Luke 15:1 - 10 (11-32)
Maybe you remember: last January a three-year old boy was missing for several days in eastern North Carolina. When family members couldn’t find him, they called the police and local, state and federal law enforcement and hundreds of volunteers searched for him, aided by dogs and drones and airplanes. Even here in North Carolina, January weather isn’t hospitable and they were searching in cold temperatures, heavy rain and wind. Happily, after three days of searching, the boy was found, wet, cold and tangled up in some briars in the woods, but alive! Imagine the celebration that took place when he was found!
In today’s gospel Jesus tells three parables about being lost and being found, about searching and about celebrating.
Parables are stories that Jesus told that say something about the character of God or God’s reign or kingdom. The parables compare God and God’s kingdom to the familiar world in which those hearing him lived. So the parables use yeast and bread, widows and shepherds, merchants and rules to explain some aspect of who God is and what it looks like to live as God’s people.
Our lectionary reading only includes two of the three parables Jesus told that day, but I am including the third one because the story is incomplete without it.
Often, like he does today, he asks his audience directly, “Which of you…?” Any “safe” distance we have from his story dissolves with this opening question. He is talking to us!
In the first parable that Jesus tells here, a shepherd has one hundred sheep and one goes missing and the shepherd leaves the 99 to search for the lost one.
In the second one, a woman has ten coins and one goes missing and the woman leaves the 9 to search for the lost one.
And, in the third, a man loses one of his two sons when the young man takes his inheritance and leaves.
Often my first response to these three parables is to identify as one of the lost, and to experience deep gratitude for being found, for knowing God and returning to the Church where I found a community.
And that’s ok, as far as it goes, but as Amy-Jill Levine, Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt writes, Jesus’ followers would have known that “parables and the tellers of parables were there to prompt them to see the world in a different way, to challenge, and at times to indict.”[i]
Taking another look at these parables, one of my questions is, “What does it mean to be lost?”
One popular interpretation is that the lost are the unrepentant sinners, people who have strayed from the Way of Jesus or even more deliberately refused to follow him.
But as the story of the three-year-old illustrates, sometimes we “become” lost. Our absence is noticed; we are missed by people who love us.
And other times, we experience being lost because we are overwhelmed by circumstances and unsure about what the next step is.
The sheep probably didn’t mean to get separated from the flock, and certainly the coin, which was inanimate, didn’t do anything to get lost. Only the son chose to go away.
And neither the sheep nor the coin repent. We can view the son’s return home as a repentant action, but it’s more likely that he returned because he was confident that his father’s love for him was greater than a desire to hold him accountable.
As I was listening again to these parables, I remembered the Genesis 18 story of Abraham bargaining with God. He stood before the Lord and argued for a city to be saved from destruction if there were fifty, forty, thirty, twenty or even just ten righteous men in it. Eventually, God promised mercy
even if there were just ten.
What we hear in these parables is that God’s mercy reaches even to the one. As a shepherd God leaves the 99, trusting them to protect and provide for each other so that the lost one can be restored to the flock.
As the woman with the missing coin, God lights a lamp, shining it into all the dark corners of the house, all “the places where demons dwell”, sweeping and searching until she finds the one that is lost.
And then in the third story, we see God pictured as a compassionate father who sees the son “while he was still far off” and runs to him to “put his arms around him and [kiss] him”. (v. 20)
With these parables, Jesus challenges us that we should be restless and unsatisfied, as long as there are lost ones.
That doesn’t just mean as long as there are open seats in the pews,
but as long as we have neighbors who are separated from the community because they have been lost in the crowd, overlooked or forgotten;
as long as we have neighbors who are isolated or alone;
as long as we have neighbors who have made mistakes or chosen poorly.
I had the opportunity this week to sit down with Pastor Michael Gullatte who is the executive director of the Cleveland County Rescue Mission and catch up on their work in our community. As most of you know, the rescue mission began with a men’s shelter in the building behind our property and when the men moved to their new building on Buffalo Street, the rescue mission opened the Heart to Heart women’s shelter in the bright yellow building next to us. During our conversation, Pastor Gullatte told me several of the men and women’s stories but one stood out:
A woman in a rehab program in Virginia was told that when the program ended, she would be turned out on the street. The facility gave her phone and internet access and she set to work finding a place where she could go next and get back on her feet. Unlike most of us, she didn’t have a safety net of family members who were waiting for her. When she tried to find a place, she was turned down more than eighty times. Her children were in Rutherfordton and on her last day in the Virginia facility, as she searched for someplace that would put her closer to them, she found Heart to Heart. She called and they said she could come there. And in the time she has been at Heart to Heart, she has accumulated sobriety and been reconciled with her children.
At the end of her long bus ride from Roanoke, she found a community that welcomes her as a beloved child of God, that celebrates her gifts and rejoices with her.
Through the parables, Jesus teaches us that, in faith, the fullness of God is in each of us, but we are not complete as long as there are lost ones.
I hold together both my gratitude for being found
and my conviction that I am God’s hands and feet, responsible for searching, looking and watching with compassion for those who are lost.
In each of these three parables, the lost do not quietly slip into the back pew during worship, or just pick up where they left off. Instead, the shepherd, the woman and the father invite everyone to rejoice with them.
As I thought about the celebrations we have today when we might call friends and neighbors to rejoice with us, I thought first of retirements and graduations, and then weddings or the birth or adoption of a child. All of these are times when we are on the cusp of something new and not yet known. There is anticipation and some uncertainty but there is hope.
When the lost are restored to their places alongside us, in our lives and at our table, we are complete and whole again, and we celebrate even as we look ahead to what is yet unfolding.
Let us pray…
Loving God,
Through Your Son Jesus Christ you give us your kingdom and count as Your children.
Thank you for your abundant love and mercy that searches and finds every last one of us.
Encourage us by Your Holy Spirit and send us out with compassion for the lost – the outcast, the lonely and the grieving;
Bring us to the day that we too can rejoice together at the wholeness of the family of God.
We pray in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.
Amen.
[i] Levine, Amy-Jill. Short Stories by Jesus (p. 4). HarperOne. Kindle Edition.
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