Sermon: Cathedral Eucharist Trinity 16

Preacher:

Date:

Sunday 15th September 2013

Readings:

Luke 15: 1-10

1 Timothy 1: 12-17

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

Upon my bed at night
I sought him whom my soul loves;
I sought him, but found him not;
I called him, but he gave no answer.
I will rise now and go about the city,
In the streets and in the squares;
I will seek him whom my soul loves’. (Song of Songs 3.1, 2)

Passionate desire and fervent searching is a feature of the Song of Songs a little of which I have just read. The same is true of our two gospel parables this morning. Those two parables are labelled in my Bible ‘The Parable of the Lost Sheep and ‘The Parable of the Lost Coin’. But those labels don’t do justice to the essence of either parable. Better to label them, ‘The Parable of the Seeking Shepherd’ and ‘The Parable of the Searching Woman’. Or, but this gets a bit long winded, the parables that show that God is always seeking out the lost, people like you and me, and will never rest until we have repented and come back to him, which is when we will join him at the most lavish banquet where the angels will rejoice, and no one is outside his love.

Okay, that’s not a succinct headline. The complexity and depth of these parables is inexhaustible. They evade a simple headline, and as soon as we think we have pinned them down, there is always more to be said or reflected upon.

You could reflect on the lost sheep itself. On its own perhaps it had a great time: there’s a lot more grass when there aren’t ninety nine others all trying to eat it. You don’t have to follow them all the time; you can throw off your reputation for being a dumb follower of other sheep: you’re free. Perhaps it wasn’t so great being a lost sheep. Perhaps it was very hard, especially knowing that the other ninety nine all safely back in the sheep fold, tucked in for the night, appreciating that little bit more space they had now. Perhaps it started to get rather cold out there, lost, without the other ninety nine to give some warmth. How am I, how are you, a lost sheep?

Or the shepherd. Perhaps we make a link with the pastoral ministry of the Church. We think of Christ the Good Shepherd and the ways in which we seek to model that pastoral care and attention focused on the ministry of the Bishop, bearing the pastoral staff, the shepherd’s crook. Perhaps we think of the ministry of priests and deacons, and all well and good, so long as we don’t abdicate responsibility for the pastoral care that each of us in the Body of Christ should have of the other, or indeed delegate it solely to the clergy. How am I, how are you, a good shepherd?

Or the coin. The coin is not just a bit of loose change that the woman has lost. The ten coins are the totality of that woman’s money and savings and disposable income. She has lost a tenth of her financial resources: and a tenth is a tithe. This alerts us to the call to generosity in our lives, and that generosity brings its own delight and rejoicing in ways we cannot begin to predict or comprehend. What can I, what can you, spare from the gifts given to us?

These two parables evade a neat category or a handy headline. It’s not the devil in the detail of these parables; it is God in the detail.

The parables lead us deep into the heart of God, a heart yearning passionately for you, for me in which each of us will find healing and true fulfilment. This is not a clasping, grasping love or manipulative desire: it is love beyond control. It is a love that allows us, like the sheep, to wander and stray or, like the coin, to hide away. But it is also a love that seeks, just as the sheep is part of the flock: we are fulfilled in our relationships within the Body of Christ. The coin is unproductive lost under a wardrobe gathering dust, but is now employed in God’s economy of love.

Both parables end in the scene of utter delight and wonder and rejoicing that that which was lost now is found, ‘just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’ (Luke 15.10)

In the gospels repentance always trumps righteousness, because repentance leads to righteousness which is having a right relationship with God. Funny though, neither the lost sheep not the coin repented. Repentance is the journey we make in response to being sought out. It depends on God’s grace and our willing response.

So being right with God can never be something we are triumphant about, but only something others can rejoice in, like the angels. Hence why it is through the death of the Good Shepherd, the Lamb of God, that the depths of God’s searching, seeking, initiative taking love for his creatures is revealed. We must never create a lost sheep, or scapegoat, driven from the Father’s presence. We human beings drove out the Lamb of God, and by his death no victim can be driven away from God again.

So we come to the banquet to which we return as repentant sinners, the Eucharist. And, as the Book of Common Prayer puts it, we come as people who ‘have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep’. Our liturgy begins with confession, time for repentance and amendment of life as we seek forgiveness from God who has already sought us out and brought us home. Hearing God’s word tells us of his mercy, love and call to repentance.

At the feeding of the multitude, the 5,000, loaves and fishes are shared and very deliberately Jesus tells his disciples when all were satisfied, ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost’. (John 6.12) The vision of the Kingdom of God which the parables herald and the Eucharist - with ‘angels and archangels’ - prefigures is of a creation renewed and nothing lost and all restored in the fullness of creation. No one is destined to be lost; no one can be pushed away from God.