Luke 15:1-10; 1 Peter 5:6-11; Micah 7:18-20
In the Name of the Father and of the
+ Son and of the Holy Spirit.
“Not all
those who wander are lost.” Or, so goes the oft-quoted poem from J. R. R.
Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” which today is frequently pasted to the
bumpers of motorhomes and a multitude of recreational vehicles traveling our
nation’s highways and byways. Unfortunately, while this may be true of
Tolkien’s mythological Ranger/Messiah/King figure Aragorn, it is unequivocally
untrue of every human being who has ever lived, save one – the one that
Tolkien’s Ranger Aragorn served as metaphor of, the only Son of God made flesh,
Jesus Christ.
Truly Jesus
is the only man who has ever wandered far from His home so that He had no place
on earth to lay His head, and yet, Jesus was everything but lost. Indeed, Jesus
came to seek and to find, to save and to restore, and to bring home those who
were lost – you and I. Jesus is the Good Shepherd who seeks, finds, and saves
His lost sheep. Jesus is the woman who diligently searched her house until she
found her lost coin. Still, the key thing to recognize and to confess today is
that you were lost, but now you have been found. Jesus has found you. His Holy
Spirit has called you by His Gospel, enlightened, sanctified, and kept you in
faith. Before Jesus, without Jesus, you were a straying, wandering, and lost
sheep – and often still you stray and wander. Before Jesus, without Jesus, you
were as completely helpless as an inanimate coin dropped between the
floorboards, lost to all – and often still you become spiritually listless and
lifeless. But, you are precious to Jesus and His Father, and He has forsaken
everything to find you, to purchase you, and to restore you. Jesus wandered far
from heaven, far from His Father’s home, to seek and to find His Father’s lost
children, His own lost sheep. He found you, and He did what was necessary to
save you and to restore you. He gave all that He had, even His very life because
He loves you, and He loves His Father who loves you, and you are precious to
Him, you are precious to the Holy Triune God. You are His sheep and His
children, and He will never let you go.
But, there
are many layers to the onion of Jesus’ parables of the lost. And, I will but
scratch the surface of them with you today. Jesus told these parables to the
Pharisees and the scribes who grumbled that tax collectors and sinners were
coming to Jesus and were eagerly listening to and receiving His teaching. However,
what really offended them was the fact that Jesus welcomed these people and
joyfully ate and drank with them. Jesus treated them as equals, as brothers and
sisters, as fellow children of Abraham and children of His heavenly Father.
Those lost and broken people were precisely the people Jesus came to seek, to
find, to save, and to restore. Ironically, that was the work the Pharisees and
the scribes were supposed to be doing! The Pharisees and the scribes were
supposed to be the shepherds, pastors, and teachers of Israel proclaiming the
Gospel, the Good News, that God was seeking, saving, and restoring His people
just as He had promised after man’s fall in the Garden. But, somewhere along
the way, the shepherds of Israel became hardened in their hearts and self-righteous.
What they failed to see, to remember, and to confess was that they themselves
were also lost and needed to be found, saved, and restored. They believed that
they kept God’s Law pretty well – and, truth be told, they did, except that
they bent and lowered the bar of the Law repeatedly in order to make it more
do-able in their eyes and in the eyes of men. And, so, the reality is that they
did not keep the Law of God – for, no one keeps the Law of God – but they
deceived themselves into believing that they did keep it. They were lost, but
they could not see that they were lost; therefore, they could not be found.
They were sinners, but they did not believe or confess that they were sinners;
therefore, they could not be forgiven. And, because of their self-righteousness
– which is no righteousness at all – they judged others guilty of sin and of failing
to keep God’s Law, and they condemned the very children of Israel that they
were called and sent to seek, to save, and to restore.
