16th Sunday after Pentecost [Pr. 19] September 16, 2007 “Series C”
Grace be unto you and peace, from God our Father and from our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Let us pray: Dear Heavenly Father, we give you thanks that you sent your Son into our world to redeem and restore sinners to a right relationship with you, our Creator. Through the power of your Holy Spirit, help us to realize that we, too, come before our Lord’s table as sinners who have been redeemed by your saving grace. Take from us the arrogance of pride in our self-accomplishments, and help us to trust solely in your amazing grace. This we ask in Christ’s holy name. Amen.
Our Gospel lesson for this morning contains two of those familiar parables of Jesus – “The Parable of the Lost Sheep,” and “The Parable of the Lost Coin.” We know these parables well. We probably learned them in our early years of Sunday school, and because of the simple nature of these stories, they were easily committed to memory. That was the purpose of Jesus using parables to teach us. They were easy to remember.
Thus, we know the text of these stories well. But how many of us have really struggled to understand the context in which these stories are recorded in Luke’s Gospel? Even though the parables themselves may be rather easy to understand, if we consider the context in which Jesus told them – those to whom they were addressed – we might gain a deeper appreciation of their significance to our own lives.
Thus, this morning I would like to begin by focussing on the first two verses of our Gospel lesson. Here, Luke tells us that by this time in Jesus’ ministry, “All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to [Jesus]. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’”
Just picture this scene! The persons whom Jesus seems to be attracting to him by his teachings and ministry, are the tax collectors – those who had agreed to work for the occupying Roman authorities to collect taxes to support their empire. They were considered to be traitors by most of the people in Israel. And with them came the “sinners” those who were most likely known to have committed offenses against God or those in their neighborhoods.
Doesn’t that seem a bit odd? I mean, here is the incarnate Son of God, who came among us to proclaim God’s word to the people, and the ones who seem most interested in hearing him preach and teach, are the ones that most of the respectable people of that day would rather ignore.
And according to our lesson, this did not go unnoticed. For Luke tells us that the Pharisees and scribes grumbled among themselves, most likely loud enough that Jesus could have heard their utterings. “This fellow,” which I don’t believe was meant to be a flattering comment, “welcomes sinners, and even eats with them.” It was as if they were saying, surely this man can’t be a prophet of God, or the Messiah.
Now, before we get to quick to label the Pharisees and scribes as the bad guys in the story, we might do well to stop and consider what a Pharisee and scribe were. A Pharisee was a person who accepted the teachings of Moses based on the Ten Commandments, and strove to follow those teachings to the best of their ability. In other words, they were deeply religious persons, who took their faith seriously.
In the same vane, the scribes were deeply religious persons, who were well schooled in the books of the Old Testament, and who devoted their lives to teaching the precepts of Scripture and the Mosaic Law to others. They were Biblical scholars who read the ancient manuscripts and then translated them into the language of the people.
As a result, I’ve been led to a couple of interesting thoughts, that I would like to share with you this morning. To be sure, I still believe what most of us have been taught since childhood, that these parables of Jesus are stories of God’s relentless grace in seeking out the lost in order to restore us to a repentant and meaningful relationship with himself.
Thus, it is not so much that the tax collectors and sinners came to Jesus to hear his message, but that Jesus welcomed them and ate with them. It is the shepherd who goes in search of the lost sheep, and the woman who searches for the lost coin. It is God’s will to seek the lost, and to do so until it is found. God’s love never gives up on anyone of us, no matter how sinful we may be, or no matter how long it takes. God continuously seeks us, and with his loving grace, offers us forgiveness of our repentant sins.
But then, what does that say to us who are members of Christ’s church on earth, and now represent his presence to those around us? Do we continue to reach out to the sinners of our day, to actively search for those who truly differ from us, welcome them to know the grace of God to amend their lives. Or do we tend to be more like the Pharisees and scribes, who would rather ignore and distance themselves from those deemed sinners?
Yes, we still have those Pharisees and scribes with us today. There is nothing that irks me more, especially around election time, to receive mail from the “Moral Majority” or other conservative religious groups that tend to rate those seeking office by how righteous and religious they seem to be on certain issues, according to their standards. How easy it is for us to want to live our lives according to our faith, but ignore the very basic concept of Jesus the Christ reaching out to others, especially those who differ from us, with the grace of God.
As we consider the context in which these two familiar and loved stories were told, we might begin to see that they have a sting to them. After all, we who have come to know the redeeming grace of God as baptized members of Christ’s church, who worship God on a regular basis and read and study the Scriptures, may need to ask ourselves if we are now the ones who grumble, or the ones who follow our Lord’s example, actively seeking those who could benefit from God’s redeeming grace.
Throughout the nearly thirty years of my ordained ministry, there have been many church programs that have come down the road, designed to reverse the trend in the declining membership of the church. Quite frankly, I have not found any of those programs to truly work. And I believe the reason that they don’t work, is because too many of us within Christ’s church have adopted a Pharisaic and scribal attitude toward those around us. We would rather “those sinners” be ignored, rather than truly reach out to them and invite them to join us in the family of God’s redeemed children.
Perhaps if the church is going to be effective in reaching out to others, we may be the ones who need to realize that we may be lost and in need of God’s redeeming grace to amend our lives. Perhaps we also need to consider our second lesson for this morning, from Paul’s first letter to Timothy. It is a very appropriate confession, from this man who proved to be one of the most effective evangelists of the early church, espeically in light of our Gospel lesson.
Listen to Paul’s words. “I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.”
What strikes me most about this confession of Paul is the fact that he was once a Pharisee. He was a member of that inner circle of the religious purists, who took their faith in God seriously. He was one of those who were charged, following Jesus’ death and resurrection, with purging the synagogues of those who came to faith in Jesus as the Christ. And he did so with sternness of conviction. He was so zealous to uphold his faith convictions, that he actually persecuted “those sinners” who became Christians.
Here was a person who thought he was doing what God, according to his faith, wanted him to do. But God, in his grace, did not abandon Paul in his sinfulness against the Christian church. He came to him, forgave him, and welcomed him into Christ’s redeemed community of sinners. And because of his receiving the God’s redeeming grace in Christ, he reached out to those even more shunned and neglected – the Gentiles. And the church of Christ grew.
When we consider the text of these parables, in the midst of the context of our lessons, they take on a call for repentance from us all, perhaps even more, from those of us who now represent our Lord’s presence on earth. For the sins which we have committed, is no different than the sins which we have failed to do – to reach out and welcome others who differ from us, into God’s redeeming grace.
But the good news in these parables, is that God never gives up on us. He keeps seeking and looking for us, so that we might be restored to his fold, and not only become a member of his cherished fold, but reflect his love to others. May God’s grace so inspire us to reach out to others with the same grace that we have been shown.
Amen.
