The Parable of the Lost Sheep and Lost Coin
Psalm 23 and Luke 15:1-10
“Just who does Jesus think he is? The gall of the man!” These are, no doubt, the thoughts of the Pharisees who had gathered around Jesus; they could not believe what they were hearing. And the question for us today is: can we believe it?
*****
Before
Jesus entered the Temple in Jerusalem to overturn the tables thereby forcing
the crowds to wonder if he could be the Messiah, before the early Christians
were forced to rethink everything they thought they knew about Israel’s God
because of the fact of Jesus’ cross, before Jesus was recognized as the Son of
God in power by the fact of his resurrection, before any of these things
happened, there was simply Jesus. The
man. A carpenter. From Galilee, aka
“the sticks.” “Yes, he has is followers who call him ‘rabbi,’ but most of these
followers are lower class themselves, the am-haretz,
some of them are even women and they don’t count,” or so thought the
Pharisees. “Yes, he can turn a phrase
and shows a certain wit and wisdom with a story but these stories are
subversive; they undermine our way of
life,” or so thought the Pharisees. “By what authority,” thought the Pharisees,
“does this man teach? Why does he welcome sinners and even eat with them, share
fellowship, communion with those kind of
people? Just who does he think he
is?”
The
question in the Pharisees’ minds would have intensified when they heard Jesus’
parable of the Lost in Luke 15. Often we hear the Parable of the Lost Sheep and
we conjure images of a pretty little sheep and its shepherdess painted on to a
child’s lunch box – “Oh, how cute!”
No. In Luke 15, Jesus and the
Pharisees are engaged in an intense, eyeball to eyeball, scholarly debate. The
Pharisees surround Jesus, get in his face and say, “Alright, young man, we want
to know right here and right now if you really are a man of God. We want to know what you’re up to and we
want the truth!” Jesus responds, “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!”
Think: Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men. Very
intense.
Perhaps that
analogy has too much shouting involved.
A better analogy would be the conversation I had with the President of
Princeton Seminary when I was a senior.
I had written an editorial about campus security for the student
newspaper that had all the subtlety of an M1-A1 Abrams tank; I believe the
refrain at the end of each paragraph was: “This is an outrage! What is the administration thinking?” This led to my being “invited” (read:
summoned) to meet with Dr. Gillespie.
For two hours we sat across from each other, our knees never more than
six inches a part, our eyes never leaving each other’s stare, our voices never
raised beyond a normal speaking voice, as we lobbed verbal grenades at each
other. Very, very intense. That’s what’s happening here, and we miss
much of the parable if we do not see this context.
*****
The first thing we
must see is how Jesus attacks the Pharisees’ view of religion. The Pharisees had some very particular views
on what made one properly religious.
For instance, their view of repentance had three steps: confess,
compensate, demonstrate. Confess your sins; acknowledge them
openly and honestly, tears of sorrow are always nice. Compensate the person you
sinned against; repay them what you took, whether in honor or possessions. Demonstrate that you are a changed
person; show by your works that you are ready to “walk the walk” and not just
“talk the talk.” This is our view of repentance also, of course. When I was a misbehaving boy, my dad would
say to me, “Don’t tell me you’re sorry, just don’t do it again.” So this was
repentance: confess, compensate, demonstrate.
All three. If you missed even
one part, your repentance didn’t count.
And then Jesus tells the Pharisees his
view of repentance in the parable of the Good Shepherd.
“Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?” Sheep are not smart. Usually they’ll follow the shepherd’s call, a ten second song the shepherd sings about once a minute. But every now and then they’ll be too busy feeding to follow, and the herd moves on. A sheep left alone is terrified: it hides under the nearest bush making as much noise as possible, which, of course, attracts every wolf in the vicinity. If the shepherd is not quick, the sheep will be lost…for good. So the good shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to seek the one.
“And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it
on his shoulders and goes home.” Notice what the lost sheep, clearly a metaphor for a sinner, must
do to get right with God. Must the lost
sheep confess? Must the lost sheep
compensate? Must the lost sheep demonstrate a new kind of life? No.
The only thing the lost sheep must do is be found by the shepherd. When
the shepherd finds the lost sheep, the sheep’s legs have gone all wobbly and
the sheep is catatonic with panic. It’s
not doing anything productive for quite a while. So when the shepherd finds the lost sheep, the shepherd puts the
sheep around his shoulders and carries it home. Jesus says the shepherd does this joyfully.
“Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’” Let’s jump back to the beginning of the parable for a moment: “When one of you…loses one,” says Jesus. Excuse me? Who lost the sheep? The Pharisees lost the sheep. But here, the good shepherd, a reference to Jesus, has found the one lost sheep the Pharisees have lost. Jesus is amazed by the Pharisees’ attitudes. Here he is going out into all parts of Israel bringing sinners back to God, and rather than rejoicing with him (and God), the Pharisees are complaining about what he’s doing. They should be rejoicing with Jesus, not giving him grief!
“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.” Now, did you catch the part of the parable where the sheep repented? Did you hear the sheep bleat out the “sinner’s prayer”? Did you notice the sheep tears puddle up on the grass because it was so sorrowful for its sins? Did you like the way the sheep paid each and every farmer back every cent for all the grass it had ever eaten? Wasn’t the best part the way the sheep refused to eat other people’s grass ever again and only ate grass it, the sheep, owned? …You mean, you didn’t see any of that in the parable? No? Then why does Jesus talk about the joy heaven knows when one sinner repents?
