LOST AND FOUND: THE SHEEP AND COIN (Luke 15:1-10)

(Other readings: Psalm 14; Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; 1 Timothy1:12-17)

Kinglake West/Whittlesea UC, 16-9-07

During my eight days in Israel 2½ years ago we were fortunate to have Jacob, tour guide and former army intelligence captain, drive our small group around Israel in a four-wheel drive vehicle. As we left the Dead Sea and headed through the hills toward Jerusalem it was easy to imagine thieves waiting in ambush for travellers such as the victim in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. We stopped briefly so I could photograph a young Arab shepherd with his small flock, handing over the expected shekels after two or three satisfactory photos (see image on screen). I felt closer to Christ and the world of the Bible in such outdoor settings than in the shrines built over the presumed sites of the stable in Bethlehem and the crucifixion and tomb in Jerusalem. While the shepherd boy had been riding a donkey, in most other ways the scene had probably changed little since Jesus’ day when he told parables like those of the lost sheep and coin in Luke 15, our Gospel reading. Here, as in all his parables, Jesus chose an image from everyday life to illustrate his message. In both Judea in the south and Galilee in the north the shepherd and small flock of sheep would have been a familiar sight.

Luke 15:1-2 provides the context both for the two parables we are considering this morning, and for the even more famous parable of the Prodigal Son (read v1-2). Some of you have heard me tell the story of when Rowland Croucher was visiting preacher to a small and very conservative congregation. They had big black Bibles and severe expressions. Rowland invited them to list all the good qualities of the Pharisees. To them this was obviously a new way of looking at Jesus’ main opponents. Rowland copied their answers onto a black-board: Most Pharisees knew their Bibles (our Old Testament) off by heart; they prayed a lot; they tithed, often giving up to 1/3 of their income; they fasted twice a week; they were willing martyrs for their faith in Yahweh and their commitment to Torah; they attended ‘church’ (worship)

regularly; they were moral people (many could not remember breaking any of the commandments); they were ‘evangelical’ (believed all the right doctrines, like resurrection); and Jesus said they were evangelistic missionaries, even crossing oceans to win converts. Rowland says there was a hushed silence in the little church. He asked if there was anything wrong. ‘Yes,’ replied someone in the front row. ‘What is it?’ ‘That’s us!’ he said. ‘Is it?’ Rowland asked. ‘If it is, we’re in trouble, because Jesus said these Pharisees were “children of the Devil”’.

In our two parables Jesus is rebuking the Pharisees for their self-righteous judgmentalism and refusal to share God’s joy when “sinners” found faith and forgiveness through Jesus’ preaching of God’s kingdom. The Pharisees were scandalised that Jesus not only kept company with outcasts – obvious sinners – but welcomed them, showed them hospitality. Jesus’ response is to tell parables which teach that he is simply expressing God’s hospitality & mercy to sinners who repent. But let’s take a closer look at each of the parables.

THE PARABLE OF THE LOST SHEEP (v4-7)

V4 A hundred sheep would have been an unusually large flock, requiring more than one shepherd. Jesus may have been using the number for convenience, but if it had significance then we are to understand that it was the owner of the flock, the over-shepherd, who went out to find the lost sheep. PT Forsyth makes the point to his theological students that Christ is “the true head of every true church and the bishop of its minister”. If ministers are called to be God’s shepherds then Christ is the over-shepherd, the shepherd who risks his life to find his lost sheep – indeed, the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep.

It’s hard not to interpret v5-6 as Jesus having a dig at the Pharisees’ too-stern view of life; he certainly is rebuking them for missing the heart of Torah, that God is more interested in justice, love & mercy than in detailed regulations and such things as dietary laws.

Similarly, in v7 I do not believe for a moment Jesus is saying the Pharisees are not sinners. There is a sense of satire in his reference to the “ninety-nine persons who do not need to repent”. In the third parable in this section – that of the Prodigal or Lost Son, which is not included in today’s lectionary reading – Jesus makes clear through his depiction of the older son that the Pharisees, for all their religiosity, are more lost than the outcasts who hear Jesus gladly!

THE PARABLE OF THE LOST COIN (v8-10)

V8 The second parable is only found in Luke. The lost coin, one of ten, is a drachma, a silver coin worth about one denarius, or a day’s wages. In other words the coin is not very valuable. Who would not search industriously for a fortune? But this parable concerns a poor woman with only a small savings or dowry, who will search tirelessly for the loss of even one coin.

Again, in v9, the recovery of what was lost is celebrated in a party with friends and neighbours. And like the first parable, this one of the lost coin contrasts God’s joy over just one sinner coming to repentance with the Pharisees’ parsimonious and judgmental attitude. In both parables we have a picture of the rejoicing in heaven as something communal, the equivalent of an earthly party.

In v10 the rejoicing is “in the presence of the angels of God”.

LOST AND FOUND: THEN AND NOW

One commentator says “The parables of the lost sheep & the lost coin expose the grudging spirit that prevents us from receiving God’s mercy. Only those who can celebrate God’s grace to others can experience that mercy themselves”. (NIB, XI, p.298)

These parables of the lost sheep and coin challenge our comfort zones. We have all known loss. Lostness is as real today as when Jesus told his parables. Every day the media brings us stories of lostness – as with little Madeleine McCann, whose assumed kidnapping in Portugal is beginning to sound like the Azaria Chamberlain case.

In the early 1970s, when I was pastor to the Morphett Vale and Hackham Baptist Churches in Adelaide’s outer southern suburbs, we befriended a Dutch family from nearby Christies Beach. They came to us one day, very distressed. Their eleven or twelve year old daughter had apparently found a baby in a pram outside a supermarket, and wheeled the child away. The mother was distraught, and the police were called. The girl returned with the baby some time later, and eventually the mother calmed down, although the matter did go to court. We can only imagine the mother’s emotional roller-coaster!

We had a similar experience some years later. We were driving home from a week’s holiday on the west coast of South Australia, which we had visited for the first time. Just past Port Augusta we detoured north to visit Wilpena Pound in the Flinders Ranges. It was a very hot day, and our children were distressed. When we arrived at Wilpena Chalet we bought drinks and ice-creams and got talking to a woman who was drawn to our children, especially baby Sharon. She offered to mind Sharon while I took Stephen to the men’s toilet and Dorothy visited the Ladies’. When we came out we couldn’t find either Sharon or the woman. We hastily searched the building and then outside. I eventually found the woman and Sharon in a shaded area behind the chalet. The woman had been trying to find a cooler spot for them both. All this probably only took a few minutes, but it felt like hours! In that time we feared Sharon had been kidnapped, and we would never see her again. Such experiences plunge us into fear and grief.

Our grief can give us insight into God’s grief when we turn our backs on him and stubbornly refuse to surrender our lostness. Or God’s grief when we fail to show the love and forgiveness to others that he has shown to us.

But how can we imagine God’s joy when we accept his love and forgiveness, and allow ourselves to be gathered into his loving embrace.

Have you ever had the experience of a family member go missing, perhaps to turn up long after you were expecting them? Our love for our spouse, or children and grandchildren, gives us but an inkling of God’s love for them, and for us. Our experiences of love, and of finding a missing person or possession that is precious to us, give us some slight inkling of God’s joy when the lost is found. We can know assurance of God’s love and forgiveness, but we can never assume them. We all need to humble ourselves before our holy God, and accept the love and forgiveness he longs for us to know, and that Jesus died to bring us. And even if we have been Christians for many years, we still need to receive afresh each day the love and forgiveness which reminds us that we who were lost have been found!

Let’s pray!

Chris Venning