Trinity 3
Lk 15:1-10
7/6/14
Lk 15:1-10
7/6/14
Many of you have met my mom during
the last eight years – most recently she was here to speak at our annual
ladies’ salad luncheon. I trust that you
have concluded she is, indeed, a very nice person.
My mother was a great mom when I was
growing up. However, I have two real
complaints about those years with her.
The first is the limitation that she put on drinking milk. When I was a teenager, my mom put
restrictions on how much milk my brother and I could drink.
Now I thought this was just wrong.
After all, when you come in and are thirsty, what tastes better than a nice
cold glass of milk? However, my mom said
that my brother and I were going through milk too fast and that it was too
expensive to drink like water. So she put limits on us. We could have one glass
in the afternoon when we got home from school, and one glass at dinner. Mom’s policy prompted my brother and me to coin
a phrase for milk in our house: “white gold.”
Of course, now that I am a parent I have learned that milk is not cheap.
While it is healthy for you, it is really not suitable for mass consumption and
so now I find myself telling my kids that milk is not something to chug when
you are thirsty.
My other complaint is about
gumballs. To this day, when you enter a
grocery store you see coin machines for gumballs and other candy. Every time I saw one of these gumball machines
I would ask my mom for a coin so that I could go get one. And you know what? My mom had audacity to say that I didn’t need
to get a gumball every time we went to the store. She acted like it was supposed to be some
kind of treat.
And so, ever since I have been out
on my own, I have been living large.
Basically any time I go to the grocery store, I stop at the machine and
buy myself a gumball. I am making up for
all those times I was denied and I take great pleasure in doing so. When I park at the store I get a quarter out
of the spare change that I keep in the car.
Sometimes, this requires me to search for the coin, because while
pennies and nickels and dimes accumulate, the precious quarter needed for a
gumball often dwindles. And if I can’t
find one in the spare change, I have been known to look around in the car – on
the floor, under the seats – until I find that necessary quarter.
In the second parable of our Gospel
lesson this morning, Jesus tells about a woman who searches for a coin. She expends
great effort looking for it because it is valuable to her, and she rejoices
when she finds it. In the parable we
learn that each sinner is precious in the Lord’s eyes and that there is joy in
God’s presence when a sinner repents and receives forgiveness.
Our text this morning is from Luke
chapter fifteen. In this chapter, our
Lord tells three parables about something or someone that is lost: a lost
sheep; a lost coin; and a lost son. This
morning we want to focus on the parable of the lost coin.
The first verses of our text provide
the setting for all three parables. We
hear, “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him.
And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, ‘This man receives sinners
and eats with them.’”
One of the defining features of
Jesus’ ministry was that he associated with those who were the outcasts of
society. He was regularly in the company
of people that the Pharisees described as “sinners.” Now this term took in a
wide range of people because of the beliefs held by the Pharisees.
The Pharisees were primarily a lay
group, and the scribes were those who had formal training in the Scriptures and
also the teachings of the Pharisees. The
Pharisees sought to be a holy group within Israel. They took various practices
that were required of priests who served in the temple, and they applied them
to everyday life. They developed a large body of oral law that described how to
keep the Torah, and some held this interpretation of the law to be on par with
the Torah itself.
In the Pharisees’ view of the world,
a “sinner” could be a person who engaged in activities that actually violated
God’s will – like a prostitute. But it
could also be a person who didn’t follow the Pharisees’ rules for life. Tax
collectors were included in this category because they often abused their
position to get extra money for themselves, and also because they were seen to
be collaborators with the Romans and their puppet kings.
These were the kind of people who
gathered around Jesus. And it’s not just
that they came to see him. Jesus
received them and actually ate with them. Even in our own day we understand that eating
together with people indicates some level of acceptance and familiarity. In the first century Palestinian world this
was far more important than anything we have experienced. To eat with someone said that you accepted
them and had fellowship with them.
Our world today has noticed this
fact about Jesus – but it has drawn all of the wrong conclusions from it. The world says that Jesus didn’t judge
people. It says that Jesus accepted
people for who they were. In fact, the
pop singer Elton John said this past week that if Jesus were alive today, he
would have no problem with homosexual marriage.
However, Jesus’ own words refute
this attitude. Earlier in this Gospel
Jesus said, “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” We hear the same theme in our text this
morning. After the parable of the lost sheep Jesus says, “Just so, I tell you,
there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over
ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” And then at the end of
the parable of the lost coin he adds, “Just so, I tell you, there is joy before
the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Jesus does not affirm any decision we want to make. Instead, he calls
people to confess their sin and turn away from it.
In the parable our Lord says, “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?” The woman has ten coins. Each coin
represented a day’s wage – a whole day of work.
Each was valuable and she had only ten of them. When she realized that
one was lost in the house she lit a lamp so that she could see better in the
dim interior, swept the house and searched carefully for it.
The parable tells us both about how
God values you and also about your problem.
Created in his image, he has made each one of you to be unique – one of
a kind. Right down to your DNA there is
no one else that God has made exactly like you. You are precious and valuable
to him.
Because of sin, you were also
lost. You were cut off from God. And so as the ultimate affirmation of how
much he values you, God sent forth his Son to become like you. He sent him into this world in the
incarnation as the Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of
the virgin Mary. He took on your
humanity without ceasing to be God. And
then in order to overcome the sin that separated you from him, the Father sent
the incarnate Son to die on the cross and rise from the dead.
In Holy Baptism you were found. You
were made to be a child of God. You sins
were washed away. You were born again of
water and the Spirit. The problem is that because of the old man – the sinful
nature in you – you still at times act like someone who wants to be lost. You make choices that place the creation
ahead of the Creator. In spite of God’s unmerited love that you have received,
you speak and act in hurtful ways toward others.
And so God continues to seek you out
because you are so valuable to him. Not
only are you valuable to him as his creation.
You are valuable because of the price that has been paid for you – for
after all, you have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ. He continues to call you to repentance
because as he told the prophet Ezekiel, God takes no pleasure in the death of
the wicked, but instead desires us to turn from sin and live.
Through his word of law he confronts
your sin. He does this so that you will repent – so that you will confess these
sins and turn away from them. And then
he comforts you with the Gospel. Through
his Means of Grace he forgives you and strengthens you in the faith. And our text tells us what happens when this
occurs: there is joy. The joy of the woman who finds the coin – a joy
that she can’t keep to herself but must be shared with her neighbors –
describes the joy in heaven.
You came here this morning knowing
the ways that in this past week that you have shown yourself to be a
sinner. But God has sought you out. He has worked repentance – the very
confession you made at the beginning of the Divine Service. And now as we are about to receive the
Sacrament of the Altar you can rejoice that the words of the Pharisees are
indeed true: “This man receives sinners and eat with them.” The crucified and risen Lord invites you to
his table – to this new meal fellowship were Jesus is both the host and meal. He gives his body and blood to you the repentant
sinner for the forgiveness of your sins. And because of this there is joy
before the angels of God.
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