Luke 15

I never did get into the US TV series, ‘Lost’. I saw the pilot episode, which was one of those American shows that has a bigger budget than the entire British film industry since the War. It’s the story of the survivors of a plane crash who find themselves on an apparently deserted island. Perhaps it was popular because we all know that feeling of being lost. My earliest childhood memory is of getting lost in town and being brought home in a police car (my one and only time!). I suspect my parents were more traumatised by the event than I was. I came home with a packet of Smarties, most of which I had dribbled down the front of my clothes.

Luke 15 could be entitled ‘Lost’. We hear the stories of a lost sheep, a lost cost and a lost son. In each case, that which was lost is restored to its rightful place. The sheep gets lost because it wanders off. (You know what sheep are like.) The coin is lost through no fault of its own. It simply finds itself lost. And the son, having told his father ‘I wish you were dead’, runs off to a distant country in the hope of a better life, free from parental restrictions.

Look at the context in which Jesus tells these stories:

Now all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ (Luke 15:1,2)

It’s one of the things we know about Jesus. He’s not fussy about his friends. He doesn’t choose them in order to better his social standing. Quite the opposite: Jesus makes friends with those that society would happily lose – the ‘sinners; people who are not ‘us’, the respectable, the religious.

So, if you had a hundred sheep and lost just one, you would leave the 99 safely in the fold and search high and low until the one missing sheep is found. You don’t say, “I’ve got 99, that’ll do”. They are your sheep. Finding the missing sheep is an occasion for celebration. You say to your friends and neighbours, “It’s party time!” Jesus says, That’s what God is like. Happy with the 99% who are safe. But never really happy until the last one is safely home.

If you had ten silver coins and lost just one, the same thing: search high and low and, when the missing coin is found, it’s party time.

And the same with the son, even though it was through his own choice that he got lost. And that’s why Jesus eats with sinners. Sinners matter to God just as much as the righteous, the respectable and the religious:

For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.
Luke 19:10