Proud and lost or humble and found

Sermon for Trinity 3

1 Peter 5:6-11  +  Luke 15:1-10

Luke 15 is the “lost and found” chapter of the Bible. Here, Jesus tells three parables about lost and found. You heard two of them today. The parable of the lost son comes after the lost sheep and the lost coin. All three of them emphasize the lostness of sinners and the zeal of the Lord God to find all who are lost.

But there are two ways to be lost, and they both have to do with pride. Peter wrote in today’s Epistle, Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time. Where there is humility, there God can raise a person up. But where there is pride—pride in one’s sin, or pride in oneself—there God will tear the pride-filled person down. One day, that tearing down of the proud will be permanent; they’ll be lost forever. But for now, for a little while longer, God still tears down the proud with His Word, so that they may become humble, so that they may be found. Proud and lost, or humble and found. Those are the two possibilities we encounter in today’s Gospel.

We’re introduced to the first group of proud and lost people in the first verse of Luke 15, the tax collectors and sinners. As you know, the tax collectors in Israel at that time were thieves, extortioners, and traitors to their fellow Israelites. And the “sinners” were the well-known public sinners, prostitutes and drunks and people with a bad reputation. For a time, they had been proud of their sins. They had flaunted their sins. They had been too proud to repent, too proud to listen to the God in whom they had grown up believing, like so many today who refuse to admit that their sinful lifestyles are actually sinful and wicked. Our city, for example, like so many cities across the country, is proud of its support of the sin of homosexuality and the perversion of gender. It’s proud of what it calls tolerance and progress in the acceptance of these sexual perversions that God hates. It proudly displays the rainbow and trans flags that proclaim and advertise their defiance of God, their Creator and Redeemer. And they even acknowledge it as “pride.” Truly all who engage in or who support and promote such pride, such wickedness, are lost. And they will be judged and eternally condemned.

Unless they do as the tax collectors and sinners did in today’s Gospel. All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to hear Jesus. Yes, He condemned their sins, but He also held out hope to them as He called them to repentance and offered the forgiveness of sins to all who would seek it from God through Him. He depicted them as the one sheep that had strayed from the other ninety-nine. And He presented Himself as the shepherd in His parable, who was determined to go out to search for them and find them and carry them home on His shoulders. These tax collectors and sinners, who had been lost, were in the process of being found by Jesus, and He was happy to have them with Him.

As He would be happy to have any sinner today become part of His holy Christian Church. He would be happy to receive the LGBTQ people in our city. He would be happy to receive a woman who has slaughtered her baby in her womb. He would be happy to have the porn stars, and the porn users, and the drug addicts, and the rapists, and the illegal immigrants, and the climate worshipers, and the lying politicians, and the corrupt media personalities, and the racists, and the promoters of race hate, and the bad dads of the world and the bad moms of the world, if only they would abandon their pride and humble themselves before God in repentance, if only they would listen to the Gospel and turn from their sins toward Jesus, the shepherd who came looking for them and who laid down His life on the cross for them, to bring them to God. He wouldn’t just be happy. He would rejoice with all of heaven that such people had gone from proud and lost to humble and found.

But here’s where the other group of proud and lost people shows up. All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to hear him. But the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” The Pharisees and scribes were the “good,” religious people. They weren’t guilty of gross public sins. No, they rightly condemned sinful actions as sinful. And they led lives that looked upright and obedient. The problem was, they took pride in themselves for it. They were convinced that they had earned God’s favor for themselves, and they firmly believed that everybody else needed to earn it, too. So they did not rejoice when Jesus welcomed sinners who hadn’t behaved themselves, who hadn’t earned their place in God’s house with hard work and good behavior. No, they did not rejoice with Jesus’ finding of the lost. In fact, it made them angry.

It was their anger that prompted Jesus’ telling of the three lost and found parables. The second parable about the lost silver coin seems especially fitting for the Pharisees. One silver coin out of ten appears more valuable than one sheep out of a hundred, just as the Pharisees appeared to be more valuable than the tax collectors and sinners because of their upright behavior. But no matter how much a coin is worth, it’s worthless as long as it’s lost. And that’s what the Pharisees were: lost. Proud and lost, of no value to anyone. Except to God! Who had sent Jesus to find them, too. And so, like a woman desperately searching in her house for that lost coin, Jesus was desperately searching for the lost Pharisees, to bring them to acknowledge their own sinfulness and pride, even though their sinfulness was more hidden than that of the tax collectors.

It’s in that third parable, the parable of the lost (or prodigal) son, where the lost Pharisees are depicted most clearly, toward the end of the parable. If you recall, after the first son in that parable had openly gone lost and then returned to his father in humility and repentance, after his father had welcomed him back with open arms, the father then went out to the field to his other son, who hadn’t come in to welcome his brother back or to celebrate his return. That son was sulking out in the field by himself. He wasn’t happy that his brother had returned, and he especially wasn’t happy that his father was rejoicing and throwing a party in the “bad” son’s honor. The “good son” thought he deserved all his father’s attention. He had worked hard for his father’s love, and he was proud of it.

Except that it doesn’t work that way. You can’t work for your Father’s love. And you certainly can’t work for His forgiveness, which the “good” people need just as much as the “bad” people do. The pride of the good people is just as damning as the pride of the bad, which is why “No one is good” in the eyes of God, because all are infected with a disgusting pride in themselves. But He loves the proud and sends out His word to find everyone, to call all men to repentance, to urge all men to humble themselves, to admit that they are not what they are supposed to be, so that they may receive God’s gift of forgiveness through Christ, so that they may be found by Jesus and carried back home to God, so that He and all the angels of heaven may rejoice that a sinner has been brought to repentance.

Consider today where you’re at at the moment. Are you among those who are proud of their sins, proud and lost? Are you among those who are proud of themselves, proud and lost? If you’re in either of those groups, the Lord Jesus has gone looking for you and calls you right now to humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time. Are you among those who have already humbled themselves and are, even now, riding back on the shoulders of Jesus, trusting in Him for mercy and grace? Then know that all Christians and the angels in heaven rejoice over you. But also, take care. Because to be found by Jesus also means that, as long as you still live in this world, you have an adversary, the devil, who, like a roaring lion, prowls around, looking for someone to devour. The more righteous you become in how you live—and you must grow in righteousness and in obedience to God’s commandments!—the more opportunities the devil will find to coax you back to pride in yourself and in your own goodness. We know that this is a favorite tactic of his. So beware of it! As Peter says, Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are being brought upon your brothers in the world. But the God of all grace, who has called us to his eternal glory in Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a little while, will restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.