The vital role of entire-life repentance

Sermon for Trinity 3

1 Peter 5:6-11  +  Luke 15:1-10

It’s so good to be back with you again today after being gone for two weeks. Being away from worship—from the gathering of God’s people around Word and Sacrament—comes with certain challenges, even risks. I’ll use a campfire as an example. We built several fires during our stay up north. As you know, once you get a good fire going, with plenty of wood, it can burn for hours. But if you want to go to bed, it isn’t hard to put the fire out. You don’t even need to douse it with water. All you have to do is separate the burning logs and the glowing embers from one another, spread them out in the fire pit so that they’re no longer touching one another, fueling one another. Do that, and you can watch as the flames go out and the burning coals grow dimmer and dimmer, and soon the fire is extinguished. So it is with our faith. Where two or three are gathered together in My name, says the Lord Jesus, there I am in the midst of them. To be gathered in Jesus’ name means to be gathered together for sacred purposes: to worship Him, to hear His Word, to receive His Sacraments, to carry out His will, to pray, not as individuals, but as the gathered Church, coming together as the body of Christ, in the name of Christ, even if it’s only a few Christians at a time, like the (relatively) few of you who have gathered here today, like those of you who have gathered together in other places, with a few other Christians, to watch the service, to hear the Word, and add your prayers to ours. Church members are like fire embers. Together, by the power of the Holy Spirit, working through the Word, our faith will keep burning. Apart for too long, and what happens to the embers will happen to the members.

And so, together, we turn our thoughts to the Gospel, to the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, praying that the Holy Spirit will stoke the flames of faith in us as we meditate on Jesus’ words. Here in this Gospel we learn a vital lesson about one of the most basic teachings of the Christian faith: the vital role of repentance in the life of God’s people.

To whom did Jesus originally address these parables of the lost? Luke tells us: He spoke these parables to two groups of people who were gathering around Him. To the tax collectors and sinners, and, more directly, to the Pharisees and scribes who were grumbling and murmuring among themselves, This man Jesus receives sinners and eats with them. Remember who the Pharisees and scribes were. They were “God’s people,” as were all the people of Israel, technically, members of the one and only true Church on earth, the one established by God Himself through Abraham and later through Moses. The Pharisees and scribes were what you might call the active members of the Church. They gathered regularly for worship. They knew the Word of God. And, outwardly, they obeyed the commandments, too.

On the other hand, the tax collectors and sinners in Israel were what we might call inactive members. They probably didn’t attend synagogue and most certainly weren’t living according to God’s commandments. Their sins were public and well-known, and people like the scribes and Pharisees thought that such sinners should be permanently shunned.

But Jesus didn’t do that. Instead, He preached in such a way that the tax collectors and sinners heard, not only about their sins against God, not only about God’s anger and the punishment they deserved because of their sins, but also about a God who was willing—even eager—to have them back in His house, a God who was willing to forgive them, wipe the slate clean, for free, about a God who had come searching for them, because He loved them and didn’t want to see them burn in hell. That message was drawing them to Jesus, bringing them to recognize that God was right (about everything) and they were wrong, bringing them to acknowledge their sins, to fear God’s wrath, to trust in Jesus for forgiveness and reconciliation with God, and to turn away from the sinful lives they had been living. In other words, the message of Jesus was bringing them to repentance.

But, as we learn in today’s Gospel, that same message of Jesus, and His willingness to receive sinners, through repentance, was what made the Pharisees and scribes so angry. Their goal wasn’t the repentance of sinners but the destruction of those whom they regarded as sinners. Their goal was to be praised, by God and man, for being such good Church members themselves—for being men who, in their minds, needed no repentance.

So Jesus told them, first, the parable of the lost sheep. Like a shepherd who cares for each one of his sheep, the Lord cares for each one of His members. The Jewish tax collectors and sinners, as Israelites, had been sheep in God’s sheepfold from an early age, practically from birth, but, like sheep, had gone astray. And God cared. So He sent His Son into the world to go looking for them. And when He found them, He didn’t condemn them. He converted them. He brought them to repentance. He forgave them, freely, without their having to do a thing to earn it. And He put them up on His shoulders and began to carry them home to His Father.

