Scripture can be found here…
Every Sunday we gather and we listen for the words of Jesus to tell us… what? What God really thinks? How God really feels about us? What God really wants from us? We want something real from Jesus, a real connection to God. So we listen, and it’s so hard, sometimes, to cut through the layers of tradition, and interpretation, and expectation... not to mention the layers of 2,000 years, of ancient cultural understandings, of language…
What if we could go back? What if we could be standing there, right there, when Jesus turned to the crowd, and lifted his head and spoke?
Take today’s passage. It begins, “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to [Jesus]. “And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them’” (Luke 15:1-2) The religious leaders are concerned about the company Jesus has been keeping. First we have the Pharisees—which is to say, members of that group that like to debate about sacred law amongst themselves, people who have particular traditions around who they will and won’t eat with. And we have the scribes—which is to say, the bible experts connected with the Temple in Jerusalem, and with the Temple priests. These two groups, who often disagree with one another, agree right now, on this one thing: Jesus has been hanging around with the wrong kind of people.
As Luke uses it, that word, “sinners,” usually means someone who is known for a particular vice or crime—a petty thief, say, or maybe a local bully who is known for violence. Tax collectors are considered sinners because they are members of Jesus’ community who pay the Romans for the right to take taxes from their neighbors. They’re seen as traitors to family and friends.
And just to be clear, the Greek word for “sinner” comes from archery. It is about missing the mark. So, even though it’s used in this story to label people, always remember: someone who misses the mark was trying to hit the target. It’s a word that actually has grace built in.
So here we are: Jesus is speaking to the people—imagine with me, a crowd of people standing on the grass near a road, and Jesus standing on a low rock, just high enough to help his voice to project a little bit. And not far from him are people in very distinctive, very fancy clothing—in Jesus’ time, the religious leaders are going to be wealthier than most of the people who follow Jesus around—except, maybe, those tax collectors—and those people in fancy clothing are murmuring together. Grumbling. Complaining. Jesus is watching them, the way they whisper together while looking at him. And after a short moment, he turns back to the crowd and begins to speak.
“Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?” (Luke 15:4). Well, at that moment, members of the crowd start muttering. One guy—a shepherd, actually—whispers to the man next to him, “Pretty lousy shepherd, losing a sheep.” Another guy—also a shepherd—laughs out loud. If he’s out with a flock and he’s alone, which is often the case, the owner of the sheep would have his hide if he left ninety-nine to go after one. What is this Jesus talking about? Does he even know how shepherds do their jobs?
Jesus continues, “When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices” (Luke 15:5). This is a kind of a heartwarming image. The kind shepherd carrying the poor, lost sheep home. The crowd warms up, some gentle smiles, even the shepherds like this image. It flatters them. “And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost’” (Luke 15:6). At that, there’s a puzzled silence, just for a second, and then the whole crowd bursts out laughing. The shepherd throws a party! Guess what’s on the menu? Why, it’s mutton stew, of course! It’s perfect.
Jesus pauses, not wanting to step on a laugh. They he begins again. “Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?” (Luke 15:8). The crowd quiets down up at this, becomes a little more somber. Most of the people listening are poor, many of them day laborers. A silver coin is a day’s wages—sunrise to sunset, backbreaking work—and no one can afford to be so careless as to misplace one. The women in the crowd furrow their brows—maybe in judgment on that careless woman, maybe remembering all too well the sinking feeling in the pit of their stomach, what it feels like to lose something precious and not easily replaced. Jesus goes on, “When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost’” (Luke 15:9). And the crowd relaxes. Yes, they know what it feels like, to find what was lost. The sheer relief of it.
Now, Luke adds some interpretation of these parables—Jesus makes a comment, about repentant sinners and happy angels. But what if the parables ended where they ended: two stories of a community celebration, neighbors gathered together to rejoice with the finders at what they found?
It’s always puzzled me, Jesus’ words here about repentant sinners. The words always felt like commentary for some other parable. After all, can a coin repent? Can a sheep express regret for inconveniencing the shepherd, and vow to change its ways? The one responsible for the loss of the coin isn’t the coin: it’s the woman who lost it. The one responsible for the loss of the sheep is the shepherd who didn’t pay close enough attention to a sheep that was just—being a sheep.
The ones who did the losing are also the ones who did the finding. They paid for their error with time and effort and maybe even some risk—I’m thinking of the ninety-nine sheep left untended—and they were rewarded. The items that were lost were victims of carelessness, surely. But they didn’t change, the way Jesus wants us to let God change us, change our hearts—which is what repentance is. What exactly is going on here?
What if it’s actually the shepherd who repents? What if it’s the woman who lost the coin who has a determined change of heart? And if they do, what are they repenting of? Is losing a sheep a sin? Does misplacing a whole day’s pay make you a sinner?
I have to admit, I’ve always believed that the shepherd and the woman in these parables were stand-ins for Jesus or God. I was particularly excited to think that here we had a female image for God! But when I look at Psalm 23—the way that Shepherd, clearly identified as the Lord, carefully guides and cares for the sheep… that’s not this shepherd. And when I check in on John 10—where Jesus talks about his role as the Good Shepherd (but also as the gate for the sheep, that keeps them safe), again I say: this is some other shepherd, a shepherd that feels a lot more like fallible me than good shepherd Jesus.
What if we’ve had these parables completely backwards?
What if these parables are meant to make us think about those things we take for granted, and then lose, or lose track of? Connections. Relationships. People. One another.
What if these parables are designed to help us to move from identifying with the thing that is lost—and, of course, no one wants to be lost—to identifying with the one who did the losing?
What if the precious thing… the thing that seems to wander away, the thing that you tuck away safe but then forget about… what if the thing that you simply must not lose, and yet we seem able to lose all the time… is the thread?
The Big Thread. The one that tells us, Love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength.
The Big Thread. The one that tells us, love your neighbor as yourself. Your kind neighbor. Your cranky neighbor. Your white neighbor. Your black neighbor. Your Hispanic neighbor. Your neighbor of the same political party. Your neighbor of the other political party. Your gay, straight, trans, bi neighbor. Your Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Baha’i, Atheist neighbor. Your neighbor whom you love. Your neighbor whom you despise. Your neighbor who keeps an impeccable lawn. Your neighbor whose motorcycle wakes you up at midnight on Saturday night. Every single Saturday night.
What if what Jesus doesn’t want us to lose… is ourselves? Who we are, and whose we are? Isn’t that what every parable is getting at, sooner or later?
Every Sunday we gather and we listen for the words of Jesus to tell us something real. We want something real from Jesus. I am here to tell you—by which I mean, I was called to tell you—there is nothing more real than the way we treat one another, because inseparable from that is the way we treat God, whose image shines out from each and every face we encounter, every day, all day. If there is something to be found, isn’t that it? The ability to walk around this world in wonder that God is walking with us, every moment, every day, everywhere?
And… wouldn’t that just make you want to throw a party, a grand celebration of what was lost but has been found, and found forever: this God-created connection between us? This joy we can share? (For the introverts in the room, imagine a party with a maximum of three people, your two favorites plus you. I want you to want to go to the party.)
Imagine Jesus, as he closes this set of parables, looking at the crowd, and waiting as they disperse. He doesn’t move. He just watches them. And imagine him waiting until, finally, a few of the religious folks in the fancy clothing, and a few tax collectors, and a shepherd or two, and a woman householder and some of her friends, all gather near, and it’s decided they’ll all go to the a collector’s home, because there’s plenty of food in the larder. Because Jesus is still here, and probably still full of stories they want to hear, each of them. And because the best parties are the ones you simply don’t want to end.
Thanks be to God. Amen.