SERMON—We are not worthless!
One of my favourite memories from childhood was a train ride to the beach in school holidays. Mum and I would catch the bus from Tea Tree Gully to the city, and then get the train to Grange. One of the highlights for me was the return trip to the train station at North Adelaide. We would wait there for dad to pick us up in the car park after work and drive back home. I was happy to spend hours there before dad arrived, fascinated with exploring the train station, watching the signals change and the trains come and go, counting the carriages on the freight trains that rushed past.
We usually waited on the platform opposite the main station building. There was a tin shelter there. One day in my exploring around the platform I noticed there was something unusual ever so slightly protruding from the thinnest of gaps between the tin sheeting of this shelter and its bitumen foundation. Whatever it was had become wedged in so tightly it was not easily dislodged. After poking and prodding around for a while it suddenly came loose! I had found this threepence coin. The black edge you can see is what was protruding from the gap, discoloured from years of exposure to weather and diesel soot. I think it would have been late 70’s or early 80’s when I found it. Since Australia converted to decimal currency in 1966, this coin could have been concealed in that gap for as many as 14 years. Given the date stamped on it is 1955, it could have been there even longer!
When I found this coin, I was quite excited and happy. For a young boy that was like finding hidden treasure. It was quite a coincidence that I happened to find this coin that had been there for all that time. But with the parable Jesus tells in today’s text, there is nothing coincidental at all.
Again, Jesus uses everyday examples to teach what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. A woman who has lost one of her ten silver coins at home would have been easily pictured by Jesus’ original audience—and perhaps by us as well. If you’ve ever lost a credit card, car keys, wedding ring, money, or important document…you know how important it is to find it! You pull each room apart in a frantic search and the house is turned upside down until you find it.
Like a woman searching carefully for a lost coin until she finds it, so too God has sent his Son Jesus into the world to seek out and save the lost, and he does not stop searching until he finds us.
Houses in the time that Jesus first spoke this parable were basic and compact. There was a front doorway and usually small openings near the roof that were more like vents than windows. They let very little light in. The floors were dusty and maybe had primitive matting made from reeds. Scholar Kenneth Bailey[1] has noted that at the excavated site of the ancient city of Capernaum, the buildings were made almost exclusively of very black basalt, local to the region. So too this house in Korazim, where it was believed the ceilings were also made from slabs of the material. Even though the great synagogue in Capernaum was constructed from limestone, it still sits on a foundation of black basalt rock, with deep gaps between each block. If the house in Jesus’ parable had basalt floors, walls and roof, with only small vents near the ceiling, it would have been very dark indeed…virtually impossible to see much, let alone a small coin that had rolled into a crack in the floor.
We can’t be certain what the house in Jesus’ parable was particularly made of as Jesus omits that detail. Perhaps he did that to leave both scenarios above to be possibilities. Because both scenarios teach Jesus’ audience different but profound truths about ourselves—while also showing the lengths to which God has gone to save us. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot climb up to heaven. Just as a coin is an inanimate object, we too, in our natural state, have no spiritual life within us. We do not know the way to salvation. The wages of sin is death. Like a coin covered over by dust on an earthen floor, to dust we are and to dust we shall return.
Like a coin that has rolled away from its owner, all people in their natural state have gone far from God. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to them, and they are not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Corinthians 2:14). The coin is unable to restore itself to the purpose for which it was intended, as too are all humanity who are trapped under the power of the kingdom of darkness, like a coin trapped in a deep, dark crack between two basalt stones in a darkened house. We have fallen, and we cannot extract ourselves from the powers of death and hell.
The only character in the parable is the woman. The woman is the only one who initiates action to search for her lost coin. She first of all lights a lamp—a small, clay vessel filled with oil that could be moved around—and then takes time to sweep the whole house—patiently, carefully, deliberately sweeping each crack in the floor, slowly sweeping away the surface dust, stooping down with the lamp in the hope of spotting it, so that she can have it safely in her keeping. The woman goes to great lengths to find her coin, because it belongs to her.
No wonder Jesus says that this is a picture of the Kingdom of God. In the same way as a woman who has lost one of her coins would go to great lengths, and carefully and patiently search through the whole house, not giving up until her coin is found, so too God goes to work in the world looking for his lost children.
