Lent Week #3 – a Transformed Heart
Transformation stories about lost, found and community
Preacher: Phil Swain Readings: Luke 15:1-32
Transformation is more than just thinking different … it can also be about a change of heart. This Sunday as we continue our Lenten journey within our “transformation” theme we are looking at three well-known and well-loved parables … the lost sheep, lost coin and lost son. These stories will stir our emotions as we rejoice as the lost is found and communities or families restored. It is a reminder that God is offering to transform us from within – or in the words of Ezekiel 36:26 – God is offering to give us “a new heart and put a new spirit within us”. In this video our pastor Phil opens up these amazing parables and challenges us to open anew our hearts to the love of God.
Sermon Text
Can you think of a time when you felt loved? I am not talking about “oh that’s nice, they must like me” … I am talking about that heart-warming, all-embracing feeling of being loved.
Maybe it was sitting on your parent’s lap when you were younger. Or when you received an unexpected present? Or the first time someone outside your family said those three words, “I love you”. Maybe it is in the simple things like having a meal prepared for you or the touch of someone’s hand on yours or a text of someone just checking in. Or maybe it is the big things like being told by your parents that they are so proud of you, or your partner saying “I do” in front of family and friends or being wrapped up in a hug in those time when you feel like you are about to fall over.
Love is not something we can explain logically. I know that some people struggle believing that they are loved – that there would be no reason for anyone to love them – but that the thing about love. Love is not something we can explain logically. I can’t explain why Marion loves me. I can’t explain how I felt so much love for my children before they were even born. Love is not just a choice we make, love is something of the heart.
So far in Lent we have been talking about transformation of the mind – the way that Easter can challenge our perspectives and change the way we think about things. Today we are moving to how Easter can transform our hearts – not just how we see and think about things but also transforming the way we feel, the way we respond or react, even transforming the way that connect with God and transforming the way that we love.
In our first week of Lent we were challenged to love God and love each other with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. Over the past two week, we have approached this Lenten journey intellectually … how we love with all our minds. These next two weeks on our Lenten journey are more about experience, or emotional engagement, or loving God and each other with all our HEART. And Luke 15 is a great place to start.
But before we jump into these three well-know and well-loved parables, lets put them into context. Jesus tells these parables in response to the grumbling by the Pharisees. What were they grumbling about? “This Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
One of the big themes that Luke keeps reminding us of in his gospel is that Jesus has come to bring good news to the poor, the marginalised, those who have been excluded or shunned by society. It is part of Jesus’ mission statement in Luke 4. In Luke 5 Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick”. (Luke 5:31). This is not new, so why were the Pharisees upset by this?
One answer has to do with the word ‘sinners’ in the text. In the Greek the word is ἁμαρτωλός hamartōloi (ham-ar-to-los) which while can be interpreted as sinner, it has a broader idea of “people who are out of bounds”. Maybe they are “out of bounds” with God because they are not following God’s ways … but maybe they are seen as “out of bounds” because they were simply didn’t fit the mould of what a good Jewish person should be like … because they were different?
This is interesting if you align this thinking next to the Jewish understanding of “sharing a meal”. Sharing a meal with someone, whether as the guest or host, implied holding the same ideas, values, and social position as your table companions. Put simply, to eat with someone was to accept them.
So, were the Pharisees grumbling because Jesus was implying that he eats with and therefore accepts “non-godly people” – people who were not following God’s ways? Or were the Pharisees grumbling because Jesus was eating with and therefore accepting people who were different?
This was a big issue at the time, not only for Jesus but the “scandalously” inclusive table fellowship practices the early church had. Back then the normal practice was to invite the important people, the influential people, or the well connected people to a meal and to make sure that they had the best seat at the table. But Jesus (and in turn the early church) seemed to throw the doors wide open and invite everyone in. In one parable Jesus talked about going out to the highways and byways and inviting everyone … including all who were “out of bounds”.
In response to the grumbling, Jesus was challenging the Pharisees and the crowds to have a “change of heart” … and did this by telling three similar but different parables – the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son. Let’s jump in and have closer look at the text.
Jesus starts the first two parables with a question … “suppose one of you had 100 sheep” “suppose a woman has 10 coins”. Jesus is inviting the listeners to imagine themselves in the story. Ok … lets do that.
Suppose you had 100 sheep and lost one. Wouldn’t you leave the 99 in the wilderness and go after the lost one until you found it?
What is your answer? Yes or No? Realistically … probably no. Leaving the other 99 in the wilderness does not seem the wisest idea. They might not be there when you get back.
Or imagine a woman who has ten coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and scour the house, looking in every nook and cranny until she finds it?
No, I would wait until morning when the sun is out, and you don’t have to light a lamp. And I may do a quick analysis of whether the value of the coin is worth my time looking for it. If it was say a $2 coin … I might not bother looking at all.
Jesus is asking these things as if they are self-explanatory … something that everyone would do … but it is not quite that simple. And then the reaction to the finding is a little out of the ordinary as well. I found a lost sheep … lets party. I found a lost coin, so let’s spend the coin I found on a party to celebrate the coin I lost and then found and then spent. What is Jesus trying to say here?
Well, a number of things … but I said before, we are looking at this from a heart perspective, so here is three points that I got out of the passage which are related to a change of heart…
1) God is not passive … God seeks!
