September 14, 2025
The Rev’d Michael J. Horvath
Gospel: Luke 15:1-10
Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

So here’s Jesus again, in his sweet spot, surrounded by people who weren’t supposed to be there. Tax collectors and sinners are crowding in to hear him, and the religious leaders are grumbling. “This guy welcomes sinners and eats with them.” And Jesus doesn’t defend himself with a theological argument or a position paper. He just tellsstories. A shepherd has a hundred sheep, loses one, and leaves the ninety-nine to go after it. A woman has ten coins, loses one, and turns her house upside down until she finds it. And when they find what’s missing, they throw a party.

I love that Jesus always seems to double down when people complain about him. “You don’t like that I welcome sinners? Cool. Here’s a story where I leave everyone behind just to go after one sheep. Here’s a story where I act like one coin is worth more than all the furniture I just broke trying to find it.” Jesus seems to be saying: if you think this whole God thing is about keeping everything neat and tidy and just the way you like it, you’re missing the point. God is not about preservation. God is about pursuit. God is about creation. God is about movement. God is about joy when the lost are found.

Jesus is affirming God’s faithful commitment to us to find us whenever we are lost. Because all of us know what it feels like to be lost. Maybe we’ve wandered into the wilderness of grief or addiction or shame. Maybe we’ve quietly drifted away from community and faith until one day we realized we didn’t know how to come back. Sometimes lostness looks dramatic, sometimes it just looks like slowly pulling away, little by little, until you feel like an outsider even in your own life.

And what Jesus is saying is that being found is not our job. God doesn’t sit around waiting for us to get it together. God comes after us. God searches. God refuses to give up until we are carried home. And when we’re found, heaven throws a party. Not a stern lecture. Not a probationary period to see if we’ll behave. A party.

Now, if you’ve been here the last couple of weeks, you’ll notice that Jesus is building a whole arc of what it means to be part of God’s kingdom. Two weeks ago, we heard Jesus talk about the seating chart at God’s table. Remember that? Everyone scrambling for the best spots at the Sabbath dinner, and Jesus saying, “Nope. You’ve got it all wrong. At God’s table, the guest list isn’t the powerful or the well-connected. It’s the ones who can’t repay you. The overlooked. The outsiders.” In other words, God’s table is different. God’s table is about grace, about belonging.

And then last week, on Homecoming Sunday, we heard Jesus turn to the big crowd following him and say, “This isn’t about being a fan. It’s about being part of a community.” We talked about how crowds are easy, but community is costly. Community means commitment. It means not just spectating but showing up, building something together, carrying one another through the mess.

And now today, in Luke 15, Jesus takes it one step further. Because if the table is about belonging, and the community is about commitment, then the joy is about completion. The church isn’t complete if someone is missing. The community isn’t whole unless the lost have been found. God doesn’t shrug at 99 out of 100 and say, “Pretty good average.” God says, “No, I’m not done yet. I’ll keep searching until the family is complete.”

That’s actually a word of comfort for every single one of us who has felt lost, but it’s also a word of challenge for the church. Because the church changes all the time. Every generation has to do the work of asking: who doesn’t feel like they belong here? Who’s missing from the table? Who has gotten lost along the way? And the moment we stop asking that question, the moment we start saying, “We’ve got our ninety-nine, we’re good,” is the moment we’ve stopped being church.

When I talk to colleagues I worked with in other churches or parishioners from parishes past, they usually same something like “The church has changed since you were last here. You wouldn’t recognize it.” Sometimes I wonder if they’ve forgotten that ours is a Creating God, who is forever shaping and reshaping the way we understand ourselves and the world, as well as the churches we inhabit. Church is always changing. I would even go so far as to say it changes weekly. Our people change, our priorities change, the hymns we sing change, the variety of people we welcome changes because we open our doors wider and wider.

So when people say, “I don’t recognize my church anymore,” because it’s gotten more diverse in terms of who shows up or what ideas are being wrestled with, maybe the faithful response is: “Good. That’s a sign that God is still finding people.” Because if the church always looks like it did twenty years ago, that’s not necessarily a sign of health. That’s a sign we’ve stopped letting the Spirit do her thing.

The grumbling Pharisees and scribes are basically saying the same thing: “We don’t recognize this community anymore. Look at who’s here. Tax collectors. Sinners. These are not our kind of people.” And Jesus’ whole point is: that’s exactly right. The circle just got wider. The community just got bigger. God’s joy just got louder.

And here’s where it loops back to us. Because in the next few weeks we’re going to be talking a lot about stewardship and what it means to give. And sometimes stewardship feels like numbers on a spreadsheet or plugging holes in a budget. But in light of today’s Gospel, stewardship looks like when even one person shows up and says, “I want to be part of this community,” we rejoice. When even one person makes a pledge, however big or small, we rejoice. When someone who has felt lost decides to give church another shot, we rejoice. Because every person matters. Every gift matters. Every story matters.

I think sometimes we underestimate how radical it is to keep throwing parties over the people who weren’t supposed to be here. Because the world doesn’t really work that way. The world says: keep the circle tight. Stick with the people who look like you, think like you, vote like you. But Jesus says: nope. I’m out here scouring the wilderness, sweeping the floor, knocking on doors, dragging everyone back into the joy of community. And if you want to be part of what I’m doing, then you better get used to a community that keeps changing shape.

This is what it means to move from the crowd to the community and then from the community to the celebration. Not just tolerating one another, not just organizing ourselves neatly into pews, but actually throwing a party because God keeps finding the ones who wandered off. Moving from welcome to inclusion.

And maybe the best news in all of this is that when it’s us who have wandered off – when we’ve been the sheep or the coin – God hasn’t given up on us either. God hasn’t shrugged and moved on. God is still searching, still sweeping, still finding, and still rejoicing when we are brought home.

So today, remember: you belong at God’s table. You’re called out of the crowd and into community. And when you get lost, God will find you. And when you are found, the whole neighborhood of heaven throws a party.

Amen.

Michael J. Horvath, Rector