September 14, 2025, Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
“Rejoice With Me!”
Psalm 119:169-176; Ezekiel 34:11-17; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10
Divine Service III, no Communion
Hymns… #723 “Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven”; #740 “I Am Jesus’ Little Lamb”; #811 “Oh, That I Had a Thousand Voices”; #813 “Rejoice, O Pilgrim Throng”
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
There was a young man named Saul once. Saul was “livin’ the life” man; he was young and ambitious, and his future was bright. He’d been to the finest religious college of his day, and He’d done well; he was a star student, graduated at the top of his class. Now he was gaining the respect of the higher ups in the church and in his religious community. Everyone said, “That young man is going places.” He had it all lined up; he was getting promotions, and climbing the ecclesiastical ladder, and looking forward to all the power and wealth and money that went along with being “in with the in crowd.” Saul was going to be somebody.
But for all his success, his life was joyless; something was missing. Saul could talk about God, and quote you anything from His Word. He could give you an answer to any religious question you cared to ask. And his fellow priests and church leaders claimed to know everything there was to know about God, just ask them; but they were hard and bitter and joyless too. Saul was zealous for God and for keeping all the rules and regulations that went along with his religion - but he didn’t even know who God was.
Now there had been a man in Saul’s day who claimed to be sent from God - who claimed to be God’s Son, in fact; and the Jews killed Him for that. And now it was being told all over that that Man had come back from the dead. And Saul was given the task of rounding up anyone believing and following that Man, and throwing them in prison and having them put to death. And that’s what he was doing when God came to find him.
Saul the Pharisee was a truly awful person, cruel and joyless and loveless and lost. And yet, out of all the people in this world He could have chosen, God pointed at him and said, “That’s the man I want! I want him to be Mine!” Why God would do that, I don’t know; and Saul didn’t know why either. What we do know is that Jesus Christ came to find him, while he was on the road to Damascus to round up more Christians to kill. And Jesus knocked him off his high horse, and said from up above, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” Saul was left temporarily blind by that encounter; but in the end, God opened his heart, and the bitterness went out, and forgiveness and joy were poured in instead.
You can read about Saul’s conversion and his life in the Book of Acts, and in all the letters he wrote to the churches that he started in Jesus’ name all over the world; Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, and all the rest. (God gave him a new name, and called him Paul from then on; St. Paul, we call him). We can get the gist of it, I think, in what Paul wrote in that reading we had from First Timothy 1:
“I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me faithful, appointing me to his service. Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners--of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display His unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on Him and receive eternal life. Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.”
God is so good! While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. He pursued a sinner like Paul and brought him back to Himself. He even found a use for a lost sheep of a sinner like me. This is what God does; this is His essence; this is His “Good Shepherd” self in all its glory. "I Myself will search for My sheep and look after them,” He says in the reading we heard from Ezekiel. “I will rescue them… I will bring them out of the darkness… I will gather them… I will search for the lost and bring back the strays, and bind up the injured and strengthen the weak.”
That “Man” Saul the Pharisee once persecuted was Jesus, and He was and He is the Son of God, the Messiah, the Christ, the Savior of the world, who came to this world to die for the sake of Paul’s sins and your sins and mine. And He was raised from the dead after three days in His tomb, to bring us life, and light, and hope… and joy!
In our Gospel reading in Luke 15, all the tax collectors and sinners - all the outcasts and losers and reprobates that those high and mighty church people would have nothing to do with - were gathered around to hear Jesus. And He was glad, He was more than happy, to sit down with them and talk with them. “The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost,” after all.
But the Pharisees and scribes and law teachers saw that, and they muttered and grumbled and complained, because that’s what they did. “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them. Ewwww…” That was against their rules, against their “holy law.” To associate with “unclean sinners,” to sit with them, to touch them, to even eat with them, for goodness sake, would make you unclean, too. Their rules were important to them; so important, in fact, that the rules meant more to them than the people right in front of them who were hurting and sad and in trouble and needed saving. Jesus told them in another place, “It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.”
The parable Jesus tells them in answer to that is about the joy God has in finding lost sheep, and how that should be our greatest joy as well. The truth is, there are no tax collectors and sinners in God’s eyes. No one is irredeemable, no one is beyond hope, no one is so lost in sin that God in His mercy can’t find them and make them His own again. But for us to take part in the joyful work of doing that, we have to be willing to find them, sit down with them, talk to them, even share our food. “Jesus sinners doth receive” – and so should we.
Now remember, Jesus is a Good Shepherd, and His parable is about a Shepherd who is good. Not a shepherd who’s cold and callous and doesn’t care about the sheep, but a Shepherd who knows His sheep and loves them and calls them each by name. So suppose, just suppose, that you have a hundred sheep, and one of them gets lost. You don’t just shrug your shoulders and say, “Oh, well; what does one sheep matter, more or less,” do you? For a Good Shepherd, it’s personal. It’s not just any old sheep that’s missing; it’s my Tom or Bob or Mary or Larry or John. I’m not looking for some nameless sheep, I’m looking for a lost child. Jesus is trying to tell us about the heart of God.
And when He finds it – oh, hallelujah, when He finds it - He doesn’t yell or scold or condemn or punish the poor thing. (It’s only a sheep, after all). No, He joyfully puts it up on His shoulders and carries it home. If we want to talk metaphors here (and metaphors are what parables are), there are two different things that “home” can be.
One meaning is “home to God’s Church.” Home to worship, home to the blessed Sacraments, home to the blessed fellowship and to the love of God’s people, home to the place we call “God’s flock.” Those of us who come regularly to this place know about the love we have here for one another. There’s no other place on earth where you can find a thing like that. Thank You, Jesus, for bringing me here; my life would be joyless and sad without it. “Lord, I love the habitation of Your house and the place where Your glory dwells.”
The other meaning of Jesus carrying us “home,” of course, is about our home in Heaven. Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home! This little sheep is going home on Jesus’ shoulders one day. And when Jesus comes walking through those gates, with me up on His shoulders, there’s going to be a celebration up in Heaven, in His honor and in mine.
I do need to point out that when Jesus mentions “ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent” here, He’s putting “righteous” in parentheses. He’s looking right at the Pharisees when He says those words. If anyone thinks they don’t need to repent, they’re not really righteous at all; self-righteous, maybe, but not righteous in God’s eyes. The only way for us to be righteous is to confess our sins and ask God for forgiveness, and to be washed in the precious blood of Jesus Christ; righteousness comes only by faith. Heaven rejoices over every sinner, over every lost sheep, who repents and comes home. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me; I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind, but now I see.”
The woman with the ten silver coins is the same lesson, told a slightly different way.
Her response is just the same as the sheep-finding Shepherd: “Rejoice with me! I have found my lost coin!”
Jesus says, “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." Church, calling sinners to repentance is what God has put us here on earth for. It’s our mission and our calling, and the source of our everlasting joy. May what we say, and what we do, and who we reach and touch with the Good News about Jesus, cause all heaven to rejoice. May our witness and our love and our kindness make Heaven’s angels sing. May Jesus find us rejoicing, and working for Him with joy, when He comes for us at last. In Jesus’ name; Amen.