The Lord of the Lost and the Lowly--December 5, 2024

The Lord of the Lost and the Lowly--December 5, 2024

"Good and upright is the Lord; 

     therefore he instructs sinners in the way.

He leads the lowly in what is right,
     and teaches the lowly his way.
All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness,
     for those who keep his covenant and his decrees." (Psalm 25:8-10)

The shepherds aren't an exception to the rule. God is always drawing the least, the last, the losers, and the left-out and leading them by the hand. 

So when, in a few weeks' time, we hear the story of night-shift sheep ranchers and farm hands getting personal invitations from a whole choir of angels to come and meet the newborn Messiah, we shouldn't be surprised that God seeks out the lowly to welcome the Christ-child into the world.  We'll know that it's always been God's way to seek "the lowly"--the ones with no status, influence, or power--and to point them toward something good.  God seems much less interested in handing out gold stars for achievements and much more interested in gathering up the ones who have lost their way or who got left behind and walking with them all the way home.

Once you know that about God (and again, the psalm writer here just seems to think it is so obviously true that he takes it as a given), you start to see it everywhere. That's especially true in the Bible, including throughout the well-worn Nativity story we are rehearsing together over these coming weeks. Not only does God choose to send the angels to the folks on the margins--the literal edge of town--where the guys who got stuck working the graveyard shift are herding their flocks, but Mary herself is one of those "lowly" people the world regarded as a "nobody" until God invites her into the story.  Elizabeth, too, has felt overlooked and invisible without children, until the angel appears and changes her life forever.  And not to leave Joseph's part of the story out, when the angel comes to him to tell him to go ahead with his marriage to Mary, the message also includes the reminder to name the boy "Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."  The whole project is centered on God showing kindness to sinners and mess-ups and gathering the nobodies on the margins to lift them up.

Or, as the words of the psalm put it (as many of us heard this past Sunday), "Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in the way. He leads the lowly in what is right..."  It's almost like the way you see God's goodness is the way God leads the lost and the left-out.  So often, we Respectable Religious People get it all backwards and think that you show off your "goodness" and "holiness" by who you leave out--who you won't be seen with, who you won't share a table with, who you don't want to be associated with "so that people don't get the wrong impression." God, however, turns the tables.  God's goodness isn't shown forth by who God leaves out, but by God's intention to gather in the people on the margins and to lead them all by the hand, walking the way with them.

So, if we are going to take the Scriptures seriously, it sure sounds like the place to meet God isn't by sealing ourselves off from the "sinners" or the "undesirables," but just the opposite.  If you want to encounter the living God, go to the margins, to the edges, to the folks who have been forgotten or ignored by the Big Deals, and discover that God is already there.  The God of the Bible is the Lord of the lost and the lowly.

It's not a secret or a surprise--the Scriptures have been telling us this about God all along. Maybe we're just slow to pay attention.

O God, lead us when we are lost, and gather us in with all the people you have taken by the hand, who feel forgotten or who have been left out in lowly places.