Text: Luke 15:1-10
Date: September 11, 2022
Event: Proper 19, Year C
Luke 15:1-10 (EHV)
All the tax collectors and sinners were coming to Jesus to hear him. 2But the Pharisees and the experts in the law were complaining, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
3He told them this parable: 4“Which one of you, if you had one hundred sheep and lost one of them, would not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that was lost until he finds it? 5And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6and goes home. Then he calls together his friends and his neighbors, telling them, ‘Rejoice with me, because I have found my lost sheep!’ 7I tell you, in the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who do not need to repent.
8“Or what woman who has ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, would not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9And when she finds it, she calls together her friends and neighbors and says, ‘Rejoice with me, because I have found the lost coin.’ 10In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
What Does God Think About You?
Do you ever wonder what someone thinks about you? Maybe you’re wondering if you got off on the wrong foot with that new coworker, or wondering if your first impression with that friend-of-a-friend went really poorly, or perhaps a formerly strong relationship has begun to drift. In any case, you can be left wondering what someone really thinks about you and that can make future conversations and interactions difficult, uncomfortable, or even feel impossible.
That’s bad enough when it comes to our human relationships. It gets multiplied when we consider our spiritual relationship, that is, our relationship with God. Knowing how God thinks about you, knowing what he feels for you, will be vitally important for your peace of mind and heart as you look forward to eternity. So, what does God think about you?
In our Gospel, Jesus took the opportunity to respond to some Pharisees’ criticism. They were appalled that Jesus would spend time with quote-unquote “sinners,” that is, people who were publicly known to have done or be doing things that the Pharisees felt were wrong.
What sorts of people were they referring to? Two of the most commonly referenced people in the Gospels that raised the Pharisees ire were the tax collectors and prostitutes. We know that Jesus welcome such people, spoke to them, and spent time with them. Were the Pharisees wrong to disapprove of these people from a moral standpoint?
Let’s start with the tax collectors this would not be the equivalent of an IRS agent. Tax collectors in Jesus’ day would almost be more akin to a member of the mob shaking down a business for personal gain. Tax collectors were local people commissioned by the Roman government to gather taxes. Now, they had a minimum that they were supposed to gather from people, but Rome turned a blind eye if they took more than they were supposed to. So many tax collectors became fabulously wealthy by collecting many times the required amount from the people and then pocketing the difference. They were morally corrupt by stealing from others what was not owed to them. And the rest of their countrymen found them to socially corrupt, because they were partnering with the foreign power to profit themselves at the expense of their own people. On many levels, this is not conduct that should be condoned.
What about the prostitutes? We don’t need as much background here as prostitution has been relatively unchanged in the history of the world. A prostitute seeks money by distorting God’s design for sex and turning it into a transaction. They are professional adulterers and fornicators. You do not need to look far to see the sin in people that take up this profession.
So no one, Jesus included, would defend the sin of these so-called “sinners.” Jesus would continue to try to help the Pharisees see beyond surface level obedience, though. The Pharisees were good at identifying professional sin. The tax collectors and prostitutes chose occupations steeped in sin or one where sin was very easy to walk into. The Pharisees recoiled at that, and to a certain degree, rightly so. However, what the Pharisees often failed to see was the personal sin, that not just in publicly seen action, but that in the heart of every person is a sinful nature. Sinful thoughts pervade even the most sanctified of people. Sinful desires and temptations claw at every single person. While not every person may feel temptation to the same sins, temptation in general is universal in fallen mankind.
But that’s not really the point of Jesus’ brief parables here with the Pharisees. The point Jesus is trying to make is not whether or not anyone is a sinner. Jesus has been clear over and over again that EVERYONE is a sinner, even the Pharisees who didn’t think they were. But Jesus’ point is that that’s not something someone needs to deny or run from because of what God thinks about them.
