Get even: live long enough to be a problem to your kids.
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Atlantis: the domain of the Stingray
16Jun
2013
Sun
17:55
author: Stingray
category: Sermons
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Third Sunday after Trinity

Luke 15:1-10

Trinity III 2013 Wordle
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“This Man receives sinners and eats with them.”

Oh, those Pharisees...so right, yet they get things so wrong! We tend to pick on them a bit, don’t we? With good reason, I suppose. These are the hyper-righteous folks of Jesus’ time. They are at the temple as often as they can be. They know Moses and the Prophets forward and backward. They speak long prayers. They give generously to the temple. They teach the law without reproach. They follow the law to high precision (no, not perfectly, but nearly perfectly). This all sounds well-and-good, doesn’t it?

Well, that’s the point. It SOUNDS well-and-good. It looks pretty good, too. And that leads to a problem. The Pharisees relied on their goodness. They depended on the lie that their goodness was a means to holiness—a holiness as God would define it. They were God’s chosen people and they repaid God with their goodness, so God owed them.

Now, Jesus is on the scene. He is the Son of God, the Messiah. Though they don’t care to admit it, the Pharisees know Jesus is the fulfillment of Moses and the Prophets. He is the Coming One the Scriptures spoke of, so they need not look for or expect another (cf. Matthew 11:3); yet, somehow, they do not want this One...or another. Jesus is God, and they know it, and they reject Him for it. You see, Jesus’ coming presents a problem for the Pharisees—He disrupts the status quo, in fulfillment of the very Scriptures they sought to fulfill themselves!

Jesus receives sinners. How scandalous! Everywhere Jesus goes, He teaches the poor, attends to the needy, heals the sick, raises a few dead, and generally hangs out with the lowlifes! These are people who do not measure up to the Pharisees’ standards. These are the people the Pharisees hope would look upon THEM as an example of holy and righteous living, so that they could attain to salvation, too. Then, Jesus, the Coming One, Messiah, God’s Son, comes and does things to and for them.

What’s more, God dines with them! Outrageous! Recall the lessons from the last two weeks—to dine with God is to have God’s favor. Now, God-in-the-flesh, who is holy and just, dines with the reprobates, spurning the holy and righteous in favor of them! This just doesn’t fit, yet it does. It doesn’t fit with what the Pharisees earnestly desired and expected, yet it fits perfectly with what Moses and the Prophets said.

“This Man receives sinners and eats with them.”

Of course, Jesus addressed their concerns before.

And their scribes and the Pharisees complained against His disciples, saying, “Why do You eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus answered and said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.” (Luke 5:30-32)

In essence, Jesus tells them, “Look, you folks are alright—at least, you think you are. You demonstrate no need for Me, the Great Physician, in fact telling Me that you don’t want Me. I came to heal those that are sick, who know they are sick and cannot heal themselves—to forgive the sin and sins of those who are broken by God's Law to see that they cannot, in and of themselves, measure up to the righteous and holy standard of YHWH.”

Now, ten chapters later, they still refuse to admit it, so Jesus tells them these parables:

What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!” Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls her friends and neighbors together, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the piece which I lost!”

If you have anything, and lose even a part of it, do you not ignore everything else to search for that which you lost? That’s God in Christ Jesus seeking and saving the lost. The rest of the bunch, who have it so good that they don’t need or want to be sought or saved, are just fine (or so they think) being left for a bit. But for the one who is lost, God spares nothing, not even His Son, Jesus Christ, to seek and to save it.

This is exactly what Jesus said in another four chapters from today’s lesson. There, He was passing through Jericho. The chief tax collector there wanted to see Jesus, but he was a man of short stature. Running ahead, he climbed into a sycamore tree. Jesus, passing by, sees the man in the tree and tells him, “Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house. Having come down, Zacchaeus received Jesus joyfully. Likely, they dined together. And the people grumbled because Jesus was the guest of a man who was a sinner. Jesus responds, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham; for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” (cf. Luke 19:1-10)

“The Son of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” So zealous for the lost is He that He does not rest until the lost sheep is on his shoulders, even laying down His life for the sheep as a Good Shepherd would. Then, He rejoices for He has saved the lost. So zealous for the lost is He that He lights a lamp, sweeps the world, and carefully searches until He finds it. Then, He rejoices for He has saved the lost. The idea that our omnipotent and omnipresent God searches for the lost is confounding to us, but it should at least speak of the care, concern, love, and utter zeal that He has for the lost, as does the joy over the one sinner who repents. As I said before, God spares nothing to seek and to save the lost, not even His own Son, Jesus Christ, who gave His life as a ransom on the tree of the cross so that the lost would be found and redeemed and forgiven and justified in Him!

