About King David: the Lord our God, counting numbers, and Satan. 1 Chronicles chapter 21, verses 1 and 2, says the following: “Then Satan stood up against Israel and incited David to count Israel. So David said to Joab and the leaders of the people, ‘Go, count Israel from Beersheba to Dan, and bring me word that I may know their number.'”
At the time, you see, David and the Israelites were at war. They had just won a couple of victories in the previous chapter, and they were likely facing some more and some greater battles ahead. So David — the text says, incited, that is, tempted by Satan — orders a head count of his men at arms. Now Joab and the other military advisers objected to the order, and they told David that such an order would infuriate the Lord God. They did everything they could to discourage King David from having the order executed — which is what he did.
Now given the current situation, it sounds like a pretty good order, doesn’t it? Except for that Satan part. It’s usually a good thing to know how many fighting men you have at arms before you enter into a battle or a war. But the head count displeased the Lord God immensely. In fact, it displeased Him so much that in 21:14 we read He sent a plague on Israel: 70,000 men of Israel fell. That was the punishment for going ahead and counting noses of men at arms.
You see, trusting in numbers rather than the Lord God is a bad thing. But it’s a thing that we sinners do all the time. We live by numbers. Now numbers can be a good thing. The book of Acts has numbers. It tells us that on one occasion 3,000 men in one day were converted and baptized into the Christian faith. It tells us on another day 5,000 men were converted and baptized into the Christian faith. We have a book, by the way, called Numbers, and it has some numbers in it. It gets the name Numbers from the very beginning and the very end of the book itself, wherein God authorized a census. At the beginning of the book of Numbers there were 603,550 men in Israel. By the end of the book there were 601,730 men. For the bean counters here, that’s a loss of 1,820 men. Israel was a little smaller by the end of the book of Numbers.
Now American Christianity has had a particular love for nose-counting and head-counting and numbers when it comes to church attendance and participation and, quote-unquote, churchy kind of activities and events. The revival movements of the 19th and 20th centuries boasted about the hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people who flocked to their meetings and made, quote, “commitments” or “decisions” for Jesus. And when the old-fashioned revivalism and contempt of revivalism started to fade away and wane — people were no longer turning out as they once did — then they got to work on changing the nature of the church and the church service. Thus we have the contemporary church service and music, and the church growth movement, which set out to bring in new people by new, more entertaining and exciting approaches to what they call “doing church.” The megachurch was born. And even conservative Lutheran synods like the LCMS and the Wisconsin Synod took the bait and bought in.
You see, our old sinful nature and our culture worships at the altar of numerical success. Declining numbers indicate a failing pastor and congregation. And that’s always a conversation starter — stopper for me: “Oh, you’re a pastor, are you? What kind? Lutheran. How big is your church?” “Oh, about 30.” End of conversation. Time to have a beer. That’s how it works. All you do is tell them you’re 25, 30, 40, 50, and all of a sudden you’re not quite fully a pastor, you’re not quite fully a congregation. Increasing membership, on the other hand, indicates the pastor and the congregation are on the right track. They’re doing the right things, and they’re making God happy, because their numbers show it.
The parable this morning, though, teaches that Jesus doesn’t look at us, or the church, or the ministry, in that way. In the first parable this morning, Jesus leaves the 99 sheep in the open field — that means unprotected — because His primary concern is to find the one little lamb that is lost, that is endangered by itself. He is so concerned about the one that He searches high and low for it until He finds the one that is lost. When He finds the one that is lost, He’s filled with joy. He lays it on His shoulders, and He’s rejoicing. And He comes home and He calls together His friends and His neighbors, and He says, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.”
The Gospel this morning, the lesson, comes from chapter 15 of the Gospel of St. Luke, which has a nickname: it’s called the “lost and found” chapter of the New Testament. That which was lost gets found in chapter 15. This chapter is one large parable containing three separate stories designed to illustrate the same theological truth. Chapter 15 consists of these three parables, two of which our reading addresses this morning: the lost sheep and the lost coin. There’s also — it finishes with the lost son, which we name the prodigal son. In all three parables, there is much joy and merry-making when the one that is lost is found, returned, or comes back.
