Proper 19, Year C | Luke 15:1-10
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Have you ever lost something that mattered? Not a sock in the dryer—something yours: the dog that slipped the gate, the cat that never came when you shook the food, the phone with your whole life on it, the car keys when you’re already ten minutes late. It’s never when you have time. It’s when the clock is loud and your heart is louder. You retrace every step. You check the same pocket three times. You move cushions, crawl under furniture, empty the garbage—because when something precious is lost, you don’t shrug. You seek desperately.
That’s the heart of the shepherd and woman in today’s Gospel. It’s the heart of Jesus telling the parable. This morning, your Lord is showing you His heart. He is the seeking shepherd. He is the searching woman. He is the God who won’t rest until the lost are found because the lost cannot return on their own. Jesus seeks the lost and carries them home—and heaven rejoices when one sinner repents.
I. Lost—unable to return (vv. 1–4a, 8a)
We are told, “all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near [Jesus] to listen to Him” (v. 1). Crowds are flocking to have a conversation with Jesus, to hear him teach. They were tax collectors and sinners. “Tax collectors” were despised because many of them were cheats, and on top of that, they were traitors because they worked for the oppressive Romans. “Sinners” were the common people—the not-very-religious—often the poor, the lame, and the blind), those openly tangled in sin (adultery, cheating, slander), and people who worked jobs they didn’t like (herdsmen, peddlers, tanners).
Verse 2 says, some find this to be a problem: “Both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them’” (v. 2). Notice it says they are grumbling. All The Pharisees and scribes see are sinners. All they can think of is how unclean these people are and how inappropriate it is that a rabbi, a holy man, should dirty himself with their presence. Do you think the Pharisees really valued the people who were coming to Jesus? No. As far as the Pharisees were concerned, these people were not good enough to be in their religious club. They were the sort of folk the Pharisees avoided at all costs. They didn’t want to talk to them. They certainly didn’t want to eat with them. Ah, but Jesus is speaking with them. Jesus is eating with them. Jesus welcomes sinners to His table. He wants to have a conversation with them. So, when Jesus tells two parables in our text, he is responding to the holier-than-thou religious experts.
He gives two parables. First, about a shepherd who “has a hundred sheep and has lost one of them” (v. 4a). Second, about a woman who “has ten silver coins and loses one coin” (v. 8a). To be lost is to be isolated, alone, helpless. The lost sheep can’t do anything to be found. It can make a lot of noise, which it probably does, but that will also alert the wolves. Not good. A lost sheep is as good as a dead sheep. It can go off in one direction or another, but in all likelihood, its wandering will only increase its lostness. The lost coin is an even better example of lostness. It can’t make a sound nor can it move around. It can only sit there in its lostness between the cushions of the couch waiting to be found.
The “lost” are the “tax collectors and sinners” who flocked to Jesus—but it’s also us without Jesus. Humanity isn’t just a little off course, We are thoroughly lost. Like that sheep—vulnerable, bleating, drawing wolves. Like that coin—silent, motionless, unable even to call for help. That’s what Scripture means by dead in sins: we have no pulse for God, no power to get up and go home, no inner compass pointing to God. “All we like sheep have gone astray” (Isa 53:6). And the world proves it every day: if people were basically good, we wouldn’t need locks and laws, and a man wouldn’t be shot for simply trying to have a conversation. Just look at the news any given day and you’ll see the evidence. We are lost. We desperately need Jesus. And this doesn’t just apply to the unchurched crowd. A Christian can hear a sermon and still love their sin; We can sit in church and still refuse the Savior. Without Christ, we are the sheep that won’t make it back and the coin that can’t budge. We are helpless in and of ourselves. If you look to yourself, you will never find hope. We are lost and unable to return home. So, what does the owner do?
II. Sought—at great cost (vv. 4b, 8b)
What does the Shepherd do? He “leaves the ninety-nine in the open pasture and goes after the one which is lost until he finds it” (v. 4b). What does that woman do? She “lights a lamp and sweeps the house and searches carefully until she finds it” (v. 8b). Why doesn’t the shepherd look at the ninety-nine and feel satisfied? Is it really worth the trouble? Why doesn’t he clutch the nine coins and shrug off the one? Why carry out such a diligent search? Why go to such lengths and take such risks to secure just one more sheep or coin?
