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Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost – September 14, 2025
Luke 15:1-10
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
This summer our brothers and sisters in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod had a large youth gathering in New Orleans which was protested by the Westboro Baptist Church. You’ve probably heard of Westboro – a tiny sect made up mostly of Fred Phelps and his family members. They show up at all kinds of events. They were at the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Phoenix this summer too. They show up at rock concerts, sporting events, and all kinds of other public gatherings, both sacred and secular.
The youth of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod seem like a very odd target for this group to protest, but the Westboro Baptist Church is all about purity. They see themselves as the pure Christians, the only truly righteous ones. They protested the LC-MS as a lukewarm denomination full of sinners. Their signs made this point using some pretty harsh language. From what I heard from some of my friends in the LC-MS, the chaperones did a great job, and the kids handled themselves well, but it was still a little unsettling for some of them.
In a sermon to the twenty-thousand youth gathered in the Super Dome for the closing worship service, Synod President Matthew Harrison made reference to the protesters earlier in the week. First he quoted from the gospel we hear today. He said, “Jesus’ critics complained, saying “He welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Then he said to the kids, “Those protestors the other day, you know what they said to me? They said, ‘You have sinners in your church.” He paused for a minute and then said, “Well, duh!”
There was laughter and there was applause and there was joy from the crowd, and Harrison went on to assure them that Jesus came into world to save sinners. They could laugh and applaud and rejoice at his “Well, duh!” not only because he was bluntly stating the obvious, but because, as Harrison told them, they have big sins, but they have a bigger Jesus.
They dynamics of all of this reflect the dynamics we see in our gospel reading for today, in spirit if not in scale. Jesus was indeed eating at a table with tax collectors and sinners. And the Pharisees, whose pursuit of righteousness had turned into a self-righteous purity cult, objected. Jesus was presenting himself as a holy man and as a teacher of Israel, and here he was rubbing elbows with sinners, sharing a meal with them.
In response to the grumbling of the Pharisees over the company he was keeping, Jesus tells two parables. (Three actually, but we only hear two of them today.) He tells a parable where a shepherd pursues a lost sheep, and when he finds it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. He calls together his friends and neighbors, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost!”
He tells another parable in which a woman loses a coin. She searches diligently for it. She lights a lamp and sweeps the floor. And when she finds it, she rejoices. She too calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost!”
With these two parables, Jesus is painting a picture of what God is up to through him, through his ministry. He is painting a picture which explains why he welcomes sinners and eats with them. He is doing so because he has come to save sinners! He has come to pursue lost sheep so that he can lay them on his shoulders and bring them home. He has come to recover the lost coin from the darkness underneath the couch, where they are stuck with the spiders and the dust bunnies. He has come to bring them out into the light. All of this is cause for rejoicing, not grumbling! “Just so, I tell you,” Jesus says, “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” This is what Jesus came to do. St. Paul says it so well in our epistle reading: “The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”
And he still is! We are here today not because we have passed some purity test. We are here because our Lord Jesus has found us. We are here because he has rescued us. We are lost sheep who keep chasing the wrong clumps of grass, but our Lord Jesus keeps on pursuing us. He gets hold of us, laying us across his shoulders, bringing us home to God. We are lost coins. We have no power of our own to roll ourselves out of the darkness under the couch, but we have been plucked up, retrieved, and held in the hand of our dear savior. All of this brings much rejoicing in heaven. It brings much rejoicing here in what should be understood as the fellowship of the found.
There should be no grumbling in the fellowship of the found. There should be no complaining that the fellowship isn’t pure enough. It is easy to make an example of Westboro Baptist Church, but I’m afraid this purity test creeps in among us too from time to time. There is a quieter version of Pharisee in each of our hearts. People grumble about those they wish were more active in the church. People grumble about those at church with personalities they don’t like, or traits they find annoying. People grumble that some at church aren’t reverent enough while others grumble that we are too reverent, too stiff and formal. People grumble about the fact that there are those at church who might think differently about politics than they do or belong to a different party. People grumble about what some people wear to church. We preach the great gospel truth that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, and then when real, actual sinners show up, people grumble!
Now it is true that part of repentance is turning away from sin. In our first reading, when God forgave the people for worshipping the golden calf, God didn’t say, “It’s okay. You can keep worshipping it if you need to. You do you.” In our epistle reading, as Paul describes his own conversion story, confessing that he had been a blasphemer and a persecutor and a man of violence, it is obvious that his repentance involved turning away from those things. There are some evil things which cannot be tolerated. When Jesus sits at the table with tax collectors and sinners, we should in no way assume that he was affirming their sin or turning a blind eye to it. Part of repentance means turning away from sin.
The greater part of repentance, however, is being turned towards. It is being turned towards the One who has come for us. It is being turned towards the shepherd who has chased us down when we were lost and wandering. The greater part of repentance is simply letting ourselves be picked up by the gracious hand which has come to pluck us out of the darkness and bring us into the light. It is the grace and mercy of our rescuer which finally starts to turn us away from sin and towards holiness of life.
But make no mistake about it – none of us ever achieve a level of purity that we no longer need that grace and mercy! None of us ever achieve a level of personal holiness such that we no longer need to be rescued. We all remain in desperate need of Christ’s forgiveness. As we say at the beginning of worship most Sundays, “If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” This is a direct quote from scripture, from 1 John 1:8, and it remains true throughout our lives. We only ever gather here as sinners, and none of us has any standing or status by which to grumble that there are other sinners here too.
The good news for all of us is that our Lord Jesus continues to eat with sinners. The reason you are here today is that Jesus is like a shepherd who pursues the lost sheep until he finds it, and then he carries it back on his own shoulders. The reason you are here today is that Jesus is like a woman who turns her house upside-down to look for a single lost coin, and will not rest until she has it back safely in her coin purse. Instead of grumbling about the other sheep in the flock or the other coins in the purse, this is reason to rejoice! God is not scandalized by the sinners who show up. God invited them! Jesus brought them here!
Do you know what God says when we grumble that there are sinners at church? God says, “Well, duh!” And our response to this should be laughter! Our response to this should be applause and joy – because that is exactly what is happening in heaven! “There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents,” Jesus says.
Let there be joy here too. Let there be rejoicing among us. For we who were lost have been found once again. Today our gracious shepherd finds us amidst the anxieties and dangers of this world. He finds us in the midst of our lostness, our wandering, our sin. He comes to us not with a scolding, but with forgiveness. Not with wrath, but with grace. He rescues us from the muck, lovingly takes us up on his strong shoulders, and carries us home to his holy flock, where, with all the other sheep, we can celebrate.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church