Luke 15:1-10 (NRSV)

Apologies for this late entry; it has been a busy beginning of the new academic year. I hope to post much earlier in the week in future.

Luke 15:1-10 (NRSV)

The Parable of the Lost Sheep

15Now all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. ²And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’

3 So he told them this parable: ⁴‘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? ⁵When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. ⁶And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” ⁷Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.

The Parable of the Lost Coin

8 ‘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? ⁹When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” ¹⁰Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’

Some commentators claim that there is no chapter in the New Testament so well-known and so dearly loved as the 15^th chapter of Luke’s Gospel.  This might have been the case in 1975 when he wrote his helpful commentary, but I am not so sure any longer today – as we live in a world of mostly biblical ignorance!

Some have seen this passage as being the ‘... Gospel within the Gospel ...’

The parable arose out of ordinary everyday experiences that everyone could understand and identify with.  It was offensive to the Pharisees that Jesus associated with men and women who were labelled (by them) as ‘sinners’. There were a host of Pharisaic rules saying who they could have no dealings with at all and all of them aimed to ‘... avoid every contact with the people who did not observe the petty details of the law.’ So, it is not surprising that they were shocked to the core at the way in which Jesus met with people who were sinners, in their minds. The Pharisees believed that “There will be joy in heaven over one sinner who is obliterated before God ... They looked sadistically forward not to the saving but the destruction of the sinner.’

Into this context, Jesus tells the parable of the lost sheep and the shepherd’s joy at finding it.

Shepherds in Judea had a hard and dangerous task: pasture was scarce as they were on a narrow plateau only a few miles wide to work with. There were no retaining walls and it was possible for a sheep to wander. The shepherd was personally responsible for the sheep so, if one was lost it was his task to, at least to bring home the fleece so that he could show how it died. They became experts at tracking and could follow a straying sheep’s tracks for miles across the hills. But in the process, it often meant risking his life for the sheep.

Many of the flocks were communal, belonging to whole villages with two or more shepherds in charge. Those whose flocks were safe would arrive home with news of any shepherd who was searching for a lost sheep. Often this would mean villagers looking out for the remaining shepherd to return. When he was sighted, they would shout for joy.

It is on this experience that Jesus based his parable. This, he said, is what God is like. God is glad when a lost sinner is found, just as a shepherd is filled with joy when a strayed sheep is brought home.

The coin referred to here, refers to a silver drachma worth only about £1. It would not be difficult to lose a coin in a Palestinian home, as peasant’s houses were very dark and, if they did have a window, it would have been no more than a circle of about 18 cm in diameter. The floor was beaten earth covered with dried reeds and rushes, so to look for anything lost would literally be like looking for a needle in a haystack. The woman swept the floor in the hope that she might see it glint or hear it tinkle as it moved.

Barclay suggests that there are two reasons why the woman might have been so eager to find it:

It could have been a matter of sheer necessity. £1 would have had much more buying power then than it does today as it amounted to more than a day’s wage for a working man in Palestine. These people lived on the edges of poverty. She would have needed to search, because otherwise the family would not eat.

There could have been a more romantic reason. The mark of a married woman was a head dress made of ten silver coins linked together by a silver chain. For years a young girl would save in order to have ten coins to make her wedding ‘crown’. Once she had this and was married, it could never be taken from her – even for the payment of a debt. It could have been that the women in the parable had lost one of these.

In either case, it is easy to think of the joy of the woman when she eventually found the coin and why she would celebrate. This is what the joy of God is like when one sinner comes home – like the joy of a found coin that stood between a family and hunger or of a married woman who had lost part of her most treasured possession.

No Pharisee had ever thought of a God like this. This was something absolutely new which Jesus taught them about God; that He actually sought out people to save. The Jews might have agreed that if a person came crawling home to God in self abasement and prayed for pity, they might find it; but they would never have conceived of a God who went out in search for sinners. Barclay concludes:

“We believe in the seeking love of God, because we see that love incarnate in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who came to seek and save that which is lost.”

Throughout this chapter, Jesus is speaking about repentance. I know this conjures up the idea that he is being negative, but for me, repenting is always something positive, because metanoia – having a change of mind and turning from inappropriate things - is always lovely, because we are given the chance to start again.

Here, Jesus is providing a different understanding of what it means to repent from the view of the Pharisees. For them, it meant adopting their standards of purity and ultra-strict law observance. For Jesus, to repent means to follow him and his ways. Jesus is implying that the Pharisees and other religious leaders also needed to repent and they would have views this as an outrage.

There is a party going on – all heaven is having a party – because people are turning away from their sin. We too should be part of this and be filled with joy. The two halves of God’s creation – heaven and earth – are meant to fit together and be in harmony with each other. If you discover what is going on in heaven, you will discover how things are meant to be on earth. This is why we pray in the Lord’s Prayer ‘... on earth as it is in heaven ...’

The religious leaders of Jesus’ day believed differently: they were of the view that the Temple was the closest thing to heaven. In order to enter the Temple one needed to go through elaborate cleaning rituals and follow the ways of the priests. Now Jesus is saying that Heaven is having a wonderful party every time one sinner sees the light and began to follow God’s ways.

Our lives should be characterised by joy because this is the product of repentance. Each day we need to make a decision to follow the ways of Jesus, and so when we pray we ‘... call to mind our sins ...’ and repent of them.

Tom Wright reminds us that the particular sheep and the particular coin are not of significance – the only thing of importance was that they were lost. This would have been of great significance to the sinners that were gathered there; the realisation that it was not they who had to do something, it was God who came in search of them – as Wright writes: “He loved coming looking for them, and celebrated finding them.” Jesus was doing what God was doing, searching them out and finding them – welcoming them and loving them.

Wright issues a challenge to us in the modern world:

What would we have to do, in the visible, public world, if we were to make people ask the questions to which stories like these are the answer?

We need to be living the sort of lives that are so different to those of the rest of the world, that would make people stop and ask: “Why are you living the way you do?” “Why are you different?”

It would also need to be attractive ... peaceful, loving, gentle, compassionate ... bearing the fruits of the Spirit.

It would seem that the world is lost, and we need to be God’s agents to go out in love and find them and rejoice in the process. At the same time we will probably raise eyebrows because it could involve welcoming those whom society has shunned in their own unique for of Pharisaism.

H.H. Staton in his book, "A Guide to the Parables of Jesus" tells the story of having been on an ocean liner headed to the Middle East.

Nine hundred miles out to sea a sail was sighted on the horizon. As the liner drew closer, the passengers saw that the boat - a small sloop flying a Turkish flag - had run up a distress signal and other flags asking for its position at sea. Through a faulty chronometer or immature navigation the small vessel had become lost. For nearly an hour the liner circled the little boat, giving its crew correct latitude and longitude. Naturally there was a great deal of interest in all the proceeding among the passengers of the liner. A boy of about 12 standing on the deck and watching all that was taking place remarked aloud to himself - "It's a big ocean to be lost in."

Life is also a big thing to be lost in, too. And we do get lost - we get mixed up and turned around. We despair, we make mistakes, we do evil to each other. We deserve the wrath of God and that is what the Pharisees who criticized Jesus maintained. But Jesus understood God more. He knew God as a Shepherd in search of the one lost sheep. He knew God as a woman searching in the dark, in the crevasses, for that valuable coin. In the end it was Jesus' view of God which prevailed and not his critics.