16 Pentecost 07 Proper 19

There was a newspaper story sometime back about a new bride who accidentally flushed her $1,800 diamond wedding ring down the toilet. Her husband, who was still making payments on the ring, wasn’t going to let the one-carat diamond get away without a fight. He spent the night digging up the yeard and tearing up the plumbing searching for the ring. The wife spent the night at her sister’s house because, in her words, “he was really upset and I didn’t want to be around him.” By morning the frustrated groom felt the ring was no longer in the plumbing of the house, so he called the water department. The city sent out its “lost diamond crew” to look for the tiny, valuable rock. After installing a trap at a downstream manhole, they flushed the pipe by sending a high pressure stream of water down the sewer pipe. Then one of the crew crawled down into the manhole and fished the diamond ring out of the sewage.

I guess most of us at least temporarily have lost something valuable to us. It is characteristic of Jesus’ teachings that he took one of the most familiar situations in human life and used that situation to teach us about God.

In Chapter 15 of Luke’s Gospel today we read about a woman who lost not a ring but a valuable coin. It may be difficult for us to relate to that. After all, our coins are worth so little. We can’t imagine anyone going to such lengths to find a single coin.

Pastor Adrian Rogers once offered an interesting perspective on this story. Remember that Jesus begins the story by saying, “What woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?” What’s the significance of the number ten? Rogers suggests that these ten silver coins Jesus referred to were valuable because of the sentiment attached to them. When a man took a bride, he would give her a ribbon on which would be strung ten coins. She would wear this token of love on her head even as women do in the Middle East today. Like a wedding band these coins represented the marital relationship. Often on each piece of silver the name of the husband would be engraved. If a woman was caught in adultery, if she were unfaithful to her husband, one of the coins would be taken out leaving a gap to show that she had disgraced her marriage vows. Now we can clearly see why this woman was so frantically searching for the lost coin. It wasn’t as though she only lost a few dollars; her reputation and marriage were at stake.

Fortunately the woman did find the coin. And when she found it, she called together her friends and neighbors and said, Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” The Jesus adds a moral to the story, “Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Do you really believe what Jesus is saying – “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Do you believe that? Jesus must have believed it, for he made the same essential point three times in this same chapter. First in the parable of the lost sheep, then in the parable of the lost coin an finally in the parable of the lost son which we know as the prodigal son, In each, Jesus repeats the theme that God loves the sinner so much that it warrants an all out search to find him. When found, God rejoices over the sinner who comes home. Do you believe that? Do you believe there is rejoicing in heaven every time a sinner repents?

For us to believe that there is rejoicing in heaven when one sinner repents is to believe, first of all, that sin is serious business. That alone is stumbling block for many of us. We don’t really take sin seriously. We’re like a legal client I heard about recently.

While working as a court-appointed attorney, Emory Potter was assigned a client who had been accused of criminal trespass. Mr. Potter probed his client with some general questions of background. He asked if he had any previous arrests or convictions. The man ashamedly said, “Yes, sir. I’ve got quite a few.” The thorough attorney then asked, “Any felonies?” The man indignantly replied, “No sir! I specialize in misdemeanors!” That sounds like many of us. WE know in our minds that we are sinners, but we specialize in misdemeanors not in felonies – in small sins not in large ones. In our minds, ours are excusable sins. We are like the Pharisee who thanked God he wasn’t like the tax collector. His sins fell within a range of acceptability.

The late British actor Peter Ustinov said he once dreamed he had been elected Pope. In his dream he saw smoke rising from the chimney pots, and heard people saying he must go out on the balcony at once and wave, and that he must choose a name. Under pressure he did come up with a name, “Not Guilty the First!” he cried. The bishops were dismayed. “Don’t you mean Innocent?” they asked. “I’m not Innocent,” Ustinov replied, “I’m Not Guilty.” That’s us. We’re not innocent; we are just not guilty. We’re not perfect but our sins are really not that serious in our estimation. They’re misdemeanors – not felonies.

And yet, according to Jesus, there really is no such thing as a misdemeanor. To those who prided themselves on never committing adultery, Jesus said if you have looked upon a woman with lust, you have already committed adultery in your heart. To those who prided themselves that they had never committed violence, Jesus said that anyone who had ever said, “You fool,” was in danger of hell.

