Pentecost 14 – 2025
Luke 15:1-10
Marian Free
In the name of God who seeks the lost and is not content until they are safely home. Amen.
In her book Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean tells the story of her relationship with Elmo Patrick Sonnier, a man who is on death row in Louisiana State Penitentiary. Sonnier has been sentenced to death for his part in the kidnapping and murder of two young people and the rape of the young woman. Sonnier is not a particularly attractive individual. He is sullen and defensive, and he refuses to take any responsibility for his actions. Prejean in no way condones the young man’s behaviour, but she does see behind the tough exterior a vulnerable human being who loves his mother and his younger brother.
Prejean’s visits to Sonnier and her increasingly vocal opposition to the death penalty do not make her popular and are a source of pain and confusion for the parents of the murdered youths. They simply cannot understand how a good Christian woman can give Sonnier the time of day, let alone show him some kindness. They want her to join them in calling down God’s judgement on him. They want him to pay for what he has done, and they firmly believe that God’s fury should be poured out on him. It is beyond them to comprehend that anyone could have sympathy for a person who has committed such evil acts.
Prejean persists in her friendship, consistently urging Sonnier to admit to and take responsibility for the crime. It is only when Sonnier is within hours of facing the executioner that he finally acknowledges that he took part in the murder and that he raped the girl. He was still executed – not as someone who was still lost, but as someone who, through the love of God regained his humanity and was redeemed.
Who is the most loathsome person you can think of? Hitler or Idi Amin might come to mind, or perhaps those who attacked Camp Sovereignty in recent weeks[1]. Top of your list might be those members of Hamas whose murderous rampage on October 7, 2023 began the current war in Gaza. It could be that the perpetrators of domestic violence or chid sex offenders might cause you the greatest sense of revulsion. To be honest, having put my mind to it, I can see that there are many categories of people whose actions put them beyond the pale and who, because of those actions seem to be out of the reach of forgiveness or redemption. Even to think about the perpetrators of such horrendous crimes causes such disquiet that their removal from society seems to be the only way to create a safer more harmonious world.
Can you even begin to imagine that God might love Sonnier, or Rowan Baxter who incinerated his wife and three children in their car? Can you envisage God’s loving the murderers, the sex offenders, the terrorists, the oppressive dictators so much that God’s heart is breaking for them until God can bring them back to Godself. It is a shocking, horrifying thought – that God should love the reprehensible, the destructive, and the violent. Doesn’t God constantly call us to obey the law – love our neighbours as ourselves and so on? Are we not right in expecting God to rain down judgement on all those who go against God’s laws? Aren’t we justifiably affronted when an evil person apparently gets away with the evil they have committed?
Is it not an insult to ourselves, but more particularly to the victims and their families that one day a murderer will be set free when they themselves will have to live with grief and absence for a lifetime or even that a murderer will live when one whom they have loved will not?
In the light of such thoughts, can you imagine then how confrontational the parable of the lost sheep would have been to Jesus’ listeners? What on earth is the shepherd doing going off after the foolish sheep that has got itself separated from the folk – the one that has wandered off, the one that was unable to conform to the standards expected? What self-respecting shepherd would abandon a flock (or 99% of a flock) – to wolves, to thieves – for the sake of one percent – the rapists, the extremists, the violent offenders, those who defraud?
We have lost the offense of this parable by associating ourselves with the one lost sheep instead of understanding that the lost sheep is the rank outsider, the one who has made choices that put its life and the lives of the others at risk. Jesus tells the parable in response to the Pharisees and scribes who are disgruntled because Jesus welcomes and eats with sinners. Jesus tells the parable to make explicit God’s love for and desire to save all people – especially the sinners. Those who are already saved – the law-abiding, the church-going – have no need to be sought out and brought home. They are already at home.
It is the self-righteous indignation of the 99 (the scribes and the Pharisees, the “saved”) that is expressed by the elder brother in the third parable of the lost – the forgiving father. The 99, the good, the well-behaved, those who already have everything that salvation has to offer have not need to be sought out by God.
Today’s parables tell us of the lengths God will go to ensure that absolutely everyone – the good, the bad and even the ugly – know the warmth of God’s love. If that offends us we have not grasped the nature of God’s all-inclusive, unconditional love for all God’s creation and nor have we grasped just how blessed we are that we are recipients of that love.
If we are truly secure in God’s love, rather than in our own sense of self-righteousness, we too will want the whole world to know the warmth of God’s embrace.
[1] The site of an Indigenous ceremonial place and burial ground on which a number of indigenous people camp and which was attacked following a “March for Australia” leaving four people injured, two with severe head wounds.
Swallowsrest 