Grace,
mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: (Luke 15:1-10)
And when he
comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbours, saying to them,
“Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.”
Prayer: May
the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your
sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
In the recent few weeks, our
sermons have been exploring the mystery of the Holy Spirit in the church. We
have celebrated Pentecost, where Jesus said: The Holy Spirit will teach you
all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. The
Holy Spirit comes into the church and puts the words of Jesus into our minds
and reminds us of them. The week after, we celebrated Holy Trinity Sunday, when
we read where Jesus said to Nicodemus who came to him by night: Unless his
born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God… The wind
blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it
comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. The
Holy Spirit comes and blows through the words of Jesus, and works in the way
the he wishes, not the way that we want. The Holy Spirit cannot be manipulated.
Then the first Sunday after Trinity, we read about Lazarus and the rich man,
where Abraham says to the rich man in hell: Remember in your life how you
received your good things, and Lazarus likewise bad things. But now he is
comforted here, and you are in anguish. The Holy Spirit does not
necessarily blow on the respectable people in the world, but blows in places
where we don’t expect, sometimes even on the poorest of the poor, taking no
notice of our wealth, status, position. The Holy Spirit blows in such a way
that even a poor beggar can be infinitely blessed and a friend of all the
angels of heaven ahead of a person with lots of money and status. And last
week, we read the parable of the banquet, where we see the reason why the Holy
Spirit is blowing. He wants to call us to God’s wonderful banquet, and say to
us: Come, everything is now ready.
And so in our reading today, we
also learn something else about the Holy Spirit. We learn about conversion,
about repentance. What sort of contribution to we make when we are breathed
upon by the Holy Spirit through the holy word of God? What sort of a state do
we have to be in for the Holy Spirit to do his work on us?
Let’s read from our Gospel
reading today:
What man of you, having a hundred
sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine sheep 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 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 that 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 neighbours, 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.
We have to ask ourselves in our
reading today: Where am I? What’s my work? What am I supposed to be doing in
the reading?
And also the second question we
have to ask is: What is God doing in our reading? Where’s our heavenly Father?
Where’s Jesus Christ at work? How is the Holy Spirit working and blowing?
People so often want to make a
contribution to their spirituality, to their Christian life and their
salvation. Our sinful nature, our Old Adam, is just itching to do something!
Our hearts are restless in wanting to fix our problems, and to rid ourselves of
our own sins. Of course, there are plenty of people who don’t care about sin or
judgment at all. These people also are always wanting to pretend to themselves
that they live a good life, and that God must accept them because they are
basically decent, honest people. I heard someone recently say: My grandma
taught me that if you live a good life and do good things, you can go to
heaven. And anything different is a heaven that I don’t want to go to.
But here’s the problem: who’s the
judge? You or God? Did you invent heaven? Did you build it? Do you set its
rules and its standards? Who decides what is good? Are you a good person
because everyone else thinks your good? What about your bad motives? Who judges
your heart? Do you even understand your own heart? Maybe you don’t think it
matters what’s in your heart. Well, then share it, if it doesn’t matter: then
you’ll know if you care about it. You don’t want everyone to know what you’re
thinking, because they might think that you’re not the person you would like
them to think you are. Now, what about God? He does know what you thinking. He
does care. He does search out and plummet the depths of your heart, your mind,
your soul, in such a way that even you don’t understand. You don’t even know
the half of what’s going on in your mind. And what you do see is not always
good. In fact, rarely it’s good. Mostly, it’s selfish and self-serving and
wandering away from God. In fact, if you wanted to sit down and examine your
thoughts and really work out which of your thoughts were good and which were
bad, you’d be completely overwhelmed with the task. You’d find yourself
completely lost and desperate.
That’s exactly the picture that
we are painted in our Gospel reading of ourselves. We are like a lonely sheep,
wandering off from the fold by ourselves. We’re a little sheep that doesn’t
even know what danger lies ahead. We don’t even know that we’re wandering off,
we don’t even know that we’re exploring. We’re a completely hopeless little
sheep.
But what’s the picture of the
God? Where’s our heavenly Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit? Jesus is
our Good Shepherd. And he looks for us. We don’t look for him. He looks for us.
And Jesus finds us. We don’t find him. He finds us.
There is absolutely nothing that
we can contribute to being found by Jesus. He finds us. He speaks his voice, he
calls out through his word. The Holy Spirit searches and searches. The Holy
Spirit takes the living word of God and blows back and forth until that
purposeful, loving wind touches the neck of that little sheep. The Holy Spirit
searches and finds and reminds us of our Good Shepherd. The Holy Spirit reminds
us of our Saviour’s loving face, when we realise just how far we have wandered
from him. But the Holy Spirit also gives us such wonderful joy, when he shows
us the face of Jesus when he finds us, and we realise that he has been
searching for us all along, and we didn’t even know it.
