Luke 15:1-10 and Exodus 32:7-14 | Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost | September 14, 2025 | First Christian Church, St. Paul, MN | Dennis Sanders, preaching
It never seems to fail. I get a check from someone and I put it in a safe place to make sure that I won’t lose it. The time comes for me to take it to the bank to cash the check and I can’t find it. So then I am tearing up the place trying to find this check, looking at the same place over and over and over again. There is a huge sense of relief when I finally find the check.
It is scary to be lost, but there is also a sense of frantic nature about knowing something or someone is lost.
We know have things like amber and silver alerts that tell us about when a child is abducted or an elderly person is missing. We’ve all seen the alerts go up on our phones or alerts on freeway signs. Everyone is given the sense that someone out there is lost and everyone is now on the lookout for this lost person.
I don’t have kids, but I know how I would feel if my child was lost even for a second. No doubt many of you who do have children have felt that way.
In this chapter of Luke, Jesus is hanging out with people that have bad reputations. Scripture says they tax collectors and sinners, so these were people that the Pharisees and the religious leaders didn’t want to hang out with and they didn’t understand why Jesus would want to hang out with them either.
And to be honest, there was some reason to wonder. I’ve shared this before, but tax collectors were considered collaborators with the Roman Empire. On top of that, they were considered crooks. They needed to collected taxes and they were allowed to collected a bit more to make some money, but of course they tended to shake down the poor people.
Jesus hears all of this and then tells these two stories. The first is about a shepherd with 100 sheep. For whatever reason, one goes missing. The shepherd does something amazing. He leaves the other sheep behind. We have no idea if there are any other shepherds tending the sheep or if they are left on their own, but the shepherd goes and hunts high and low for this sheep until he finds it. When he carries it on his shoulders to take it back to the flock. Jesus says there is joy in heaven for a sinner who repents over one who has no need to repent. He then went to this other story that is very familiar to me. This woman is hunting high and low for this coin, tearing up her house in order to find it. When she does, she invites her friends over to have a party because she found the lost coin.
Chapter 15 is a series of three stories of lost things, but that isn’t included in this week’s story. That story is one many of you are familiar with, the story of the prodigal or lost son. Again, something is lost. When something is found, there is a big party.
There is so much to unpack here. These parables tell us so much about the nature of God. Several times in the text, the following word in Greek is used: eurisko. It means to find. If it sounds familiar, that’s because it sounds like the word, eureka is also a Greek word (and also a wonderful quirky science fiction series and the state motto of California), which means “I have found it.” The definition is the triumph of discovery and traces its origins to the Greek Scholar Archimedes, who uttered the word twice when he realized the water rose as he entered his bathtub, discovering the volume of water displaced was equal to the part of his body that entered the tub. Legend has it he was so excited of his discovery that he got out of the tub, running naked through the streets of ancient Syracuse to share his findings.
That sense of joy, that shout of Eureka! Is how God is when he finds us. Because it is you and I that are the ones who are the lost sheep and the lost coin. The Pharisees might be mad that Jesus is hanging out with the wrong people and they might think that he is talking about the tax collectors and sinners being the lost souls, but Jesus is also saying they are lost as well, and that God, the good shepherd, the diligent woman will hunt high and low until they will find them and bring them home. When God finds you, he is the one who puts you on his shoulders and brings you home for a celebration. That is the story of the father in the Prodigal Son where the father throws a big party for the wayward son. He was lost and now he was found. Eureka!
Sometimes we might feel lost and far off from God. Sometimes we might be cut off from family and friends because of something we did. We might fear that God will not want anything to do with us.
And let’s face it; our human society likes to cut people off. We like to look down on certain people. We all have those people who we don’t want darkening our doors. But God doesn’t have those people. God is looking for you and me and that person with the weird hair or the guy with the hat we don’t like, or the person who has that annoying sign in the lawn or the person with a flag with the politician you can’t stand. God is looking for everyone, and when God finds them, God shouts Eureka! God puts them and you on God’s shoulder and to a big party.
The late evangelical pastor Tony Campolo tells the story of a late visit to a diner in, of all places, Honolulu. He overhears two women talking and finds out quickly that they are what we now call sex workers. One of them casually mentions that tomorrow was going to be her birthday she never had a birthday party. Campolo came up with an idea. He asked the cook if the two women came here every night. The cook said yes. Campolo asked if they could throw a birthday party for this woman named Agnes. He would even get cake. The cook loved the idea and said he would even bake the cake. The next day, they had a wonderful celebration for Agnes, which means Lamb of God, and she was flabbergasted.
After she left with the cake, Campolo prayed for Angnes and the cook, who didn’t know he was a pastor, asked what kind of church he belonged to. Campolo replied, “"I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for whores at 3:30 in the morning."
That is the God we serve. The one who finds all of us and celebrates. Eureka! He has found us! Thanks be to God. Amen.
