Luke 15:1 - 10
A telemarketer called a random number
one day and a little boy answered.
“How old are you,” said the
marketer?
“Five”, the boy replied.
“Could you let me speak to your
mother?”
“No, she's busy.”
“How about your father?”
“He's busy too.”
“Do you have any older sisters or
brothers?”
“Yes, I have a sister, but she's
busy.”
“Is there anyone there I can talk to
besides you?”
“Well, there are some police and
firemen here, but they are busy.”
“Why is it that everyone in your
house is busy?”
“They are all looking for me.”
We have the option today of reading
the first two stories Jesus tells, or reading them along with the
parable that we refer to as “the prodigal son”. I know you all
are very familiar with that parable, because that's usually the one
we preach about. But maybe today we should concentrate on the first
two parables, about the shepherd who loses a sheep and the woman who
loses a coin. Sometimes we interpret these stories as being about
how God never gives up on sinners, or people who have left the
church. That's probably a reasonable conclusion. But maybe we
should think about what is really going on here.
First, Jesus is responding to
Pharisees who are scandalized because he eats with sinners. The
Pharisees had a saying, that if a sinner was hungry and you fed him,
t hat was a good thing; but if you sat down and ate with him, that
was a terrible thing. What they meant was that if you sat down and
ate with the sinner, you were in a sense condoning his sin, and the
best hope for winning him back was to show him that he wasn't welcome
among the righteous. In another scripture Jesus says something
similar when he talks about what to do if your brother offends you –
remember? You make attempts to have him see that he's done wrong,
and when nothing works, you treat him like a gentile. So the
Pharisees are scandalized by Jesus, who seems to accept sinners as
they are, and is making no effort to show them that they are sinful.
And that brings on the parables.
Out west in the cattle drives ranchers
would have their cowboys drive their herds to market. Usually
several ranchers would combine their herds. It was expected that a
few cattle would be lost in the drive; and I'm sure it was true of
shepherds, as well. A man shepherding a hundred sheep would expect
to lose a few. So our shepherd is totally out his mind, leaving the
ninety nine to go after the stray. And the thing about the woman
with the coins, each worth about a day's wage, is not that she would
look all over for the coin – if you lost a fifty dollar bill you
would probably look as well. But after she finds the coin, she
throws a huge party, probably costing a lot more than the coin.
She's out of her mind.
And remember, in both cases the sheep
belongs to the shepherd, the coin belongs to the woman. I think
Jesus is talking about you and I, not necessarily public sinners,
people who have left the church, people who are in need of
conversion. Really and truly, do you get lost sometimes? I do. I
get lost all the time. Sometimes I feel abandoned by God; sometimes
I fail to trust Him. I feel lost when my ministry doesn't seem to
bear fruit. When someone close to me dies, I feel lost. People get
lost in addiction, in anger, in the failure to forgive. And some of
us get lost right here in church when our prayers seem dry and we
begin to wonder if God is really here. We are in good company,
though, because Mother Theresa wrote in her correspondence with her
confessor that she felt like that a lot. I think lostness is part of
the life of faith, it's normal, it's natural, and we need to
recognize it. Because, you see, that was the Pharisee's problem;
they refused to believe they could be lost and maybe sometimes were
lost, and therefore they had no need to be found.
But think also about what these
parables say about God? He experiences loss. Isn't that amazing?
When I am in need of being found, God goes looking for me, because I
am his, I belong to him. And God would leave the ninety nine behind
to find me, and God would have a lavish celebration when he finds me.
For the Pharisees, God will only step
in and involve himself with you when you follow all the rules, when
you get rid of all your uncleanness – not only must your behavior
conform to God's rules, but so must even the thoughts of your mind.
But for Jesus, God is not what the Pharisees expect; he is out
looking for his own. He is where his lost ones are. And even if we
don't want to be found, like the little boy, He's still looking for
us, because that is God, the busy God, the one who never gives up,
who goes wherever he has to, even to dine with sinners, to rescue
what he has lost.
This week reflect on where you might
be lost, and as you do so try to see how God is there, working right
in that part of you that needs to be rescued, and you might see that
he is working in you to restore what is his.