Jesus
compared them to shepherds, which offended them, for they did not see
themselves as shepherds and they considered shepherds to be lowly and beneath
them and unclean. Moreover, Jesus accused them of losing a sheep. You see, He
didn’t say that the sheep wandered off and got themselves lost, but that the
shepherd lost a sheep. The lost sheep Jesus was referring to were the
sinners and tax collectors that were lost and needed to be found, whom the
shepherd-Pharisees refused to acknowledge, let alone look for or take any risk
to find, save, and restore. And yet, Jesus’ parabolic shepherd leaves the
ninety-nine sheep in his flock in order to find the one that he had lost. Now,
I don’t think that most anyone would consider this a wise move – to abandon
ninety-nine sheep in order to find one; it just doesn’t make good economical
sense. And, yes, there are many biblical commentators who suggest that there
were other shepherds to watch the ninety-nine. Well, maybe, but Jesus does not
say that. Therefore, I think that we can take from this a deeper theological
meaning – the ninety-nine sheep are just as lost as the one. Yet, the shepherd
in Jesus’ parable picks and chooses which sheep to care for and which to simply
ignore and abandon. The Pharisees and the scribes did just that in practice,
because they considered themselves among the ninety-nine sheep that were safe
and secure in their own self-righteousness. They could care less about those
they judged and condemned as sinners and unclean. They were not the Lord’s
sheep in their eyes, let alone the children of Israel, of Abraham, and of God.
And, then,
Jesus hits them a second time by comparing the self-righteous scribes and
Pharisees to a woman, to a woman who has also, once again, lost something – she
has lost one of her coins. Again, the parable seems a bit exaggerated from the
judgment of human reason: She has ten coins. Why the panic and fuss over one
lost coin? Again, commentators speculate on the great value of the lost coin,
or that the coin represented her husband’s pay for one week of work and that
she was given the great responsibility of managing his money. Well, maybe, but,
again, Jesus does not include any such details. The important point here is
that the lost coin was important and precious to the woman so that she stopped
everything and searched the whole house until she found it and it was restored
to her treasury. The Pharisees and the scribes had no such zeal for the lost
sheep of the Lord’s flock and the lost children of Israel. Consequently, Jesus
ends both parables with the summary explanation of what they mean saying,
“There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over
ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”
“Not all
those who wander are lost?” The point of Jesus’ parables of the lost is that we
are all lost and need to be found. Indeed, there is rejoicing in heaven
over each and every sinner who repents. To be found is to repent. To repent is to
recognize and to confess that you are lost, that you are a sinner in need of
forgiveness. Notice, there’s no talk about good works, great faith, sincerity
of repentance, etc. Jesus simply states that there is rejoicing in heaven over
sinners who repent. To repent is to be found. Only the lost can be found. Only
sinners can repent. And, repentance is not a work that you do, but it is
something that is worked in you by the Holy Spirit through the Word of the
Lord. Think of it as the Good Shepherd’s call to His lost sheep. The sheep
remain lost until the Shepherd calls. Then, they hear – and, hearing is a
passive activity – and they respond; but responding is dependent upon the call:
no call, no response – period.
Thanks be to
God that He has sent His Son, the Good Shepherd, to call His lost sheep, to
call you and me, to repentance. Thanks be to God that He has poured out His
Holy Spirit upon us, creating faith and trust in our hearts and turning us from
our wayward path of sin and destruction back to Jesus who is the Way and the
Truth and the Life. His Gospel call has gone, and goes, out to all through His
undershepherds, His pastors and priests and ministers, and through you, the
Priesthood of all Believers. Jesus continues to eat and to drink with sinners,
and the angels of heaven continue to rejoice over each and every sinner who
repents.
“Not all
those who wander are lost?” You were lost, but you have been found. Now you get
to participate in the searching and the seeking and in the calling and the
restoring. Do not despise those wayward sheep who are sinfully pursuing their
sinful paths – they are lost. But, go and find them. Call to them with your
Master’s voice, His Holy Word which is the vehicle and means of the Holy
Spirit. Call them to repentance by showing them mercy and compassion while
sharing with them the hope that is in you. And, return here, to the flock,
where your Good Shepherd is present with His Words and with His Wounds to
forgive you anew, to heal and to restore you, to nourish you and to protect
you, and to build you up for service in His kingdom to the glory of His Holy
Name. Let us rejoice with the angels of heaven over each and every sinner who
repents. To the glory of God the Father, through His Blessed Son Jesus Christ,
in His most Holy Spirit.
In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.
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