SERMON

PENTECOST 17

"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? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbours together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.' In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

As a child this was one parable of the Bible that really had me stumped. It didn't make sense at all. And it wasn't just because I hadn't seen too many sheep. On our farm we had a couple of hundred chooks (some of which would get out and go missing now and then), so, in fact, I felt I could identify with what Jesus was saying. I knew what my Dad would do if he discovered a hole in the fence and one or two missing. He'd simply patch up the hole and rejoice that more had not got out to become fox food.

Even I knew that to lose one or two chooks out of a hundred wasn't too bad. So why did Jesus tell a story about a silly shepherd who went to look for one lost sheep when he still had 99 perfectly good ones?

But that wasn't all. No matter how I tried, I could only see our neighbours and friends in fits of laughter if ever Dad came home triumphantly, fowl under arm, shouting "Rejoice with me, for I have found my chook which was lost." It was clear to me that Jesus had things little mixed up: Things like this just don't happen.

About the only time I saw my Dad act anything like the shepherd in the parable was when our car was stolen. He called the police, and he asked us kids to keep our eyes open suggesting that we ask our mates at school to do the same. He wanted as many people as possible to look for our lost car. But a valuable thing like a car isn't really the same as one stupid wandering sheep out of a hundred. The parable says nothing about a $10,000 prize ram.

Well, while I think I understand the parable a little better now days. I haven't changed my mind one bit about the strange actions of that shepherd. Any normal human shepherd just wouldn't be as silly to leave 99 defenceless sheep in open country - or the wilderness as the Greek says - to find one silly one that got itself lost. Indeed as the years have passed I've discovered more to back up my childish thinking. In those days it was very unusual for people to go looking for lost animals. The custom was that if you found an animal it was your responsibility to return it to the owner who would then have to reimburse any of your costs. The finders-keepers attitude we have today just didn't exist. If you lost something, then you could expect it to be brought back, you didn't have to go looking.

To understand Jesus' words we need to go back to the beginning of our text to look at why he told this parable in the first place. He's under attack from the Scribes and Pharisees who're criticized him for welcoming sinners, and even eating with them. I mean it was very clear to them that no religious man worth listening to would ever lower himself to mix with these sort of people. This parable is Jesus' reply. It's an explanation of his own strange even silly behaviour.

And here's the clue to everything. Jesus is wanting us to parallel his strange actions with that of this strange shepherd. This is the way he claims to act. This also means he wants us to parallel ourselves with that lost sheep. Stupidly going our own way and not really valuable in ourselves. We're sinners. We can't even claim to have sentimental value. We're not God's favourite pet lamb. God has no special favourites.  Surely we have to agree with the Psalmist (8:3) who says, "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?" The New Testament describes us in terms of rebels and enemies of God, not very endearing titles at all.

If Jesus were to have acted like any normal human shepherd, he just wouldn't have bothered to go out looking for us. Our human logic tells us that God shouldn't have bothered to come seeking us. He should have cut his losses and gone elsewhere.

But our God didn't do that. He didn't act like a wise human shepherd. According to our understanding, he acted stupidly and came seeking us, driven on by his amazing love for us. This has something to do with what Paul says in 1 Cor. 1:25 "For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength." And it has everything to do with those wonderful words we find in John 3:16 - "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him."

I believe that if we claim to understand why this shepherd went looking for that one silly sheep, then we miss the real depth of meaning here. This is not just understandable good human love at work here. No it's the unbelievable, totally amazing and mind-boggling love of God. It's so strange to our human way of doing things that we're forced to call it silly. And thank God for that!

But Jesus doesn't even stop there. He goes further to claim that this shepherd returns home rejoicing with the sheep on his shoulders. He calls his friends and neighbours together

to celebrate the return of the lost. And Jesus goes on to explain that there will be more "rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent."

Again the Pharisees and even our modern minds find this difficult to grasp. That God should rejoice over finding me. Usually it's round the other way, we rejoice because of what God does. But here heaven bursts with praise when one sinner is brought back home. Of course the bottom line of this praise is always the completely unexplainable and unfathomable love that God has for us. The Pharisees just couldn't grasp the depth of this love. They felt they were the righteous who needed no repentance and this pleased God. They grumbled when Jesus accepted and welcomed sinners. And Jesus' story says very clearly think like this, and you're out of step with God himself.

This is a parable that aims to change attitudes. It wants to show us just how different our human understanding is to that of God. It wants to teach us what amazing love God displays in even bothering to search for us and how valuable you and I are to God. It wants this love God's show us to change our attitude towards those people we usually write off as worthless as nevertheless being very valuable to our Good Shepherd. It wants us to be able to rejoice when we're given opportunities to be able to share this amazing undeserved love God has shown us to others.

I don't believe that we can just read this parable and say, yes we should be acting more like this shepherd here. We should be totally swamped with the love God has shown to you and me in our Baptism, where he first came to seek us. And then driven to rejoice again and again over the new life Christ promises each day so that we can also see the value in the people we meet each day.

As we sing the next hymn, [" Alas! and did my Saviour bleed, and did my soverign die? " (ALH 61)] look carefully at the words. Hear yourself confess your worthlessness before God, be amazed all over again at his unbelievable love for you, and then rededicate your life to him as you promise to give yourself in service to others.

© Copyright Rev. K.W. Stiller.