190707 Sermon on Luke 15:1-10 (Trinity 3), July 7, 2019

190707 Sermon on Luke 15:1-10 (Trinity 3), July 7, 2019

In the two parables that we heard in our Gospel reading today we are dealing with things that have been lost. Something being lost means that it can’t, at least as of yet, be found. But not all lost-ness is the same. For example, if someone is on a cruise and their ring falls into the ocean, then there’s nothing that can be done. Even if you hired a scuba diving crew to search the area, that ring will never be recovered. When you lose your keys, that’s a different story. If you look hard enough, you will probably be able to find them. In the first scenario it is impossible to find that which has been lost. In the second scenario there is still hope. In the first case it is stupid to go to the trouble of trying to find it. In the second it is stupid not to try.

Let’s apply this to the reason why Jesus tells these parables in the first place. Sinners and tax collectors were drawing near to hear Jesus. When the Pharisees looked at these people they thought that there was no hope. Murderers and sluts and cheats and drug-users and jerks and alcoholics and perverts and despisers of God’s Word and rapists and child abusers and pornography users and meth-heads and people on welfare and homosexuals and transgendered and fools and pimps are all lost and it is a waste of time to say or do anything for them. People like that don’t come to church. Furthermore (and this might even be more to the point), we don’t want people like that in our church.

Now it’s a different story if we are dealing with our clean-cut neighbor who goes to work like us, dresses like us, talks like us, raises his kids like us, and so on. That is someone we can imagine being a part of our church. To work with such a one is not a whole bunch of wasted effort. Here it’s just a matter of finding the right bait to lure him in. Maybe he likes softball, and we have a softball league. Maybe he likes soft rock, and we have a praise band. Maybe he is just a social guy and we’re social people, so let’s all be social together.

This second kind of prospective member is more desirable than the first kind in many ways. This second kind is the type of person we want in our church because he is like us. He also probably has some money, and so we can use him to help pay the congregation’s expenses. He can fit in and we can feel as though we are successful. He is the type of lost soul where it seems likely that he can manage to found.

The Pharisees never would have grumbled at Jesus if he had dined with people who were somewhat respectable. On the contrary, they would have thought it was a good thing. He is expanding the kingdom of God. But Jesus dining with hopeless cases was not right. In their eyes all that Jesus is managing to do is make it seem as though these wretched, sinful people can go on with their wretchedness and sinfulness. According to their way of thinking, Jesus is saying that being perverted or addicted or abusive is fine.

But notice what this also implies about the Pharisees. It implies that they have a right to be at table with Jesus. This does not mean that they don’t think that they are sinners. It just means that they aren’t as bad with their sinning as the tax collectors and prostitutes were with their sinning. Or we could speak of this according to their lost-ness. They would classify themselves as lost, but it’s more like they have been misplaced. If they believe in themselves and try hard enough, then they can probably whip themselves into shape. They aren’t lost like a wedding ring in the middle of the ocean. They are worthy and potential converts. Those who are possessed by demons are not.

Jesus responds to the grumbling of the Pharisees with three parables. We heard the first two in our Gospel reading this morning. The third is the parable of the prodigal son who is welcomed back by his forgiving father but resented by his older brother. All three of these parables speak of something being lost, and then found. They have been loved by Christians over the centuries, and for good reason. They get at the heart of God—what he is like—and what is discovered there is that he is gracious and merciful, looking for and finding that which has been lost.

Jesus is surprisingly gentle and winsome with the Pharisees here. At another time and place he called them hypocrites and whitewashed tombs. But here he is kind, to lead them to repentance. He does not condemn the way that they are able to see the sins in others, but cannot see them in themselves. Instead, he tells them of God’s attitude towards sinners and the work that he engages in to bring them back.

When all mankind fell in Adam’s fall, God was not under any compulsion to redeem him, his wife, and us his children. God was free, and righteousness and justice even demanded that we should all be condemned. But God loved us even in our fallen state and decided to save us. Indeed, the Scriptures reveal the mysterious thought that God had determined to do this even from eternity. Because of the Father’s, the Son’s and the Holy Spirit’s love for us, it was determined that the Son should become man in the womb of the Virgin Mary and that he should suffer the wrath of God for sin to redeem all the sinners of the world, reconciling them to the one God, restoring harmony and love between God and man. We were lost, but God found us.

