprised as anyone to see a cat flying through air into some little girl’s yard.
Let’s look first at the passage from Exodus. The Israelites have
turned away from the God who freed them from slavery in
God has made a decision. These people are done. They had their chances and they blew them all. God had a plan and put forth a great effort to make it work, but the Israelites wrecked it because they refused to cooperate. God sees no further reason to continue this failed experiment, but will go on to try something new.
And what happens? Moses talks God out of this plan. After Moses presents his case, we are told, “the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.” The Hebrew word used here can be interpreted as relented or repented. Or as the NRSV translation says, “God changed his mind.”
This is not the story of a God who controls everything or knows everything that is going to happen. It is not a script where everyone plays the parts assigned to them.
It is the story of a God who sought relationship and voluntarily set aside a certain amount of power in order to achieve it. It is the story of a God who sought a way to save a lost people from their destructive existence, and was greatly upset when people refused to cooperate. It is the story of a God who was looking for a reason to continue with the plan of saving people by forming a covenant with them, but could not find it. From God’s point of view, it looked hopeless, and God saw no choice but to turn to other options.
Until Moses gave God that reason that God sought. It’s not that Moses was smarter than God and came up with a better idea. Rather, through his own testimony of faith, Moses proved that while the plan to save humankind may fail with a lot of people, it doesn’t fail with everyone. That there are faithful people who cling to the promises, and because of that can enter into the full life that God desires for all people.
An angry, disappointed God was pleasantly surprised by that. This was something new to be factored in, something that God had hoped for but had not expected. If God had known that was going to happen, God would not have decided to destroy the Israelites. Now that this has come to pass, God reevaluates the new situation, and changes his mind.
Now I often warn against cherry-picking isolated verses and incidents and turning them into absolute laws about what we should do and believe. Is this episode with Moses just an isolated story that lies outside the core of what the Bible teaches?
No, it is a common theme, and one that again shows up clearly in today’s Gospel reading. Jesus tells two parables having to do with lost items: lost sheep and a lost coin. He talks about the joy that results when the lost are found. “There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous who do not need to repent.”
Joy is an emotion far more intense than contentment or happiness. The intensity comes from the element of surprise or relief. Joy does not happen over the expected, it happens over the unexpected. Joy happens over the hoped for, but not sure it’s going to happen.
Football fans who watch their team destroy a cupcake opponent 66-0 may be pleased or content or happy, but they are not joyful.
Compare the reaction to fans at
Absolute pandemonium breaks out. Steeler fans are screaming, jumping, falling over, howling with delight.
The difference between the scenarios is the surprise factor. Everyone believed this game to be over. Everyone expected a loss. And suddenly, the unexpected happens, and the loss turns into a win. And now you have joy.
When a lost person is saved according to the script that God knew would unfold, you might expect God to be pleased or content. But the emotion described throughout this passage is joy. Joy happens when despite the odds, despite the dangers, the fears of what could go wrong and probably will, the lost person is saved.
We rented a movie recently called The Tunnel, a German production with English subtitles, and I think it is a wonderful illustration of the God presented to us by Jesus in these parables.
It is based on the true story of a German swimmer, who finds himself
and his sister trapped in
He recruits a group of people who all have the same goal—to somehow
bring their loved ones out of
The task seems hopeless, but this swimmer is relentless. He digs and
he digs and he digs. His will to save his sister is so strong that he simply
will never give up, and this iron will and the blood, sweat, and tears that
he spends in this process inspires those around him. He and his friends
develop a network inside
Despite this incredible effort, the odds against them are enormous. East German security is active and vigilant and becomes aware of this group and what they are trying to do.
It is an intense, nerve-wracking story. The obstacles are enormous, and not everyone is saved.
But some are. And the scene at the end of the movie is the epitome of the joyful celebration in heaven that Jesus talks about. It is a scene that makes the Steeler fans’ celebration look like polite applause at a cricket match. Emotions are raw, all barriers between people vanish. They are so overwhelmed by the moment, they can hardly stand. Hugs are infinitely tender and powerful at the same time, tears of joy flow.
All of these people had family and good friends around them every day. People whom they loved probably as much as many of the people they saved. But they would never hug them like this. As Jesus says, such a joyful celebration can only happen when the stakes are high, when doubt and fear lie all around, where a tremendous amount of blood, sweat, and tears goes into the project. Such a powerful reaction can only happen when, against all odds, the lost have been found.
That is the celebration that Jesus tells us about in these parables. He brings forth the revelation that God is not the all-powerful puppetmaster who knows all and sees all and makes the world dance to his tune. God is not the gatekeeper, who separates the pure from the impure, the righteous from the unrighteous, the cream of society from the dregs.
God is the shepherd, who seeks after those who are lost; God is the tunneler who is obsessed with saving those who are caught on the wrong side. It is brutally hard work, but God means to save as many people as possible. Anyone who is beaten down by life, trapped by the consequences of sin, crushed by injustice, fallen slave to addiction.
That saving is not a sure thing, not even for God. Danger, sin, selfishness, destruction, stubbornness stand in the way. But God is relentless.
The Tunnel gives a far more accurate picture of what is meant by “God’s will.”
When we speak of God’s will in a Biblical way, we are not speaking of that which takes place automatically because God decreed that it will happen. Rather, God’s will is the relentless, iron will that never gives up; the iron will that is so powerful that against all odds and all obstacles, and through blood, sweat, and tears, it will accomplish God’s goal of saving as many lost people as possible from the consequences of their own self-destruction.
God doesn’t play favorites. God cherishes the lives of all those with whom God shares relationship. But the joy comes when a lost person is brought in through the tunnel, freed and given new life. Jesus invites us to come through the tunnel and to share in the joy of that vocation, to God in expecting the unexpected, in saving the lost.