“God’s Lost and Found Department ”
Luke 15:1-10

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Pastor Kevin Vogts
Trinity Lutheran Church
Paola, Kansas
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost—September 15, 2013

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Our text is today’s Gospel Reading, two parables Jesus tells about, “God’s Lost and Found Department.”

“Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep.”  Throughout the Old and New Testaments, the one image used most to symbolize the relationship between God and his people is a Shepherd and his sheep.  “We are his people,” Psalm 100 says, “and the sheep of his pasture.”  Jacob describes the Lord as “the Shepherd . . . of Israel.”  Joseph says, “God has been my shepherd all my life to this day.”  Jeremiah says, “He will watch over his flock like a shepherd.”  Isaiah says, “He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart.”  And, of course Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.”

Isaiah tells us, “We all like sheep have gone astray.”  Sheep are notorious for straying and getting lost, and we all like sheep have strayed spiritually.  If left to ourselves we would be lost forever.  But, the parable Jesus tells about the lost sheep harkens back to the Lord’s promise in today’s Old Testament Reading from Ezekiel: “’As a shepherd seeks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I seek out my sheep and rescue them . . . I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down,’ declares the Sovereign Lord. . .  ‘I will search for the lost and bring back the strays.’”

Micah prophesies the coming of the Good Shepherd, the Messiah: “He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.  And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth.  And he will be their peace.”

“I am the Good Shepherd,” Jesus says, “and I lay down my life for the sheep.”  Your Good Shepherd loves you so much that he laid down his life you, by his sacrifice paying the penalty of your sins and earning you forgiveness, bringing you back and giving you a place again in God’s flock.  As Peter says, “You were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”

“Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep.”  Jesus is the Good Shepherd, and in his preaching recorded in the Gospels, and in the writings of his Apostles, Jesus’ followers are often described as his “flock.”  Jesus says, “Do not fear, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.”  And Paul tells the pastors at Ephesus that they are like undershepherds of the Good Shepherd, “Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers.  Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.”

So, the “hundred sheep” in the parable is the Church, Christ’s followers on earth.  This parable isn’t about those outside the Church, being found by the Good Shepherd and then coming to faith in him.  This parable is about us, within the Church, and what God’s attitude is toward us when we go astray.

“Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them.”  In one of our other orders of service we quote the Apostle John in the confession of sins, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”  John was writing those words to Christians.  We should not think that as Christians we are now immune to the disease of sin.  We do have assurance of the ultimate cure for sin, in heaven.  But, until then, as long as we remain in this life, we are only in remission.  Our sin sickness is always with us, and along the way to heaven sin can and does erupt in our lives again.

As Paul says in Romans, “What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? No, not at all! We have already made the charge that . . . all alike are under sin.”  Luther puts it this way in the Small Catechism, “For we sin much daily, and deserve nothing but punishment.”  That is why we begin our worship services with a confession of sins: “I, a poor, miserable sinner, confess unto you all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended you and justly deserved your temporal and eternal punishment.”

Paul says in 2 Timothy, “If we are faithless, he will remain faithful.”  That is the point Jesus is getting across with the two parables in today’s Gospel Reading: “If we are faithless, he will remain faithful.”  Do not fear that when you fall he will turn you away in anger.  “Whoever comes to me,” Jesus says, “I will never drive away.”  As the Apostle John continues, “But if we confess our sins, God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

“Dear children,” John says, “I write this to you so that you will not sin.  But if anybody does sin, we have an Advocate who speaks to the Father in our defense-Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.  He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

That is the point of the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin in today’s Gospel Reading, and also the third parable immediately following which Jesus told that day about God’s attitude toward those who go astray, the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  With these three parables, Jesus is assuring his followers, “Whoever comes to me I will never drive away.”  Paul puts it this way in Galatians, “Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should gently restore him.”

“Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear him.  But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law complained, saying, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’”  Sometimes people both within and outside the Church get the same distorted idea the Pharisees had in today’s Gospel Reading, that the church should have a sign above the door which says, “Sinners Need Not Apply.” “So he spoke to them this parable.”

With these parables, Jesus is telling us that over the door of this church there could instead be a sign which says, “God’s Lost and Found Department.”  For, that’s really what the Church is.  Here today Jesus once again “welcomes sinners and eats with them.”  Like the shepherd rejoicing to find his lost sheep, like the woman rejoicing to find her lost coin, like the father rejoicing to welcome home his lost son, when you go astray your Savior rejoices to forgive you and receive you back again.  “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”