And not only that, God and the angels rejoice when sinners are converted. That is one of the things we learn from this parable. God does not redeem and save grudgingly or mechanically or even because of some principle or another. He is personally invested in the outcome of our salvation. The shepherd puts the lost lamb on his shoulders, brings it home, and calls his friends to have a party. The woman who finds the coin invites her neighbors over so that she can talk about the good things that have just happened with her. God is happy with our salvation and chatters on excitedly with the holy angels over what happens to you when you are found and brought to faith in Jesus.

This Gospel, this Word and will of God, is the true determining factor by which people are put into one group or the other. Some believe it. Some don’t. Among those who believe it, therefore, it is the height of foolishness to take up your time and energy in figuring out how lost you were or are, like the Pharisees are doing here. Jesus lays out three wonderful parables of God’s grace in answer to their grumbling so that they drop their stupid ideas about worthiness, and prefer the beauty of the Gospel that has just been laid before them instead. We all belong to that common class of people called sinners.

Trying to make distinctions between the worthiness of this sinner and that sinner is like trying to distinguish between different kinds of vomit. It is all gross. And we are all gross. It only makes us more gross if we think that we are so far above anybody else. We are all impossibly lost. All of us are like that wedding ring that has been dropped into the ocean. There’s no way to get it back. There’s no way for any of us to be anything other than damned before God so far as we all are in and of ourselves. God literally does what is otherwise completely impossible when he redeems us. There is absolutely no sense in trying to find something in ourselves that gives us our good standing before God. This is what the Pharisees were doing when they were grumbling at sinners who happened to indulge in different sins than they had. What Jesus shows them is that salvation is not by anybody’s doing, but by God’s choosing.

This great truth must also carry over into the way that we conduct the Christian ministry in our midst as well. There are certain standards for judging whether the Christian ministry is being carried out correctly that are all wrong. A congregation appears to be successful when it has the big shots in the community as members, when it is big and growing, and everybody who goes to it looks like the model American family. There are supposed to be lots of kids and no old people. That is a congregation that is on the up and up. The congregations that don’t meet these standards are considered failures. For many, many years people have coveted the outward power and money that these big successful congregations are proud of and project into the community. Visitors often refuse to go to congregations that don’t have this look. But is this the Gospel?

The Gospel ministry is a strange looking thing. It doesn’t conform to the world’s standards of attractiveness and success. It consists of poor, miserable sinners testifying to the goodness and mercy of God that has saved wretches like them. Our only true task in the world, therefore, is to testify of Jesus the Savior. It is not up to us to determine the message or how it will be received. The Christian message of Man’s total depravity and sinfulness on the one hand and the complete redemption and salvation that is given to us in Jesus on the other, drives away and attracts whomever it will. Some people who live in obvious sin and vice are converted like the tax collectors and prostitutes that we hear about in the Gospels. Others are offended and stay away. Even more people who become high and mighty and enjoy many outward successes are offended by the Gospel message, but there are a few from that class as well who are humbled and brought to faith.

High or low, black or white, rich or poor, male or female, from this background or that background—none of this stuff matters for Christians. There is one great truth that has taken our heart captive, and that is that Jesus Christ is the Savior of sinners. He seeks out the lost sheep, places it on his shoulders, and carries it back to the fold. That is what he has done for you and for me, and this is what we have to offer to the world. We esteem Christ. We do not esteem ourselves. When we are hankering after praise and admiration for ourselves, then we are no longer glorifying God.

Therefore we must welcome with open hearts all sinners who repent, no matter who they might be or what sins they have committed. Those who grumble at the ones who come to church who aren’t from the right class are the devil’s very own agents and they are bound for hell if they do not change their ways for by their snubbing of people who are not like them they are showing that they do not understand the Gospel at all. No Christian would make it hard for those who are hungering after the grace of God to receive it by shaming them. It is not hard to welcome someone who is like us. They are easy to talk to because you have a lot in common with them. But welcome the stranger who needs to have his or her sins forgiven just like you need to have your sins forgiven. Rejoice together with them in the God who finds and saves those who are lost.