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Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 15
Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
3 Then Jesus told them this parable: 4 “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.
8 “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins[a] and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? 9 And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ 10 In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”


If you see a coin on the ground, do you stop to pick it up?

Or do you discriminate, stooping only to get the higher change, quarters and up? I guess it depends on your circumstances, your willingness to roll change, or just the state of your back. Ponder that as I take you back in time to 2007, in lovely Watertown, NY.

We have a common road trip saying, which goes some like this: “Remind me to fill up with some that that cheap Yankee gas.” Then later: “Better stop soon, if you want some of that cheap Yankee gas.” And so it goes.

On this particular day, filling the car with cheap Yankee gas, I look down and notice that I’m surrounded by loose change. It’s all over the ground, and no one seems to be stooping to pick it up. I continue to fill up with that cheap Yankee gas.

Heading in to pay, a guy is just leaving the store and casts his change on the ground. Okay, this is strange. As I pay for my cheap Yankee gas I ask the clerk: “There seems to be a lot of change on the ground out there. Is that normal? Do you pick it up?”

“Oh yeah,” he says, “at the end of every shift—we do okay.”

Back in the car I said “something strange is happening. Not sure what, but something strange.”

Now remember the date—2007. Months before the sub-prime crisis, the housing bubble, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, European contagion, the global financial crisis, the sovereign-debt crisis, and everything else that falls under the name ‘the Great Recession.’ Coins strewn on the ground. People literally throwing their money away.

Let’s call it the Parable of the Tossed Coin. Or the Parable of the Careless Consumer. Or the Parable on the Brink of Disaster. Whatever we call it, it’s the polar opposite of the Parable of the Lost Coin.

The Lost Coin. The Lost Coin is actually part of the trilogy of parables—Lost Sheep, Lost Coin and Lost Son. What we most often refer to as the Prodigal Son is also known as the Parable of the Lost Son, just to complete the set. So Luke 15 is about seeking the lost. One chapter, three units, one theme.

As usual, the scene is set by grumblers. “This man,” the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law say, “welcomes sinners and eats with them.” This is all the invitation Jesus needs. Believing that nothing defeats the grumblers like a good parable, he gives them three.

“Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them.” Wouldn’t you leave the ninety-nine in the open country and search until the find that little lost sheep? And finding it, would you put that sheep over your shoulders and carry it home, asking others to rejoice with you? Then the moral:

“I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”

Then the lost coin, lighting a lamp, sweeping the house, calling others to rejoice, then the moral:

“In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

It’s all rather easy, parable-moral-repeat. Except the Lost Son has no moral, and that should be a clue. You will recall the idea of scribal enthusiasm, or scribal exuberance, that led editors and scribes to tack a moral on to the end of various parables and stories, seemingly to enlighten the reader or ensure that we take just the right meaning away. Scholars will tell you to be wary of morals and tidy endings, and look again. So we look again.

The Lost Son has no moral, only a good story as God intended—literally. The lost son asks his father for his inheritance in advance, half the family farm, and (as the King James says) “wasted his substance with riotous living.” Well, riotous living leaves him broke, and the first and most pressing clue is the urge to eat the pigs food, as he is reduced to real labour. He resolves to head home and seek his father’s forgiveness. If he has to be a farm hand, he thinks, he might was well do it at home.

And this, of course, leads to that famous scene, again best recorded in the KJV: “Bring hither the fatted calf,” the father says, “and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.”

And in this parable-without-a-moral we get the older brother’s response, in my opinion, one of the most emotionally honest passages in scripture (and he also provides the definition for riotous living):

‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

But the father is unrepentant in his desire to forgive: “But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”

No moral, only forgiveness that defies all reason. So let’s go back to the first two “lost” parables and do a little Q&A. Imagine you are in the audience as Jesus shares these parables for the first time and imagine your response.

“Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them.”

“Okay.”

“Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?”

“No, because that sounds careless, Jesus. That make no sense at all from a risk-management perspective.”

“And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home.”

“Ah, no. Sheep stink—even first century people knew that.”

“Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’

“Again, Jesus, no. That would make me look like an idiot, wearing a sheep as a shawl and bragging about neglecting 99% or my flock.”

I think you get the picture in parable one. How about parable two?

“Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins[a] and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it?

“Maybe, if the rent’s due, or she’s a neat freak.”

“And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’

“Again, no. One, friends likely don’t care, or they will label her careless or even boastful—‘hey, look at me, ten coins.’”

So while it is certainly true that there is more joy in heaven over finding the lost—especially compared to ninety-nine percent of religious people who frequently forget they need to repent—the lost parables seem to about something else altogether.

The lost parables are all about what’s reasonable. What would you do in these situations? In law they talk about the reasonable person, or the reasonable third person—what would they do? Apparently the Brits say “The man on the Clapham omnibus.” Don’t ask me why.

Answering all those questions, the most common answer is ‘no’—I won’t leave ninety-nine valuable animals for the careless one, I won’t lose sleep over one lousy coin, I won’t embrace the kid who just squandered half my net worth. For most of us, except these sainted parable dwellers, the answer is no, no, no.

But remember, the father is unrepentant in his desire to forgive. And there’s no moral here, only forgiveness that defies all reason. No reasonable person, not even the man on the Clapham omnibus would be so foolish as to ignore logic, and reason—and the justified anger of everyone on that farm—to redeem the lost. Only God.

There are actually two ‘lost son’ stories, the one in this chapter and the one at the end of the story.

Then he told them this parable: “Suppose each of you has disavowed me (it’s the sensible thing to do) having answered ‘no’ to they question ‘do you know him.’ And suppose I was lifted high on a tree—becoming obedient unto death—even death on a cross. And suppose that just before the moment all was lost—I was lost—I had the opportunity to speak, to say the words that would define me. What would I say?

Forgive them.

May we love the God who is unreasonably forgiving, seeking the lost, saving, redeeming at measureless cost. Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 5:53 AM