Trinity 3
Lk
15:1-10
7/3/22
“Jesus spent his time with tax collectors
and sinners.” This is a statement that I
often hear as people talk about the Church today. Now it’s fascinating to see how it is used to
make two very different points. And it’s also important to recognize that both
of them are not accurate.
On the one hand, the statement, “Jesus
spent his time with tax collectors and sinners” is often used to criticize the
Church today. The point that is being
made is that the Church is too withdrawn from society – it is too insular. Instead, she should be reaching out to others
and meeting them where they are at. The Church needs to be seeking to speak the
Gospel to all different kinds of people in all different kinds of settings.
There is, of course, truth to this. You will always be able to make the case that
the Church needs to do more in sharing the Gospel. It will always be true that
we are more comfortable being with people who are like us, and that we are less
likely to reach out to those who are different.
This is the old Adam in us and we need to put to him to death.
However, the statement, “Jesus spent his
time with tax collectors and sinners,” doesn’t really support this
argument. For you see, in the Gospels
the tax collectors and sinners were coming to Jesus. Consider how our
text begins: “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to
hear him.” Jesus was preaching the
Gospel of the kingdom. And the tax
collectors and sinners weren’t blowing him off.
Instead, they were coming to hear what he had to say. They were
interested and wanted to listen to Jesus.
How I wish this was the response that the world usually gave to the
Gospel!
On the other hand, the world, and those
so-called parts of the church that have given into the world, say “Jesus spent
his time with tax collectors and sinners.”
By this they mean that Jesus accepted them. Here Jesus is being held up
as the great example of non-judgmental inclusiveness. So yes, Jesus did spend
his time with tax collectors and sinners.
But he was not just accepting them as they were and affirming their life
choices. Instead, Jesus was calling
them to repentance by his message. As our Lord says in the last verse of
our text, “Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over
one sinner who repents.”
Our text begins this morning as Luke tells us, “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.’” Now the letters “IRS” probably do not give you a warm fuzzy feeling. Tax collectors have never been popular people in the world. But in first century Palestine, it was generally assumed that tax collectors were crooked. They could use their position to take more tax than was legitimate, and keep the extra for themselves. So, they could assess a shipment as being worth more than it really was, collect the tax and keep some. The problem was that people really had no recourse. They just had to accept that this was the way things worked.
The term “sinners” is a little more
ambiguous, because the label is being applied by the Pharisees and
scribes. Some of these people may have
been living in a way that openly broke God’s law – who were living in public
sin. But the Pharisees also had their
own interpretation of the Torah, and they were likely to call someone who
didn’t live according to this interpretation a “sinner.”
“Tax collectors and sinners” – these were
people that the Pharisees considered to be unacceptable and to be avoided. And yet Jesus was willing not only to receive
them but also eat with them. I mentioned last week that meals were a source of
controversy between the Pharisees and Jesus.
The people with whom Jesus was willing to eat was an issue because of
what it meant. To eat with someone
showed that you accepted them – that you were willing to associate with them.
Where the Pharisees wanted nothing to do with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus
regularly ate with them.
Jesus was willing to associate with tax
collectors and sinners at meals. Yet as I mentioned earlier, we need to
recognize Jesus’ purpose in doing so.
Jesus had in fact called a tax collector to be one of his apostles. Matthew, also known as Levi in Luke’s Gospel,
gave a great meal for Jesus and there were many tax collectors present. Here the Pharisees and their scribes
grumbled at Jesus’ disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax
collectors and sinners?” And so Jesus answered them, “Those who are well
have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call
the righteous but sinners to repentance.” Jesus was with sinners in order to call those
sinners to repentance.
Christ was doing this in order to bring
salvation to them. That was his purpose
in eating with tax collectors and sinners. In order to explain this, Jesus
tells two parables in our text. In the
first he describes a shepherd who has one hundred sheep. However, he has lost one that has gone
astray. So he goes after the one that he has lost until he finds it. When he has brought it back he comes home and
calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, “Rejoice with me,
for I have found my sheep that was lost.”