Or, in the analogy of the second parable of the lost coin, God saw His people as precious, valuable coins—all, by the way, of the same denomination. In other words, just as ten silver coins are all worth the same, so God views His people as all being worth the same. So when one goes lost, He doesn’t say to Himself, “Well, that one wasn’t worth very much anyway.” No, the worth of the one who goes astray is the same as the worth of all the rest. Nor does He say, “Well, too bad, I lost one coin, but at least I still have nine. I’ll be content with that.” No, He leaves behind the 99 sheep, He leaves behind the 9 silver coins, to go looking for the one sheep, or the one coin, that was lost.

And when the shepherd finds the sheep, when the woman finds the coin, when God finds the sinner and brings him to repentance, God rejoices. And those who love Him, His friends, both human and angelic, rejoice right along with Him.

What does it mean, then, when people like the Pharisees and scribes don’t rejoice along with Jesus when the sinners are brought to repentance? It means that they don’t love Him, which means that they don’t love God, which means that they themselves have gone astray. They themselves have been cut off from God’s kingdom. They themselves, although they are outwardly obedient to God’s commandments and worship God with their lips, are in a worse state than the repenting tax collectors and sinners, because while the sinners have been brought to repentance and are finding a place prepared for them in the kingdom of God, the scribes and Pharisees think they have no need of repentance, and, therefore, no need of Jesus, or of His Father in heaven. Having fallen away from faith in God, they are the ones who have truly become lost, who will spend eternity burning in hell, because of their impenitence.

One of the most profound and useful statements in Martin Luther’s 95 Theses was the very first one: When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance. Repentance means a rethinking about one’s sins, no longer regarding them as good things or fun things or as “the right thing,” but now regarding them as terrible mistakes, as something you never should have done, and as something you intend to stop doing. It also means a rethinking about God, no longer regarding Him as an unjust tyrant, but as the One who deserves your worship and obedience, and, most importantly, as the One who has given His Son into death for your sins so that you might be reconciled to Him through faith alone in Christ alone. Such repentance needs to happen when a person has been separated from God through sin and impenitence. And it also needs to happen continually, throughout the entire life of believers, so that, each and every day, you turn away from sin in your heart, turn toward God for mercy and forgiveness, and recommit to changing your life into a holy one, with the mighty help of God the Holy Spirit.

Such repentance, such rethinking about sin and about God, comes about through the preaching of the Gospel. That’s what brought the tax collectors and sinners to recognize that they had ruined their lives and turned against their God and Creator. It brought them to see the truth, that God is good, so good that He would send His Son into the world to seek and to save what was lost, at great expense to Himself. Who wouldn’t want to be reconciled to a God like this? Who wouldn’t want to leave behind the slavery to sin, to flee for refuge to the Lord Jesus and find a Father’s welcome through Him? Who wouldn’t wish to spend all his days serving this God, listening to His Word, and keeping it?

Sadly, there are many. Most, even, who choose destruction and permanent alienation from this God, because, like the devil, they want to believe their own way and do things their own way. And most tragically of all, that number includes many who were once believing Christians, but who have now fallen into impenitence, even as they delude themselves, as the Pharisees and scribes did, into thinking they’re still on the path to eternal life.

You’ve seen it. I’ve seen it, too many times. People who were raised as Christians but then allow themselves to be dragged away into willful sin, whether it’s sleeping with someone you’re not married to, or speaking cruel, hurtful words that you refuse to take back, or holding onto a grudge instead of forgiving as you ought. As the writer to the Hebrews says, If we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries… For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. And again, “The LORD will judge His people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. That is, it is a fearful thing to stand before God’s judgment in impenitence, holding onto sin, refusing to take refuge in Jesus’ sacrifice. In repentance and faith, there is safety from God’s wrath. Without repentance, no one is safe, for there is no one on earth who needs no repentance.

So imitate the tax collectors and sinners in today’s Gospel! Imitate them by recognizing, daily, that you have sinned against God and deserve only His wrath and punishment, but also imitate them by hearing the Word of Jesus and by being amazed at the love of God for sinners like you and me, that He would send His Son to go looking for you, to give His life into death for you, and to carry you back to Him with rejoicing. And, whatever you do, don’t imitate the Pharisees and scribes, who refused to repent because they foolishly believed they had no need of it. We all have need of it. We all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each one has turned to his own way. But the Lord has laid on Him, on Christ Jesus, our Savior, the iniquity of us all. May God, by His mighty Spirit, keep you in daily contrition and repentance, and in the forgiveness which He first gave to you in Holy Baptism, so that your entire life may be one of repentance, leading to life. Amen.