The second picture we have of
ourselves is a lost coin. In some sense, this is even more stark an image than
that of the sheep. In the parable of the lost coin, we sinners are likened to
the lost coin. We are stuck underneath the cushions of the sofa somewhere
together with five years’ worth of biscuit crumbs and pen lids! We’re just a
lump of metal that is of no use to anyone as long as it’s lost!
But what’s the picture of God?
God is like a frantic housekeeper, sweeping her house, panicking and fussing
around until he finds us. Do you notice here the Holy Spirit sweeping and
brushing the cobwebs of hearts of people all throughout the world, gathering up
the dust? What a useful item we are in the hands of our loving Saviour when he
finds us! Just think of how he can spend us, and how he can invest us, and what
he do with us, now that we’re found! We’re useful to him now, even though
before we were nothing but a piece of metal! We’re valuable, precious in his
eyes!
After these two parables, the
rest of the chapter tells us of the famous parable of the prodigal son. Here
the Holy Spirit teaches us what it feels like to be found, what it looks like,
what sorts of things happen when the Holy Spirit sweeps through the house, when
Jesus our Good Shepherd goes looking for his lost sheep. Here is a son. And we
read: He gathered all his father’s money that he had and took a journey into
a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. And
when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he
began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of
that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to
be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything. But when
he came to himself, he said, “How many of my father’s hired servants have more
than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my
father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before
you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired
servants.”
This is what it means to be lost.
When the father welcomes his son home with open arms, he says, My son was
lost and now he is found! He was dead and is now alive again! See what it’s
like to be lost, with no food, no money, no friends, no family. And see how the
Holy Spirit searches and finds this man. See how the Holy Spirit sets the son
back on his journey home. He empties his pockets of all his money. He sends a
famine. He sends his pig swill to eat. And what happens? The man realises he is
a sinner! He agrees with the Holy Spirit’s own verdict, and he sets himself on
his feet and returns to his loving father. And what a wonderful welcome he
receives when he comes home!
To repent means to be found by
God. To convert to Christianity means to be found by Jesus. To be forgiven and
receive eternal life means to be found by the Holy Spirit.
Our reading today is about
repentance. There are no converts without repentance. There is no disciples of
Jesus who are not repentant. Jesus says: Repent and believe the Gospel.
And in our Gospel reading today, Jesus says: I tell you, there will…joy in
heaven over one sinner who repents.
The problem is that today people
don’t know what repentance is. People think it means saying sorry and
grovelling towards God. No. God can’t be paid off with your grovelling. People
think repentance is fixing all your sins. No. Being a sinner means that you
don’t know the first thing about fixing any of your sins. People think
repentance is whipping yourself into a state of sorrow, to that you feel worthy
and disgusted enough about yourself that God would accept you. No. You’re
self-loathing doesn’t even touch the tip of the iceberg of how serious your sin
is.
Repentance is being found by God.
God is searching for you and he wants to find you. But you don’t want to be
found by him. You would much rather be by yourself in the wilderness without
the other sheep. Wait until the wolf or the lion gets you! You would much
rather be stuck down the side of the couch in the dark covered with all the
crumbs and filth of the years.
Repent. God wants to find you.
And he will search for you with his holy law until he finds you. He will plummet
and judge the depths of your heart with each of his commandments, and he will
not let you escape. He will send you the famine, the drought, the pig-swill,
and rise you to your feet and call you to your senses.
This is a serious business that
our God does in looking for you.
But the only things he goes
looking for is that which is lost. The only people Jesus wants to convert to be
his disciples are those are real sinners. Fake sinners are no use. If you want
real forgiveness, then you have to be real sinner, a proper one, a lost sheep,
a lost coin, a lost son.
And when Jesus finds you, can you
imagine his joy! This is a joy that God does not keep to himself, but it is a
joy that he shares and with which he fills his sanctuary and permeates his
church! He shares it with the angels! He shares it with the archangels! He
shares this joy with all the martyrs, all the apostles, all the saints! He
shares it with all of you. This is the joy of the complete, total forgiveness
of every single one of your sins. Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost
sheep that was lost. Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had
lost. I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who
repents.
Amen.
Lord Jesus, thank you for searching for us and finding us. Send out your Holy Spirit into our hearts and minds to work to your good pleasure, for our benefit and for our salvation. Amen.
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