Tag: the lost

Here, where the lost are found

David HerbertLeave a comment

A reflection for a small church on Luke 15:1-10 and 1 Timothy 1:12-17

Why are we here?
We are here to hear Jesus.

Our gospel reading introduces us to a gathering to hear Jesus:
“The tax collectors and sinners were all gathering round to hear him.”
That is the gathering we join,
and we do that alongside Paul,
who in our first reading names himself the worst of all sinners,
an ex-blasphemer, persecutor and violent man.

That is the context of every worshipping community.
In our gospel, it caused trouble for Jesus.
The Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered their opposition:
“This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

So Jesus told them two parables.
Luke pairs them: a man’s story and a woman’s story.
A shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to search for the one lost sheep.
A woman lights a lamp, sweeps the house, and searches carefully until she finds her lost coin.
Luke underlines the quality of their searching.
They both show “immense patience”,
a patience that refuses to give up,
a patience that never says “it’s not worth it”.
The shepherd goes after the sheep until he finds it.
The woman spares no effort until she finds it.

They are finders.

Jesus tells these parables against those who were muttering.

The tax collectors and sinners gathered to hear Jesus were also finders.
They had found in him the word of life.
Luke even arranges his gospel so that this gathering follows immediately after Jesus says: “Let anyone with ears to hear listen.”
Who is it that comes to listen?
The tax collectors and sinners.
They are the finders.
The Pharisees and the teachers of the law are also within earshot, but they refuse to listen.
They just scoff.

Luke keeps staging this confrontation.
The tax collectors and sinners are outcasts –
lost by the systems of the world governed by the rich and powerful,
represented here by the Pharisees and lawyers.
The Pharisees and lawyers are respected, secure, and honoured.
In the kingdom of their own making, they are the winners.
They have the best seats. They decide who is in and who is out.

But Jesus sees them differently,
not as winners, but as losers.
They lose people.
They’re dismissive of those who don’t fit.

And isn’t that the way of the world?
We keep losing people
through contempt and neglect,
through systems that write off the poor, the dishonoured, the inconvenient.

These two parables aren’t just about a sheep and a coin,
but about everyone lost in the games of the rich and powerful.

We live in the kingdom where scoffing, exclusion and arrogance are normalised.
But we live for the kingdom where the winners are seen as losers,
and the lost, the last and the least become finders.

And here we are: gathered, like them, not by merit,
but by the word of Jesus,
finders of the way.

The church is the fellowship of the found:
found by Jesus, founded on his word.

I don’t know whether any of you are watching the new series of Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams.
He sets up cricket teams in some of the most deprived areas.
He visits a pupil referral unit in Liverpool,
boys permanently excluded from school,
written off as trouble. Lost boys.
And he makes a team of them.

Flintoff refuses to let them stay lost.
With immense patience, he works with them,
coaxes them, encourages them,
hoping they might find purpose, dignity, hope.

If one man can give such patience to boys dismissed by the system,
how much more will Christ Jesus seek and find the lost?

That is what Paul says in our first reading.
He calls himself “the worst of sinners”—
a blasphemer, persecutor, violent man.
If anyone was beyond hope, it was him.
Yet Christ Jesus showed him mercy,
so that in him the immense patience of God might be displayed,
the patience of the shepherd,
the patience of the searching woman
magnified in Christ’s patience for us.

Paul is proof that no one is too far gone,
no one is finally lost to God.

And that is why we are here.
We may feel small, even overlooked,
like a congregation easily written off.
But in Christ’s kingdom, no congregation, no gathering is lost,
and no person is forgotten.

We are not the society of the scoffers,
drawing lines and writing people off.
We are the fellowship of the found,
found by Christ’s immense patience,
gathered by his mercy,
called to practise the same humility and hospitality:
ready to search, to welcome, to rejoice
whenever one who was lost is found.

Jesus still eats with tax collectors and sinners.
He still makes room for the poor, the marginalised, the left-behind.

And here we are,
the ones he has found,
gathered at his table.
Here we are,
the fellowship of his patience,
the people of his joy.

Every welcome we give is a share in heaven’s joy.

Every time the overlooked are honoured,
the lonely embraced,
the written-off given a place,
we join the joy of the finders of God
and the joy of God in the lost God has found.

Here we are. Found, forgiven, rejoicing.

The Samaritan, the wounded, and the question that won’t go away

David Herbert1 Comment

We know parable of the Good Samaritan so well we can almost recite it by heart. But maybe that’s the problem. Its edges have worn smooth with repetition, and its challenge no longer cuts as sharply as Jesus intended. What happens when we let it confront us afresh? Here’s a sermon that asks us to imagine hearing it for the first time — and to wrestle with the question that won’t go away: “Who is my neighbour?”.

My customary intro – so customary these days that we could almost do it as call and response.
Here goes: I love preaching that brings scripture back to life.
Call: Do you love preaching that brings scripture back to life?
Response: We do.

