Lost and Found

Sometimes one person’s celebration can be really annoying for you, especially if you don’t understand the reason for the party.

And this was the case for the Pharisees and Scribes in Luke 15.

The three parables, lost sheep, lost coin, and prodigal son, are told because Jesus is making a habit of having parties with all the ‘wrong’ people, and some thought it was a nightmare.

Throughout Luke 15 we witness how Jesus responds to “the least of these” and, perhaps, how we should too.

At the heart of the trouble is the character of the people Jesus is eating with on a regular basis. The tax-collectors are disliked not just because they are tax-collectors – nobody much likes them in any culture – but because they are collecting money for either Herod or the Romans, or both, and nobody cared for them at all. And if they are in regular contact with the Gentiles, some might have considered them unclean. Sinners are disliked because they are considered to be unclean. (N.T. Wright)

In the stories of the sheep and the coin, the punch line in each case depends on the Jewish belief that the two halves of God’s creation, heaven and earth, were meant to fit together and be in harmony with each other. If you discover what’s going on in heaven, you’ll discover how things were meant to be on earth. That, after all, is the point of praying that God’s kingdom will come ‘on earth as in heavens.” As far as the legal experts and Pharisees were concerned, the closet you could get to heaven was in the Temple; the Temple required strict purity from the priests; and the closet that non-priests could get to copying heaven was to maintain a similarly strict purity in every aspect of life. But now Jesus was declaring that heaven was having a great, noisy party every time a single sinner saw the light and began to follow God’s way. If earth-dwellers wanted to copy the life of heaven, they’d have a party, too. That’s what Jesus as doing – throwing a party!

But throughout the chapter Jesus is NOT saying, “Because I am eating with these people, they are fit to live their lives however they choose.” No. Sinners must still repent. The lost sheep and lost coin are found. The prodigal son comes to his senses and returns home. But Jesus has a different idea than his critics of what repentance means. For the Pharisees and scribes, nothing short of adopting their standards of purity and law-observance would do. For Jesus, when people follow him and his way, that is true repentance.

The point of the parables is then clear. This is why there’s a party going on: all heaven is having a party, the angles are joining in, and if we don’t have one as well we’ll be out of tune with God’s reality. (N.T. Wright, Luke for Everyone)

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