Sin is an attitude of the heart. Just because you were never provoked enough to actually strike out to another human being does not mean you are innocent. Just because you have never been put in a situation where it became easy to cheat on your spouse does not mean your heart is pure. Sin is serious business. And it crouches in every heart eager to spring forward to devour homes and to devour lives and to devour careers. Sin is serious business. That is the first thing you would have to believe if you believe there is rejoicing in heaven when one sinner comes home.

In the second place, you would have to believe that people really can repent from their sin. If people really can’t repent from their sins, there can be no rejoicing. Unfortunately, there is much skepticism nowadays that people really can repent or change.

Norman Vincent Peale once told about addressing a Methodist conference in Atlanta, Georgia along with a fine preacher, Bishop Noah Moore, and Pierce Harries, a much-loved local pastor. In his message Peale said that he believed that Jesus Christ could come into a life and change it, no matter how hopeless it seemed.

After the service, when he and the other guest preachers were gathered in the minister’s office, they were told that a man wanted to see them – a somewhat disreputable-looking man – unshaven, unwashed, and poorly dressed.

When the man came in, he was reeking of alcohol, but his mind was full of the message he just heard, “Do you really believe that Jesus can help me?” he asked. “Without a doubt,” Peale replied. Then the man asked if they would pray with him. So the four ministers prayed with the man. When he went out, Bishop Moore said, a bit wistfully, “If that man changes, we’ll all be surprised, won’t we?” There it was, a flicker of doubt that change is possible for some people.

Six months later, Peale said he was sitting in the lobby of a hotel in Clearwater, FL,, when he saw a man coming toward him, leading two attractive and well-behaved little girls by the hand. The man was immaculately dressed.

At first, Peale didn’t know who he was, but as he came closer, he recognized the former derelict from Atlanta. There was a smile on the man’s face, and he was humming “Amazing Grace” as he held out his hand in greeting. Peale said it was one of the most emotional and unforgettable encounters of his life.

People can change. It doesn’t happen easily. Most people who try, fail. In fact, anyone who has ever studied Twelve-step programs and other attempts to transform human behavior will tell you that people almost never really change unless God is involved somehow. God can change the human heart. To believe that there is rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who comes home is to believe that sin is serious business and that repentance is possible. Finally, it is to believe that God really does forgive the repentant sinner.

God really does forgive. You see, many people live joyless lives because even though they no longer live the sinful lives they once did, they don’t really believe God has forgiven them. They don’t realize how much God loves to forgive. Forgiveness is what God is all about.

Roy Angell once told a beautiful story about a widow during WWI who lost here only son and her husband. She was especially, bitter because her neighbor, who had five sons, lost none of them. One night while this woman’s grief was so terribly severe, she had a dream. An angel stood before her and said, “You might have your son back for ten minutes. What ten minutes would you choose? Would you have him back as a little baby, a dirty-faced little boy, a schoolboy just starting to school, a student completing high school, or as the young soldier who marched off so bravely to war?”

The mother thought a few minutes and then, in her dream, told the angel she would choose none of those times. “Let me have him back,” she said, “When as a little boy, in a moment of anger, he doubled up his fists and shook them at me and said, ‘I hate you! I hate you!’” Continuing to address the angel, she said: “In a little while his anger subsided and he came back to me, his dirty little face stained with tears, and put his arms around me. ‘Momma, I’m sorry I was so naughty. I promise never to be bad again and I love you with all my heart.’ Let me have him back then,” the mother sobbed, “I never loved him more than at that moment when he changed his attitude and came back to me.”

Jesus said that this is how God feels about each of us. Sin is a serious business. God will help us conquer our sins. Even more important, there is forgiveness – total, complete unlimited forgiveness – available to all who request it. That’s why even angels rejoice whenever one who has been lost is found. That is also why God, through our Gospel lesson today has reminded us that lost people matter. They matter so much to him that it merits an all out search. This means we need to look at people differently. We need to treat people differently. We need to speak about people differently. We are to reach out to the sinner and invite them to our church. We can no longer label people and say they are not worthy of God’s love and forgiveness. One of the issues facing our denomination right now is the issue of homosexual relations. It is so easy for those who feel that any sexual relations outside of marriage is wrong, to verbally and sometimes physically attack those who believe that way. We can become very unchristian in how we speak of gays or how we speak about the current conflict going on.

Instead, God is calling us to walk in love, to talk in love, and to act in love towards all people. That does not mean we have to affirm or approve of what they do, but we do have to realize that if they merit an all out search by the God who can change them, then doesn’t it make sense that we should reach out to them or anyone who sins and seek to bring them to the God who can forgive them and to the Lord who died for them?