Sermon for the Third Sunday after Trinity
“Rejoice with me”
The parables in today’s gospel are powerful illustrations of the teaching in the epistle: not only does “God resist the proud and give grace to the humble”, but that grace conveys us unto glory, for God “himself shall restore, stablish and strengthen you … after that ye have suffered a while”. God is “the God of all grace” and here is a wonderful illustration of the nature and the immensity of God’s grace.
The parables come as a response to an accusation. Christ is accused of receiving sinners and eating with them, thereby identifying himself with sinners, being made sin himself, as it were. But Christ’s response shows that he does, not so as to be defined by sin, “him who knew no sin”, but for the sake of our redemption “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”. He tells three parables, two of which comprise today’s gospel: the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin. Beyond them, but as the fulfilling of them, is the parable of the lost son, the so-called prodigal son.
Sheep, coins, sons. There is a progression to these images. The first two which we have this morning stress the priority of divine grace in our restoration. What is emphasized is God’s reaching down to us in the gravity of our sins which separate us from God and from the community of divine love. There is, after all, a kind of passivity to sheep and coins, but this only serves to heighten the priority of God’s grace. Yet the effects of that grace are to be realized in us which is what we are given to see in the parable of the prodigal son. In him we see the motions of God’s grace in us effecting our restoration to grace, our establishment in grace and our being strengthened by grace.
The parable of the prodigal son completes the illustration of the teaching about God’s redemptive grace. It signifies the strong and exultant note of God’s mercy towards us. What, after all, is the recurring theme here except the theme of rejoicing? “I once was lost but now am found.” Here is the illustration of the “amazing grace” of God that “saved a wretch like me.”
God seeks the lost and God accepts the penitent who makes some motion of return to him for that motion is the motion of God’s grace in him. The first two parables make this point unmistakably clear. The sheep and the coins are utterly unable of themselves to move towards God. It is God’s grace which literally picks them up and carries them, gathers them up to himself and to the community which his love alone creates. We are reminded that our joy is to be found in the free gift of God towards us in the giving of his son.
