• Jeremiah 4: 11-12, 22-28

The Lord is so thoroughly angry at “my people” that the text of Jeremiah is clear, saying the Lord speaks directly: “it is I who speak in judgment against them.”  They are foolish, stupid, “with no understanding.”  The crux of the offense is damning:  “they are skilled in doing evil, but do not know how to do good.”  The consequence is that the Lord is prepared to even consider taking creation back to primeval chaos and desolation.  The Lord is prepared to go back to total annihilation; “yet I will not make a full end,” the Lord demurs.

• Psalm 14

The psalmist records God’s harrowing reaction to human behavior.  The fool has convinced himself that he can act with impunity.  The Lord looks for one person– just one!– who does not “devour” the people, who does not “plot against the poor….”  God cannot find one!  But, the psalm concludes with a plea/hope for that time “when the Lord restores the people’s condition.”

OR

• Exodus 32: 7-14

Moses has not yet returned from the mountaintop to God’s people soon enough, so they turn on him and ask Aaron to lead them in worship of other gods and the creation of a “golden calf.”  This Sunday’s appointed excerpt picks up when the Lord tells Moses that he needs to return “At once,” because “Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn away from the way I commanded….”  The Lord is so angry, ending the relationship with this people is not out of the question.  But Moses personally makes the case for Israel.  He reminisces with the Lord all that they have been through together and recalls the Lord’s promises; the Lord has a change of heart/mind.

• Psalm 51: 1-11

The psalmist recalls King David’s grave sin, when he seduced the wife of another man, whose death he had arranged.  Against the memory of this shameful deed, the writer throws himself on the Lord’s  grace/mercy/kindness and pleads that God will “wash away my transgressions” which “is always before me.”  He does not question God’s right to judge him, but begs to be washed clean.

• I Timothy 1: 12-17

Whether by Paul or from an anonymous writer in a “school” of the apostle, the text of this “letter” to a Timothy, nevertheless, draws on the powerful biography of Paul.  Although he had been a former “blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence,” it was Christ Jesus who “appointed me to his service.”  Although he previously acted out of ignorance, “the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.”  Paul is the “foremost” example of the Christ’s patience for one person so obviously and fully undeserving.

• Luke 15: 1-10

In chapter 14 and these opening verses of chapter 15, Luke’s text makes three tactical moves.  First, the actions and sayings of Jesus shatter every conceivable existing barrier for any and all to participate in God’s reign.  (As a result a few devoted followers and huge crowds are attracted to him.)  Second, then Jesus throws up an impossible threshold for discipleship, including selling “all your possessions.”  Now the text makes its third move, which is to focus God’s full attention on each individual person.  The broad invitation issued by Jesus has attracted a rather savory lot, including “tax collectors and sinners….”  The religious leaders are scandalized.  Jesus responds with two parables; the first is similar to Matthew’s version, the second is unique to Luke.  The first parable relates the intensity and relief of a shepherd when he gives his total, personal attention to searching for and finally finding just one lost sheep to God’s character as one who can and does pay full attention to individuals.  The second parable compares God’s loving  pursuit of an individual to the unrelenting, obsessive search of a woman for a significant amount of money lost somewhere in her home.  “Just so,” says Jesus, “I tell you there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one lost sinner who repents.”

Most of today’s  readings echo Luke’s attention to the significance of the individual.  In Psalm 14, the Lord pleads to find one– just one!– person who has not exploited the poor.  In the episode reported in Exodus, the direct, personal intervention of one person, Moses, reverses the Lord’s anger at all the Lord’s people.  Psalm 51 begins by recalling the singular failure of one man, King David, and then goes on to pen one of the most enduring personal confessions of sin and plea for mercy.  The excerpt from I Timothy uses the biography of Paul to demonstrate the power of the “faith and love” in Christ Jesus in one man’s life (and the ramifications for the church and the world!).  And Luke’s narrative, even more than the other gospels, highlights how much the response of any single individual matters to God and, indeed, “all of heaven.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein considered the dynamic between a “system of reference,” particularly a “religious belief” and the individual this way:

“It strikes me that a religious belief could only be something like a passionate commitment to a system of reference.  Hence, although it’s belief, it is really a way of living, or a way of assessing life.  It’s passionately seizing hold of this interpretation.  Instruction in a religious faith, therefore, would have to take the form of a portrayal, a description, of that system of reference, while at the same time being an appeal to conscience.  And this combination would have to result in the pupil himself, of his own accord, passionately taking hold of the system of reference.  It would be as though someone were first to let me see the hopelessness of my situation and then  show me the means of rescue until, of my own accord, or at any rate led to it by my instructor, I ran to it and grasped it.”  (Culture and Value, p. 64e)

Biblical narratives, first, incite or reveal our “lostness” and then provide the way home.  Each person individually hears/reads these texts.  Each person individually ignores them or “ran to it and grasped it,” for dear life.

This Sunday’s readings and gospel present an awesome prospect: that the arc of God’s love story with the whole of humankind comes down to individuals and their personal response.  Others can tell you this love story (indeed, that is the only way you will ever hear it; an “instructor,” to use Wittgenstein’s word), but only you can “seize” it.  It is a passionate “taking hold” for the sake of “rescue,” which is precisely the stories of the individual’s we have just read about in this Sunday’s appointed readings and gospel— the bold negotiator Moses, or the sinner, King David, or the example par excellence, Paul, and, from today’s gospel, “the one lost sinner who repents.”