Trinity 3

Luke 15:1-10 - Trinity Three - June 21, 2015
Rejoicing in Heaven

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Impenitence is man’s work.  Repentance is God’s work.  This is important to know.  When we sin, it is our fault.  When we turn back to God, it is God’s gracious work.  Jesus tells two parables to illustrate this point.  The first parable of the lost sheep shows us the problem we have as poor miserable sinners.  We got ourselves into the trouble we need to be rescued from.  All we like sheep have gone astray.  The second parable of the lost coin shows us the power we have as poor sinful beings.  We have no power to get ourselves out of the fix we are in.  A coin does nothing to get itself found.  In both parables Christ presents himself as the one who searches out the object of his love.  He is the main character in both. 

The word “repent” simply means to turn, or to change your mind.  But in order for there to be a turning away from what is evil and harmful, there must be something that is good and beneficial to turn towards.  Repentance is not simply turning away from sin.  It is also turning in faith and trust toward him who forgives us our sin.  In fact, there is no real turning from sin unless we also turn to him who takes our sin away.  The Pharisees imagined that they could do the first part of repentance without the second.  They thought they had turned from their sin without a savior from their sin.  They were their own saviors.  But they had deceived themselves. 

They saw sinners gathered about Jesus.  They weren’t wrong.  They saw tax collectors whose sin was obvious and offensive and also quite harmful to others.  They saw adulterers and fornicators who had made a mockery of the beautiful and life-giving institution of marriage that we also see assaulted today.  They saw sloppy drunks and wife beaters and lazy fathers who didn’t teach their children how to be decent, God-fearing people.  They saw phony beggars who took advantage of mercy with no real gratitude.  They saw those whose lives and very existence were a scourge and stain on the good order of all that is worth defending.  They saw what each of us would be dead right in identifying as the general trash of society that is sinful and unclean. 

Jesus didn’t argue with their assessment.  And he won’t argue with ours.  There’s nothing wrong with speaking out against these sins, or even working to punish them, or to discourage such shameful behavior in others.  After all, we are to teach our children to avoid these kinds of lifestyles.  St. Paul says that he who does the things these people were publicly known to do don’t inherit the kingdom of God.  God insists that pastors be blameless and above reproach, and that they run their households with honor precisely so that we as Christians might know what kind of outward life pleases God and is fitting for saints. 

The problem with the Pharisees was not that they identified sin, or even that they identified who it was who was committing these sins.  The problem with the Pharisees and scribes is that they failed to identify the same problem within themselves.  They thought their problem was external, and so they were satisfied with an external solution.  But their problem ran far deeper.  Repentance is not merely turning away from something outside of us.  Jesus says that that which defiles a man comes from his own heart.  Repentance is turning away from yourself.  It is acknowledging your own desire for the things that less disciplined sinners indulge in.  It is knowing that we are all formed from the same lump of clay and that no temptation overcomes one that is not common to all. 

Every one of us is a sheep in need of a shepherd.  So here is our problem: We wander.  We err.  We look for greener pastures.  We seek satisfaction where there is none to be found – whether this is in cheap booze that intoxicates the mind and ruins the body, or else in the pride that intoxicates the soul and hurls a man into hell.  Sheep seek, in one form or another, what cannot satisfy and make whole.  They seek what they want outside of themselves only to fulfill the sinful desire for pleasure or power or public respect that burns on the inside.  And of this every one of us is guilty as sin.  We are sheep in desperate need of a shepherd. 

But Christ seeks us.  He seeks to help us.  He does not rely on how we make him feel.  Our sin offends him, to be sure.  That’s how he felt – if we want to know and consider it —: the eternal God who hates sin was in the flesh surrounded by sinners.  As a righteous Man, he had more cause than any Pharisee to be grossed out and angered by the things that our hearts imagine and desire.  But these are not the feelings he consulted when glancing on us poor sinners.  Rather, he consulted the word of God that teaches plainly the purpose for which he was sent.  God sent his Son to seek and save sinners, not to condemn them.  The word of God gave him a more overwhelming feeling – if you will – than any disgust at our sin.  Because the same word of God that condemns our sin is the word of God that appointed God’s Son from eternity as the Christ and promised from the beginning that he would rescue us by bearing our sin and by clothing us in his own innocence.  What he felt was compassion – compassion that swallows up all wrath.   

But compassion alone does not free us from our sin.  It is the plan and action combined with his compassion.  Jesus’ compassion for us was not a mere stirring within his human heart.  It was the eternal love that has always existed in the heart of God.  This love is the very essence of God.  And this love was turned toward us.  Moved by compassion that was first expressed to Adam and Eve whom God clothed in the Garden, Jesus sought for himself the penalty for our sin.  He sought to take our place under the law and to bear God’s wrath.  And so he came in our likeness, not wearing the skin of an animal that covered shame, but assuming the flesh and blood of man, yet without sin.  He sought to offer his holy life into death in order that our lives might be spared and our shame might be covered by what God is eternally pleased with.  God is pleased with the obedient life of Christ Jesus his Son. 