Because Jesus has a new definition of repentance.
For Jesus, repentance means accepting our acceptance. Repentance means being lost to ourselves, lost to our community and lost even to our faith, then being found by God. Repentance means knowing that there is One, even God, who loves us more than we can imagine. And the proper response to all this repentance is joy. What’s worse, implies Jesus, is that it is the Pharisees who are lost. After all, where are the 99? The shepherd is in the village rejoicing and feasting. Where are the 99? They are now alone in the wilderness. They are now the lost sheep. They are now the ones who need to be found. None too delicately, Jesus rejects the Pharisees’ view of religion. Who does he think he is?
*****
But
it gets worse. Jesus not only rejects
the Phariees’ view on religion, but also their politics. Jesus puts his own
interpretation on the entire Psalter!
When one looks at the images used to describe God in the Psalms, 98-99%
of the images are words like “shield,” “high place,” “tower,” “refuge,” “rock,”
or “stronghold.” In other words, they
are homeland security images. But there
is a minority voice in the psalms: three other images are used, ever so
slightly, but they’re there: God as a Shepherd (Psalm 23, 100), God as a Woman
(Psalm 131), and God as a Father (Psalm 89, 103). Rather than “strength and security,” these images speak of “care
and compassion.” So in Luke 15 Jesus tells three parables – Lost Sheep, Lost
Coin and Lost Son – in which God is like a Shepherd, a Woman and a Father.
These images would have provoked the Pharisees’ anger. Why?
Because of politics of the age.
The great British New Testament scholar N.T. Wright has shown that much of the religious life of the first century Israel revolved around the political issues of Roman occupation and the hoped for Messiah. The dominant view was that God would send Messiah, who would then lead a rebellion against Rome, restoring political autonomy to Israel and bringing in “the kingdom of God.” In fact, any time that we hear Jesus talk about “the kingdom of God,” we need to remember that his original listeners understood this phrase in terms of zionism to be political, nationalistic and militarily oriented. We hear “kingdom of God” and think “spiritual stuff,” “church,” “separation of Church and State.” Those in the first century Israel heard “kingdom of God” and they thought: “the strong arm of the Lord,” “the Almighty is our strength,” “our Rock and our Refuge.” In the first century, those who held the dominant view used religion to support the nationalistic dreams of armed rebellion.
As Wright shows,
though, much of Jesus’ teachings redefined the term “kingdom of God” away from
the political, the nationalistic and the militaristic and back to the
spiritual, the communal and the ethical.
For instance, when Jesus teaches, “If someone strikes you on the right
cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matthew 5:39), this was in reference to the
common practice of Roman soldiers to use their left hand to slap Jews who
crossed them; the left hand was the hand that conveyed disrespect. Jesus here is advocating non-violence,
saying in effect: “Do not worry about the Romans; our life with God is beyond
their ability to touch.” So when Jesus
tells his string of parables in Luke 15, he isn’t telling stories in a vacuum
but in a particular context. Simply
put: Jesus rejects using religion to promote Homeland Security; what Jesus
promotes is the notion that the God of Israel is, first and foremost, a God of
care and a God of compassion for each and every person regardless of
nationality. None too delicately, Jesus
rejects the Pharisees view of politics.
Who does he think he is?
*****
But
it gets worse. Jesus not only rejects
the Pharisees’ views on religion and politics, but also their view of God.
Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees is an incredibly sophisticated retelling of one
of the most famous passages of Scripture: Psalm 23. (I wish I could show you all the details that suggest this is
what Jesus was doing, but we don’t have time in this one sermon.) In any case,
this takes some nerve on Jesus’ part because Psalm 23 had been retold before
only by the great prophets Jeremiah (Jeremiah 23) and Ezekiel (Ezekiel 34).
“So,” the Pharisees would have thought, “you think you can run with the big
dogs, eh? With David and Jeremiah and
Ezekiel? You are arrogant, aren’t you?” But it isn’t nearly as bad as the Pharisees
think…it’s way, way worse. Jesus isn’t
claiming merely the status of great prophet of Israel. Think back to Psalm 23: who brings back
(restores) the sheep? The Lord. In Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the psalm gets
retold to say that the Lord and David, foreshadowing one who will be Messiah,
bring back the sheep. In Luke 15, who
brings back the sheep? The
shepherd. And who is the shepherd? Jesus.
Jesus
stands before the Pharisees and, with the subtlety of an M1-A1 Abrams tank,
says to them, “You want the truth? You
can’t handle the truth! The truth is
the Lord God restores sinners to himself.
The Lord God brings back the sheep.
And…I…Am…He.” With these words Jesus elevated the confrontation beyond
scholarly debate to, quite literally, mortal combat. And while Jesus hung on the cross the Pharisees, no doubt, would
have thought to themselves, “Now the debate is finally over,” but they would
have been wrong, for it was only Friday…and Sunday was coming.
*****
The Pharisees’ question of Jesus was “Who does he think he is?” Our question needs to be a little different. Our question is: “Who do we think he is?” Beyond the Christ of the confession, beyond the stained glass Jesus, stands the man. He is here. Before us. Who do we think he is? Is he who he claims to be? Will we open our hearts to the joy of his finding us? Will we receive him as Savior? Will we follow him as Lord?