THERE WILL BE GREAT REJOICING
Luke 15:1-10
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2 And 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? 5 And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 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.
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? 9 And 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.’ 10 Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Before we address the scripture, I want to point out that the nature of story telling is that it usually stimulates a story in the listener. A network of connections is often activated when people start remembering together. That also means the same story can elicit very different responses. There is no ‘right way’ to respond and often the very same story is remembered—and responded to—quite differently. This is the genius of the biblical stories and especially the parables. We can listen to parables that we have heard over and over but something about the story strikes us differently. In Faith and Real Life, we have often revisited certain passages many times and almost every time, there is something different that comes up. I have often looked at familiar passages and thought: “Oh, no. We’ve talked this one to death.” But I have come to trust there is always something new. It is one of the reasons we call the Bible ‘the living Word.’ The place we are in life changes how we reflect. The people we are with will tease and tickle our imaginations differently. A very large part of biblical reflection is consciously leaving room for the Holy Spirit. If we are willing to listen, She will speak.
These two parables actually belong to a trilogy in Luke. We have the lost sheep, the lost coin, and if we continue the chapter, we have the lost son. They are written to respond when the “Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” It was incomprehensible to them that Jesus could love undesirable people. Religion, as is often the case, became a way to stratify people. Living was turned into an extended entrance exam to qualify for God’s favor. Sharing meals with people who had obviously failed that exam suggested the exam did not carry any weight. That was clearly unacceptable.
The scribes and the Pharises’ story was that humans had to do better to belong to God. We teach the same thing to our children when we want them to advance academically. There is nothing wrong with that practical advice. The danger is thinking that is how God sees us. We are constantly making God in our image rather than allowing ourselves to be molded into God’s image. When Jesus, whom we call the Christ, repeatedly loved the person in front of him, he separated our obedience and good behaviors as indicators of our acceptability to God. What God wants is for us to love as He loves. What God wants is for us—even when we do it badly—to move in the direction of seeing the Holy in every person we meet. That is a much different story to tell than the secularized version of religion that measures and compares people to decide who will be loved.
So Jesus tries, through parables, to communicate the ordinary experience of losing something we treasure and the joy that comes from finding what we had lost. But precisely because parables are stories, what we notice depends greatly on where we enter the story. The easy entry is to engage the story as the shepherd or the woman. I asked the Faith in Real Life groups for stories in which they had lost something. Everyone had such a story. In most cases, the lost piece of jewelry, book or contact lens was found but not always. But the common thread was anxiety and fear followed by relief and rejoicing. This is such a relatable experience that it is easy to imagine God having the same level of concern for one of His lost as we would for something we hold precious.
There were some attempts to evaluate how valuable a single sheep or a single coin was worth but I think such assessments of comparative worth reflect ordinary human thinking. All we know is that the sheep and the coin were valuable enough to search for. The individual sheep or coin might have different values to different people. In fact in our secular world, neither might not be worth our time to search for. We don’t get to know what God thinks is worth searching for on the basis of our own stratification of value. Both stories state explicitly “there is joy in heaven when a single sinner repents.” It is a different way of saying that every life—even if it is a single life among billions of lives, matters. Or as Paul put it, ‘there is nothing in life or in death that can separate us for the love of God in Christ.’ That includes our sinfulness and disobedience. Again that is a very different story about human worth to God vs how we humans establish worth.
Another way to enter the story is through the eyes of the 99 sheep who are left behind while the shepherd searches for the single lost sheep. Families have this difficulty all of the time. Sometimes it is as simple as a younger child displacing the oldest child—or as complicated as a single disabled child drawing off the parents energy. Children are constantly comparing. Children are constantly trying to measure and test their parents’ love. It is quite possible to feel lost when we see others receiving care we wish we had. The older brother in the Parable of the Prodigal epitomizes that predicament. God’s love is simply not measurable on the basis of human criteria. That is both wonderful and powerfully disturbing. But when we focus on such ‘inequities’ we run the considerable risk of losing joy. And the equal risk of failing to see what we have already been given. The simple way to describe this is to remember: “To compare is to despair.” Yet, as often as not, that is our human default position.
Finally, we could enter the story as the lost sheep or the lost coin. It was notably more difficult to identify (out loud at any rate) those times we have felt lost, what that feels like—and what it feels like to be found. At first I had difficulty imagining the predicament of a lost coin. I could imagine being a lost sheep but not so much a lost coin. Then it occurred to me that a lost coin no longer could serve the purpose for which it was created. It could never be spent. That is a familiar predicament for most of us. I regularly see people who are lost—empty nesters, graduating seniors, struggling relationships, people in the middle of great loss. When we are lost we don’t know where to turn. We are separated from what we have known—lost sheep or lost coin. We must be found in order to regain purpose in our lives. Repentance is the word to describe turning back to what really matters. Such turning reestablishes our place and purpose in the world.
Surely the tax collectors and sinners that Jesus loved were lost in a world that dismissed, if not despised, them. Jesus showed them and us that God’s kingdom is very different from our conventional understanding. They too have a place and a purpose.
The trick is to learn Jesus’ story. Enter it and be transformed. There will be great rejoicing. Let it be so.
