Sermon for September 14, 2025
Pentecost 14 C
Luke 15:1-10
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
When I was on my pilgrimage in Ireland back in May, something we saw a lot of were sheep. All over the countryside, from coastal mountain meadows to inland valleys—sheep. They provide wool for the famous Aran sweaters. They provide meat for the famous Irish stew. And when they’re out in the pasture they munch their grass and call out “Baa…Baa” as if to welcome hikers and pilgrims to their home with the traditional Irish phrase “Cead Mille Failte—One Hundred Thousand Welcomes”. Sometimes as we hiked the trails the sheep would be on the other side of a fence. Other times the trail would cross over the fence and we’d walk right through the pasture.
For all the many sheep pastures we walked by, one thing I don’t remember ever seeing was a shepherd! The sheep seemed to be more or less taking care of themselves. They would cluster together, or a lamb would run to find its mother to drink some milk, or several of them would march single file on their own trail, and if they felt that we humans were getting too close, they’d quickly turn and march off on a different trail.
The pastureland where the sheep grazed was often filled with rocks and boulders and stone fences, or tall grasses and hedgerows. At times the sheep kind of blended in with the landscape—except for the stripe of blue or red spraypainted on their wool. If one out of the many hundreds of sheep that we saw got lost, that splash of color would make it a little bit easier to find.
Jesus talks in today’s gospel about someone who has 100 sheep—and if one gets lost, the shepherd goes out and searches until he finds it. I’ve always thought, “well, wouldn’t that leave the 99 unattended sheep vulnerable?” But my pilgrimage taught me another way to look at it. The 99 will still be all together, more or less caring for each other. It’s the one sheep who is lost, who is fending for itself—that’s the one who needs mercy from the shepherd in order to be found and cared for. And when he finds that lost sheep, the shepherd rejoices because the lost has been found; the one who has wandered away has been reunited, not only with the shepherd, but also with the whole flock. He’s been welcomed back into the community who cares for him.
The lost sheep being found is a metaphor for God’s mercy. And we see throughout the Bible that God finds great joy in being merciful—because mercy is a sign of his presence and love; mercy is the antidote to cruelty. Mercy is the mindset of compassion. That lone sheep, out in the wilderness, needs mercy when he’s facing a world that can be pretty cruel at times. We feel that cruelty ourselves when it seeps into our own lives and consciousness—and, when it does, it makes us feel lost and alone like that one sheep. Especially these days, with yet more shootings of school children, political activists, government leaders and their spouses, and more. And there’s not only the physical violence in the world, but also harmful verbal attacks, and psychological intimidation—and even the relentless schemes of internet scammers and financial fraudster; these things just keep hitting us over and over and over. They sap our energy, time, and emotions. All of it together can be enough to make us want to give up hope.
And yet, we still have the promise Jesus makes in this parable from Luke 15. The shepherd keeps searching for the one lost sheep. God does not give up on any one of us! God rejoices when we look for help, and when turn to him for mercy for our weary souls. And God in his mercy therefore invites us to follow his ways by cultivating compassion. The first step on this journey is to recognize that because God has compassion for you, you need to have compassion towards yourself, in your own weariness.
And then the next step is to extend this same compassion towards others. Compassion is the motivation that draws us together with the 99 other sheep in the flock, so we can support and care for one another. And feeling that support, compassion then becomes the motivation to take action and be advocates who seek solutions to soften the cruelties of the world: to speak up for peace in place of violence; tolerance in place of judgementalism; curiosity in place of assumptions. This stuff is hard work—it’s like looking for a sheep in the dark when it blends in with the landscape around it. But God does not give up on us. And the Christ who gave himself for us, even on the cross, is willing and able to walk with us in this work, even when it’s dark and we can’t seem to find the way.
Being compassionate is not glamorous. It’s something that you usually find only the midst of ordinary life. And that brings us to the second parable of today’s gospel reading—the woman who lost her silver coin. We’re not so different from this woman. The coin that she lost was known as a “drachma”—and it was worth a whole day’s wages. Just like her, if any of us had misplaced a whole day’s wages, you bet we’d be “lighting a lamp, and sweeping the house, and searching carefully until we found it”!
With this parable, Jesus is teaching us to look for the ways that God’s kingdom appears in our lives. Now, we tend to want (and maybe even expect) that God should give us a grand show of power and might. But in response to what we want, God gives us what we need—which is Christ’s own presence in the ordinary and modest. When we experience a loss, a failure, and accident—like the woman searching for her lost coin—Jesus tells us that those are the places where we’re going to find God. Don’t look for power and might—look to the ordinary, everyday experiences. That’s where God promises to be found.
But why? Why does God choose to appear in the ordinary instead of the majestic? Because this is God’s way of assuring you that the presence of Christ is always with you. You can never fall so far that you can escape from God’s merciful and loving presence. God is closer to you than your own breath; therefore you can lean on Jesus to give you the strength—and compassion—to simply show up for life day by day, and just do whatever needs to be done. That is how God works miracles—when we show up and offer God our failures, and our ordinary, everyday experiences and pray “OK, Lord. This is all I’ve got. What can you do with it?”
That’s what the woman does in the parable. She offers God the failure of her lost coin and then she shows up by lighting a lamp, sweeping, and searching. What happens, then, when she finds her lost coin? She calls her friends and neighbors and they rejoice together! It’s a miracle! The lost has been found and the community comes together to support and care for one another. God’s presence and mercy are close at hand in ordinary, daily life—whether you realize it or not. Amen.