'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."
So he told them this parable: "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? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 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.' Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
"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? 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.' Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."'
I lose things. A lot. I lost my high school ring, which was miraculously found in another state six months later. I lost my father’s college ring from the Citadel – if you know, you know – which was, sadly, never found. I lost a precious James Avery cross ring, which I wore on my right hand to match my wedding ring just before we moved back to North Carolina from Updstate New York. Honestly, I don’t know what it is with me and rings! While I was serving at a church in South Carolina I lost my sunglasses, and our wonderful parish administrator, who was a devout Roman Catholic taught me a short, simple prayer to St. Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of lost items:
Dear St. Anthony, please look around. Something is lost and cannot be found.
I never found that particular pair of costly sunglasses, but if I had, she explained, I was supposed to show my gratitude by praying:
Dear St. Anthony, thanks for coming around. What I had lost has now been found.
Any of y’all ever enlist St. Anthony’s help to find something you lost? Assuming you did find the thing you were looking for, do you remember how overjoyed you were to find it?
The entire 15th chapter of the Gospel of Luke is made up of three parables about lost things – lost sheep, lost coin, and a lost or prodigal child, which we don’t hear this week because we actually heard it way back on the Fourth Sunday in Lent. Each of these parables follows the same pattern: a sheep is lost from the fold, the shepherd goes to find it and rejoices when it is returned; a woman loses a coin that is worth 1/10th of her earnings, turns her house upside down searching for it, and when she finds it she throws a party to celebrate. Something is lost, someone searches for the something, and joy abounds when the something is found.
If parables are meant to teach us a thing or two about ourselves and God, the message of these parables seems pretty obvious. God is the shepherd searching for the sheep. God is the woman searching for the coin. The sheep and the coin are the folks who are lost, the folks God loves. They’re you. They’re me. They’re even the ones we wish would stay lost. To some of you biblical scholars out there, this assessment of the text might seem a bit like low-hanging fruit, but it's true, regardless of how simple it may sound, and it’s critically important for us to remember. So much gets in the way of us really believing this. Our shame whispers: “Maybe everyone else, but not you. Not after what you’ve done, what you’ve said, what you’ve secretly thought. A just God couldn’t possibly love you that much, to seek you out. Anybody but you.” Our pride whispers in the other ear: “Not him. Not her. After what they’ve done, what they’ve said, the seeds of contempt that they’ve sown. A just God would not possibly love them that much, to seek them out. Anybody but them.” Both voices are that of the Enemy.
The voice of Jesus is different. It says come unto me and rest. It says that one is loved to such an extent that he, this good shepherd, would leave everything to find such a one, would turn the whole house upside down looking for such a one; and what’s more, while speaking directly to the religious authorities who are chastising him for eating at the table of so-called sinners, Jesus does not return their outrage with his own. Moral outrage – whether self-inflicted or directed toward another – is not the way of Jesus. He remains engaged with the scribes and Pharisees. He is every bit in relationship with them as he is with the ones they call sinners. What a concept! Staying rooted in love so much so as to not leave the table! To borrow a line from Nichole Torbitzky: this is one of the beauties of the lure of God!
The Wesley Study Bible summaries this chapter by saying that these parables are intended to move the scribes and Pharisees from grumbling to rejoicing. And yet, despite his efforts to reach across the table, despite his insistence that God does, really and truly, love every single person THAT much, these religious elites continue to grumble as if it’s some kind of national pastime! The more things change, the more they stay the same, am I right? Jesus pleads with them to understand that God is actively searching to reconcile, not seeking to punish. Why would they respond in such a way? Why would anyone, upon hearing such good news, respond with dismissiveness, blame? Why, even now, are there folks who cheer at the idea of a vengeful, angry God, but, once you start talking about a God who loves each person with the kind of fervor that the shepherd and woman possess in the parables, those same people rant and rave and utterly reject such a concept?
I wonder if it’s because such folks see themselves as part of the 99, the ones that the shepherd seems to abandon to go look for the one single lost sheep. Have they not also been loved? Why then would the shepherd – why would Jesus – leave them to go search for a “sinner,” for someone who doesn’t fit what they’ve been taught a person who is worthy of God’s love looks or acts like? Maybe blindness to their own belovedness has done this, the result of years of indoctrination, the twisting of empathy into something to be mocked and spat upon the way the passers by mocked and spat upon Jesus. Hurt people hurt people, so the saying goes. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. Perhaps we should all ask ourselves how we would feel if Jesus left us to go search for someone else. Would we, too, feel abandoned and angry? Could we possibly find the empathy for such a one?
These parables speak the truth that not only are we all loved, but we are all, to some extent, lost. When we silo ourselves for the sake of security, cutting ourselves off from the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of others, and are convinced of our own moral superiority, we are lost. When we strive so hard for success and capital that we reject the commandment to rest and cast our cares on God, believing everything really is up to us, we are lost. When we respond to the abominable plague of gun violence in our communities with scapegoating and what-about-isms, literally praying that such tragedies are not perpetrated by “one of us,” we are lost. To be lost is to rely solely on own egocentric worldviews, and to believe that the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the grace, mercy, and love of God that he both preached and embodied are not nearly enough. If this God of love is not enough, then neither are we.
The God of love had a really bad week last week: the theatre of war expanding and escalating on the other side of the globe, public shootings here at home. Jesus don’t like killin’, no matter what the reason’s for. John Prine said that, and it bears repeating. The world and everything in it feels lost as of late. And while that might be true, here’s the thing: the shepherd and the woman in the parables were determined to find the pieces of the whole that were lost. They never stopped searching, never gave up. And the sheep and coin? They weren’t repentant. They were simply found. There is nothing that will stop Jesus from searching for any who are lost, and there’s nothing for any of us to do to earn such grace, such love, such mercy; it is a gift we need only accept, for ourselves and for those neighbors of ours of whom it would be easier to believe are not worthy of such a gift. Perhaps if we could do that for ourselves, we could do it for our neighbor; and if we could do it for our neighbor, little by little, person by person, then we would seek each other out, we would find each other, and there really would be celebrating in heaven.
The God of love may have had a really bad week, but the God of love is still the God we know and meet in Jesus Christ, and this God never, ever gives up on any of us, even when we give up on ourselves, on each other, and on God. This Jesus of ours, is still seeking folks out, even through the tears that he has no doubt been shedding, while Rachel again wails over the sufferings of her children. Patty Griffin has a song When It Don’t Come Easy in which she sings, “If you break down, I’ll drive out and find you/If you forget my love, I’ll try to remind you/Stay by you, when it don’t come easy.” Kristen and I love this song, mostly because it sums up our relationship really well – I literally drove out and found her in the middle of the night early on in our courtship when we weren’t even sure if Team Kroe was really a thing. No matter if it’s you, me, or them, Jesus is searching, driving out there to find us, reminding us of his love, even when we forget; staying by us, when it don’t come easy. That’s grace, which makes all things possible, even for our own wailing to be turned into dancing. We may deserve blame, yet we’re forgiven. We may be filled with righteous anger, yet we can be joyful. We may wander away, yet we will always be found.
