Luke 15:1-10
Our gospel reading from Luke is a set of two parables about losing and finding things. One of the parables is about a lost sheep and one is about a woman who loses a coin.
In the first parable, one sheep in a flock of one hundred wanders off and gets lost in the wilderness. Jesus sets the parable up as a question. “Which one of you…does not go after the one that is lost until he finds it?” It’s not a straightforward question. The temptation would be to write the stupid sheep off. There are ninety-nine others to care for (and make money off of). The risk of leaving the nine-nine certain sheep to find the one lost sheep seems so high as to not make it worth it.
But the surprise in the parable is that the shepherd does go off in search of the one lost sheep. And when he finds it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, “rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep.”
In the second parable, a woman loses 10% of her money. She has ten sliver coins, but then loses one. Again, the parable comes from Jesus with a question: “What woman having 10 silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? And when she has found it, calls together her friends and neighbors saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” Again, I don’t think Jesus’ questions are straightforward. I don’t think that most of us, myself included, would think to throw a party to celebrate finding something we lost. I’m more likely to be embarrassed to admit that I lost 10% of my money in the first place. I don’t want my friends and neighbors to know that, let alone come to celebrate that I finally got it back.
But the Lord doesn’t always think like we do. I’ve often found it the case in reading the Bible and in prayer, that what we human beings get ourselves worked up about, God doesn’t seem all that interested in. And what we human beings prefer not to care about, God is very interested in. Put another way, a lot of us are probably on board with God caring about the big things like war and peace and politics and holding the world together. That seems like God’s job and things that the Maker heaven and earth should care about. But, these parables also tell us that God is a God of the small things too – a sheep (who is not the brightest bulb in God’s shed) and a lost coin.
I’ve been trying to think of how Jesus might tell these parables in a time like ours. Maybe it is something like this. “Which one of you, in your workplace where one of the staff is seemingly incapable of doing their job (as is said in the military, they are ‘lost in the sauce’), does not take your lunch break and for one month straight talk with this incompetent worker, train them on what right looks like, and keep working with them until they get it? And when this formerly incompetent person wins employee of the month because your patience and training has finally helped them know how to do their job, not throw a party because this formerly incompetent worker is now one of the best members of the team?”
Or, “Which one of you, having car keys, a wallet, and a cell phone, if you lose them, does not turn on the lights, look under the sofa and in every conceivable basket and in every room, and maybe even the refrigerator until you find them? And when you do find them, breathe a big sigh of relief and call your spouse or your friend and complain with joy that you finally found those things?”
Both of Jesus’ parables end with a statement of how God sees things. When both the shepherd and the woman who finds the lost coin call together their friends and neighbors to celebrate, Jesus compares this to a celebration in heaven when sinners repent and find themselves again. “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”
What makes Jesus’ parables rich for our spiritual life is that they use ordinary things that we can relate to to reveal spiritual truths to us. The ordinary things in the parables are a lost sheep and a lost coin. These are insignificant things in the world and even in both the shepherd and the woman’s life. They would survive without them. And yet, finding them causes celebration similar to how God rejoices when someone who was lost and without God and without hope in the world comes back to their senses and to themselves and back to God.
I think we can see God as the shepherd and the woman in these parables. The spiritual truth in these stories is that God cares about lost people. Who are these lost people? Well, in one sense, everyone at some point or another. It’s the human condition that we can find ourselves lost, off track, not recognizing ourselves or who we have become. The whole point of God giving us things like the 10 Commandments is not to beat people over the head with them. Instead, the point of the 10 Commandments is for them to serve as signs or guideposts for a well ordered, well-lived life. It’s like the Lord saying these are the kinds of behaviors and actions that life with me as your God entails. But when we violate a commandment, it’s not just like we kids in the lunch line and someone steals another’s lunch money and when the teacher sees it, has them give it back. Instead what makes people lost is not knowing what they are doing (the adult version of stealing lunch money is greed) and thus finding themselves further and further divorced from themselves and reality. Being lost is not limited to how much we make or how educated we are. The CEO or university professor can be just as lost sometimes as the bum on the street. It looks different and it can be hidden from view.
Again, the spiritual truth of these parables is God cares about lost people so much that like the shepherd, he will take a great risk to go find the lost sheep and like the woman spend a lot of time and energy searching for the lost coin. This is the Christian story. God came at great risk to his dignity when he came as one of us in Jesus of Nazareth. Think about how seemingly undignified it was for God to be born in a manger in a barn. And think of the enormous pain and suffering Jesus underwent on the cross as he died for us and our salvation. These parables are little stories that take ordinary things like a lost sheep and a lost coin to reveal to us the Christian story that “for God so loved the world, He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.”
The other spiritual truth in these parables is that finding God or maybe it’s better to say, being found by God, comes with a great sense of relief. That is what I was thinking about with my silly parables about losing your keys, wallet, and cell phone and the relief that comes when you finally find them. I think that sense of relief is in part what the invitation from the shepherd and the woman to their friends and neighbors in Jesus’ parables is about – I’m relieved I’ve found these lost things, come celebrate with me.
I hope that each of us can come to a point at some point in our life where we can say that our lives are richer, fuller, and bigger because we have God in them. This doesn’t mean that being a Christian makes life easier. It doesn’t. Sometimes it makes it harder because the Lord asks us to do things we’d rather not do like forgive and ask for forgiveness and pay attention to someone we don’t think deserves our attention. But there is a relief that comes from knowing God.
The relief comes from being relieved of the responsibility of having to try to play god in our life or in the lives of others. We’re relieved of having to prove our worth, that we’re in control, or that we’re good enough. The gospel is that in Jesus Christ, God has pronounced us forgiven, which is another way of saying we are off the hook for having to prove how good, or valuable, or worthy we are. The relief comes because on our own, none of us really are those things. But, maybe salvation means being relieved of those things being our responsibility because God has taken that on? The relief that comes from knowing God means you are free, to love and obey God all the days of your life.
Friends, the Lord and all of heaven rejoices when the lost are found. The Lord is thrilled that you are a son or daughter of his. What a relief.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.