THE SEEKER AND

THE SOUGHT

The Third Sunday after TRINITY

20 June, AD 2010

TEXT:  St. Luke 15:1-10

“For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”  St. Matthew 9:13b.

“Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.”  St. Luke 15:10.

Today’s Gospel lesson has Jesus teaching those with whom He supped, and the Scribes and Pharisees who listened in, about being lost and being found.  Indeed, he may not have touched upon this subject at all were it not for the grumbling of the Scribes and Pharisees regarding the company Jesus kept.  Many thought that Jesus was a strong candidate to be the Messiah, well at least, at first.  But His habit of associating with social outcasts and eating with them was beginning to sully His reputation; for tax collectors were considered collaborators with Rome who had sold-out their fellow Jews and if we look at the Greek text we find the word “sinners” to include prostitutes.  Jesus spent a lot of time with these people; welcoming them, talking with them, and even eating with them and, therefore, the self-righteous Scribes and Pharisees began to label Jesus a “bad person” just as they did to those with whom Jesus associated.  It is in the midst of their self-righteous judgments that Jesus tells them two, really three parables:  the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and what we have come to call the parable of the prodigal son.  It is the first two, those of the lost sheep and the lost coin that we will focus on this morning.

It is within the season of Trinitytide that we hear most of the parables that Jesus told.  We hear them over and over again and we think that they are vehicles that Jesus used to tell us what we ought to do.  We put ourselves in the middle of them and try to zero-in on what Jesus is telling us to do in the hopes that everything will turn out alright.  But the first point we have to understand about Jesus’ parables is that they are, first of all, NOT about us!  They are about how GOD works in His world; how He is in relationship with His Creation, and how He wants to communicate Himself to us.  If we can apprehend and understand that idea, we can arrive at the point of Our Lord’s parables more quickly and grasp the meaning behind them more immediately to the benefit of soul and body.  So it is that we turn to the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin.

I wonder, if Jesus posed these two scenarios to you, how would you answer?  How would you respond?  Say you were, in fact, a shepherd.  What would you do if you suddenly discovered one of your sheep had gone missing?  Would you leave the ninety-nine and go out looking for one sheep?  The real answer is “of course not”.  No shepherd in his right mind would go off, half-cocked and leave the ninety-nine other sheep to the coyotes and wolves and run off chasing after one.  You’d cut your losses, forget about that one lost sheep and go on with the ninety-nine, wouldn’t you?  Well, of course, everyone would!  Or, what if you had ten 1896 Walking Liberty Silver Dollars and suddenly discovered one of them was missing?  Would you put off that business trip or conference call and otherwise stop, completely, all the things you had to do that day and turn your home or office upside-down and not do anything else until you found that coin?  Probably not.  Yet that is exactly what both the shepherd and the woman did.  It seems odd and ironic that Jesus would tell two stories like this to social outcasts and the religious authorities of His day.  Jesus has something very significant and important to teach them and us if we can get behind these bazaar and odd stories.  It all hinges on being lost and then found again; the Seeker and the Sought.  Let’s focus on the actions of the shepherd first.

He did leave the other ninety-nine sheep and go after the one that was lost.  That sheep could have been sick or injured or may have simply not been able to keep up with the rest of the flock.  He could have even been a little willful and wandered off entirely on its own accord.  For whatever reason, that little sheep has become separated from the flock and the shepherd has gone looking for it.  When he finds it, what does the shepherd do?  Does he beat it for wandering off?  Does he simply drive it home with his staff?  No.  He takes that lost sheep up into his arms, puts it around his neck, and carries it on his arms back home.  What of the woman who searches diligently and finds her lost coin?  When she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors to celebrate the fact that what had been lost is now found and rejoices in that fact and they with her.  It seems that both the lost sheep and the lost coin have great priority with those that are seeking them.  As a good shepherd, he knows his sheep individually, not as just a wooly mass.  The coin, as an object that is sought is easier to understand because it holds monetary value for the woman.  But both the sheep and the coin are valuable to their individual seekers and it begins to dawn upon us how tragic it is when something is lost, but how joyful a thing it is when it is found again!  It is from this realization that our spiritual eyes begin to focus upon the bigger picture that Jesus is painting before us.  Both the shepherd and woman in these parables are Jesus who seeks those who are lost, for whatever reason, and brings them back to Himself and the Father.  This was and is His primary mission and ministry.  Jesus came first to seek and save those who were lost because every individual has infinite worth and is the object of God’s redeeming love!  Only those self-righteous Scribes and Pharisees who thought they had no need of redemption or repentance failed to respond to Our Lord’s message and ministry.  Remember what Jesus said to the self-righteous people in St. John’s Gospel about being His sheep in chapter 10, verses 26-29,

“But you do not believe because you are not of my sheep.  My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of my hand.  My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father’s hand.”  

From this we know that Jesus, the Good Shepherd, seeks all those that are “lost”; those who may never have heard the Gospel, those who may have wandered away for a season, those with doubts, or even those who are in open rebellion toward God.  Whatever the case, like the Good Shepherd and the woman, God searches for them because His Love is extraordinary and this is what makes it so, exactly!  We might understand a God who, if we turned to him first and approached him, might have mercy on us and forgive us of our infractions.  But never has a god, in this case, The God of the Universe and of all Created Being, Himself, sought out the objects of His Love!  How did He do this?  By sending His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ into the world to redeem it back to Him.  Just as surely as the arms of the Cross held Jesus’ Crucified Body, Jesus, who took our sins upon Himself, carries us back to the Father on His shoulders as the Good Shepherd.  And as the coin, which bore the image of the King, was found and restored, so too are we restored to the image and likeness of God, when we surrender ourselves to being found.  As St. Peter wrote in his first epistle, chapter 2, verses 24-25,

“. . . and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.  For you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.”

The key to these two parables and the parable of the Prodigal Son, all put together, teach us that it is not our sins that governs God’s behaviour towards us.  It is not our problems that motivate Him.  It is His need, the motivation of His Love for us, that compels Him to seek us.  It is the need of the Finder to find, not the need of the lost to remain lost.  The great truth and comfort of these parables is in the knowledge of the Love of God towards us and how that Love motivates God the Finder to seek and to find all of us in our lostness by God’s actions through the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  It is Jesus who becomes and is the interpretation of all His parables.  After we come to see that and understand it, it becomes, of course, the beginning of an eternity spent with God.  So today, whatever your state, turn your heart toward God, come to the Table of His Heavenly Banquet and be filled with the life-giving savour of His Body and Blood.  Enter, once again, into the Kingdom of God and let yourself be found!

And now, unto God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost be ascribed all might, majesty, power, and dominion as is most justly due this day, both now and forever; world without end.  Amen.

SOLI DEO GLORIA – JEU+