Luke 15:1-10 - This Man Welcomes Sinners - October 6, 2019

You may have noticed a trend over the past several weeks – that our sermon texts have all dealt with Jesus’ parables: his earthly stories with spiritual meanings. Parables aren’t what they seem to be. Just as the parable two weeks ago wasn’t really about dinner parties and last week’s wasn’t about how to build a tower or go to war – so the parable this morning isn’t really about how to find lost sheep and coins. Then what is this parable about? What spiritual truth is Jesus teaching us? Sadly, too many preachers see parables as an opportunity to serve their own agendas. For example, if you’re trying to raise money, you could talk about how precious even one coin is to God. Or, even more popular, is the notion that these parables are Jesus’ commission to the Church. That we are the shepherd and the woman and that it is our responsibility to get out there and beat the bushes and find the lost and save them. Now, I’m not saying that the Bible doesn’t say anything about stewardship or outreach; but the context should make it crystal clear that Jesus is not talking about those things here. This parable is Jesus’ response to the Pharisees’ grumbling complaint: this man welcomes sinners.

Clearly then, this parable is about the seeking, searching, tireless love of Jesus. He is the main character. But how do we get there? Well, in context of Luke 15, the “lost” are the tax collectors and “sinners” who were flocking to Jesus. Throughout his ministry Jesus made a habit of welcoming and associating with these social and religious outcasts. He even called one of those hated tax collectors – Matthew – to be his apostle (Matthew 9:9-13). And later in this same gospel, he invited himself to the home of another tax collector named Zacchaeus where he declared that the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost (Luke 19:10). As the Good Shepherd, as the Creator and Redeemer of these poor souls, it was only natural for Jesus see them as precious and go out of his way to find and save them.  

But Jesus’ natural love for the lost filled the religious elite with disgust. The Pharisees and teachers of the law – who were supposed to be the spiritual shepherds of God’s flock on earth – didn’t care at all about the lost. They didn’t preach about God’s grace but his wrath; they emphasized Law not Gospel. Their message was inherently work-righteous: that you need to clean yourself up, stop sinning and reform your life before God will accept you. They despised and ignored these poor, lost sinners; figuring that they were simply getting what they deserved. In fact, the Jewish historian Alfred Edersheim even records a shocking saying of the Pharisees: “There is joy before God when those who provoke him perish from the world.” [1] It’s hard to imagine a greater blasphemy than alleging that heaven rejoices when the wicked perish in hell. (Ezekiel 33:11)

In this parable, then, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law are the ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent. It’s not that they didn’t need to repent, they – like everyone else on earth – had fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:22-23) – they didn’t think they did. They thought they were right with God because outwardly they were better and holier than these open sinners. The real tragedy in this text is not that Jesus was associating with open sinners but that these self-righteous Pharisees didn’t see their need to join them!

Jesus drives this point home by asking the crowd to consider two familiar situations: Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? What shepherd wouldn’t abandon his flock to search for one wandering sheep? Here’s the twist: no good shepherd would do that! You can almost picture the shepherds in the crowd whispering to each other, “That Galilean carpenter doesn’t know bunk about shepherding! You don’t risk your entire flock to save one. You write that sheep off as dead and cut your losses.” Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? Do you put your life on hold and turn the house upside down if you lost one coin even though you still had nine in your pocket? “Well, maybe for an hour or two, but there comes a time when you forget about it and get on with your day. Maybe it will turn up later, but my time is too valuable to waste it looking for one lost coin.”

So what’s the point? The point is that Jesus doesn’t see people the way the religious elite did. His ways are not our ways; his thoughts are not our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9). Jesus didn’t come to earth to seek out the good, the righteous, the powerful – those who appear to have their lives together, the good who are getting better, he came to seek out the weak, the sick, the lost. He doesn’t weigh the cost vs. benefit of abandoning the flock to seek out just one lost sheep. Again, this parable is not really about shepherding, financial stewardship, or even outreach. It’s about Jesus’ irrational, outrageous grace that seeks and saves the lost without regard to the cost or the logic. He seeks those who don’t want to be found. He loves the ungodly, the unrighteous, those who are lost in sin and cannot find any way out. He dies for sinners, not saints; for his enemies, not his friends (Romans 5:10). Jesus is the Good Shepherd who doesn’t stop searching; he’s the one who turns the whole house upside down, moves the furniture and tears up the carpets until he finds that lost coin. The lost are the sole object of his attention. Nothing else matters to him.

While this parable applied most directly to Jesus’ ministry to the tax collectors and “sinners” of his day, the truth of this parable transcends time and space. In a way, it takes us all the way back to Eden. The lost sheep is Adam, the representative of mankind, who brought sin and death into the world (Romans 5:12). He is the lost coin, the worthless asset in God’s bank account, the one who wasted the perfect life God intended for him, who was so lost in shame and guilt that he tried to hide behind fig leaves in the bushes. And yet, God searched for his wayward child and didn’t give up until he found him and brought him to repentance (Genesis 3). And, like it or not, we are all like Adam. We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way (Isaiah 53:6). We are all the lost children of God. We fall for Satan’s deceptions daily. We reach for things God doesn’t want us to have. We have strayed from the path of life and stumbled onto the wide road that leads to destruction. Left to our own devices we are and would remain lost.

