Lost

Text: Luke 15:1-10

Today, it seems, is an exercise in contrasts. If some of the scripture lessons we’ve had lately haven’t been that well known, the one that I read this morning goes to the opposite ends of the scale. Along with the parable of the Prodigal Son, the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin are amongst the most familiar and most comforting images that come out of the Gospels. They have evoked images of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, laughing, with a young lamb draped over his shoulders. It is a powerful and comforting image, tying in with so many other images from scripture, it has managed to soak into our collective consciousness.

There have been many hymns written about this... stories that talk about the welcoming of the repentant sinner coming home. It would seem that I would have nothing else to say about this passage at all, because it is so well known, no additional explanation is necessary. There we go! Sermon’s done... onto the closing prayer, and we can go home for the day! Hey! This sermon took less than two minutes... we could get used to this!

But... Frankly, I think we would be doing ourselves a real disservice by letting this one go as the comforting passage that everybody knows. To be honest, in reading this passage over and over again, there are a number of things that stick out that actually don’t make a lot of sense. In fact, they make no sense at all, when we really think about it. We’ve let those various familiar images gloss over some things that should make us sit up and go, “Huh?”

So let’s look at this again.

Luke tells us that Jesus is having supper with sinners and outcasts. The dinner is going well, when suddenly these Pharisees appear out of nowhere, turn up their nose, and make rather disparaging comments against the company that Jesus is keeping. Now, keep in mind that Pharisees are good church-attending folks, they are like you and me. That’s the first thing we often forget. In fact, Jesus is turning to us when he tells this parable... saying...

“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?”

This seems to be a rather silly question, actually. It is also one that we frequently mishear. The image that we have is of a shepherd counting the sheep as they are led back into the safety of the pen. Upon discovering that there is one missing, the shepherd heads back into the wilderness to retrieve that one lost one out there.

The trouble is, Jesus does not say that the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine sheep in the safety of the pen. What he does say is that the shepherd leaves the flock in the midst of the wilderness to go off and find this one vulnerable, lost sheep. In the midst of the wilderness?? I mean what is Jesus thinking! This is a time that there were no fences... not out in the wilderness anyway... Sheep aren’t exactly the brightest animals in the world. By leaving the flock in the wilderness to go find this one lost sheep would mean risking many more sheep would wander off.

So in essence, when Jesus asks this question... he knows what the answer is:

“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?”

That’s easy!!! None of us would! Why would we go after the lost one if it indeed means that we are going to lose many times more of that from the flock we already have?? The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few... or the one... That’s the logical stance.

Yet as Jesus so often points out, the love of God, the grace of God defies any sort of logic that we try to put in place. This now familiar text takes a bizarre turn, and we’re left wondering what God is up to. Maybe we need to take a new look at it again, and see if we can’t see things the way God does.

We don’t get the chance though... To make matters worse, he throws another parable at us. A woman who has lost a coin aggressively searches through her own home... sweeping everything up, turning everything upside down to find it. Like the shepherd, she abandons all reason, it seems, to find this one single coin. Perhaps it isn’t as odd as the story with the shepherd, because at least the coins that are not lost aren’t going to wander off on their own.

Searching your house for something valuable isn’t out of the ordinary. Turning your house upside down looking for something valuable isn’t out of the ordinary... it’s what the woman does when she does find the coin is extraordinary. Her joy in finding the coin is so powerful, so overwhelming, that she calls all of her friends over to have a party.

But think about this... what does it take to throw a party? Money!! Which means she ends up spending the coin that she just found celebrating the fact that she just found it. Then what was the point for having searched for the coin? It defies logic, doesn’t it?

Jesus presents two stories that, on the surface, seem to be nice, pleasant tales of the lost being found. Yet because they are so familiar to us, we’ve built up a lot around them to make them more comforting than radical. Jesus asks us, “Who among you would do this?”, when he tells these stories. The fact is, none of us would!

But God, as Jesus tells us, sees things differently than we do. God is the one who will risk it all to find the lost. God is the one who will do those things that we find impossible, or even absurd! God is the one who will let go of everything else to in order to go after one who is lost, and to celebrate in the most profound way when the one is indeed found.

If anything, it is that Good News is difficult to understand. Nobody ever said that parables were easy to get... they’re more there to get us to see things the way God sees them. As we find out, it is a very different way of looking at the world. God is willing to risk it all to go after the one, to take that chance... and experience that joy that comes in finding.

Jesus is giving us a glimpse into how God sees the world. That the priorities that we seem to hold near and dear are very different in God’s eyes. The problem for us is how do we respond? What is it about these parables that can help us?

Ultimately, Jesus is trying to tell us that God cares... in ways that are more profound than we understand. That God will never give up on us, no matter how far we have fallen, no matter how lost we have become? For those who were outcasts in society then, this was incredibly good news... that even when everyone else had abandoned them... God would not... and would still be there. It is that sense of profound joy that we celebrate as Christians. In remembering that God never gives up on us that we find hope, not only for ourselves, but we can give hope to those who feel themselves far beyond it... and THAT really is good news!

Amen.


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