It was when we could not save ourselves that God stooped down to us in the person of Christ. Jesus came all the way from heaven to earth—the Holy Son of God born as Mary and Joseph’s son. He was born in a dusty, filthy, unclean stable as a light shining in a dark place. Dust we are, and to dust we shall return…yet so too was the Son of God clothed in the same frail, mortal flesh as ours. He taught in the Synagogue at Capernaum, with words of authority, the same authoritative word he speaks to his church today. He gave the blind sight and helped them to see him as the Christ. He fed people with the bread of life and gave them living water to drink. He healed people so that they would not just have life in material things but true life in him. He freed people from the power of demons and even raised the dead to life. And he brought this saving help, and this compassion, once for all, with arms outstretched wide on the cross. And like a coin, wedged deep down between two blocks of basalt, Jesus descended into darkness, proclaiming his victory over sin, death and Satan, and burst the stronghold of the prison of hell.
Jesus tells this parable for a world that is broken and breaking apart. People living in broken homes with shattered hearts because of the evil done to them. People living enveloped in the darkness of fear, abuse, addictions, and abandonment. People living with guilt and shame, feeling dirty, dusty, trodden under foot, and as though they have slipped through the cracks and their lives have gone down the drain. People who are trapped in frail and mortal bodies with chronic illness or irreversible disability. One of the greatest lies Satan wants people to believe is that they have been abandoned—that no one would ever care about them—not even God—because they are worthless. And a great temptation the Devil makes to us is that we should abandon the people who hurt us and do evil to us…because they are “worthless so and so’s.” Maybe you know someone with those thoughts, or will come across someone in the future who thinks that way. Maybe at times you’ve even felt worthless.
But nobody is worthless. That is the whole reason Jesus tells this parable. The coin the woman in the parable searched for was lost, but it was not worthless. It had a value stamped on it, and it was valuable to the woman. And more importantly, a coin has an image stamped on it, of the ruler of the nation. The image of the nation’s king, queen or leader shows that the coin is the legal currency of that kingdom, ultimately belonging to them.
In Genesis we hear that God has created us in his image. We are stamped with God’s own image, showing that we ultimately belong to him. Since God has made us in his image, it is what he says about us that is truth, not the lies of others, or the devil, or even the self-condemnation in our own minds. We are not worthless. Nobody is worthless. We are not here by chance but an intentional, careful, deliberate plan of God who created us as the highest point of his creation, which gives all people incredible dignity and worth, from the most vulnerable of embryos to those who are frail in their senior years. There’s a sense of security and belonging that comes with this too, know that we were not an afterthought. Our DNA and fingerprints are not duplicated with any other on this planet, and even the hairs on our head have been numbered. God has a plan and purpose for every person as his representatives here on earth. Our God-given image is far beyond and above any image we could create for ourselves. And his love for all people is far beyond the love anyone could ever give.
It was when while we were sinners that God showed his love to us in Christ. It was when we turned away from God, that he turned to us, and, like a woman searching for one of her lost coins, he stooped down to us, all the way from heaven to earth, carefully searching for all his people, and not abandoning that search until we were found. In ourselves, we are unworthy before God. Yet we receive Christ’s worthiness as our own through faith. Jesus has come to pay the price of redeeming the world. He has paid for everyone’s sin, and the price he paid for us to be his own was not silver or gold, but his holy and precious blood.
And so there is a great unexpected twist at the end of the story. God is not disappointed with us that we have cost him so much. There is no sense chastisement, rebuke, or grumbling from God—or even the thought that we must repay him. Instead, just as the woman who finds her coin calls her friends and neighbours together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin’ Jesus says that there is rejoicing in heaven as God calls the angelic host and the saints who have gone before us to celebrate over every sinner who repents.
Repentance is not us turning away from our sin, cleaning ourselves up and then turning to God without our sin, as if we could make ourselves right and holy to make him happy. If we could do that…well…we wouldn’t need Jesus. But repentance is turning to Jesus with our sin that we might receive the mercy and grace of God in Christ while it may be found, in whom our sin has already been washed away at the Cross, and we are clothed in his righteousness and holiness, all as a gift. Every time we turn to Jesus in sorrow for our sin, every time we come to worship and confess our sins there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God. The angelic host and the saints in heaven and God himself rejoices in everyone who turns to access God’s grace in Christ.