Chapter 15 opens with the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law observing Jesus with tax collectors and sinners, and they’re grumbling and complaining. They say, “Look, this man receives sinners and he eats with them.” That word that’s translated “receives” can also be translated “welcomes.” This man welcomes sinners, and he eats with them. Grumbling and complaining was going on to the point of annoyance. It wasn’t just a passing comment. They were constantly grumbling and complaining that Jesus was so popular among these people, and that Jesus — who’s supposed to be a righteous and upright man, a keeper of the Law — kept company, close quarters, with such people. He kept company with the dregs of society, unclean sinners whose uncleanness could be infectious. All the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near to Him and listening to Him. They were physically getting close to Him, which is the danger zone for becoming unclean with their uncleanness.
The Pharisees and other teachers of the Law weren’t wrong in what they reported. It was true: Jesus was welcoming, receiving sinners. And Jesus wasn’t ashamed of the fact either. He is the one, in fact, doing the righteous thing, while the Pharisees and keepers and teachers of the Law were doing the unrighteous thing. The critics had it backwards. They looked at the church and the ministry in a completely wrong way — which is a kind of problem among Christians in every generation, in every century.
In these three parables — of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son — Jesus teaches His critics and followers alike what God is really like, and what He regards as the greatest work of joy in all the world: which is the repentance of one sinner at a time. God so loved the world of sinners that He gave His only-begotten Son, that everybody who believes in Him should have everlasting life and not perish.
See, we all need to be saved, because we all suffer from the universal plague of sin and of sin’s consequences. These parables teach us that the true nature of God’s love is love for the individual sinner. That is: God’s love is not an abstract concept. It’s not an abstract disposition of all things and all people, kind of generalized, sort of thing. It’s a love that creates its object. Luther, in the Heidelberg Disputation, has a thesis that says: God’s love does not find its object; it creates it. That is: it can’t find anyone who is holy in and of themselves, so He must create saints out of sinners. He creates the object that He loves.
While Christians are members of the body of Christ — the una sancta, the one universal catholic church — these parables show that what Jesus is ultimately concerned about is the one sinner, the lost one, the one who’s called to repentance and brought back to the fold.
From the shepherd, man, to the woman in the house: when something of value is lost or misplaced, effort is exerted in order to find it, reclaim it, and bring it back into the household. “What woman,” He says, “if she had ten silver coins, loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search it carefully until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her family or her friends and her neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my coin which I had lost.'”
Now philosophically, in America, as you know, we are part pragmatist. That means we want to know: if it gets what needs to be done, done — if it is, it’s good. It’s our version of the British form of utilitarianism. Philosophies of utilitarianism and pragmatism hold this: that the highest good, the best good, can be determined by a mathematical equation — numbers about the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. Value is not found in the individual person. Rather, value is found in the collective, the group.
But for Jesus, it’s all about the one. The one sheep. The one coin out of ten. The one son out of two. It’s always, for Jesus, about the one. You — the one that He has called, gathered, enlightened, and sanctified by His Holy Spirit.
One seems insignificant to us, right? It’s right next to zero. It can’t be much more insignificant than that — one, just by itself. But by the standard of the world, Jesus looks like a very bad shepherd. He’s consumed with the desire to save the one that is lost. But to God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — you see, you are more precious than everything else in the world.
You’re part of a demographic. You’re part of a voting bloc. You’re a consumer group. You’re an economic class. And now, in many places called the church, you’re an audience for a religious show on the weekends. In life, you’re a flash in the pan: here today, gone tomorrow. No meaning prior, and no meaning after. That’s it.
But not to Jesus. You’re the found sheep, the one lost coin that’s been brought back into the fold, and you’re the returning son or daughter.
The Pharisees and scribes were complaining about Jesus’s attitude towards sinners, instead of celebrating the reality of the saints who came to listen and learn from Jesus. The chapter began: “All the tax collectors and sinners were eagerly drawing near to Him to listen to Him.” The sinners weren’t there to chat with Jesus. They didn’t come to play the victim card about how society had so badly mistreated them. They didn’t come to a show and to experience some kind of religious revival. They came to listen and to learn. Jesus was doing what Jesus always did: He taught the Word. He called sinners to repentance. He taught children of the heavenly Father what it meant to be a child of the heavenly Father. The Word — both Law and Gospel — was bringing those who listened to Him to repentance, which is another way of saying to true Christian faith.
