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September 16, 2007, Pentecost 16,  All Souls' Episcopal Church

 And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love …

       One of the reasons our Lord Jesus proved to be such an effective teacher is the way he illustrated his points with images and stories. He described scenes from everyday life which his listeners immediately related to and were able to picture in their minds. He gives us two such illustrations in today’s Gospel reading. Both illustrations deal with the themes of loss, recovery, and joy.

      I have no doubt that a shepherd with one hundred sheep in his care would be happy to have ninety-nine percent of them accounted for. However, the shepherd is not at all prepared to leave the one lost sheep behind, regarding the loss as “acceptable, and within the parameters of plan.” He goes out immediately and begins searching for the one that was lost. Similarly, the woman who lost one coin - called a drachma in Greek, and roughly equivalent to the day’s wages of a laborer – lights a candle, sweeps the house, and searches diligently until she finds it. Neither the shepherd nor the woman in these two stories is prepared to cut their losses and move on. They both search for that which was lost. They search diligently. They search until the lost has been found.

      Every now and then, we will hear or read about a disgraced celebrity who in the midst of some trial or difficulty, usually self-inflicted, claims to have “found God.” My response is always the same. I didn’t know God was lost. You’d think someone would have reported him missing. My point is simply this. God does not need to be found and there really is no need to “discover Jesus.” Instead, the Christian faith teaches us that it is we who know what it is to be lost and it is God who finds us. Jesus called his disciples. He didn’t place an ad in the local paper and hold try-outs. He went to where people lived and called them in the midst of their busy lives. And, while most of us would identify with the ninety-nine sheep which were safely in the fold, each one of us is in a way also that lost sheep or that lost coin.

      What brought about the telling of these two stories is the fact that the Pharisees were critical of Jesus for eating and drinking with sinners. You see, it was one thing to deal with sinners in your day to day work. That was to be expected in an imperfect world. You had to deal with sinners. It could not be avoided. It was the cost of doing business. However, inviting sinners in to your home, under your roof, and extending the fellowship of your table to them was what they had a problem accepting. After all, eating a common meal with friends and family was understood as an act of communion. The Pharisees did not want to be seen as being in communion with sinners. The very word, Pharisee, means to be separated – set apart, as it were, for God.

      These Pharisees no doubt saw themselves as the ninety-nine sheep and the nine coins in the stories which were safe and secure and right where they belonged. St. Paul once saw himself the same way when he was a Pharisee, but as he tells us in the Epistle lesson, he had to learn of the grace and love of God which found him and called him to faith in Jesus Christ. Listen to the collect of the day: Oh God, forasmuch as without Thee, we are not able to please Thee, mercifully grant that Thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts.  The Articles of Religion put it this way:

We are accounted righteous before God only for the merits of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, by faith, and not of our own works or deserving. (Article 11)

 The condition of man after the fall is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith and calling upon God. (Article 10)

 Think of it this way. Babies are born possessing all the faculties required for speech. But, they learn to speak. It’s a process. They need to be spoken to and encouraged. Just as none of us as little children would have learned to speak unless we had been spoken to, so none of us can become the person God created us to be without God’s grace guiding, enabling, and inspiring us. Once we learn that, as St. Paul did, we begin to understand that we, each one of us, are the lost sheep and the lost coin which has been found. “I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see.” Understanding this changes one’s perspective somewhat.

      Both the lost sheep and the lost coin were part of a larger collection to which, once found, they were restored. They were recovered. Unless you are already perfect, you need to be in a state of recovery. Christianity is, among many things, a way of spiritual recovery. Each one of us is created in the image of God. Our recovery is the restoration and perfection of that image. Whether you call it sanctification or recovery, it amounts to the same thing.

      You’re lost when you don’t know where you are, or when you don’t know how to get to where you need to be. If we find someone wandering around who had no idea who he is, we would say he has lost his memory. We are similarly lost when we forget who we are as a precious, beloved child of God created in His image for the purpose of knowing, loving, and enjoying God forever. We cannot be restored and we cannot recover our rightful minds without God’s grace. We need to accept our condition, recognize that we are powerless in the face of it, and stop trying to run away from the only one who can restore us to where we should be and enable us to become all we can be.

      Notice if you will the emphasis on rejoicing in both these stories. The shepherd rejoices to have found his lost sheep. He places it on his shoulders, rejoicing. The woman rejoices when she has found her lost coin. She calls her friends together so that they can rejoice with her. The Pharisees were not rejoicing over the fact that sinners had come to be with Jesus. Unlike St. Paul, they had not come to acknowledge that they were lost. They saw others as lost, but not them. However, once we understand that we were lost but that God found us in Christ and gracefully recovered us and restored us to fellowship and communion in Christ, and that we did not and could not earn that, we can then begin to rejoice with the woman and the shepherd and with the angels of God over one sinner that repents.

Oh God, forasmuch as without Thee we are not able to please Thee, mercifully grant that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, amen.

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