Lost and Found

Luke 15:1-10

It was “senior skip day” during my senior year of high school, and I was in Physics class, talking to my friend David. If you looked around the classroom, you would have seen six students present; two were sleeping, and the other four were engaged in various conversations. In front of the classroom, our teacher lectured. He had material he wanted to get through, and whether or not the few students who had not chosen to skip school wanted to listen was none of his worry. We simply weren’t listening.

Today’s scripture follows immediately after Jesus’ words: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” (Luke 14:35b). The issue is that there are some who just are not listening to Jesus. The tax collectors and sinners are all gathering around to hear Jesus, but the Pharisees and the teachers of the law are complaining.

In Jesus’ time a tax collector wasn’t just a despised IRS agent. Not only did a tax collector take your hard-earned money, but he did it for Rome. Rome required its conquered territories to pay them, and the way they got their money was by tax collectors, who would bid for the job and then get to keep everything they collected above that amount. So not only were they taking money, they were doing it for the despised Romans… and then some. They are a disgrace to their people, traitors even.

The problem was that Luke presents the tax collectors entirely positively. They continually hear Jesus’ words and act upon them. Tax collectors like Zaccheus, the wee little man, have become famous for how they responded to Jesus. Tax collectors have ears, and they are hearing Jesus.

It’s obvious that Jesus has something that they want – that they need. They are flocking to Jesus, which just makes the religious leaders grumble. They have been doing everything they can to keep Judaism pure, and here Jesus comes, “welcoming sinners and eating with them.”

One of our problems is that we don’t recognize ourselves in this scene. For example, many of us were raised to dress nicely for church, out of respect for God. This is a good thing. We who are Christians should want to give our very best to God, when it comes to the way we act, the way we use our money, the way we talk, the way we behave, our work ethic, and, sure, even the way we dress. But we should also ask ourselves the question: why am I doing what I’m doing? Two answers should emerge: to please God and to share Him.

If it’s for any other reason, especially if that reason is to show off (including to show people how holy you are) then it’s getting in the way of your relationship with God and it has become an idol for you. If you are more concerned with the way someone is dressed than with worshiping God, I suggest you are here for all the wrong reasons. Yes, if you are a Christian, please dress modestly, please don’t dress to distract, because we’re here for God, not for a fashion show, and church is not primarily about me or you. It’s about God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

The Pharisees knew and understood God’s law. They knew it was sinful to allow themselves to become polluted by the sinful world. They knew that to associate too closely with sinners was to risk becoming defiled themselves. This is true. However, they missed out on half of the covenant God made with His people; they were always blessed to be a blessing to the nations. How are the nations supposed to know God if they have no contact with God’s people?

So the religious leaders are muttering about Jesus welcoming and eating with sinners. This plays itself out in churches across our nation every week, usually something like this: The youth ministry has a new, huge, exciting outreach where dozens of new kids come to the church. They don’t look like church kids. None of them is wearing a jacket and tie, and some of them are (gasp) wearing hats in the church building. They’re dressed in whatever young people are wearing today, which isn’t what we wore when we were young – we always looked perfectly respectable. Our styles never looked so horrible or disrespectful.

I’ve got news for you: ours were just as bad. I just hope people take lots of pictures so today’s young people can be as proud of their teenage style choices as I am of mine.

I was in a church building early on a Sunday morning a while back, and one of the church women was incensed. She was fired up mad. One of the teenagers there for a retreat was smoking outside the church. She wanted to pull the plug on the church’s participation and hosting of this retreat. How dare they! What she didn’t know was this young man’s story, which I had found out parts of the previous evening when I stopped to talk to him. At 16 years old, he was a recovering heroin addict. Yes, he still smoked, but God was transforming him.

You see, Jesus’ mission isn’t just to keep church people happy. Jesus himself said, “I did not come to call righteous people, but sinners to repentance.” (Luke 5:32)

So Jesus turns everything on its head yet again. Tax collectors and sinners had been defined by not being among the righteous, as being objects of God’s wrath, as actually even deserving Hell, but now Jesus is presenting them as those to whom the Good News is aimed. They are the ones who are actually willing to repent, to turn from their sin and follow Jesus.

