Sermons

Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity

Sunday 16th September at 8am and 6.30pm

Maureen Williams
Readings: Luke 15: 1-10

The Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin

None of us can escape criticism. Anyone who stands up and does something, stands the risk of being criticised. We can be criticised fairly and unfairly. If we feel we have had enough, give up and decide to retreat, then we shall be criticised for doing nothing. We can't escape criticism. But sometimes, criticism has an uncanny way of bringing out the best in people. In the reading from Luke, when Jesus faces criticism of his every word and move, he responds with two stories that teach us so much about his ministry and mission - that to him PEOPLE MATTER and he has come from the Father for the specific purpose of seeking them out.

It all began with 'grumbling' 'muttering', perhaps hoping they would be overheard. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were agitated by Jesus' choice of friends, They thought they had him in an embarrassing position - in the company of tax collectors and those they called 'outcasts', people who might have been immoral but also might have had occupations that made them unclean, unable to keep to the letter of the law. But to their horror, they discover that Jesus does not just tolerate them, he actively welcomes them - goes out of his way to welcome people who ordinarily would expect rejection. More than that, he eats with them. In Jesus' culture, sharing a table implied more than just a meal, but welcome and recognition as well. To the religious elite, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, they were untouchable, impure by the definition of Jewish law.

But are people any different today? Is there still a danger of being too rigid in the interpretation of faith? A Hasidic Jew was asked about the Reformed branches of the Jewish faith and replied that to him there was only one category of true Jews. He believed that he represented the observant, traditional remnant of true Judaism. There is a danger here for Christians. It is a great sadness when some parts of the Christian church feel unable to work ecumenically with other members of the Christian family because of a different interpretation of faith.

What is our ministry about? Our mission statement is that St Edmund's 'seeks to be a WELCOMING Christian community'. We are not perfect, we continue to make mistakes, we are not as welcoming as we should be, but we are actively seeking, by choice, to 'include' rather than 'exclude'; to be a church which makes room for all, because we believe that God loves and accepts people, not on condition that they first repent and reform but precisely because God loves us unconditionally. He loves us whatever our background may be; whatever our failings and the mistakes we make we are loved, and through Jesus he seeks to search us out to include us in his family.

In the reading, Jesus is mixing with people who must have felt the failure of never being accepted, never included, even ground down by the feeling of being separated from God's love and concern. So Jesus tells them three parables about what is 'lost' and then 'found' and the joy in the finding. We heard the first two stories today - the lost sheep and the lost coin and later in the chapter there is the story of the lost son.

If we place them side by side, they might not seem to be worth very much - a sheep, a small coin, a feckless young man. But their value is that they belong to someone. Somebody cares about them and what is lost, with effort and searching, can be found. God longs for those who are lost, people who are unaware of, or reject, his love.
John ch3 - v16 says, - 'For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life.' And the next verse which we hear less frequently, 'God did not send his Son into the world to be its judge, but to be its Saviour.' God so yearns for people who are lost that he was prepared, in Jesus, to go to great personal cost to win them back. The Pharisees' God seems standoffish and passive. Jesus shows us an active and generous God, a search and rescue God.

Is our God the one Jesus showed? Because has been necessary in this time without a vicar, we have had to be inward-looking, to consider what is important to us in our church and what attributes we would like to see in a new incumbent. Does this mean that we been polishing safe coins recently? Or giving the 'inside sheep' more care than they need? The gospels, and this reading, show God's heart for those outside, the people he longs to reach out to. Archbishop William Temple had a clear conviction of this when he said that 'The Church exists for the benefit of those who don't belong to it'.

How we view these parables has a lot to do with how we view mission. Is our job to take care of the needs of people already in our church family? Surely, there can be no doubt about that. It is no good reaching out to others if we fail to love and nurture those already with us. But there are people in our own families, in our streets or at work who seldom come to church and have no commitment to faith? What about their spiritual welfare? Don't we have a commitment to them as well?

We can find an answer in the rest of our mission statement that, 'St Edmund's seeks to be committed to exploring our faith in Jesus Christ and SHARING IT WITH THE WIDER WORLD'. Our church's call is to mission, to bring God's love and care to people and places where he is not known, to rejoice in the fact that he loves them and, in Jesus, is actively seeking them. In Chapter 19, Luke tells us that 'The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost'. We were lost sheep until Jesus found us. The communion liturgy reminds us that 'when we were still far off you met us in your Son and brought us home'. Now, we are called to be the shepherds sent to seek out his other sheep and rejoice when those sheep are found.

To a great Jewish scholar, this was the one absolutely new thing that Jesus taught about God - that he actually searches for people. As his followers, our challenge is to be true to our mission statement that we seek to share our faith with the wider world. As we strive to achieve the right emphasis and balance as Jesus did, we shall no doubt attract the same criticism. But this is a commitment and responsibility that we are called to share.

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay