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The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, 09/11/2016
Sermon on Luke 15:1-10, by Walter W. Harms
1Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus.2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” 3 Then Jesus told them this parable: 4 “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent. 8 “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins[a] and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? 9 And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ 10 In the same, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Lost and Found
I was amazed! When I visited my grandchildren’s elementary school, in the office were piles and piles of lost items of clothing. These weren’t simply old, outdated items. These were nationally known brand named coats, sweaters and more—lost but not found, for sure. All of these items did belong to one of the students attending that school. I wondered how in the world could children forget coats and sweaters. How could parents not wonder where their children’s high priced clothes had gone? But then by the time the parents realized they were lost, the children had probably outgrown the missing clothing.
Lost but not found!
One thing for sure—these items of clothing could not in any sense find their owners. If the owners didn’t care, no one else would care! I wondered if parents or children ever did go to the office of the school to check if the item their child had lost, had been found. Well, I don’t know about that. I do know it was the end of the school year and parents and children had long forgotten winter clothing.
In this part of the life of Jesus told by the writer Luke, Jesus tells three stories about being lost. Two are about lost items that could not find their way back, and next Sunday you will hear a most interesting story about a person, a son who did find his way back. What a surprise awaited him, but that’s next Sunday’s story.
To be truthful, the stories we hear from Jesus today are not about being lost, but about attitudes of people who found it quite abhorrent that Jesus would eat with persons who repelled the religious folk of that day. If, and if, you believed that Jesus was really a holy man, how in the world could that person eat with people who from everyone’s point of view were obviously not trying to stay within the boundaries of God’s law?
What kind of persons were these folks that Jesus was eating with? Well, some were prostitutes, others were tax collectors (not that today’s tax collectors have such a high reputation) who were persons who collaborated with the hated Roman government, others had to work with food items that were considered filthy by the religious leaders, and others were no doubt people who were homeless, beggars, and persons with mental disorders.
I have not a clue with whom you would not associate today. There is an organization in this city that intentionally meets with homeless persons. Recently they brought to the worship I attend two persons. One was a man who had slept on the streets for 4 years and the other was his daughter who stayed with him who was in her twenties. We welcomed them to our worship but we had already provided all the provisions for the apartment they were now living in. What would you think of this family, if you met them on the street?
And so we come to Jesus and his purpose in arriving in this world. In another place in God’s Word, it tells us that Jesus came to seek and to save the lost! I can tell you that “lost” is no fun at all. It is a lonely, foreboding, desperate condition.
Now what I would really like to know, does that describe any of you? Does it tell me something about who I am or who I was? Do the people around you look “lost” and need saving, or rescue or, however, you want to put it?
I really hope not! I hope all of you have been found. I pray that all of you have caused angels in heaven to rejoice, have a great celebration. Perhaps even more importantly, I would hope that each of you would seek the lost, because they don’t know they’re lost. They consider their condition “normal.” And as a result they would perish if not found or be useless and discarded.
I remember the house in which I was born. There was an attic that had a ceiling, but where the flooring met the sidewalls, there was space, so that things could fall down the space and not be recovered. Parts of toys and puzzles fell down there, never to be recovered. To this day that house stands where it was, now nearly a 100 years old.
Lost and never recovered!
It would be nice to think that we were never lost. We would like to imagine that we always had some value in and by ourselves, some good we could boast about. The concept of you and me ever being lost is as foreign to us as some exotic bird in the Amazon jungle. That is simply not us! Or so we think.
I have to tell you that it is you and me. Like sheep we had gone astray and could not find our way back. A sheep is now only a pretty dumb animal; it also follows its instincts pretty much wherever that may lead. If a shepherd does not go after a lost sheep, one of two fates is in store for that sheep. It will either be killed by wild animals or simply starve to death.
You see you and I never did belong. The lost sheep belonged; the lost coin belonged. They were precious, important, worthy by the fact that they belonged to someone. You and I by the nature of our existence belonged to the heavenly Father. We are made in the image of God as were Adam and Eve. And as Adam and Eve we wondered off, thinking and believing that we know what is right and wrong, when we have no clue because we have been deceived by that ancient Deceiver, the Devil, the Snake in our lives.
And as with Adam and Eve, the Creator will not abandon us to the ends we deserve. He is going to come after us. He sent Jesus to come into this world! Can you imagine someone wanted to come and live in a sanitary landfill? It was worse than that, of course. This Jesus came and throughout his life fought against the result of man’s being lost. He healed the sick, the mentally challenged and disturbed, cured every kind of illness. He took little children who had little value in that day because most of them died before the age of ten, he took them in his arms and blessed them. He didn’t go only after his own kind of people. He heard the pleas of a foreign woman and cured her daughter. He healed the servant of a hated Roman official—a slave of this man! Impossible to believe.
What is even more impossible is that he came after you, through parents, friends, teachers, pastors and sought you out. Many of us he found when we were helpless infants and took us back into his family through Holy Baptism.
He gives us restoration to the family, the sheepfold, the coin collection, if you will. The journey to restore us was not without cost to him. He took the insults of many, the cowardice of others, the injustice, the pain, the brutality with which we treat each other, the words that cut to the quick, the mocking, and then, the dying, and its end, death, and then the grave. And then the rising to tell all of us who are lost that death is not the end, that the grave is not the final resting place, that the oblivion of death is not ours, but we can live again because he lives and gives us life eternal.
I wonder what the celebration in heaven was like when you were lost, were found! I wonder if we rejoice when persons are baptized, when the person who didn’t know anything about Jesus is given faith through our witness or the witness of others?
The church, its worship is a taste of the heavenly banquet. Here we rejoice that though we deserve nothing but present and eternal punishment, we have been found and brought back—back to the loving arms of our Father, back to become brothers and sisters of Jesus, back by the power of the Holy Spirit.
There is no one, and I mean, no one who is so lost that he or she cannot be found by the power, the dynamic clout of the news of Jesus and his love. The worst sinner can be found; the most hated person in our society today is a lost sheep, a lost coin, just waiting to be found.
That is difficult for most of us to imagine who live where we live and have what we have and never get in trouble with any civil laws. It just happens to be the truth of the two stories that Jesus tells us today. Lost and found—that’s you, brother; that’s you sister; that me; that’s all people.
Jesus tells you and me to go and seek them. Don’t wait! Now is the hour; now is the appointed time! The lost can be found. Amen.