✠ Psalmody: Psalm 25:16, 18; 1-2a; Psalm 55:22a, 17b, 18b; Psalm 18:1-2a; Psalm 9:10–11a, 12b; Psalm 17:6
✠ Lection: Micah 7:18–20; 1 Peter 5:6–11; Luke 15:1–10
In the Name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
How much of a part do lost sheep and lost coins have in being restored to those to whom they belonged? None. Bearing the sinful flesh means that we can only claim credit for rejecting a call to repent, to turn and seek, which means we have zero role in coming to salvation and to the forgiveness of sins. God brings those to us. He searches, He pursues us with goodness and mercy all the days of our lives. Sheep can only bleat out in ignorance, likely unaware that it is lost in the first place, happy with the dumbest of things that catches the attention, strolling toward a cliff edge or wondering why not be friends with the wolf. After all, doesn’t love win?
The coin was most certainly as inanimate as we are spiritually before Christ finds us, because it was definitely not calling out, “warmer… warmer… you’re getting warmer,” to the one who was burning oil and sweeping the house to find it. Glory be to Jesus that He ascribes greater value to the soul than even man does to the lifeless face inscribed upon a coin. No face on a coin is able to open its mouth and call out or to proclaim its perceived worth. Those who seek to possess coin give it its value, yet the One seeking us out has not an intention to then give us away to another nor spend us frivolously for fleeting pleasures. All Christ’s coins He intends to keep, prizing each one more than an obsessive coin collector is capable of.
The restoration of the sheep and the coin are works of God, or in the case of the parables, the work of the shepherd and the woman, for these they give you a picture of the Lord working on your behalf, seeking you out, granting you repentance, long before you even knew that you needed to be found; long before you knew what repentance was; long before you knew what being lost meant; long before you could contemplate how you might try to earn God’s favor. You can’t cross the chasm of death by your own doing. In order to be reconciled to the Father in heaven, One from yonder had to come to seek you out in this dark, dangerous, and lost place.
We must understand repentance which is granted in being found and rescued eternally by God Himself not to be an entrance point into the kingdom, but a characteristic of the baptismal life lived in it, meaning that to reject repentance is to reject the life that the Shepherd and the woman seek to restore and rejoice over. The words, “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents,” and “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents,” may sound like a one-and-done type of thing associated only with our conversion from death to life. A sinner repents, heaven and its angels rejoice, Amen. Now continue you on as you were when your thoughts and actions were not on the Lord is not these words’ meanings. One sinner who repents, doesn’t mean a one-and-done event. It describes an ongoing action, in other words, the very way of life in being restored into the fold or unto the pocketbook.
Heaven rejoices, the angels of God sing praise when added to the kingdom of God is a sinner who goes from a life of habitual sin and seeing no need of receiving forgiveness daily to a life of not repenting once, but repenting over and over and over again, certain of forgiveness in Christ’s Name, which is the kindness of the Lord that leads us to repentance, until we all need to repent no more as we pass beyond death. Every day between now and then is one in which we all need repentance, the turning away from sin in the moments when God gives us a way to flee from temptation, for the sake of our souls, and its majestic Finder and Rescuer, to stop our tongues, to keep covenant with our eyes, to love and serve our neighbor, to fear, love, and trust in God above all things. To neglect this truth is to neglect the life that the Good Shepherd preserves, which is shown by how He treats the 99 in the first parable. These are not members already secure in the Church, although they very well may think themselves to be. These are the ones who consider themselves to be among the sheep, yet see no need to heed the Shepherd’s words. They are left in the “wilderness”; a location not like the “large place” or the “green pasture” of which the psalmists sing which conjure our imaginations to see ourselves as content, joyous sheep frolicking in the verdant pasture with neither worry nor care. This wilderness is the place of unbelief which will be saturated with weeping and the gnashing of teeth of unbelievers on the Last Day. It is no place one of Christ’s sheep should ever be content in being.
The pharisees thought that they were religious enough as if the outward white-washing would clean out the stench of death within. Mere appearances of godliness do us no good. We don’t fool God. The hypocritical religious ears listening to Jesus thought that they needed no daily being found by the God Who sought them out; of the God Who sought to grant them the gift of turning away from their sins and the forgiveness of them all. Beloved in the Lord, you need not ever see that the Lord’s leading you to repent is rain on your July the 4th parade or fireworks show. His ways are always good. Sinners saved by grace repent, acknowledging not only to be sinners, but ones forgiven by the merciful One Who seeks them ought all the days of their lives, be it even on the sharp, self-led-to edge of a cliff, or the dark, dusty corner where we hide from life poisoned in mind and heart into being content with not being found. Do not be ashamed before God, or before His ordained ministers, that you are a sinner, because your condition, He is more aware of than you are. He desires not to cast sinners out, but by the shed blood of His Son Who sought you out, you have full, eternal reconciliation with your Father in heaven. Your Lord came in the flesh, receiving sinners, and eating with them, seeking them, calling them, to repent of their sins and trust in Him. He seeks you now, to feed you with the same words; powerful words of His own that create life and keep you found. They create a new heart within you. The create repentance within you. That is how this works. Do not resist the work of the Holy Spirit. Trust all the more in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit working within you. Rejoice, for today you eat with your Savior. You feast upon the sin-forgiving Body and Blood. Embrace the gift of repentance that He brings to you within it, for He has truly found you. Thanks be to God.
In ✠ Jesus’ Name. Amen.
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