Sermon for the 13th Sunday after Trinity – 11th September 2022:Exodus 32, 1-17; 1 Timothy 1, 12-17; Luke 15, 1-10

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

John Newton was born in London, in 1725. His father was a shipping merchant. At the age of eleven, he joined his father on a ship as an apprentice; his seagoing career would be marked by headstrong disobedience.

As a sailor, he denounced his faith after being influenced by a fellow shipmate. His disobedience caused him to be press-ganged into the Royal Navy. He deserted the navy to follow the woman he had fallen in love with. After enduring humiliation for desertion from the navy he was traded as crew to a slave ship, and he began a career in cruel slave trading. While aboard the ship Greyhound, Newton gained notoriety as being one of the most profane men the captain had ever met.

In March 1748, while the Greyhound was in the North Atlantic, a violent storm came upon the ship that was so rough it swept overboard a crew member who was standing where Newton had been only moments before. In the midst of the terrifying ordeal he cried our ‘Lord have mercy’ thus beginning the questioning of himself that led him into faith.

Working as a customs officer from 1756 he began to teach himself Latin, Greek and Theology. He and his new wife engaged with their local parish church and with his new found passion for faith his friends suggested that he should be ordained. In 1746 he was ordained by the then Bishop of Lincoln and he became curate of Olney in 1764.

The reason I am telling you so much about John Newton is that he is the author of the hymn that we have just sung – Amazing grace.

This is perhaps one of the most famous of the Olney Hymns composed by John Newton while he was Curate in that village in Buckinghamshire.

It is personal, and profound; penitential and salvific. He speaks of the sheer grace of God in Jesus Christ redeeming him from a life of profanity and of gross degradation of human beings – yet despite all this he is found by God’s grace and transformed by it.

So often we think of people ‘finding religion’ or ‘finding God’. More often perhaps we have to turn this around and think of ourselves as being found BY God, by his grace and by his love. Salvation is an act of God through the cross, not a human action, though our co-operation is entirely necessary.

So often I tell of a story from my university days at St. Andrews. There was a very sincere Christian woman who would hand out little leaflets with passages of the bible. One day she accosted the Very Revd. Matthew Black, Master of St. Mary’s College where Divinity was taught. As she jumped out in front of him, she asked the question such earnest Christians often ask – ‘Are you saved?’. The Professor’s response was, ‘Aye madam, in the year 33AD’.

Salvation comes through the cross and God’s action in and through his crucified and resurrected Son. It is being open to this possibility that allows us to be found.

Today’s gospel reading from St. Luke is set within a number of parables that Jesus tells about various things being lost and being found.

Ironically we are told that the people coming to Jesus are tax collectors and sinners – these are the ones open to being found – and Pharisees and scribes who grumble about Jesus – these are the ones who are lost. The first two categories are found because, though they are social outcasts, they know their need of listening to the words of grace. The latter two categories are lost because though they have all the outward displays of religion, but they are far from the grace of their God.

So in response to those who are lost, Jesus tells of the rejoicing when a sheep has strayed from the flock and gets lost and is found again. He proceeds to tell of the woman who loses a coin, works hard to recover it, and when it is found she rejoices. When the sheep and coin is found the joy is shared – not kept to the individual who has found the lost item. The rejoicing is not isolated in some selfish setting but with a celebration for the whole community. This is real community joy. This should be the church when someone new comes to faith; this should be the church when someone finds fresh and renewed faith.

These stories of lost and found items culminate in what is perhaps the very best parable to describe what the Christian faith is. If someone asks you or me why we believe, or what it is we believe, we could of course look to the text of the Creed. Everything we believe is to be found there, after all; or we could attempt to give some sort of philosophical or theological explanation which we might think is clever, but could lead us into some intellectual quagmire. Instead, we could do what Jesus does. He tells a story, and surely the very best of stories involves being lost and found. It is not a sheep and not a coin. It is you and me, and the story is known as the Parable of the Prodigal Son. This story of lost and found sums up what our faith really is – it is the core of our relationship with God, and with each other. It follows the classic formula of someone being lost, discovering the reality of that loss and seeking to be restored again, and when found there is a celebration.

The parable of the Prodigal, also known as the Parable of the Forgiving Father, is about the schism of human-centredness and God-centredness. When we leave our home in God we drift and lose our way. We return to God and we find that the Father has been waiting for us all along. His love has been searching for us – his grace has always surrounded us.

Through many dangers, toils, and snares

I have already come

This grace that brought me safe thus far

And grace will lead me home.

 

We none of us are too stiff-necked to return. Time and again the people of Israel returned from their stubborn ways to the ways of the Lord, and God never gave up on them. When he writes to Timothy the letter writer admits he was a blasphemer, a persecutor, a man of violence, all things we know about St. Paul from other bible sources – but he, even he, the least of all men, experiences the overflowing grace that is in Christ Jesus.

 

All of this is so deftly expressed in the words of a stiff-necked, stubborn man, who cursed better than others and lived a dissolute life and worst of all –  he who was once a slave trader:

I once was lost, but now I’m found,

Was blind but now I see.