14th Sunday After Pentecost, 09/15/2019

Sermon on Luke 15:1-10, by Hubert Beck

DANCING WITH ANGELS

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”

So he told them this parable: “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, 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 persons who need no repentance.

Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

DANCING WITH THE ANGELS

Do you realize that angels dance with joy in the Dance Halls of eternity? Or, even more to the point, has it ever occurred to you that you can be and are dancing with them?

Such an imagination is very likely far from any vision you have ever had, but on the assumption that you are a repentant sinner, which is, I assume further, the case since you are here in the midst of a bunch of other “penitent sinners,” today’s text says that you are, indeed, whether you know it or not, rejoicing with the angels just as they are rejoicing with you, the penitent sinner come “home.” I further assume that where there is rejoicing such as that it is accompanied by a happily carefree dancing taking place along with the other angelic activities.

THE ASSUMPTION

As was noted, I assume that you are a penitent sinner – and I assume that is at least one reason why you are here this morning. If you are not that, I think you would still be snugly in your bed at home or having a leisurely Sunday morning breakfast at a favorite restaurant or out on the golf course or some other place like that.

Your presence here, however, at least implies that somewhere along the line in either your distant or, perhaps in your more recent, past you have realized that something was wrong in your life – something that needed a boost of some sort to realign your life before that “something wrong” got out of hand. Maybe you felt the need for a word of forgiveness for a totally out-of-tune time either past or present. Or possibly you need a reassurance that God will help you through a hard spot in your life. Or you may have a longing for a fellowship with others like you who rely on the Lord for vision and support in your daily life. Whatever the case may be, it is reasonable to suppose you are here for some very good reason.

Whatever it was, then, that brought you here this morning, I assume that, among all those things, you are here as one whose life has been marked by at least a touch of remorse over failed or wasted or frivolously misspent moments, a recognition that things need adjustment in your life, beginning with a wiping away of all the things that have burdened those wasted or failed moments. Whatever was the reason, penitence

covers the waterfront for the many things that may have brought you here because you sensed that sin in many, many disguises kept nagging at your heels – and you felt a need to fully uncover that sin before God in order to hear his word of forgiveness spoken over you in this, the “house of God” where you apparently feel his special presence. Therefore you are here in any or all of those cases in order to dance with the angels as you lay your burdens before the Lord and hear his word of forgiveness, support, promise, healing or renewal as he speaks such words of encouragement, forgiveness, strength and promise through the scripture that is read to you, the absolution announced over you, receive the very nearness of his presence in the bread and wine offered here, or in ways similar to those.

Or you may be just be “drawing near to hear him,” to use the words of the text describing the setting in which Jesus speaks the parables serving as our text this morning. Maybe you are still very unsure of either just exactly what you need or what this man Jesus has to offer you, so you are just standing at a distance as little more than a bystander to check all this out. If that is you, do listen carefully, for there is always……

ONE WHO IS BEHIND ALL THIS

The words of this text would be meaningless if they only spoke of the “lostness” – the lost sheep and the lost coin. It is the shepherd who misses the lost sheep who is at issue. He is not just a disinterested watchman, just one who is concerned about these sheep because he is paid to do so. He counts them carefully, he knows them one by one, he watches intensely lest a wolf suddenly appear or a lamb goes astray. It is the shepherd who speaks, calling with caring voice a number of forms of comfort and support to those over whom he keeps watch.

And he will do anything necessary to find a sheep that is suddenly discovered to be missing. He will risk his life to find that sheep. He will go to great lengths to bring that sheep back into the safety of the flock again. He gives his all in behalf of the missing sheep just as he watches with equal care over the ninety-nine remaining sheep in whatever way possible.

The woman with the ten silver coins, likewise, keeps them in as safe a place as possible, but when one turns up missing, evidently having rolled away in a moment of carelessness, she exerts great energy in order to find where it may have rolled to in that unguarded moment. The coin is mindless and does whatever gravity or a momentary unguarded shift of her body calls for it to do. But the owner is frantic to find the coin and place it once again in a place as safe as she can find.

The shepherd and the woman are both symbols of the loving care that God exercises over those entrusted to his Son who tells these parables. Those under his care are basically mindless about where they are or what their welfare requires – at least until the shepherd finds his lost sheep and returns it to the flock or until the woman finds her stray coin and tucks it safely away once more. It is when the lost are found that the lost begin to realize what a blessing it is to have one who cares for them as their caretaker. Only in those moments when the lost ones are suddenly confronted with their lostness is their value fully realized and made known even to them, not to speak of the friends and neighbors who are called to her home in order to share her utter delight in having them restored to safety. It was time for a party, a time of joy much like the joy in heaven over one sinner who repents! It is time to dance, mind you!

WHERE TO FROM HERE?

Little did those idle bystanders looking on at a distance as Jesus told these parables feel their lostness, for they could only watch and listen to and judge the speaker in an almost disinterested way. Their very lostness was revealed by the way they distanced themselves with a literal detachment from the one who was seeking them and their best welfare. They did, indeed, recognize that Jesus was speaking to them

also, for they watched him with an eagle eye, grumbling and saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” Yes, they – like many others – knew things to which they would not face up, preferring to watch and listen only as bystanders interested in the words of a very good story-teller. They were too good to have fellowship with this fellow, though, for he kept very poor company.

