Luke 15:1-10
“Now all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’
So he told them this parable: ‘Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.
‘Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’”
This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray: Holy God, pour out your Holy Spirit on us gathered here that our eyes and ears will be open to see your love and grace working for restoration among those who are isolated and have lost hope. Amen.
This Sunday, we are beginning a five week preaching series called ‘Pistis-Living Your Faith Story.’ It is a series focused on narratives from Luke’s gospel in which lives are radically transformed by encounters with Jesus or those who are focal points in Jesus’ parables. Over the course of this month, I want you to be thinking about your faith story. How did you get to the point where you are now? Who helped you along the way? Where might you be headed as you grow deeper in love with God and neighbor? Some of these questions will sound familiar because they came up in conversation as I came to know you earlier this summer.
Before we get too far underway, I want to let you know that next week, you will have a guest preacher. The Reverend Tommy Ward, the current director of the Office of Ministerial Services, will be here to preach and lead the celebration of Holy Communion. Tommy is a great pastor and currently oversees the ordination process for the Tennessee Conference. If you ask him how things are at Ole Miss you’ll become an instant friend. I have the privilege of returning to the church in Richmond, Virginia that I grew up in to preach the 75th Homecoming Anniversary Service. I trust that you will welcome Tommy as warmly as you did when Keeli and I arrived and pray for me and Keeli as we travel later this week.
In the reading of this gospel lesson, my mind is drawn to the memory of a friend’s child who was preparing to get engaged. The young man had given great thought to how he would take his significant other to a nearby city park, with a picnic basket, homemade sandwiches and treats, a blanket to stay off the grass, and a bottle of bubbly to celebrate the proposal if she said yes. On the appointed day, the plan was set in motion and the young couple set off for the park for an afternoon picnic. All was well! The afternoon was headed toward its culmination as he would get down on his knee having dined on fine sandwiches to ask his girlfriend to marry him. All was well until he realized the ring was lost. He must have dropped it in the thick, well manicured grass of the sprawling city park.
You can begin feeling your stomach sink to the floor just in the retelling of the story. With adrenaline pumping, the young man furiously began running his hands through the grass around the edges of the picnic blanket. Then he began retracing his steps from the parking lot out to where he and his girlfriend decided to dine. Unable to locate the ring on the first pass of retracing his steps, he went back for a second time. One foot in front of the other. But he could not find the engagement ring.
With frantic calls in to friends and family, the search party expanded. Hope was not yet lost. As familiar faces poured into the park, the young man told those searching about the path taken between point A to point B. Perhaps they will see what he could not. To no avail, the ring remained lost and the sun began its slow descent toward evening slumber. In a last ditch effort, the young man tracked down a friend with a metal detector who joined the search!
Beep… Beep… Beep.. Beep.. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep! Found!!! I invite you to imagine or remember the joy and exuberance of finding something so precious that was once lost, or perhaps finding someone so precious that was lost and welcomed home.
“Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”
This morning’s gospel reading from the fifteenth chapter of Luke focuses on two parables told by Jesus to demonstrate the joy that accompanies the recovery of that which is lost. If we were to extend this morning’s reading beyond the parable of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin, we would encounter the parable of the Prodigal Son. All three parables could be told together to provide a mighty clear glimpse into the kingdom of God and the joy that comes in restoration. These parables of restoration are told by Jesus right in the midst of the self-righteous religious elite complaining about who Jesus spends his time with at table.
“This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
To help the Pharisees see themselves in their joyless self righteous demeanor, Jesus begins to tell them a parable or two. A shepherd with a huge flock of 100, loses one in the danger of the wilderness, and chooses to go after it. The shepherd leaves the 99 behind to find this one lost sheep. Who does this? The loss of one among 100 is small. It’s tolerable. The risk of losing the rest of the flock while the search party is off pursuing one is insane. Would it not be better and more worthwhile to protect the 99 than to pursue the one that is lost? The work of Jesus’ parable shepherd, the Good Shepherd, is not constrained by wisdom, logic, and preference for the self-righteous masses.
It is the very heart of that shepherd to pursue the one that is lost, who needs to be found and restored to fullness of life. Often the pursuit of the one that is lost is at the consternation of the self-professed righteous who see no worth in the endeavor.
When we look at Jesus’ ministry throughout the gospels, it is his way of being day in and day out to draw up guests lists for dinner who include everybody that according to conventional wisdom should not get an invitation.
Eating with sinners, tax collectors, and generally despicable people is not a new complaint aimed at Jesus in the telling of this morning’s parables. He tends to draw the unwanted to a place at the table. Do you remember the woman who pours oil on Jesus’ feet at Simon the Pharisee’s house? If Jesus knew her reputation then maybe he would think twice about letting her get so close. At least this is Simon’s thought. Although we do not know the exact nature of that woman’s reputation, everyone in the community knew about her. No one counted her among the righteous. Instead she was held in contempt by the self righteous religious officials.
So it is with the tax collectors and this whole group of ‘sinners.’
They are perceived at the bottom of the barrel of morality and social holiness. You don’t want to be seen in their company. Drug dealers. Meth cooks. Those who traffic teenagers down I40 and I 65 for sex. Politicians who abuse their staff or the Wall Street bankers whose greed undid us all in 2008. Lines are drawn in the sand in our social and religious traditions to make sure that their kind do not encroach upon our moral high ground.
If we keep them at a distance with shame and whispers, we do not have to risk a searching inventory of our own life. We can avoid the truth of how lost we might be, despite our best attempts to love God and neighbor. Sometimes the only difference between us and those sinners is we do a better job of cleaning up our image.
Are we just as lost behind the beautiful veneer yearning to be found by the reckless grace of God as those that spend a bit too much time with Jesus at table? How lost are we on a road of despair that we’ve become convinced no one loves us and life is not worth living? How lost are we in the madness of busyness convinced that we’ll keep at it until we make things right?
One way or another, we know what it’s like to be lost. Utterly lost. Like when you can not see your hand in front of your face on a summer night because it is so dark outside. It is there, in that dark corner, that the grace of God will meet you, catch up with you, find you in that time of need and bring you back home to be restored and made whole. In being found and brought back home, the heavens will resound with great joy.
The halls of heaven will resound with shouts of joy and acclamation when the grace of God leads you back home. That is how important you are to God. One among billions, but always a beloved Child that is worth being found. There is no way that God’s grace is going to give up on you. In this morning’s gospel lesson, that is the good life giving news of Jesus Christ, like a lost sheep or a lost coin, God will keep up the search because God never envisioned you to live out your days in the wilderness or in a dark corner. God yearns to bring you back into right relationship, especially among your neighbors through the love of Jesus Christ.
Church, I want us to be the kind of people that call all of our friends and neighbors over to the house when a beloved Child is found. There is no greater reason to celebrate than someone finding out and experiencing in their bones that the grace of God has always been for them and is at work making them whole through the power of love. If that’s not worth calling the neighbors over for, I’m not quite sure what is.
Remember when my friend lost that engagement ring in the park? What a move it was from desperation and despair, to being surrounded by friends and family searching so fervently, to the joy of finding what was lost, to the celebration of an engagement, to the establishment of a new covenantal love in marriage, culminating in a world class banquet and feast. Somehow that story resonates with me as a glimpse of what the prevenient grace of God can do in searching for all who are lost, finding them, and restoring them to joy. Bless you in the name of the Almighty, Son, and Spirit. Amen.