‘To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory forever and ever. Amen.’The Lost SheepWe begin today with a familiar scene from the life of Jesus: tax collectors and sinners drawing near whilst the Pharisees and scribes grumble.Now, the objection of the Pharisees and scribes is not elaborated but it is fairly sure to say that they were concerned about maintaining separation from those who had defiled themselves through sinning in order that they (that is, the Pharisees) might maintain ritual purity. They had a view of sin which is similar to the view that we have of infectious diseases: if you get too close, you risk contamination.But, of course, this is not what all of this is really about: what it is really about is their sense of religious pride and their hardness of heart towards the people they were supposed to love and serve in the name of God.Jesus, as ever, came to show the world a different way. And so he tells a parable about a man with a hundred sheep. He loses one and leave the ninety-nine to go and find it. And then he comes home, calling his friends and neighbours to himself, rejoicing.There is more joy, in heaven, he tells us, over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine who need no repentance.In other words, the reason that he eats with tax collectors and sinners is because God seeks those who are willing to repent and to be reconciled to him. This brings about rejoicing in heaven. And God’s seeking those who are lost is manifested in the Incarnation: Christ leaving his throne in heaven to become as we are, to enter our world, to journey far from his homeland, so that he might find us and save us.The irony of Christ’s statement about ninety-nine who need no repentance is that such people really do not exist. The Pharisees may have thought they needed no repentance, but they were wrong. With the exception of Jesus Christ, every human being who has ever walked the face of the planet must repent before Almighty God for our sins. And this is not just a one-time act, but a continuous act of self-examination and humility that accompanies us on our earthly journey.So, if you find yourself today, or any day, feeling the weight of your sin, being aware of guilt or shame, the good news of the Gospel is for you. God offers you forgiveness in Christ. And, again, this is not a one-time offer but a continual offer of mercy and grace, a continual invitation to return to the fold, to come back to God, and to know his loving and saving presence once again.“The grace of our Lord overflowed for me”I’d like to mention here the Apostle Paul, from whom we get our New Testament reading in the letter to Timothy. Paul was a high-ranking religious official and intellectual, just like some of these men. He was of the tribe of Benjamin, he was a Pharisee and he considered himself to be completely righteous under the law.What changed for him to bring him out of his religious delusion was an encounter with the risen Jesus, whose church he had been persecuting. He recognised his ignorance and his rejection of the true God who had been manifested to the world in Christ and so he said the words we read today, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost”.But notice how Paul had to recognise his own sin in order to receive the grace and mercy of God, even to the point of calling himself the foremost of sinners. This demonstrates the truth of a spiritual law, which is that, the more we recognise our own sinfulness, the more we recognise the grace and mercy of God for us.Another way of putting this is that, if we want to be found by Christ, we have to recognise that we are like lost sheep, that we have strayed from the right path, as Paul says, in our ignorance, in our unbelief, in our weakness, and we need Christ to come into our world and rescue us.The Woman and the Lost CoinI’d like to say something about the other story in our Gospel reading today, that of the woman who loses one of her ten coins and sweeps her house diligently until she finds it. She then calls her friends and neighbours together, rejoicing that she has found her lost coin. Again, Jesus tells us that there is joy in heaven before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.In some ways, this story is the same story as that of the lost sheep and the diligent shepherd. However, many of the Church Fathers saw in this story in particular an image of the Church. The shepherd naturally calls to our mind the image of Christ, the Good Shepherd, leaving his home in heaven to bring those who have strayed back to God. Here we see a humble woman. The details in the story imply that her house is modest and that she is therefore probably quite poor. She has ten coins which are worth about ten days’ wages. Perhaps this is all that she has in the world. It is not much. She loses one and therefore she goes about seeking for it diligently.And so we receive a beautiful image of the Church through this parable. We are engaged in the same mission as the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ. But we do not come from a place of great strength or power. Rather, we begin from a place of weakness and humility, from a place of repentance and poverty.We have not much more to give to the world than the knowledge of God and of his joy over sinners who repent. So much the better therefore when God disabuses us of pride in our natural power or our natural resources. As the Apostle Paul says elsewhere, ‘Consider your calling, brothers: not many of your were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise: God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is lower and despised in the world, even things that are not, in order to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God’ (1 Cor. 1:16-29).Where are you in these stories?I ask you to consider where you find yourself this morning? Have you to repent of your religious pride or your unwillingness to admit to God or to others where you have been wrong? Might you see your sin a bit more clearly and be more willing to identify with the sinners, the tax collectors, the lost sheep, the lost coin? The good news, as I say, is that, if you are, then you will find a doorway opened to the very presence and joy of God. For this is the reason that Christ came into the world.In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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