September 14, 2025
Pentecost 14/ Proper 19, Year C
The Rev. Dr. Elaine Ellis Thomas
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Essex CT
Jeremiah 4:11-12,22-28; Psalm 14; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10
(Our new bible study series on the parables of Jesus in Luke’s gospel does not reach chapter fifteen until this week, so I’m afraid this sermon does not benefit from the wisdom of that group. It will be interesting to see what kind of discussions we have about today’s gospel on Tuesday, and just a note, if you’d like to join the fun, come to the parish hall at 10:00am.)
This 15th chapter of Luke contains three of the most beloved parables we have – a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost brother (or two). It is not the direction one might have expected Jesus to go as a response to the grumbling of the religious leaders: “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:2). And then we read these parables that follow and imagine ourselves as the lost ones that our beloved Jesus comes and carries home, and I’m not sure that we are fully aware that we are doing what the young folk call a “self-own” because if this is about sitting down at the table, and we’re the ones he’s sitting down with, then we are the sinners, y’all.
The language of sin has pretty much fallen out of fashion these days. We don’t like to think of ourselves as sinners. A little broken, maybe, or occasionally we make a mistake, but sin? It sounds so Puritanical.
But we just heard in the first letter to Timothy that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” (1:15), and I certainly hope Jesus came into the world to save me. Because like it or not, I am a sinner. We all are, like it or not, and we cannot save ourselves, but it is Christ Jesus who has set us free (see Romans 8:1).
But what does it even mean? Sin?
Well, when I meet with families who bring their children for baptism, just like I did with little MacKenzie’s parents, I go through some of the words contained in the baptism liturgy like our theology of baptism that says that our sins are washed away in the waters of baptism, that this child has died to sin and risen to new life, and they’re looking at their precious, innocent baby wondering what the heck I’m talking about. And I tell them, look around. Your child has been born into a sin-filled world where empathy has somehow become a failing and where no one can feel safe in a crowd or a school or even a church because we have made an idol of the 2nd Amendment. This world is sinful and children are born into it, but in baptism, we are affirming that we die to the ways of this world and rise to a life that is about loving God and loving our neighbor, sharing a meal with those who are rejected, judged, and despised, and risking it all to find the ones who are lost.
And if all this sounds like a real downer this morning, here’s the Good News: the parables are, first and foremost, about a God who does the outrageous, the unimaginable, and the unexpected, and then throws a party to celebrate. There is no length to which God will not go to bring us into the fold.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu used to say that we see all these images of Jesus with a gentle lamb draped over his shoulders, but docile little lambs are not the ones who go off and get themselves lost. No, it’s the mean, cantankerous rams covered in mud and brambles, biting and kicking all the way home. They’re the ones that go wandering off, headstrong, following their own desires, and when the bleeding and bruised shepherd gets that ram back home, he says, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost” (Luke 15:6). But when those listening to Jesus hear this nonsense about leaving a perfectly good flock of 99 sheep to go after just one, as if anyone would notice that one was missing, they would not have been able to imagine such a thing. And the woman who searches high and low for a single coin and then goes and blows it all and then some on a party to celebrate? Those around Jesus would have been doubled over with laughter. Preposterous!
But that’s who God is. God risked everything to find us, even God’s very self in the person of Jesus. And when all of it was finished, God said, “Rejoice!”
Given the troubling news in our world today whether in Utah or Colorado or Ukraine or Gaza, we are being invited to take a risk, to leave the sure thing of 99 sheep or the 9 coins in our pocket and do the outrageous thing of going out and finding the lost ones. And maybe we are sometimes the ones that are lost and need someone to come find us and bring us home rejoicing.
So, we come here today to be reminded of our baptism, to be strengthened in the sacrament of Christ’s body and blood to go out into the world living lives that demonstrate the unexpected, outrageous, prodigal love of God. Because God knows this world needs more of that.