A sermon on Luke 15 and feeling lost in the violence of last week

I’ve always been a person who loses things. My mom would be glad to tell you stories of all the winter coats and mittens I lost as a kid. I’ve lost my wallet 4 times. I lose my keys at least one morning a week, even though they each have a particular place in the house they are supposed to go to prevent exactly that problem.

It never fails that I am dressed, fed, and ready to go to work, and can’t find my keys to start the car. I look in the place they’re supposed to be, then in the places they aren’t supposed to be but often get left. Then I look in the truly bizarre places they’ve been found before: the freezer, my daughter’s toy box, behind my night stand. And usually I find them.

But sometimes, I just have to give up, get out the spare car key and hope they turn up eventually.I don’t have time to keep searching some mornings. I have to go about the rest of my life with no church or house keys.

So when Jesus asked “which of you” wouldn’t do as the woman who loses a coin does, sweeping out every corner of her house until she finds it, I guess the answer is Me. I wouldn’t.

On the face of these parables they seem nice and sweet, and we get that lovely image in our heads of Jesus carrying the little lamb back to the fold on his shoulders.

But when it gets right down to what’s in the text, the actual parable, Jesus is being ridiculous. Listen again to the first parable:

“Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?  (Luke 15: 4-5)

Which of you? Answer honestly, which of you would do what Jesus says the shepherd does? None of you. That’s bad shepherding. It’s irresponsible. He’s being reckless.

And this woman, in the second parable. Listen to her story again.

“Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ (Luke 15: 8-9)

Would you turn your house upside down, drop everything on your to-do list to find that one coin. And then when you did, would you spend more than that coin was worth to invite your friends and neighbors to celebrate?

Of course you wouldn’t, because you’re not reckless. You’re not irresponsible. No coin is that important to you. Or me.

And don’t forget about the third parable of the lost. These two parables are followed by the story of the lost son, in which once again the character in the story who should be responsible and an upright citizen is completely reckless with his livelihood. He not only gives away half of what he owns to a son too young and immature to inherit it, but after that son wastes it, the father embarrasses himself further by running down the lane to embrace him, and wastes even more of his precious money to throw a party for this found, but still lost son.

Now, which of you would do that?

None of you, none of us, and that’s exactly the point Jesus is trying to make. You wouldn’t go out of your way for one straying sheep, one lost coin, because it would be reckless. It is irresponsible to leave the 99, to throw a party for all your friends and neighbors over one coin, to celebrate the return of the prodigal son who is not even sorry, but only comes asking for more.

But these parables are not about you. They are about God, through Jesus. And to God, every single one of us, wandering sheep or faithful member of the flock, is precious enough to risk his life over. Every single one of us, even those that might seem insignificant to you, is so valuable to Jesus that he would turn the whole world inside out to find you. Every single one of us, especially the ones who treat the Father with contempt or as a never-ending bank account, will be welcomed home with open arms and celebrated extravagantly.

And that is good news for us, because Lord knows we all get lost. But this good news is not without challenge, right? Because even though these parables are about God and not about us, these parables of unrelenting grace and undeserved favor challenge our notions of fairness, especially when our God is being recklessly loving toward those we think are lost. 

We had an awful and revealing example this week of how hard this kind of reckless love is to muster, when the polarizing political activist Charlie Kirk was killed. Perhaps you saw me confessing on Facebook that I was tempted to rejoice, not with the angels in heaven at the return of a penitent sinner, but at the violent death of a person whose rhetoric made the lives of people I love much more dangerous. I have friends who were on his “professor watchlist” and it made their lives hell. I’m ashamed that I had that impulse to rejoice, but I did. And I’m 100% certain I’m not the only one.

That’s why it needs to be said again today that the gospel of Jesus Christ does not rejoice in violence of any kind, even the death of a person who harmed others. The gospel of Jesus Christ is about grace and mercy, even and especially for those who we think deserve it least. The Lord we serve rejoices when sinners repent, whether it be for their words that provoked violence, or the shameful thoughts of our innermost hearts. The Lord we serve is the one who seeks us out in the places where we have gotten lost in evil, the corners where we hide the worst parts of ourselves, and the rugs under which we have swept the truths that are too hard to confront. 

And when God finds us, cowering and afraid of his judgement for our sinfulness, we find not an angry Father ready to make us pay for what we’ve cost him. Instead our God is a rejoicing woman and a never-weary shepherd ready to carry us home to a party in our honor. It is this grace, our experience of it and our extension of it to others, that changes the world from the one that currently is to the one God means it to be. Grace is yours through Christ, and yours to share. Let our words and our work be a homecoming party for sinners finding their way back to God.