Contemporary America is one of the toughest mission fields in the world, because it is full of people who have “heard” the Good News but who haven’t appropriated it for themselves. It is full of people who have been inoculated from the Gospel by self-righteous, Pharisaical believers who have treated the outsiders, the marginalized, and even the poor entirely unlike Jesus treated them. Jesus ate with them, treating them as if they were his very family.

And so Jesus tells the religious elite a story. “Suppose one of you has one hundred sheep and loses one of them.”

Jesus puts them in the story, casting them as wealthy landowners. A normal family would have had between 5-15 sheep, so having 100 would mean they had considerable wealth. Having wealth certainly meant having God’s blessing. Now Jesus is talking their language! Notice that Jesus casts them as “owning” those 100 sheep. He is not saying that they are the under-shepherds, the dirty, stinky ones who take care of the sheep. These guys actually own the sheep.

Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? (Luke 15:4b) When the Pharisees and experts in the law hear this, they automatically would think of Ezekiel’s prophecy: “Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves! Should not the shepherds take care of the flock?” … “You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost…” (Ezekiel 34:2 and 4)

Through Ezekiel, God offered a stinging rebuke to the religious leaders of Israel. Jesus is shaming the religious leaders, demonstrating that He is the one who is acting as the shepherd, the one who is bringing back the strays and searching for the lost. The Pharisees are shamed because they don’t care about the lost.

And Jesus goes another step, showing the true character of the One who goes out seeking the lost: “And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’” (Luke 15:5-6)

The Pharisees aren’t celebrating the rescue of the lost. They are too upset about the character of the people Jesus is eating with. They’re upset that what they have is being diluted or polluted by people who don’t look the part. So Jesus finishes with the last zinger: I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.(Luke 15:7)

Jesus immediately tells another story, this time about a woman who loses a coin. The situation has escalated; before, the subject of Jesus’ story was a wealthy landowner. Now we find a poor woman, living in a windowless home (otherwise she would have had no need for a lamp). These coins would represent this woman’s meager life savings, certainly not much at all from the standpoint of the wealthy, but a whole lot for someone who has little.

And again, for Jesus there is no question –Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? (Luke 15:8b) Of course she does! Without question, she goes to every length to find what was lost, and when she does find it, it’s party time! (And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’- Luke 15:9)

And Jesus again offers the punch line: In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”(Luke 15:10) This story is not about a woman searching for a coin and then throwing a party when she finds it; it’s about God seeking the hearts of his wayward children. I always thought it was cool that the angels were throwing a party over each lost soul who returns to God, but that’s not what Jesus says. He says that there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels. Meaning someone in their presence is rejoicing. And that Someone is God Himself!

This is God’s character: one who continually seeks the lost and wildly celebrates over the recovery of the one person who had been lost. Jesus is justifying his mission, a mission to the marginalized, to the weak, to the poor, to the outsider

We have seen this mission in several of Jesus’ stories; when he told the parable of the banquet, the instruction was to invite those who couldn’t pay you back. When he told the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man ended up in Hell for not showing hospitality to the poor beggar. Let me put it this way: outreach, service, and evangelism are not optional for the Christian.

God’s attitude toward sinners is grace and love. As most of us remember from John 3:16, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. God seeks the lost, and when the lost are recovered, God celebrates. When one person repents, God throws a party!

How do we reflect God’s attitude? How do we respond to the lost? I recently watched a video from Penn Jillette, half of the duo Penn and Teller, in which Penn, who is an extremely outspoken atheist, told of a fan who gave him a Bible.

“If you believe that there’s a Heaven and Hell and people could be going to Hell or not getting eternal life or whatever, and you think that it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward, how much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them about it?  I mean, if I believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that a truck was coming at you, and you didn’t believe it, and the truck was bearing down on you, there’s a certain point where I tackle you. And this is more important than that.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owZc3Xq8obk

He has a valid point: how much do we have to hate the world to not share the Good News of Jesus Christ with a world that is on its way to Hell?

