Lost and found: abounding grace and the Supper of the Lord
Luke 15:1-10
“And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them’.” [1]
It is a common scene across the Gospels. The Pharisees - the spiritual elite, the righteous ones who kept the Law of Moses, the custodians of the Scriptures of Israel, who knew what it was to be the chosen of God - condemned Jesus for welcoming into His presence those who are termed “the tax collectors and sinners”.
The chief problem with the tax collectors was that they raised taxes for the occupying Romans and therefore associated with pagan Gentiles - those outside the chosen people of Israel. To be a tax collector, then, was spiritual treason, to have abandoned the chosen, elect people of God.
As for the term “sinners”, it refers to those amongst the common people who fell short of the rigours and rituals of the religious purity laws upheld by the Pharisees: such ritual impurity was regarded as revealing spiritual impurity, in contrast to the righteousness and spiritual purity of the Pharisees.
This is the context for these parables told by Jesus, the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin.
One part evokes a pastoral scene, the other a domestic scene: both scenes known to Jesus’ hearers and both quite attractive: the shepherd caring for his flock, the woman dutifully attentive to her home.
And yet these parables are both radical and challenging.
Radical. What are we meant to think when we hear, “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?”. Really? Surely we would make the prudent calculation that it is much wiser to stay with the ninety-nine, rather than leave them and go searching for one foolish lost sheep.
“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?” Really? Surely the sensible thing to do is not to light the lamps and turn the house upside down during the middle of the night to search for a single coin. It will obviously turn up, no need to worry, we can find it tomorrow: there is no urgency.
As for the shepherd inviting the neighbours after he finds one lost sheep out of ninety-nine, or - in the middle of the night - the woman knocking on the neighbours’ doors and inviting them to celebrate because one lost coin had been found … really? Would the neighbours not be justifiably thinking that this is odd behaviour for someone with ninety-nine sheep or nine coins?
And yet, says Jesus, His ministry is precisely like the shepherd searching for the one lost sheep, like the woman searching for the one lost coin. That lost sheep, that lost coin is more important than the ninety-nine sheep safely grazing, more important than the nine coins the woman safely had in her possession.
Which is why the shepherd goes out into the wilderness seeking the lost sheep, why the woman (in the middle of the night) turns her house upside down seeking the lost coin.
This, declares Jesus, is the grace, mercy, and love of God we see in Him and His ministry, in his welcome of “the tax collectors and sinners”: it overflows, it is abundant, it seeks out, it restores, it redeems, it brings back home.
What were the Pharisees thinking as they heard this? Perhaps it was something like, ‘Hold on, what about us? We are the ninety-nine sheep who didn’t foolishly get lost. We are the precious nine coins the woman has in her hand. Are you really saying that the grace, mercy, and love of God is more concerned with those others, foolish and lost?’
This brings us to the profound challenge of these parables. The imagery Jesus uses has deep roots in the Scriptures of Israel. It was the prophet Isaiah who proclaimed, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way” [2]. One of the great Psalms, Psalm 119, ends by praying, “I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek out your servant” [3].
With a piercing realism - ignored by the Pharisees - the Scriptures call us to see who we are: none of us have grounds for spiritual boasting; none of us belong to a spiritual elite, exalted over others; none of us are not wholly reliant on the grace and mercy of God.
This is the profound challenge of the parables: they bring us to recognise that each of us are the lost sheep, each of us are the lost coin. And that as the lost sheep, as the lost coin, the grace, mercy, and love of God in Jesus Christ carries us home and restores us. Each of us can say, in the words of the hymn ‘Amazing Grace’, “I once was lost, but now am found” [4].
Which is why Jesus says, “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance”; His words cut through the spiritual pride of the Pharisees, any spiritual pride we might have. There are no “ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance” - for, as the Prophet declared, “All we like sheep have gone astray”.
The spiritual elitism of the Pharisees; their haughty disdain for others; their spiritual pretensions - all this is cut through by these parables. The Pharisee and the scribe, no less than the tax collector and the ‘sinner’, are utterly dependent on the grace, mercy, and love of God in Jesus Christ.
“And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them’.”
The Pharisees and the scribes would say the same thing today here in this parish church. We are a mixed bunch who gather each Lord’s Day in our parish church - and none of us would meet the standards of the Pharisees and the scribes. Leave aside the fact that we are all Gentiles; we will shortly be saying of ourselves, “We do not presume to come to your table, merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness” [5]: we can make no claim to a righteousness of our own.
And so, each of us will kneel at the Lord’s Table [6], and in the signs of bread and cup, we will receive the promise that is addressed to each of us: ‘My body given for you, my blood shed for you, for the forgiveness of sins’ [7].
This sacrament proclaims the abundant, overflowing grace, mercy, and love of God in Jesus Christ has searched for us, carried us home, and there this love divine embraces us, not because of any spiritual boasts or pretensions, but because God’s love for us in Jesus Christ is as the shepherd who went searching for the lost sheep, as the woman who searched for the lost coin.
“And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them’” - and still today He does, now, as we come to the Lord’s Supper.
__________
[1] The Gospel appointed for the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, Year C.
[2] Isaiah 53:6.
[3] Psalm 119:176.
[4] Church Hymnal, no.642.
[5] The Prayer of Humble Access, Holy Communion Two, BCP 2005, p.207. Despite the rubric stating that the POHA is only to be said if the penitential section of the service is moved from the outset to this point, common practice - thankfully and wisely - has retained the POHA.
[6] See the rubric in Order One, BCP 2004, p.196: "for a signification of our humble and grateful acknowledgement of the benefits of Christ therein given to all worthy Receivers".
[7] Powerfully relayed in the traditional words of administration in Order One (1926) and Order Two: "Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for you ... Drink this in remembrance that Christ's blood was shed for you".
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