Each one of these tax collectors and sinners was lost — a lost sheep, a lost coin — but now was found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Pharisees, on the other hand, rejected the Word, as they had rejected the baptism of repentance from John the Baptist. They didn’t think they needed to repent. And that’s why Jesus included the reference to the 99 righteous: “There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over the 99 righteous people who have no need of repentance.” They thought they were righteous, and thus they didn’t need true Christian faith or repentance.
Jesus references repentance, by the way, twice in the Gospel reading — once after each of the two parables: “Just so, I tell you, there is joy in heaven before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” This is the man who welcomes sinners and turns them into saints.
But this wasn’t the first time the Pharisees and the men of the Law grumbled and complained about Jesus’s disposition towards sinners. Luke 5:30-32: “The Pharisees and the scribes began grumbling to His disciples, saying, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?’ And Jesus answered and said to them, ‘It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous to repentance, but sinners.'”
In telling the parable of the lost sheep, Jesus is also teaching that He is the fulfillment of the Old Testament lesson that we read: “Behold, I, I Myself will search for My sheep and look after them. As a shepherd cares for his flock on a day when he is among his scattered sheep, so I will care for My sheep and will rescue them from all the places where they have been scattered on a cloudy and gloomy day. Behold, I am coming to judge between one sheep and another.”
One at a time: Judgment Day, one at a time. In the waters of Baptism, one at a time. In receiving the body and blood, given for you for the remission of sins. This is what Jesus is doing in faithful congregations. This is what faithful congregations — and the mission of the church — is to be about: calling, gathering, enlightening, and sanctifying one sinner at a time, as God provides opportunity for us to do.
The Pharisees were right: Jesus is constantly welcoming and eating with sinners. He continues to welcome us and feed us in our midst. He feeds us on the Word, in preaching and teaching, in singing, the liturgy, the hymns, and Confession and Absolution. He feeds us on His very own body and blood for the remission of your sins at the altar. Think of that in the next few minutes when you kneel right over here. See, He carries you on His shoulders. He’s carrying you with joy. You are the one that was found. He found you. He worked repentance and faith in you. And there’s rejoicing over you in heaven by the angels of God.
You know, when formerly large and medium-sized congregations find themselves reduced to 100 people, or to 75, or to two or three dozen, a great depression tends to fall into those congregations. I’ve talked to people, and they’ve shared with me how joy has left their congregations, which were formerly quite large but now are very scattered on Sunday mornings and Saturday nights. A sense of hopelessness falls over the congregation and the members. They begin to wonder if they’ve done something wrong. They stopped doing what was working for them once. Hopelessness and depression then speeds more departures of members.
You see, these kinds of congregations — not just the big mega ones, but these congregations — have fallen into the numbers game too. It’s not the one that’s important to them. It’s not their own salvation that’s important to them. It’s the numbers, the atmosphere, the disposition. They’re still stuck in the idea that numbers are a measure of success, not faithfulness to the Word and Sacrament ministry. To them, numbers remain a sign of God’s pleasure or displeasure.
You guys are — you’re weird, you’re fun, you have a good time, you work hard. Little Immanuel is not one of those kinds of congregations. It has difficult times from time to time. People begin to wonder how long we ought to keep the doors open. But this congregation, by and large, is a happy, healthy, hard-working, faithful little congregation, concerned about the one — one another.
You see, you’re not a number. Your Good Shepherd knows you by name. You are His. And He says in Luke 12:7: you are more valuable than the sparrows. And again: even the hairs on your head are numbered. That’s the only number He’s concerned about. He doesn’t have to count as many anymore. He has engraved you, the psalm says, on the palm of His hand. You are His.
As church bodies go — churches, congregations, Christian schools, Christian endeavors across the country have been shrinking in number — we have been called to be faithful, to trust in Christ alone, to come to Him and listen and learn from His Word.
For Christ’s part — I’ll finish with that third stanza: “Preserve me, O Lord, I pray, lest I fall from Thee astray. But yet in love He’s sought me, and on His shoulders gently laid me, and home rejoicing brought me.”
You — the one. Your sins are forgiven. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.