But how do we bring scripture, such as this parable of the Good Samaritan back to life when we’ve worn it smooth with repetition, so familiar that its sharp edge no longer cuts?

Can we imagine the pointedness of the parable for those hearing this for the first time?
Imagine hearing this for the very first time.

Let’s do some word association.

What word do you associate with Samaritan?

What words do you think Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries associated with Samaritan?

Very different sets of word associations

Here’s a bold assertion I read this week: This parable has single-handedly shaped the reputation of the Samaritans. Samaritans stood for everything the Jews hated. In their eyes the Samaritans were despised as the last, the least and the lost. There was no such thing as a “good” Samaritan. Now a Samaritan is someone we can call when we are at the end of our tether. A Samaritan is a first responder – one who runs into trouble to help – unlike those who run away at the first sign of trouble.

But to the question posed by the lawyer, “Who is my neighbour” Jesus casts the main characters as those last, least and lost. There are two main characters.
There is the one attacked by robbers and there is the Samaritan. 

It is interesting to note who and what Jesus sees first when he preaches the good news of the kingdom. Jesus sees first not the powerful or the prominent, but the ones left behind,
the last, the least and the lost,
the stripped, beaten, and left for dead,
the wounded and the hated.

The Samaritan and the victim are the ones Jesus sees first when he responds to the lawyer’s question, “Who is my neighbour?”.

They are the ones Jesus “sees”.

And these last, least and lost become the leaders in this discussion about neighbourliness.
Jesus promotes them to be the first to teach the lawyer (and all Jesus’s hearers) a lesson on the question “Who is my neighbour?”


Here are the last.


And here are the first,
way off in the distance,
the priest and the levite,
the first people Jesus’s hearers would have thought should have responded to the stripped, beaten and robbed.

You would expect them to do good. 

They are prominent people.
They come first in the public eye, just as they come first in the story Jesus tells.
They are the professionals – the ones who should know the scripture the lawyer quotes: “Love your neighbour as yourself.”
They would have known that as the key to eternal life, but they fail to walk the talk.
I wonder if the lawyer would have done the same – walked by on the other side, failing to walk the talk.

What happens is that the first come last in the eyes of Jesus and the kingdom of God.
They are the ones who become the outcasts by just walking by.

When Jesus preached he said to those who would listen:
Love your enemies,
do good to those who hate you,
bless those who curse you,
pray for those who abuse you. (Luke 6:27-28)

And here today, we hear of a Samaritan,
loving his enemy,
doing good to one, who in all likelihood, hated him
an answer to prayer for the victim, who in all likelihood,
joined in the abusive banter of the time.

The lawyer asked, “who is my neighbour?”
We might ask, “Who is my enemy?”

Enemy is a word of two parts.
There is the ene – meaning not,
and there is the emy,
like the French word ami,
behind which is the Latin word for friend – amicus.
My enemy is literally the one who is not my friend,
not only the one who hates me, curses me and abuses me,
but the one to whom I am nothing, a nobody.

The Samaritan loves his enemy.

This isn’t just about ancient hostilities.
Our world still draws lines between us and them.
Think of the debates around borders and strangers today.

We live in xenophobic times.
Perhaps these times are no different to other times.
Perhaps these times are no different to Jesus’ own times.
Perhaps we’ve always been wary of strangers.
They’re never our friends as long as they are strangers.
They’re the enemy to be kept out.

Behind the lawyer’s question was the idea that there has to be a limit to who our neighbour is.
Probably, like the lawyer, we share the basic assumption that our neighbours are people like us, and people who like us.
But in this parable Jesus not only single-handedly reshapes the reputation of the Samaritan, but he also challenges the scandal of the boundaries we build with our hatred and suspicion.

The lawyer leaves Jesus with the question “Who is my neighbour?”

The question Jesus leaves the lawyer with is, “Will you be a neighbour?”
“Will you go and do likewise?”
“Will you bear to be a neighbour to your enemy – being compassionate, attentive, practical and generous?”

We are left with the same questions.
Will we go and do likewise?
Will we follow the Samaritan’s lead?
Will we cross the road?
Will we engage with the victims of the way things are?
Will we go to the help of the wounded and hated?
Will we attend to their wounds? Will we find help?

Will we just leave them there, beaten and hated?

Will we keep them at arm’s length, as enemy, as “not our friends”?
Or, will we go and do likewise?
Will we love our enemy, doing good to those who hate us, blessing those who curse us, praying for those who abuse us?
Just as Jesus did.
Will we maintain the dividing lines?
Or will we simply be a neighbour, like the Samaritan,
who, unlike the lawyer, never stopped to ask,
“Who is my neighbour?” – as if there needs to be a limit.

PS. I’ve started using ChatGPT to help me prepare for preaching. This week the algorithm threw me a question that stopped me in my tracks:

What if being a neighbour means crossing every line we’ve drawn between “us” and “them”?

PPS It was Jennifer S. Wyant who claims this parable “singlehandedly reshaped the reputation of the Samaritans”.