September 14, 2025: Ollie Ollie Oxen Free

“Ollie, Ollie, Oxen free. Come out, come out, wherever you are! This catchpharse called out during children’s games indicates that players who are hiding can come out into the open without losing the game. Ollie Ollie oxen free declares that the position of  the sides in a game has changed, so it’s safe to leave your hiding place. This children’s catchphrase contains the very same sentiment and truth that God declares in the incarnation of Jesus. In Jesus God calls out: Everyone’s safe. Everyone come home. “All ye, all ye, come in free!” Ollie, ollie oxen free.

When JEsus sat down to eat with those who were considered sinners, it was no small thing. Sharing table fellowship, in Jesus’ culture, is an indicator of social acceptance. Jesus declares these sinners, these outcasts, as acceptable to him and, therefore, acceptable to God. With Jesus, God changes the positions on the playing field. Ollie ollie oxen free.

In all those children’s games like Hide and Seek and Kick the Can, there is always a home base. The place you can run to in order to be “safe.” The goal is to get to home before you are caught. The person who is “IT” comes out seeking each one of the players. Some players’ strategy is simply to stay hidden, to not move, to cross their fingers, close their eyes, and just hope they don’t get caught. Other players use the strategy of always knowing where the seeker is — keeping their eyes on the seeker —- and then planning their movements according to the seeker’s movements in order to get back to home base….to reach safety.

Life isn’t so drastically different. Jesus is our Home Base. In Jesus, with Jesus, we are safe; this is where we are home and whole. God is the seeker. Never resting, refusing to accept that even one player  remain lost, not to be found; God is steadfastly seeking, looking to help us move toward home base, toward Jesus. And Jesus implores us to take the active strategy. We are not to simply hide, cross our fingers, close our eyes and hope it all turns out somehow. No, we are to keep our eyes on the seeker, planning our next movement based on God’s movements, using Jesus’ actions to plan our way back to home base.

So, at least once a week, we come here; we gather as the living Body of Christ in order to hold Jesus up in front of our eyes—-through Word and Sacrament, by recognizing Christ in one another—we come to witness, experience and proclaim Jesus. We come to re-align ourselves with Jesus. Jesus who is our mark, our target, our type, our home base. Jesus whose life and ministry and ways show us what our lives and ministries and ways should look like. Jesus who worships God and glorifies God by living the truth that God so loves the world, person by person, encounter by encounter. Whether friend or foe, sibling or enemy—all are Beloved. And what follows this truth is an outpouring of love, mercy, forgiveness, second chances, reconciliation, renewal, makeovers and do-overs. Return. Being found. Being made whole. Shalom.

God calls  us together for this Communion meal, this Eucharist, not because God has some need for us all to be in one space at one time. God calls us to gather together each week because God knows we need it. We need this liturgy, these prayers, this music, this Sacrament, this body of Christ. We need to hold ourselves up to Jesus and see where we have missed the mark. After all, that’s what the word sin (in Greek hamartia), what sin means: to miss the mark.  To miss the mark of Love.

If we want to be realigned with Love and decrease the amount of times we miss the mark of Love, then we have to claim our shortcomings, our brokenness, our sin. We have to face it and recognize our lostness in order to be found. If we don’t know we’re lost, we’ll think we are right at home, and stay just as we are. We will continue to live lives that are justified in our eyes rather than living lives that are just and right in God’s eyes, in the eyes of Love.

The world is constantly pointing us in different directions. Did you ever play that relay game where you have to put your forehead on a baseball bat and then spin around until someone tells you to stop and then you are supposed to run to  your team member across the gym or field so they can do the same and tag the next team member? And instead, because you are so dizzy from spinning around the bat, you fall all over yourself and the path between you and your teammate becomes a stumbling comedy? Beloved, the world has the same effect on us. The world spins us dizzy and we become dazed and lost. We can’t walk in a straight line. We fall down on our way to our teammates; we lose our sense of direction toward Home Base.

Scholar, pastor, theologian and author Brian McLaren wrote about the different understandings of power held by the early Jesus movement and the Roman Empire; he writes: The historical reality of Christian empire, like Christian anti-Semitism, is bathed in irony. Jesus was an oppressed brown Palestinian Jew, living in a Middle Eastern nation that was occupied by a European empire centered in Rome. Jesus challenged the empire of Rome by proclaiming an alternative empire, the empire of God. The similarity of the terms highlighted the radical contrasts between the two empires:  

• Rome’s empire was violent. God’s empire was nonviolent. 

• Rome’s empire was characterized by domination. God’s empire was characterized by service and liberation. 

• Rome’s empire was preoccupied with money. God’s empire was preoccupied with generosity and was deeply suspicious of money. 

• Rome’s empire was fueled by the love of power. God’s empire was fueled by the power of love. 

• Rome’s empire created a domination pyramid that put a powerful and violent man on the top, with chains of command and submission that put everyone else in their place beneath the supreme leader. God’s empire created a network of solidarity and mutuality that turned conventional pyramids upside down and gave “the last, the least, and the lost” the honored place at the table.  

Beloved: we are lost, so very very lost. We are living in a time of violent rhetoric that leads to real and life-stealing violence, particularly gun violence. Our  political leaders and influencer’s words are calling followers to acts of grievous violence. We are living in a time when our elected servant leaders are honoring some lives, but not all lives, calling for half-mast flags for some but not those whose membership is in the “other’ party. We are clearly, unmistakably living in an us vs them world. We are not a union, but a divided nation. And it is no wonder that violence, particularly gun violence, seems to be the answer when some people are angered, suffering or in despair. After all, there are 500 million guns in civilian hands in America, more guns than there are people. In a report published by the Bloomberg School one year ago: For the third straight year, firearms killed more children and teens, ages 1 to 17, than any other cause including car crashes and cancer.  Beloved, we are lost, lost, lost. And the deluge of violence and cruelty is exhausting.

But today, Beloved, if we have ears and hearts to listen,  we hear Good News: that even though humanity is a community well on its way to destroying itself and this Creation through our sin of disconnectedness, our missing the mark of Love—even with all our turning away from God throughout history, even with all of our disobedience and complicity—God still calls us Beloved and, as the Beloved, our Love still  has the power to heal, to renew, to build and create anew. To start again. God is still the Good Shepherd seeking us to be found and restored to who we are created to be. God seeks and calls us and leads us toward Jesus, our Home Base, Love in human flesh. All so we can know how to be Love in the Flesh—which is the only healthy way of being that will show us how, and enable us to, cope with this exhausting, relentless violence and division. Love (God’s other name), Love’s deepest desire is that we make it back to  home base—back to the safety of living in community, not only with the Holy Trinity of Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer, but also the Blessed Trinity of God, neighbor and self—--this entire community of beings who are both saints and sinners. We are all saints with a past and sinners with a future.

Today’s Gospel isn’t about recognizing the sinner from the righteous. It isn’t about drawing circles of who is in and who is out—who we are justified in hating and who we are meant to love. Today’s Good News is about our ability to see, name and deal with our lostness—-as individuals, as communities, as a nation. God has changed the positions on the playing field. We are being called out into the open. Home Base is in our sights and there’s a clear, albeit challenging, path before us. No closing our eyes, crossing our fingers, and hoping no one sees us. Let’s keep our eyes on the seeker, and….

Come out! Come out, wherever you are! Ollie ollie oxen free!