Their very distancing of themselves from him, however, made it clear that they were sure that THEY, THEMSELVES, were “clean,” without fault, refusing to eat with sinners for very good reason, and without any need for the man whom they were judging from their self-justifying distance.

Jesus’ sayings in this case end up happily, for he not only finds the “lost,” but he then situates them in a safe place once they are found. It can be inferred, however, that, until the lost are found, their very lostness would have been their undoing for then there would have been no loving caretaker, no protector, no one to find and reposition them against any future adversity.

And it is precisely at this point where we return to where we started! There was to be no dancing among the angels so long as the lost remained lost, so long as the self-confidence of the sheep or the cold remoteness of the lost coin were left to themselves and unchallenged. For in the heavens a great longing shadowed the lostness of the sheep or the coin – a “shadow” of what could have been but never was, a “shadow” of a fierce yearning for the flock where they had been so cared for, so unfulfilled if the shepherd had left a gap in the flock where they properly belonged, if the coin had remained missing, nowhere to be found among the treasures held dear by the owner. The shepherd was resolute in desiring that his flock be whole just as the woman persisted in searching out that which was missing.

Only in the “finding” did the angels find reason for joy, cause for the dance into which they invited the returned lost to be united once again. Then, and only then, was that which the shepherd and the owner considered essential to the whole if it was to be complete, cause for the heavens to rejoice and for the angels to dance with ecstasy.

THE PARABLES FILLED FULL

It was clear to those around him, both friends and foes, that Jesus was talking about the earnestness with which God searches and seeks out those who are needy of him. His foes grumbled about the way he spoke so easily with sinners, even “eating with them,” which was a sign of his full acceptance of them – an acceptance that those standing by simply had no heart to extend to those lost ones.

Moreover, his acceptance of these outlanders, these good-for-nothings, these reprobate Jews, made it equally plain that he, Jesus, the teller of the parables (in the name of the Father, mind you), was making himself a representative of the Father’s will and considered himself to be speaking the words that the Father wanted him to speak. In short, it was he, Jesus, sitting there with the sinners and eating with them, who was speaking to them as though he were gathering them together – these people who had wandered from God’s flock like sheep who needed finding or like a woman’s coin that needed finding – and making them feel at home with him, which was, in his mind, at least, making them feel at the place where the Father wanted them to gather in order to be found. What an astonishing claim he was making both for himself and for those with whom he was associating! He was gathering with the no-goods, the wanderers from the fold, the clearly discarded of Jewish social life and letting them know that he was accepting them even if others would not do so – just like the Father wanted him to gather them.

That was Jesus’ crime, a wrongdoing that made it obvious that he was not religiously acceptable nor even, for that matter, socially up to the standards of all good and righteous people. It was no wonder that he ended up on a cross, the kind of place in which the world dispatched the worst of the worst, the sinners above all sinners, the ones who were the most lost of all the lost. Where else would they be found?

But Jesus is not around any more to speak in the way we hear him speak in this text. He can no longer gather people of that sort around. So who will speak for or act for him?

If you do not know by now you haven’t been listening very well. We are his surrogates in our day. We are the ones who are to call the “outsiders” inside, to speak grace and mercy and acceptance to the “sinners” of our day, to “eat with them” in acceptance of their worth in the Father’s eyes to be along with us in the presence of Jesus, whom we represent. Once he was raised from the dead and ascended back to the place of his origin, his words could no longer be heard – unless somebody who cared enough for him and his message would pick those words up and carry them in his name and for him to all the places where he would be going if he were still on earth – to the places where sinners gather to eat!

It is interesting to realize how “open-ended” these “lost-and-found” stories are, is it not? They are only about “being found,” not about what they did or what was done with them once they were found. It is enough to “find,” to “receive,” to “accept” the lost, to bring them into the place where they truly do belong.

That was all that Jesus proposed in these parables. There are, undoubtedly, implications that the lost will serve their intended purposes after they have been found, but that is only an implication, not a known fact! Those who seek the lost have done their intended job once they have found the lost and brought them back to where they truly belong. That is not to say it would not be interesting to know what happened after the lost were found nor even to suggest that we are uninterested in knowing what happened to them.

But we, who search for the and return them to their “home,” to the place from which they had wandered, must then simply turn them loose once again to the Chief Shepherd, to the Home Owner Deluxe, and permit those from whom they had strayed to care for them thereafter.

Therein lies much of our problem, of course, for we desperately want to know what happened to them once they were found. We find it hard to do the one thing God asks of us, namely, to FIND the lost, to RETURN them to their “home base.”

But if we do that, we can be sure that the Holy Spirit has his own Chief Shepherd, the Home Owner Deluxe, his surrogates in turn at that point to care for them, to watch over them, to maintain the loving guardianship that only they can give in the Spirit’s name.

Let it be enough for us, today, then, to seek out the lost, to call them home, to return them to the “safe place” where they will be cared for as only God can care for them.

Once we have done that we can at least momentarily catch a glimpse of those heavenly spheres where the angels enjoy the perpetual presence of the Father, where they will open their arms to us and invite us to dance along with them!

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Ordained Lutheran Pastor, Retired Hubert Beck
Austin, Texas, USA
E-Mail: hbeck@austin.rr.com

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