The lectionary passage this week is the parable of the prodigal son, but I’m going to wait a week on that because I was captured by the two stories that precede it in Luke’s gospel.
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Before Jesus began telling parables about banquets, Luke told us he was at the home of one of the religious elites for a banquet. In our reading for today, Luke says Jesus was hanging out with “tax collectors and wrongdoers—sinners,” leading some of the religious leaders he had just eaten dinner with to say, rather critically, “He’s enjoying hanging out with tax collectors and wrongdoers,” and Jesus was ready with three more stories about belonging.
We are going to look at two of them this morning, as you know from Susan’s reading. One is about a shepherd who goes to find a lost sheep. The other is about a woman who tears up her whole house looking for a lost coin. The third parable is the best known: the story we call the parable of the Prodigal Son. That one we will save for next week.
All of them were told to the religious leaders who were criticizing his choice of company. Jesus wasn’t talking to the tax collectors. He was talking to the ones who thought it was their job to decide who God cared about and who God saw as disposable. They were convinced you had to earn God’s love and they spoke for God as to who was in and who was out.
Jesus was telling a different story in both his words and actions.
I know we just got through singing “Amazing Grace,” and the line that says, “I once was lost but now I’m found, but as we look at these parables, I want to invite you to hear them from more than that perspective. Remember a parable is not an analogy or a fable where we might say God is the shepherd and the woman cleaning her house and we are the sheep and the coin. That is one way to tell these stories, but parables are more layered than that. They are not intended to be simply understood. They were told to confound and bewilder us—to make us think beyond the obvious.
Which brings me to the observation of renowned theologian, Mark Knofler, the lead singer of the band Dire Straits, who wrote a song that says,
sometimes you’re the windshield
sometimes you’re the bug
sometimes it all comes together
sometimes you’re a fool in love
sometimes you’re the Louisville slugger
sometimes you’re the ball
sometimes it all comes together
sometimes you’re gonna lose it all
In that spirit, sometimes we’re the sheep, sometimes we’re the shepherd, and sometimes we’re the ones left in the fold while the shepherd goes to look for the lost one. And then, sometimes we’re the people invited to the party. Perhaps there are also times when we are the ones who think people need to earn love.
This morning, I want to ask you to imagine yourself as the ones doing the searching in these stories: the shepherd and the woman.
When Jesus asked his listeners, “Wouldn’t he leave the other ninety-nine in the pasture and search for the lost one until he finds it?,” the obvious answer would have been, “No one.” Luke makes it sound as if Jesus was speaking rhetorically, but Jesus was turning things upside down. To lose one out of a herd of one hundred was kind of how life worked in those days. And a shepherd would be crazy to leave the whole flock unprotected in the wilderness where they grazed to go hunting for one stray. On top of that, if he did host a barbeque to celebrate finding the lost sheep, he would need to slaughter at least one of his animals to feed everyone. He would not come out ahead.
The same is true of the second story when he asked, “Or what woman, if she owns ten silver coins and loses one of them, won’t light a lamp and sweep the house, searching her home carefully until she finds it?” Maybe it makes more sense for her to look for the coin, because it was equivalent to a day’s wage for a laborer, but blowing her grocery budget by throwing a party to celebrate that she found the money would have seemed foolish.
Neither the shepherd nor the woman were people of power or influence. Though we tend to romanticize what it meant to heard sheep and we find comfort in Psalm 23, being a shepherd was not a fashionable occupation in Jesus’ day. Few people saw them as exemplary. And though the woman seemed to have some money—ten days wages—it would not have been money she was able to earn or that she could call her own. They were both caretakers of the property of others.
But that didn’t matter. They were the finders and both of them used the same language when they called out to their neighbors: “Come celebrate with me because I found what was lost.”
Come share my joy. That was what mattered most.
All of that leads to this question: If we are willing to see ourselves as the finders in these parables, who needs us to find them?
Who do you know that needs to be found? Maybe they are like the sheep and have wandered off the path. Maybe they are like the coin, and you have lost sight of them because they were buried under a giant pile of the laundry of life. Maybe they are someone that are otherwise incidental to your life but were you to find them would change things profoundly for both of you. Maybe they are someone you never thought of looking for. Maybe they are someone you lost on purpose, or allowed to drift out of view.
Who needs you to find them?
Carry that question with you as you go through the week ahead. Think about it as you look into the eyes of loved ones and strangers. Listen for voices that call out for connection. Open your hearts to find that joy.
And when you find those who were lost, don’t forget to invite us all to the party. Amen.