Finding the Lost
If 1% of your fortune was lost, what would you do?
How about 10%? Would you do something different?
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? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ³Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost. - Luke 15:8-9
In today's Gospel reading, Jesus confronts the Pharisees again.
This time they are questioning why Jesus and his disciples welcome tax collectors and sinners and he answers them in riddles, parables of the lost and found.
First we have a man with a hundred sheep who loses one. A 1% loss.
Then we have a woman with ten silver coins who loses one. A 10% loss.
Both search frantically until they find what was lost and they rejoice at the finding of it.
Both are made whole when it comes to their wealth, and these are wealthy people, having 100 sheep or 10 silver coins. The wealthy woman stoops down to clean her house on her knees.
Who would do that? Not when one has servants, and she probably did.
Jesus is connecting directly to his audience, as usual. They are wealthy and they understand the value of their possessions. He wants them to see that just as they are greedy for wealth, God the Father is greedy for the salvation of his flock, for all the flock.
Jesus has come to find them and return them to the kingdom.
But parables are not to be interpreted one way. They are designed and used as teaching and learning devices, to engage and involve the listeners in discussion.
Jesus wants them to consider the meanings, the many meanings in the story and get down into a great debate over them.
While Luke positions this parable as an explanation of God's desire to redeem the population, it may also be a looking glass for all of us. How do we react at the loss of one of many or one of a few?
If every penny of our income goes to support the family, any loss is worth the trouble of recovering. But if a loss makes little difference in our lifestyle, should it be deemed acceptable as well as affordable?
Jesus doesn't suggest that those who have wealth are greedy for their want of restitution of their lost wealth. He leaves that to us, all of us.
If we draw that conclusion on our own, we are judging them, and that judgment expends to God as well, since it is God who stooped down to scratch the ground looking for those of us He lost.
This topic is worth discussing today, just as much as it was in Jesus' time. And we should discuss it, because it touches all of us in one way or another.
It isn't about wealth as much as it is about loss, and we all know what that feels like.
More to come...
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