If ever anyone says to you that God thinks they are worthless, tell them that all people are worth so much to God, that in his great love sent his Son to seek and save the lost. You can say to them: “Jesus told a story about that once…about a woman who had lost one of her coins. She lit a lamp and searched the whole house to find her coin. And she didn’t stop searching until she found it. And when she found it she called all her neighbours together and said “Rejoice with me. I have found my lost coin.” And you can tell them: “This is a story about God and you, and how there is rejoicing in heaven whenever we turn to him.”
And that, dear brothers and sisters, is also a story about God and you; you who are of great worth to him, who he has redeemed and made holy by the precious blood of his own dear Son. Amen.
Pastor Tim Ebbs
St Paul’s Lutheran Church, Glenelg
Ordinary Time, 2025
Application points: how could this parable help you respond to someone who feels like God would never want them?
Note: this is not intended to be an exhaustive list or a perfect step-by-step instruction of how to get results, but just ideas and suggestions as a guide only that needs to be adapted to each context
Pray for an opportunity to share your faith and tell this parable with someone who needs to hear it!
Study this parable and know it. You won’t be able to help someone else engage with the Good News of this parable if you don’t know it and how it applies to you yourself!
Work on building positive relationships with those around you—those you are friends with, your neighbours, work colleagues, the retail attendant who you recognize serves you regularly. Ask them how they are. Be intentional about showing care and concern for them. This kind of relationship building takes years, but it is worth it!
Keep praying!
Look for openings to share the practical aspects of your faith when the opportunity presents itself—for example, when those you talk with ask if you have a busy week, tell them what you’ll be doing in your volunteering capacity at St Paul’s. If they ask if you’re doing anything on the weekend, tell them that you’ll be going to church, and explain where St Paul’s (or whatever your local congregation) is.
Invite them to come with you to one of the activities of the congregation. Note: one of the main reasons people feel uncomfortable in coming to worship on Sundays is that it is a completely foreign environment to them, in which they know no one else. We would feel the same about going to a new facility on our own for the first time without anyone with us!
Of course, invite them to come with you to worship, but inviting them to come to one of the activities of the congregation (e.g Music nite, Latte Ladies, Wednesday community meal) might be a more appropriate first step of connecting with a church for them, where the goal is to meet some more people from the congregation without the added pressure of navigating through an entire worship service.
If they share a difficult situation in their life with you, welcome this! Be patient and non-judgmental with them. Give them permission to share further with you, if they are comfortable doing so.
Offer to pray for them If the situation allows, it would be ideal if you are able to pray with them, asking God who is everywhere present, to help, bless and comfort them.
If the person bears some kind of great guilt and/or shame, it is crucial that you validate what they feel! Not to do so would make you just another person in their life they feel they cannot trust. They may likely assert that God has given up on them (this would most likely come to the surface somewhere between points 6-8 above). At this point, validate what they feel! (“I’m so sorry to hear what has happened and that you feel like that…”). Avoid moralizing (“You should forgive and forget…you shouldn’t feel that way…you just need to…”).
The person would most likely not welcome prayer or accept an invitation to come to church because their sense of guilt and shame is great. Many people in these circumstances have a mental image of the church only heaping more condemnation and judgment upon them, and the thought of coming is unbearable. They may likely express that there is no way God would ever want someone like them.
Ask if you may share the hope you have—that we are not worthless, especially to God!
- Jesus told a story about that once—about a woman who had 10 coins. One of them was lost, and the woman lit a lamp, and searched for the coin until she found it. She was overjoyed when she found her lost coin, because it belonged to her.
- This is a story about God and you too. God wants each of us to know him and know his love. He values a relationship with everyone so much that God the Father sent Jesus to be the light of the world to show us the way to God. God did not spare his own Son, but gave his own life up for us all on the Cross .
- Jesus has come into our world to search for and find us. He gives us his light of the scriptures, that following them we will never be lost again. And when he finds us there is great rejoicing in heaven.
- Jesus said that in the same way, there will be great rejoicing in heaven over every person who turns to him!
- We cannot turn from our sins before turning to Jesus. Nothing we can do makes us right with God. But God has sent his Son that we might turn to him with our sins so that he can take them away from us.
Don’t focus on results, but on the relationship…and keep endeavoring to strengthen it. Follow up with them through the week. Remember it is all up to God, and he delights to use all his children in his work
[1]Bailey, Kenneth E (1992) Finding the lost—cultural keys to Luke 15, Concordia Publishing House, St Louis pp100-101
