Pazzo d’amore – Crazy in Love

Trinity 13 2025 – Luke 15. 1-10

A few years ago a couple got married here in this church. It was a couple that some of you may know. The groom had spent a long time thinking about how he was going to propose. He planned to take the bride to a beautiful country house and ask her to marry him while they were away. Everything was booked. Then Covid arrived, and lockdown. Everyone was stuck at home, or in a bubble with another household. So he came up with another idea. He completely filled her flat with flowers: hundreds, maybe thousands of pounds worth of flowers. He wanted to surprise her and ask her to marry him the moment she walked in and saw all the flowers. She said yes! Of course!

Has anyone ever done anything like that for you? Perhaps you would have to be loved by someone who’s a little bit mad: “pazzo d’amore”, “crazy in love” as the Italians say. Well, what I want to tell you today is that there is someone who loves you like that. That’s what the Gospel says today. God is crazy in love with you!

Last Sunday in his sermon Michael talked about the cost of discipleship. He talked about chapter 14 the Gospel of Luke and the radicalism that Jesus asks of those who follow Him. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. If you do not give up your possessions, you cannot be my disciple. We’re called to give our whole lives and our whole hearts to Jesus. That’s what chapter 14 says. Why? Chapter 15 tells today – to imitate the dramatically radical way that God loves us. Be perfect Jesus says, as your heavenly father is perfect. Jesus wants you to show people something of the infinite, extravagant love of God. So be generous, be merciful, and forgive. Not to placate an overbearing God who is waiting to punish you if you’re not perfect. No! But as a response to the even more radical love of God for you.

With the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin Jesus paints a portrait of God. How does it compare with the way that you see God? Maybe God seems difficult, demanding, and hard to placate. Is that what you think He’s really like? If I do enough hard, boring things I might just be able to satisfy this God sufficiently to get Him to love me.

The New Testament blows this picture of God out of the water, in page after page, and parable after parable. In the New Testament God is “pazzo d’amore”, “crazy in love” with us. We don’t have to do anything to earn this love. Jesus says that God is like a shepherd who would leave 99 of his sheep to go and look for 1 that’s got lost. If we were shepherds, like some of Jesus’s first hearers, we would smile. No shepherd would ever do that! That would be stupid. That would be crazy. What will happen to the 99 sheep while you’re off looking for the 1 that is lost? Do you think that they’ll still be there when you get back? A real shepherd would cut their losses. He would stay with the 99. It would be crazy to go after the 1.

But that is exactly how God behaves. All the saints, all the good people are busy following God’s laws and He loves them. Meanwhile this sinner, this loser has wandered off into some dysfunctional life. We might expect God to say, “I’m not going to bother chasing after the likes of him. I’m not going to waste my time.” That’s the way we might think. But it’s not the way God thinks. Like a crazy shepherd God heads right out after the lost sheep. You might assume that God has no time for someone like me, someone ordinary and flawed. But the God of Jesus Christ does have time for you. He goes after the lost sheep. He goes after the one who’s wandered off far away. He’s crazy in love with sinners and losers like us. As St Paul says in our second lesson …the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus…[who] came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.

The second parable that Jesus tells is even stranger. The woman spends hours and hours looking for the lost coin. She turns her home upside down. But do you know how valuable one of those silver coins is? It’s the equivalent of about 20p. So it’s like she spent all that time and effort looking for 20p. Again Jesus’ first hearers would smile. Because when she finds it, she tells all her friends and she wants to have a party. “I’ve found my 20p!” Are you “pazzo” – are you crazy?

But that’s the point. Jesus is saying, “That’s what God is like.”  Speaking to desert people Jesus tells them that God sends His refreshing rain to fall on the just and unjust alike. And He’ll turn His whole house upside down to find 20p. He’ll head off and leave the 99 to find 1 lost sheep.

God is “pazzo d’amore”, that He is “crazy in love” with us. So let us respond to that love with the crazy extravagant love of the saints of God.

Amen.

The Rev’d Dr James Lawson
St Mary Magdalene Enfield, 14/09/2025