These parables are so powerful. What does the shepherd think of that one, straying sheep? He thinks so highly of that singular sheep that he leaves behind the rest of the flock and traverses the rocks and the hills to search it out. How valuable was that one coin to that woman? She spent the night sweeping out her home by lamplight and wouldn’t rest until she found it.
What is Jesus point? What does God think about you? He loves you with a love so complete and strong that you and I can’t even understand it. He seeks you out where you are with his loving forgiveness and brings you back to himself. We know that quest wasn’t just a trip through the rugged countryside or a night spent cleaning the house. The quest to find lost you and lost me cost Jesus his life. He died to forgive our sins. He died to bring us back to himself. He loves you so much that he willingly, gladly gave up his life to save you.
Perhaps you feel like the sheep all alone or the coin that tumbled into the dusty corner of a forgotten room. Perhaps you feel like you are in those places because of your own fault. Maybe it’s something you said to a loved one or failed to accomplish that you should have, or even sinful thoughts that drifted through your head. Perhaps you feel like you’ve wandered away from God and that that’s that.
It makes sense to feel that way—Satan uses guilt to twist us into a spiritual and emotional pretzel—but it does not reflect reality. It does not reflect God’s promises to you. It does not reflect what God truly thinks about you. God isn’t giving up on you. God is not abandoning you. God is not done with you. Rather, God is seeking you out. And he calls us to repentance. And when we repent from our sin, when we turn away from those things that are pulling us away from him, there is a giant party thrown by the angels in heaven.
And this is the thing the Pharisees missed: God doesn’t just love people who look like they live a good life on the outside. God loves all people regardless of who they are or what they’ve done. But notice how Jesus does emphasizes repentance. When Jesus spent time with tax collectors, prostitutes, and other so-called “sinners,” he didn’t tell them to keep doing what they were doing. He loved them, which meant forgiving them and also not letting them think it was good or wise for sin to run rampant in their lives. It benefitted no one to avoid these people as the Pharisees wanted to do, rather they needed someone to interact with them and to call them to repentance. Zacchaeus the tax collector famously said he would pay back what he stole when he learned of Jesus’ love. Matthew the tax collector became one of Jesus 12 disciples. Jesus told the woman who was caught in adultery that he didn’t condemn her, but that she should leave her life of sin.
So Jesus’ approach to seeking the lost is not letting them stay lost. This is not a case of (as some distort it), “God loves me no matter what so it doesn’t matter what I do.” This is a case of God loving you and because he loves you, he calls you away from that sin.
Sin is a constant threat to our faith because sin leads us away from God. If we are determined enough, we can be a lost sheep that is carried away by sin and sprints away from our Savior every time he’s searching for us and calling to us. That will end in hell. But part of the comfort of God’s love for us is that he’s looking out for what’s best for us. Like a family member begging the person addicted to drugs to get help to get off of them, God calls us to get off of sin, because it only leads to self-destruction. And he provides the way out—Jesus.
So unlike the way the world defines love, God’s love is not letting us do whatever we want. The lost sheep doesn’t keep playing in the dangerous terrain, away from the flock; the shepherd takes the sheep away from the dangerous place and brings it back home. God brings us away from sin and back to himself. His forgiveness means we need not feel guilt over our past faults but also that we actively seek to thank him by living a life free from sin, living according to his will.
And this is the Christian’s constant struggle. Because no matter how much we study God’s Word, no matter how much we know what he wants or has done for us, no matter how much we know and believe that his thoughts for us are filled with love, we will still sin. Sin will be our constant companion until the day we die.
But so will Jesus. Our loving shepherd will continue to seek us out. He seeks us out in his Word as we read or hear it. He seeks us out in the loving concern of a fellow Christian who calls to us to examine what we’re doing or saying. He seeks us out no matter where we are, and in his loving forgiveness brings us back to himself.
What does God think about you? He loves you, and that will never change. God, keep us close to you, forgive our faults, and bring us to your eternal home in heaven. Amen.
