The Third Sunday after Trinity (June 20, 2021)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in our sight, O Lord our strength and our Redeemer.

In the year 1960, there was an 18-year-old named Bill Leech who was British University lost his wallet at a ski resort pub. So unfortunately, Leech had to go get all of his important personal documents replaced and took the loss when it came to his cash on hand. Fast forward 55 years to 2015. The old bar in the pub was uprooted and moved and the carpenter who was working the project found the wallet wedged in a hole. The carpenter and his neighbor worked together to track down the 73 year old Leech who returned to the pub to retrieve what was lost.

That is quite a dramatic story but it highlights the significance of finding something lost. I know in our house, and I’m not blaming anyone in particular (though it does seem like one of the risks of having two young boys), things often go missing. And there is something wonderful about finding that which cannot be found.

Indeed, when we lose something, we might feel sad. Perhaps not because the thing itself was all that important in and of itself but because things can be connected to memories, people, a self-evaluation, or something like that. So to recover the thing is to recover more than just the thing — it’s to recover all the important intangibles we connected to the thing. This helps us understand the parables that we heard today: that of the lost sheep and the lost coin.

At the outset, there is an interesting juxtaposition between this week’s reading and last week’s parable of the Great Banquet. If you remember, the parable of the Great Banquet was told at a dinner party thrown by a Pharisee whereas today’s parables are told in the presence of “tax collectors and sinners.” Last week’s reading functioned as a warning to the self-righteous Pharisees who weren’t willing to accept God’s invitation offered through the Messiah but this week’s reading acts as a promise to the sinners and marginalized who attended the banquet after the original invitations were revoked.

Now, the Gospel according to St. Luke has been called the Gospel of Mercy because it teaches that no one is excluded from forgiveness and that sinners can become beloved children of God if they repent and convert. This particular passage from chapter 15 is a trilogy of commonly called mercy parables. We read the first two in the trilogy this morning and will read the third, the story of the prodigal son, for the 9th Sunday After Trinity. The trilogy works by focusing on saving 1/100 sheep, 1/10 coins, and 1/2 brothers.

In the first parable, we read about a sheep that has gone missing. “What man of you, 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, lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.”

The second parable features a woman who has ten silver coins. Most likely, these coins would not have just been her life savings but may have been her dowry, giving them not only an economic significance but also a personal one. So she turns her house upside down, sweeping the whole house and seeking diligently until she finds it “and when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost.”

These mercy parables really cannot be separated from each other in our interpretation as they are saying the same thing using different pictures. The lost sheep sought out by the shepherd and the coin sought by the woman are both about God’s pursuit of us and the rejoicing that occurs in heaven and should happen in his Church when people heed the call of the Gospel through baptism and repentance.

In Hosea 6:6, the prophet speaks for God, saying, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” Jesus quotes these words to the Pharisees in Matthew chapter 9, verse 13 when the Pharisees confront the disciples because Jesus spent time with sinners. "Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” These verses do not mean Israelites shouldn’t have offered sacrifices. Rather, what Hosea and Jesus both means is that those sacrifices were ineffectual unless accompanied by inward change that affected how they treated others. We see this in the way the prophet Amos blasted the people of Israel for exploiting the poor even while offering sacrifices to God. While in Christ’s Church, we don’t offer bloody, animal sacrifices like they did in the Old testament, the priest does offer a sacrifice in the Mass: the sacrifice of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ on the Cross, crucified not only for our sins but for the sins of the whole world. And we come to this sacrifice week after week after week because we are aware of its power to impart the grace we require to grow in holiness. But we have to merge ourselves with that sacrifice. In receiving the lamb who was slain, we have to lay down our lives for others just as our Lord laid down his life for us. “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall attain mercy.”

How do we inculcate mercy for others? We read these parables to be about ourselves first: we were that lost sheep borne up by our good shepherd. We were that lost coin that was diligently sought out. God pursues us with what author Brennan Manning calls a “furious longing.” And Brennan Manning knew this: he was a Roman Catholic priest who battled alcoholism all his life and was eventually laicized because he got married. And if we really take stock of ourselves and realize what he has done for a sinner such as me, then we can realize, along with Manning, that “the outstretched arms of Jesus exclude no one, neither the drunk in the doorway, the panhandler on the street, the most selfish and ungrateful in their cocoons, the most unjust of employers and the most overweening of snobs. The love of Christ embraces all without exception.”

But love is not easy. It comes with a cost. Just as Jesus’ love for others caused his execution, so the world will look on at real mercy and love with befuddlement at best and outright hostility at worst. We see this in the reading: Jesus tells these stories to the audience of tax collectors and sinners as the Pharisees stand by and complain, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” But the Gospel is a stumbling block. As St. Paul states in 1 Corinthians 1:22-25: “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” We live out that message when we authentically open ourselves to the other, whoever the other is. Grace is free but it was won with a price, and our lives should reflect how seriously we take it. “I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind, but now I see.”

I’ll let Brennan Manning close us today: “Jesus came not only for those who skip morning meditations, but also for real sinners, thieves, adulterers, and terrorists, for those caught up in squalid choices and failed dreams...Those of us scarred by sin are called to closeness with Him around the banquet table. The kingdom of God is not a subdivision for the self-righteous or for those who lay claim to private visions of doubtful authenticity and boast they possess the state secret of their salvation…The confession of John the apostle that God is love is the fundamental meaning of the holy and adorable Trinity. Put bluntly, God is sheer Being-in-Love and there was never a time when God was not love. The foundation of the furious longing of God is the Father who is the originating Lover, the Son who is the full self-expression of that Love, and the Spirit who is the original and inexhaustible activity of that Love, drawing the created universe into itself.”

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