Our Lord’s compassion for sinners did not ignore that other feeling – that feeling of anger and disgust toward sin.  Oh, no.  He took it fully into account.  This feeling, too, was not a mere human annoyance like what we experience when someone does us wrong.  It was the divine hatred of all sin.  It is just as real as his love.  God hates what is not pure love.  But in compassion for us, Christ chose to bear that anger and disgust under the mighty hand of God on the cross.  He who is God from eternity, became nothing.  He humbled himself not only to be seen with sinners, but to become the only sinner there is, as all shame and blame was piled on him, and as every angry glance from heaven was zeroed in on his sacred body and soul. 

This is what compassion brought him to.  That stirring in his human heart was the same longing from eternity to bring you back to himself.  Divine compassion brought the Lord of glory to be made sin in order that we might become the righteousness of God in him.  And we are.  We receive his righteousness, because the one who ate and drank with sinners is also the one who ate the bread of sorrow and drank the cup of God’s wrath in our place.  And this One, by suffering and dying for you, revealed God’s love by bearing his hatred.  This One was raised in glory and seated at the right hand of God on high.  He who was humbled by his own desire to save us was exalted by his Father who accepted his perfect sacrifice and caused unending rejoicing in heaven.  Christ was exalted because all sins were paid for.  He was exalted to prove it.  But he was exalted also so that he might exalt us. 

In the meantime, as we lay hold of our own exaltation only by faith in him, we must learn as Christ did, to be humbled under the mighty hand of our gracious Father.  For this is how he brings us to glory. 

He eats with sinners not to minimize our sin.  He eats with sinners in order to show us our sin.  And to direct us to himself who has borne it.  It is by eating with us – that is, being with us, feeding us, teaching us to pray and accepting our prayers, teaching us the word of God, to hold on to it and love it – it is by making his dwelling with us that he seeks us out and brings us home.  He does that here.  He teaches us the law so that we might see and know how lost we are.  Look around you dear lambs.  Look where you have wandered.  Check your heart, dear sheep of the Good Shepherd.  See what desires have led you from heeding his voice and learning it.  Acknowledge where you have failed to please God and obey him.  Own your sin.  See where you have not honored the marriage bed with straying desires.  See where you have dishonored your parents by rolling your eyes at what they have taught you.  See where you have not loved your spouse or where you have failed to teach your children.  See where you have sought the numbing intoxication of alcohol rather than the rewarding satisfaction of mental exercise.  See your sin.  And you will see your Savior. 

The very fact that this Shepherd of our souls seeks to eat with us today is evidence alone that we have sorely strayed and need to be carried home.  Christ teaches you the law so that you might know what the scribes and Pharisees were too blind to see.  He teaches you what makes God angry, so that you might lay aside all pretense to strength and piety, and learn to depend only on him who lovingly seeks you out in the proclamation of the gospel. 

This is how he lays you on his shoulders.  He forgives you.  It is done.  He has found you.  There is no mention in Jesus’ parable of the long arduous journey back home or the difficulty the sheep faces in leaving his life of sin.  There is only rejoicing.  He has found you.  You are safe.  God is so happy when he forgives you your sins.  And when God is happy, the angels are happy.  When God is happy, we are happy. 

And it is in this joy that the angels share with us that we find the strength to please God with our thoughts, words, and deeds.  It is not in trepidation and fear that we must still earn the last bit of God’s approval.  We have God’s favor.  We rest on the shoulders of him who bore the cross in our place.  He does not condemn us.  He rescues us.  Herein we find the power to live as children of God.  Children of God repent of their sins by the grace of God.  They repent – they turn – because the free forgiveness of the gospel alone gives us something to turn towards. 

He is our treasure.  He gives us our value.  Our value is not found in our ability to ponder our sin and feel sufficiently bad for it.  Our value is found exclusively in the blood of Jesus that bought us.  He seeks us like a woman seeks for her lost coin.  A coin has no ability to turn in on itself let alone find itself.  It does no self-examination.  The value of a coin is not in its self-reflection, but in the price that another places on it.  This teaches us where repentance is found.  It is not in the sparkling effort we exert to be faithful Christians.  It is found where our Lord lights the lamp of his word in order to find us who are otherwise hidden and lost in darkness.  He sweeps away all pride like dust from the floor.  He rules this world in power like a woman who puts her house in order —that is, he does it all for one simple and solitary purpose – that he might find that which is lost.  How can we trust in our own thoughts and discipline when all events in creation are directed to accomplish what we cannot?  God seeks our repentance.  And so it is he who works repentance in us. 

The mighty hand of God humbles us.  But it also raises us.  It is God who teaches us to be sorry for our sins.  And it is God who teaches us to rejoice in the forgiveness of our sins.  Our safety as his dear lambs – as far as we may wander – is found in the fact that he seeks us where his voice is heard.  Our value as his treasure is found in the fact that he rejoices to find us.  To him alone be the glory.  And that we might never forget it, we pray that the work of Christ be gravened on our hearts as an eternal seal of God’s love and favor: 

On my heart imprint Thine image, blessed Jesus, King of grace,
That life’s riches, cares, and pleasures have no pow’r Thee to efface. 
This the superscription be: Jesus crucified for me
Is my life, my hope’s foundation, and my glory and salvation.  Amen.