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In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            What is it that the Pharisees and scribes are grumbling at Jesus about? Isn’t it a little strange? They were grumbling, saying, “He welcomes sinners, He receives sinners, and eats with them.” They were mad that Jesus was receiving sinners and eating with them. See, everything depends on whether you put yourself on the side of the sinners or not. Everything depends on whether you put yourself on the side of the sinners.

            Now some people might object to Christians calling themselves sinners. I’ve heard it. There’s a sense in which that objection is correct. It is correct that we should not call ourselves sinners, if that means that “sinner” is the final word, or the truth of our identity. It’s not. You have been called by the Spirit of Christ, with His word, to believe the Gospel and you have been enlightened with His gifts. He has covered you with His righteous blood, cleansed and washed you. You believe that word and so you have what He says: the holy purity and righteousness of Jesus. When God looks at you, clothed in Christ, He does not see a sinner, but a righteous one. So, if we are talking about the final word, or the truth of who you are in Jesus, before God, then you are not a sinner. That is not your identity in Christ.

            But of course, that final word and identity are only by faith right now. You haven’t seen it. We might see some evidence of the holy work of Christ in us, but we don’t see our own holiness. It is still a gift of the Lord, from outside us, given freely in His absolving word. So if you are not a sinner in this sense, if your sinful flesh is no longer the cause of your sin, then you don’t need Jesus. The Pharisees had asked Jesus earlier, when He was at the house of Levi, the tax collector, why he ate with tax collectors and sinners. And Jesus said that He came to call to repentance not the righteous, but the sinner. It is not the healthy who need a physician, He said, but the sick. So if you will not be a sinner, then you don’t need Jesus. Christ will dwell only in sinners. You can go about your life, because if you are not a sinner, you don’t need Jesus. You don’t need to confess sins, you don’t need to be absolved. There is nothing for you here if you have ceased to be a sinner. Everything depends on whether you are on the side of sinners, because that’s where Jesus is.

            The only reason you grumble about Jesus welcoming sinners and eating with them, is if you don’t think you are one. And it’s not just Pharisees and scribes who think that way. There are people who are not even believers who know what’s wrong with everyone else, and how to fix them, and perceive themselves as righteous and holy, in whatever sense, and so do not need to repent. They just tell other people how they should repent of their crimes of thought, word, and deed. But those self-righteous unbelievers are probably not here today, so we have to deal with those who are here—you and I. And for you and me, everything depends on whether we are on the side of sinners.

            Everything depends on it for you, and everything depends on it for others. For you, it’s a matter of being among those whom Jesus came to call, and whom Jesus continues to feed, and to whom Jesus continues to deliver His forgiveness. Everything depends on it for you. But everything depends on that for all the people in your life. Because if you are not on the side of sinners, then you are not on their side. You’re on the side of those who are above the sinners, away from the sinners, better than the sinners. It should go without saying, but sometimes we should say those things: the only difference between you and me, on the one hand, and every unbeliever, on the other, is that we have been granted the faith to trust in the Jesus who died for and covers and takes away our sin. The difference is not sin, of course, but faith. And if we are on some other side, then sooner or later we will be with the Pharisees and the scribes, wondering why Jesus and His Body are wasting their time dealing with such horrible people. We should also remember that people sin in different ways. Some sins are more obvious and external than others. Because we naturally think that sin makes sinners, and not that sinners sin, we start thinking about better or worse people in terms of their external sins. That’s not what makes them sinners! You and I and everyone else are already sinners, and because of that fact, that disease, we sin.

            In these two parables that we heard, and in the one that comes after it, the sinners are the lost ones. There are three parables here, and they are all about someone or something being lost. In the first, there is one sheep out of 100 lost. In the second, there is one coin out of 10 lost. In the third, there is one son lost out of two. And which of you, Jesus says, wouldn’t leave 99 sheep in the wilderness and go search for the one that’s lost, and when you find it, put it on your shoulders and return? Then you’ll call your friends and neighbors and say rejoice with me! I’ve found my lost sheep! Or which of you wouldn’t be like a woman who lights a lamp, sweeps the whole house, and searches until she finds the missing coin. And then she calls her friends and neighbors and says rejoice with me! I found my lost coin. I don’t know if you would have a party for a sheep or a coin. But certainly, if your son had wished you dead, taken half your money, and gone and wasted it far away, you would certainly wait each and every single day until you saw him walking back, run to him, and refuse to let him make excuses for anything, but have a servant put the nicest robe, the nicest shoes, and the best ring on him, and then kill the fattened calf, and say, let us eat and rejoice, because this, my son, was dead, but is alive again; he was lost, but he is found.

            Wouldn’t you? Or would you stick to the 99 perfectly safe sheep, when the lost sheep is probably dead already? Or would you keep the 9 coins safe, and hope the other one found its way back into your drawer? Or would you say, I’ve done everything you always asked me to do, and I don’t even get a little party with my friends. I’m not going to celebrate with that loser, that waster of all his father’s gifts, that sinner.

            I don’t know, but I do know it matters whether you’re in the 99, the 9, or you stayed at home and worked in the fields the whole time—or, you’re the lost ones. These parables are, in fact, only good news to the lost ones. So hear this: this is good news for you, because you were one of those lost ones, the sinners whom Christ came to call to repentance. It doesn’t matter if you were baptized as a baby and grew up entirely in the church; it doesn’t matter if you were an adult, and you had a lot of baggage that you dropped in the baptismal water (though it still sneaks back to you every once in a while); it doesn’t matter if you think you have a lot of sin compared to someone else; it doesn’t matter that I’m a pastor. Unless we don’t want anything to do with Jesus, then we are all on that side together, because that’s the side Jesus is on: the side of the sinners.

            He didn’t wait for you to figure it out and get your life right; He came seeking and searching and looking for the one: you are that one. He came to gather the scattered and to heal the sick and to lift up the low; to seek and to save the lost. He gathered and still keeps you, and He keeps gathering and seeking and finding and calling, so that the one and the one and the one will eventually be the innumerable multitude from every tribe, language, people, and nation. Let us rejoice and eat together with Him.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “The peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

– Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 9/13/25