And what about those other people? Jesus welcomed prostitutes and others whose lack of morals were well known. Jesus let them touch him, and he touched them. Everyone knew that one became unclean through such associations, through such contact. What was Jesus thinking?

There were complex rules about how to remain pure in the midst of the religiously lax. But most religious people simply tried to avoid persons they considered unclean - except Jesus, who sought out the very people whom the Pharisees wished would just go away.

The Pharisees knew that purity was important if one wanted to be right with God. They also knew that Jesus proclaimed that being right with God was the most important thing. Yet Jesus didn't seem to care about the teachings on purity. It was confounding. It was confusing. It made people angry.

"This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them," the Pharisees grumbled. And Jesus heard them. But instead of trying to establish some precedent for his wild behavior from the oral tradition of the law, Jesus chose to tell parables.

Three parables follow one another in quick succession in Luke: one is about a lost sheep, another concerns a lost coin, and then, if we kept reading in course, we would encounter the story of the prodigal son. Each of these stories examines an aspect of being lost. Each of these stories includes the joy of finding and being found. Neither sheep nor coin nor child is ignored or abandoned. The search continues until everyone gets safely home.

Let's start by talking about sheep. Now pigs are smart and some dogs can respond to a vocabulary of over forty commands. But sheep are simple-minded, four legged lawn mowers. Sheep get lost because they are dim. They may be lovable but they are foolish - they will walk in no particular direction, changing course at random while they graze until the food is gone, the sun is below the horizon, or some one comes to get them.

If they are fortunate it will be the shepherd and not a wolf. It is in the nature of sheep to drift. If they are to end up back home they need a shepherd to watch over them, protect them from predators, to gather and to guide them. And the shepherd has to care enough to go find them when they wander off. One way sheep or people get lost is through their own dim-witted foolishness. Pray that a loving shepherd is looking over all the sheep.

Coins on the other hand, have neither volition nor sensibilities. Coins can get lost through no fault of their own. I had a suit in which my keys had worn a hole in the right pant's pocket. One morning I put coins into my pocket and they careened down the inside of my pant leg and zoomed across the floor in all directions. Some rolled into dark corners or under the furniture. Coins are not like sheep. If anything in this illustration was foolish, it was not the coins but their custodian. Blaming the coins would not have been productive. Even simply blaming myself wouldn't have been effective, so instead I had the pants repaired. Like the women in the parable who searched her house, I was the one who could take action - not the coins. Sometimes people and things get lost because of the inaction or inattention of another. If such lost coins would be found, someone with the power to effect change needs to take responsibility to keep working at it until the last one has been gathered in.

People can be foolish like sheep and wander thoughtlessly where they ought not to go. People can be like coins that become lost because they are forgotten or scattered by others. But some times people head off in the wrong direction on purpose. That is the kind of being lost we see illustrated in the parable of the prodigal son. But lest we jump to conclusions, when you go home read Luke 15:11-32 and you'll notice that it's not just the youngest son who gets willfully lost. One can be headstrong at any age. Even the outwardly righteous can travel so deeply in the wrong direction that they get lost. The profligate young son and the scrupulous and self-righteous older son are two sides of the same coin, two lambs of the same flock, two sinners in need of redemption. But the father loved them both and longed to draw them to the feast at the family table.

It is God nature to seek us. It is God's desire to find us. It is neither our sins nor our glory that causes God to desire our company. We do not have to be perfect, or righteous or pure. We do not have to earn God's love. It is God's nature to love us whether we are as foolish as sheep, as helpless as coins, or as pigheaded as the sons in the parable are. God wants to be with us and God desires to draw us nearer to each other.

The question is, are we willing to be with one another? Are we willing to be in the same room with the rest of the people whom God loves - with collaborators and people of questionable morals, with the religious right and the secular left, with Texans for Truth and Swift Boat Veterans and whoever it is that give you fits? Are we willing to pray for terrorist as well as for our troops? If we wait for purity and perfection before we seek and serve Christ in one another we shall wait forever. If we expect repentance before we are willing to make contact with those whom we consider sinners we shall all remain separated and lost until all things come to an end. This is not the course Jesus took nor the counsel he gave. Remember the Gospel. Remember the parables.

Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners. He went because they needed God to find them, for they had lost their way. Today's Gospel says that ALL the tax collectors and sinners came to hear Jesus - droves of sinners flocking to God; a treasury of souls heaping up at Jesus' feet. The Pharisee saw only the sins and imperfections in these gathered people, and proclaim it was a scandal and a mess. The Pharisee could not see the perfect love that was washing the unclean and leading sinners to a new way of life.

Jesus ate with sinners. He ate with Pharisees as well as tax collectors and prostitutes. He went because they needed God to find them for they were lost as well. Robert Farrar Capon suggests that in the parable of the lost sheep Jesus throws a curve. ALL of humanity is the lost sheep. That's how we are. We need a shepherd.

And the 99 sheep who need no repentance - that's how the Pharisees imagined they were. Its how we may sometimes imagine ourselves. In this view it is others who need to repent, to come clean and change, to turn back towards righteousness and home.

But the truth is that all we are sheep and there are no self-made righteous sheep. We are all accounted as righteous because of the life, love and labor of the shepherd - Jesus the Christ. Jesus broke the bread and poured the wine, gave his body and shed his blood because we live in a world that is full of many ways to be lost and Jesus promised the Father that he would not lose even one.

Yesterday was the third anniversary of 9/11. We live with the continuing threat of terrorism. I do not mean to diminish our lost or minimize our fear. But a larger perspective is helpful. The Pharisees lived in the brutal shadow of the Roman army who crucified their enemies, and the early disciples of Christ were persecuted by a succession of Roman Emperors for hundreds of years.

If we read history we know - it is always something in this world. But our model of response is in the wisdom of the parables, not in the worries of the Pharisees. Let us be thankful that God is searching for everyone even the foolish, the powerless, the self-righteous and the willful. Let us be thankful that God does not rest until all shall be found in their rightful place- sheep, sons and silver coins. AMEN