You sense this lostness in the world around you, don’t you? You see people trying desperately to “find” themselves, to find meaning for their lives in their careers, their treasures, their accomplishments, their fame and popularity and good deeds. You can see it in the addictions and distractions mankind has invented for itself – all designed to silence the voice of conscience, to dull the ever-present drumbeat of guilt and shame and fear of future judgment. And yet, after it all, they’re still lost – because they’re still not right with God. But it’s not just out there in the world, either, is it? We feel that lostness too, don’t we? Yes, even believers feel it, perhaps more acutely because we know better: we know we should be perfect – and we’re not; our consciences agree with the Law’s verdict that we deserve pain and punishment; we know that addictions and distractions can’t really take our guilt away. Most of all, we long for the peace and safety our Father’s home but we can’t get there. And some days, we just want to sit on the ground and cry like a lost child, our lost condition leaves us depressed, despairing, weak and helpless.

And that’s what makes this chapter – which some have called the heart of Luke’s Gospel – so beautiful! We got ourselves lost. We have no one but ourselves to blame. Jesus would have been perfectly justified in writing us off as a lost cause, as not worth his time or effort. But he didn’t! Jesus came to our wilderness, leaving behind the righteous hosts of heaven to seek and save our lost race from sin and death. He came as the second Adam (Romans 5:19), taking on our flesh, wandering in our wilderness, suffering our temptation, dying our death. He lost himself, his blood, his life to find us. To be clear: Jesus found us, not the other way around. He wasn’t lost, we were. Jesus didn’t come to earth to be welcomed by righteous and powerful leaders, he came to dig through the gutters and search through the trash to find his sheep who didn’t even know they were lost. So great was his love for us that he didn’t care what condition we were in when he found us. He wasn’t worried about what he could gain or benefit from us. He didn’t wait for us to meet him halfway, to make a decision for him, to shape up and straighten up our lives before he would welcome us. He found us like Hosea’s harlot and loved us anyway (Hosea 3:1). He found us in the filth of our sin and brought us to his house to clean us up with his forgiveness. He searched for us with his Word and Sacrament before we even knew we were lost; often, when we didn’t even want to be found. And every time Jesus finds another lost sinner all of heaven rejoices over the ridiculous, irrational, outrageous love of a Good Shepherd who loses himself to find the lost.   

Which leads to our final question: what does it mean to be “found,” what is it that causes the angels in heaven to rejoice? Is it your commitment to living for God? Is it when you bring him a generous offering? When you do good and avoid evil? That’s not what Jesus says. He says there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. We don’t see it in translation, but in the original Greek repents is a present participle – which means that heaven rejoices when sinners are continually repenting, repeatedly coming to Jesus for forgiveness and peace. Here, it’s not your good works that give joy to God but the confession of your sins. But that all sounds backwards, doesn’t it? What is more pleased with a child when they confess that they broke the lamp than when they report that they’ve done their homework and cleaned their room? Again, Jesus doesn’t see things the way we do. Heaven rejoices when we come regularly and repeatedly to lay our sins at Jesus’ feet because that’s why he came. As Paul says Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15) – NOT those who think they have done enough, served enough, given enough to please God on their own. There are no parties in heaven for the proud and self-righteous who don’t think they need to be in God’s house to receive his forgiveness. Jesus didn’t come for them. He came for sinners.

And so, if you heard this text and figured that this parable is about the people out there who don’t go to church, or perhaps a member who hasn’t been here in some time, you still don’t understand. I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: Jesus’ parables often invite us to find ourselves in them. Where do you and I fit? Are we the owner of the sheep and coins? No, Jesus claims that role for himself. This text is not about us seeking and finding the lost! Are you the lost sheep and the lost coin? You might not want to think of yourself as lost – but here’s the thing – if you don’t see yourself as the lost sheep and coin, there’s only one role left. Then you’re one of the ninety-nine righteous persons who don’t think they need to repent. If that describes you, then I have only bad news for you: you’re still lost, you’re still in the wilderness. If you’ve become so comfortable in yourself, your goodness, your lifestyle compared to others that you don’t think you need to repent, then you’re no different than those Pharisees sneering at the tax collectors and sinners. If you think repentance is for other people, then it’s my responsibility to warn you against coming up to this table to eat with Jesus, because the hymn was right: Jesus receives sinners, lost sheep, not self-righteous saints (CW 304).

It’s become fashionable in some Christian circles to teach that Christians aren’t sinners anymore and that they shouldn’t call themselves sinners. Heretics like Joyce Meyer openly declare that they are no longer sinful and that to suggest otherwise is a lie from hell. [2] They would be horrified by our confession of sins, disgusted that only confessed sinners are welcome at this table. She would say that we need to think like winners if we want to attract winners and if we keep talking about sin we will only succeed in drawing this world’s losers. The fact is that heaven doesn’t throw parties for winners, but losers; those who are eager to lose their sins in Jesus’ outrageous, irrational mercy and forgiveness. So if that’s you, a lost, despised, miserable sinner – then step forward confidently, because Jesus has fixed this meal just for you. Amen.

[1] Edersheim, Alfred The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (U.S.: Hendrickson Publishers) 652

[2] https://carm.org/joyce-meyer "I am not poor. I am not miserable and I am not a sinner. That is a lie from the pit of hell. That is what I were and if I still was then Jesus died in vain. I'm going to tell you something folks. I didn't stop sinning until I finally got it through my thick head I wasn't a sinner anymore. And the religious world thinks that's heresy and they want to hang you for it. But the Bible says that I am righteous and I can't be righteous and be a sinner at the same time." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dmHJdM63hk)