The Jewish understanding was that Yahweh would receive a sinner if they came in the right way – with a repentant and obedient heart. But we have to come to God. All religions had that idea … we have to do the work … we had to approach God.
But here in these parables you have a picture of God who – out of God’s enormous love for us – doesn’t wait for us to come but actively searches for those who are lost … and carries us back home.
How does your heart respond to this?
We love God because God first loved us.
We respond to God because God first searched for us.
God is not passive … God seeks.
2) God does not evaluate … God thinks you are worth it.
I suggested that I might not leave 99 for 1 lost sheep, or not bother searching if the value of the coin was small … but God doesn’t think this way. For God, the sheep that is lost is worth everything. For God the value of the coin is irrelevant … it needs to be found.
How does your heart respond to this? That God thinks that you are worth searching for? That God – out of God’s enormous love for you – will go to extraordinary lengths to bring you home.
OK, God thinks the one is worth searching for, but what about the other 99 sheep left in the wilderness? Doesn’t God care about them? I read a really interesting take on this…
3) The re-establishment of the community is just as important as finding the lost.
Maybe we need to see these two parables not only as celebrating the lost being found, but the community being made whole again.
God deeply cared for the 99 sheep and as such knew the importance of making it the community of 100 whole again. The searching for the 1 was not only to find the lost but to bring wholeness and blessing to the other 99.
The woman searching for the coin was not just about the value of the coin but the importance of the 10 coins together. Some commentators suggest this was not just any coin she lost but a coin off a cultural headdress sometimes called a gargush. If so, then finding the coin was not about value of the coin but restoring the headdress back to whole again.
Maybe the celebration of both the lost sheep and the lost coin was not just the finder rejoicing … but the whole community rejoicing the restoration of what was lost.
How does your heart respond to this? How does it make you feel to know that not only does God loves you and values you; but you are part of a community that loves and values you too. A community that rejoices when you are here. How might you as a member of God’s family continue to show that love and value to others in this community too?
Three heart-warming takes on these parables… but I haven’t mentioned the lost son yet. Do these ideas work with that parable too?
Sort of but not completely. There were 100 sheep, there were 10 coins … now there are just two brothers. And a bit like other classic Bible brother stories – Cain vs Abel, Jacob and Esau, Isaac and Ishamel … it was the older vs younger conflict.
In this parable, the younger asks the father for his inheritance early. So the father splits up the estate and gives the shares to the two sons. The younger son takes his share and goes completely “out of bounds”. Remember that definition of earlier? Jesus, picking up on this, gives the ultimate example of someone “out of bounds” … leaving the home country and living in a foreign land, not living God’s ways but rather wild living, and hanging out with pigs (which is a no-go for Jewish people). He was way out of bounds.
Surely if anyone should be shunned for being a sinner … this guy would be top of the list – and yet, when he returns, the father doesn’t shun him. No, when the father sees him he can’t wait … he runs to him … embraces him, showers him with gifts, and celebrates with a party because what was lost was found. What a heart response! This is not logical. This is not what the customs of the day would dictate. But the father was being driven by his enormous love for his son. His son that was lost was found.
But what about the idea of God being a seeker? Why didn’t the father go to the far off country to encourage the son to return home? Maybe Jesus is just highlighting that a sense of lost can come in different ways. Sometimes we find ourselves lost through aimless wandering (like the sheep), or sometimes we become lost through no fault of our own (like the coin). In the lost son, lostness came through the sons bad choices … and maybe as such it needed the son to choose to return.
Maybe for the son’s heart would not have been transformed if the father went and found him and brought him home … maybe the transformation came through that hitting rock bottom and the clear decision to turn around and return to the father. Maybe it was the Father’s enormous love that in this case made him wait patiently … until he saw the son in the distance … then he ran.
But what about the other son? In the lost sheep and the lost Coin … the community celebrated being made whole again. Here, when the family is restored, the older son became angry – why celebrate someone who has done wrong? Why sit at the banquet table with someone who was so “out of bounds”? There seems to be a lot of similarities between the thoughts of the older son and the thoughts of the Pharisees. Why eat with sinners?
Jesus answers this with the fathers words… a Father who forgets his dignity, sets aside his power, and reaches out with compassion and love to both his children. “You are always with me, you are always loved, everything I have is yours (literally … remember the older son also has his share of the inheritance. He could have had a party with his friends anytime). Everything I have is yours. But we have to celebrate … because what was dead is alive again, what was out of bounds has come home, what was lost is found. Allow your heart to be changed and come in … because your brothers heart has been changed too.
The challenge that Jesus gave to the Pharisees is the same that he gives to us this Lent … put yourselves into these parables. In which character to you find yourself? Don’t answer with your mind, answer with your heart.
Are you feeling lost?
Are you feeling disconnected from the community?
Are you celebrating at the table? Or mummering about who is included?
Is God stirring with you a realisation of the need to make changes? Or to return home? Is God prompting you to be searching for the lost? To let go of your anger? Or to be part of the celebration?
May our Lenten calling be one where we open ourselves us to having a change of heart. May our stubbornness be softened; may our grumbling be replaced with rejoicing; and may we feel the embrace and enormous love of God as we are invited to sit at the table to celebrate that what was lost is now found.
Amen.