All of that brings me to a warning. The Pharisees are still among us. They sit, even right now, in this room. Oh, they may do a good job of hiding their contempt for Jesus, but they’re out there. These are the ones who come week after week or give generously every time they do come or try their hardest to speak about Jesus to their heathen friends and neighbors. These all sound and look well-and-good, and that leads to a problem.

Do not rely on your goodness. Your goodness is not a means to holiness, and certainly not a commodity that can be bartered with God for His favor. Do not fall into the trap of believing that because of your goodness, you have more of God’s favor than one who is less good than you.

You know the one. She comes to church maybe once a month, but she still comes when she can. He may be struggling with some pet sin, such as pornography, homosexuality, compulsive lying, and the like—and you might know about it. They don’t talk so much about Jesus beyond these walls, don’t volunteer at church functions, and may rarely be seen, if ever, outside of the Divine Service.

However, these still come, being broken under the weight of God's Law, they still repent, and they still receive the forgiveness of sins. And for each of them, as for you when you repent and receive the forgiveness of your sins, “I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

That’s the thing about the Pharisees, both in Jesus’ time and in our own presence. They need Jesus as much as the reprobates do. And Jesus gives Himself as much to them as to the reprobates.

Take Paul, for instance. When writing to the Philippians, he shared his pedigree—how righteous a Jew he was:

If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. (Philippians 3:4b-6)

If there was anyone who could boast of being good, who could thump his chest and proclaim his good deeds for all to hear and follow as an example, it was Paul, Jew of the Jews, Hebrew of the Hebrews, Pharisee of the Pharisees, zealous for God’s law, righteous and blameless. The buck stopped with him. If there was anyone who could save himself, Paul was he. And what does he say next?

But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:7-14)

Or, to sum it up as he did in his first letter to Timothy, which we heard a little while ago, “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.” (1 Timothy 1:15)

Dear fellow saints at Christ Our Savior, what a joy and privilege it is to echo those words of St. Paul. It is a faithful saying, which you can repeat: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; Christ Jesus came into the world to save me.” This, you confessed earlier today, with all of your fellow sinner-saints assembled here with you:

I, a poor, miserable sinner, confess unto Thee all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended Thee and justly deserved Thy temporal and eternal punishment. But I am heartily sorry for them and sincerely repent of them, and I pray Thee of Thy boundless mercy and for the sake of the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of Thy beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to be gracious and merciful to me, a poor, sinful being.

And the gracious words of God in Christ Jesus were spoken over you, into your ears, onto your very being, and received by your New Man created in Christ Jesus: “I...announce the grace of God unto all of you, and in the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ I forgive you all your sins....”

You were pointed to the cross of Christ, where at was won for you the forgiveness of your sins, life, and salvation. There, the zeal of God to seek and to save the lost found its fruition in the death of the Son of God. For there, with outstretched arms, pierced hands, feet, and side, Jesus sought and saved you! “It is finished!” (cf. John 19:30)

And this He gave you in the waters of Holy Baptism. Your level of goodness doesn’t matter. Your own perceived self-worth or what you believe your worthiness to God to be doesn’t matter. His zeal to seek and to save every last one of you is the same, summed up in the death of His Son Jesus Christ on the cross, and fulfilled for each one of you personally in Holy Baptism and Holy Absolution. For in those waters and in those words is given to you, personally, the merits of Jesus’ death and resurrection, apart from any work, goodness, or righteousness in yourself, and even in spite of it, you could say. It is as St. Paul wrote,

But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:21-26, emphasis mine)

You are justified, declared righteous, for Jesus' sake, whether you are a Pharisee among us or a reprobate, or anything in between. All of you alike are sinners, and Jesus Christ has come into the world to save sinners—to save you, and He has! Believe this; you can take it to your graves!

“This Man receives sinners and eats with them.”

We can’t go this far without paying attention to where Jesus receives sinners and eats with them, still. Because, in a little while, Jesus will receive you at the rail to His altar and give you of His body to eat and blood to drink. On the night when He was betrayed, Jesus said, “With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. Take this and divide it among yourselves; for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” (Luke 22:15-18) Then, He suffered, died, was buried, rose again, and ascended into Heaven. There, in glorious eternity, He feasts in the fulfillment of the Passover which is His feast of victory. And he eats with you, giving you a foretaste of that feast of victory, receiving you at His Holy Communion where He is both host and food.

Dear hearers, you who by faith have heard and received the Word of God—you have heard, now rejoice, over the zeal that your God and Savior, Jesus Christ, has to seek and to save you. For, you have heard and received and been broken by the Law which declares you unrighteous before God and His angels for your own sake, and you have heard and received the Gospel which declares you justified before God and His angels for Jesus’ sake. There is much joy in the presence of the angels of God over you, who have repented, because you are forgiven for all of your sins.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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