In Jesus’ two parables, he invites his audience to imagine they are in the story. Imagine you are the owner of 100 sheep and you lose one. Suppose a woman loses one of her ten coins. But at the end of each story, he goes back and changes the background. He has really cast God in the central role of each story. God is the owner of the sheep, the one who goes out in search of the one lost sheep. God is the poor woman who turns her house upside-down to find her one lost coin. And God celebrates over the one lost soul who repents. God rejoices.

Let’s think about it this way: our purpose on earth is to share God’s grace, to please God, and to bring Him glory. By sharing the Good News with others, we do all three of these.

So I ask you: what are you doing to share the Good News with others? Whose salvation is on your prayer list? The time is too short for us to play church. The time is too short for us to sit around and talk about it. The day is gone when we can just expect people to show up just because we have a church building and open doors. Churches are closing their doors all across our country, largely because we have neglected our responsibility to share the Good News of Jesus Christ. I am so glad that our church has begun to realize the necessity of focusing on programming for children and families – not necessarily just for church kids, either.

Do we want to be a church that wins people for Jesus Christ, or do we want to be a social club that exists for ourselves until we eventually die out? That is a serious question, and I don’t just want a knee-jerk response. Jesus began these parables by challenging, “Whoever has ears, let them hear.” I imagine there are going to be people who don’t hear what God is telling you through this message. You’re thinking about all kinds of other things right now, and you don’t have in mind the things of God. You think evangelism is someone else’s job – it’s the church’s job. People around us are on their way to Hell, and we have the means to do something about it.

God has ordained the local church to be the primary tool for doing His will in this world. That is our call. It’s not up to someone else; it is our job. When we as a church begin to bicker about territory or furniture or worship style or space usage, then we have lost our purpose. In fact, all of the bickering that goes on within local churches grieves God.

The book of Revelation begins with several letters to the churches in Asia Minor. The letter to the church in Ephesus complemented them on many things, but in Revelation 2:4 we read this: Nevertheless I have this against you: that you have left your first love.

I love this church, and I don’t mean the building. I love the people here. We have a great group of people. Whenever there is a problem or a need, people from this church will step up to serve. Some of you give generously of your money to make sure that we can continue to do ministry. Some of you are always on the forefront of doing ministry; you see a need and you step out in faith to do it. Yet for many, you have lost your first love. People in our community are heading for Hell, while we hold the keys to the gates of Heaven in our pockets.

And we will be held accountable for what we do with those keys.

What can we do to better mirror God’s character?

We all have an assignment, and it all starts with prayer. Who here knows someone who doesn’t know Jesus? I have made this assignment before, but it’s time to do it again. If you know someone who needs Jesus, write their name on a post-it and bring it to the stage. Then write it on a second post-it and keep that somewhere that you will continue to see it and pray over that person. Prayer is our first line of offense against Satan. Pray for this person as if their life depended on it – because there is more at stake than their life.

Part two of your assignment is to spend time with God. You have to do that if you want to really know Him, not simply know of Him. Spend time listening. Spend time in the Word, asking the Holy Spirit to speak to you. Spend time praising Him. If you can’t find something to praise, ask Him to show you something to praise. Put yourself in a position to learn from and with others. If you need some help on this, there are multiple opportunities for spiritual growth, especially for the women of our congregation. Men, some of you need to step up and re-start our men’s group.

Part three of your assignment is to be intentional. Ask God to put you in situations where you can share the Good News. Then talk about what God is doing in your life. Offer to pray with your friend. Invite them to your community group. Serve intentionally in one of our outreach ministries, like the food pantry or Faith Weavers, or, if you don’t see us doing the ministry that you’d like to take part in, let’s talk about starting it.

And finally, join in the celebration as lost people, people who God loves dearly, come to know His saving grace.