September 12, 2010
Today’s sermon in Drumoak Church took its theme from Luke, Chapter 15, verses 1-10. There are two short parables in these ten verses; one is called “The Lost Sheep” and one is called “The Lost Coin.” The background is that Jesus was preaching to to a crowd of people which included tax collectors and “other outcasts”. The Pharisees complained that not only did Jesus welcome outcasts but he even ate with them. Jesus responded by telling them a story of a shepherd who had 100 sheep and lost one of them. In those days, sheep were more than a source of food; indeed many flocks, if not most of them, were kept for their wool and not as a source of food. Therefore, the shepherd would keep sheep for many more years than they’re kept in this country and in this time. So, the loss of one sheep was a more serious matter than it is today and the shepherd would leave the 99 in the care of another shepherd and go and search for the one lost sheep. The description “lost” has a deep meaning in the parable; Jesus meant his listeners to understand that we too are lost in the sense of not knowing where we should be. We know where we are because our TomTom or Google can tell us, but Jesus meant us to consider where we should be in terms of our lives and our spiritual condition. When the shepherd finds his lost sheep, he would bring it back to the village and invite all his friends and neighbours to celebrate his happiness. Jesus likens the feelings of the shepherd to the joy in heaven when one sinner repents. When a sinner repents, he or he is no longer ”lost” and the message is that to God the most insignificant person, sinner or not, is important but a repentant sinner is a cause for joy.
He told another story of a woman who loses one of ten silver coins. So what? Well, in those days a woman would save up silver coins to display on a cloth which she’d wear on her head; in such a case the coins had both an actual value and a very strong symbolic value and to lose one was a serious matter. Or perhaps it was more prosaic and the loss of a coin might mean the family going hungry. Jesus again describes the joy of the woman when she finds the coin and again compares her happiness to the happiness of angels when one sinner repents, when one sinner is no longer “lost.”