Because God places such high value on each of us. This one wandering lamb belongs to a shepherd. This one missing coin belongs to a woman. They are owned, so they are valued. The search becomes certain and focused. There is a poverty that comes to their owner when they are missing. There is a wanting in the owner’s heart. The owner feels their absence. That’s why he can’t remain with the ninety-nine but must go after that solitary sheep. That’s why she can’t sit comfortably in the house but must ransack it until she has the coin. They feel the loss. He searches until he finds it. That’s how determined God’s grace is.
You are not a stray God happened to find; you are His own—created by the Father, redeemed by the Son. He feels your absence. He will not sit comfortably while you are missing; He goes after you. He searches—not casually, not briefly, but until He finds you. He does not pause to thinking about whether you’re worth the trouble; His cross has already set your worth beyond price. He does not stand at a distance and call out conditions; He steps into your mess and your brokenness, takes your sin and shame onto Himself, suffers your temptation, dies your death. Jesus has done all of this for you and me and for the whole world. Jesus has come for sinners and tax collectors, for the wandering and the hiding, the sinner and the loner. He came to find you, and he came to find me. And he won’t stop, until we’re his. That is how determined God’s grace is toward you. He sought you when you were lost. He sought you when you sought Him not.
Seeking is not the end—what happens when He finds?
III. Found—carried home with joy (vv. 5–7, 9–10)
What does the shepherd do with the lost sheep? “When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’” (vv.5–6) What does the woman do with the lost coin? “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!’” (v. 9).
Jesus leaves the ninety-nine just to go rescue you! You were the lost one, and Jesus found you. The moment the coin was in the sight of the woman, it was no longer a lost coin. The moment the shepherd saw the lost sheep, it was no longer lost. The moment the Word of Jesus came to you, you are no longer lost but found. And when he found you, what did he do? He didn’t scold you. He didn’t punish you, he doesn’t hurt you, or grumble and complain about you. “He puts it on his shoulders, rejoicing.” The good news is not a maimed sheep that limped home. The sheep doesn’t walk back. The Shepherd carried the lamb home—joy on His face, you on His shoulders. The shepherd carries the full weight of return, and he rejoices in the burden. Jesus shoulders us in His cross, bears you home, and calls it joy (Heb 12:2).
If you feel like the coin wedged between the cushions, He sees you. If you feel like the sheep too tired to take another step, He carries you. He brings you home—to His Church, to His table, to a family—because that is where you belong. Jesus doesn’t leave you wherever it was that he found you. No . . . He saves you and bears you up on His shoulders and carries you back to the fold. He restores you to the flock. He places you in His Church. He gives you family, friends, brothers and sisters, a community, a communion of saints. You are given a place to rest, a place to grow, a place and a people to enjoy.
And when we are found there is rejoicing. A free ride on the shepherd’s shoulders as though you were some kind of hero. A party that costs much more than the day’s wages you are worth. That’s the joy of the merciful heart of Jesus who rejoices in finding you and bringing you to your home on his shoulders. You and I gathered here together are a visible reminder of that amazing seeking and finding grace in Jesus. Every time a lost sheep comes home to the fold, every time a lost coin is returned to the coffer, every time the eyes of faith are opened to the seeking, saving, restoring love of Jesus, there is joy.
The Pharisees grumbled while sinners and tax collectors were greeted with rejoicing in heaven. Jesus eats with sinners! What a scandal that is to the proud and the self-righteous! But what good news it truly is to those of us who once were lost but now are found! You have a God who has not abandoned you no matter what you’ve done, but sent His Son to save you! The church is God’s great “lost and found” of wayward sheep, lost coins, prodigal sons, and sinners of every sort who have come to faith’s recognition that they aren’t lost after all. They’re found by Jesus. And that’s cause for rejoicing.
"If God is for us, who is against us?" 