Then Jesus concluded by saying, “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.”
Next Jesus describes a woman who has ten
coins, and loses one of them. She lights
a lamp, sweeps the house and seeks diligently until she has found it. Then she calls together her friends and
neighbors, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.”
Then Jesus concluded by saying, “Just so, I tell you, there is joy
before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
In the parables this morning, our Lord
describes his desire to save the lost, which is simply a reflection of God the
Father’s saving will. These are not
merely words, for it is the Son of God himself who speaks them in this
world. God the Father sent forth the Son
as Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. True God and true man, he was in this world
to make salvation possible.
It is important to recognize what Jesus is
doing when he speaks these words. In
chapter nine our Lord had told the disciples, “The Son of Man must suffer
many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes,
and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” He had predicted his
suffering, death and resurrection. Then
a little later in that chapter we read, “When the days drew near for him
to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”
Jesus Christ is on his journey to
Jerusalem. He is making his way to the cross.
He goes there to be numbered with transgressors. He goes to be the
sacrifice for sin that gives us forgiveness. Jesus did suffer and die for you
on Good Friday. But as our Lord had
said, on the third day God raised him from the dead.
Jesus’ resurrection demonstrated that he
was not just one more false messiah. His
humiliating death on the cross was not an act of failure. Instead, it was God’s powerful action to save
us as Christ won the forgiveness of sins. And now by his resurrection he has given
us victory over death, for his resurrection is the beginning of our own
resurrection that will take place when he returns in glory on the Last Day.
After his resurrection, Jesus told his
disciples, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on
the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness
of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all
nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.” Repentance
and forgiveness of sins - they go together.
To receive forgiveness, we have to admit that we need forgiveness. We
must confess our sin. But repentance means more than just we that we are sorry
for doing wrong. It is also involves the
desire to turn away from sin and the act to do so.
You are here
this morning because Jesus has sought you out. You were lost in sin, but Jesus
came and found you. He did this through
the work of the Spirit in Holy Baptism, and through his word. This was purely a matter of God’s grace
because you were conceived and born as a sinner who had no desire to be found.
Yet through his Son God has given you forgiveness, and through the Spirit sent
forth by the Son he has called you to faith. And God rejoices in this! That
note rings through in our text as both the man and the woman tell their friends
and neighbors: “Rejoice with me.”
As long as
we live as fallen people in this fallen world, we will continue to struggle
against sin. Through Christ’s Spirit we
do live in ways that please our Father.
But we also stumble, and worse yet, we knowingly choose to act in
sin. Yet the good news of our text is
that Jesus always seeks us out. In love
he always calls us back to himself. He
calls us to repent and receive his forgiveness.
He calls us to return to the forgiveness we have in our baptism. He suffered and died for us to win that
forgiveness. He wants us to have it.
There is joy in heaven when we repent – when we confess our sin and turn away
from it – as we turn towards Jesus in faith.
This is how
God acts towards you in Christ. He
receives you back in forgiveness as a repentant sinner. He rejoices to do so. But because God has done this for you, this
also means that we now forgive others. Jesus says a little later in this
Gospel, about our brother, “if he sins against you seven times in the day,
and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.”
Forgive?!?
Forgive my husband or wife? Forgive my brother or sister? Forgive my friend or
neighbor? Yes, forgive, because God has forgiven you in Christ Jesus. This is not something that we can do on our
own. Just as only the Spirit can call us
to faith, so only the Spirit can enable the new man in us to direct we what
do.
And so to be
able to forgive others we need to be receiving the work of the Spirit. We need
to be receiving the forgiveness that God gives.
We do this as we make use of the Means of Grace. The Lord still welcomes sinners to his table
as he gives us his true body and blood for the forgiveness of sins. He speaks his word of forgiveness to us in
Holy Absolution, just as he did at the beginning of the Divine Service. He give
us forgiveness through the Gospel as we hear and read God’s word. This is how the Spirit strengthens us in
faith so that we can live out that faith in the world. This is how the Spirit
gives us the ability to forgive others because of the forgiveness we have
received from God through Jesus Christ.
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