Lesson: Luke 15:1-10

The Pharisees and scribes strive to be holy, an admirable goal. One way to do that in ancient Judean society is by sharing a meal with the right people. So, when the scribes and Pharisees see the company Jesus is keeping, they say to him, “Why do you always hang out with sinners and tax collectors? If you hang out with these unholy people, it might rub off on you.”

The parables with which Jesus responds probably rocked his listeners’ world. First, he asks them to imagine themselves as a shepherd. Shepherds were unclean. Then he asks them to imagine themselves as a woman. Women were, well, women; inferior. “Which one of you,” he says, and then tells a story so that they have to imagine what the world might look like and what their response would be as people they want little or nothing to do with.

Jesus says, “I want you to imagine that you have one hundred sheep and that you lose one of them. Now, wouldn’t you go out after the lost one until you find it?” The obvious answer is, “Of course not.” Nobody in his right mind leaves the ninety-nine to the wolves to go chasing off after the one. You cut your losses, forget about the lost sheep, and take care of the ninety-nine. Jesus’ question is ironic. Who among you would do this? Nobody would! But he goes on: “And when you find the sheep, wouldn’t you go home and throw a party?” This is crazy, too; he’s suggesting not only that they’d confess this foolish decision to their friends, but celebrate it? I kinda think Jesus is messing with them.

The parables raise the question, “Just who are the ‘lost’?” The Pharisees might assume it’s those tax collectors and “sinners.” In Jesus’ time, “sinners” simply meant people who didn’t follow the law closely, or at least not as closely as the Pharisees believed they did. There were all sorts of reasons people might not follow every one of the 613 laws of Torah; some of those reasons were economic. Affluent people could afford the proper sacrifices, the proper tithes, the exacting Sabbath expectations, the dietary restrictions; less affluent people could not.

But just maybe the lost also include the Pharisees, the scribes, the people who have an easier time hiding their struggles, their fears, their foibles. It’s easy to hide corrosive hate or anger. It’s easy to hide loveless relationships, or loneliness, or pain or fear. It’s easy to hide all sorts of things behind self-righteousness and propriety and a conviction that you’d never be like “those people.” As one commentator puts it, “I suspect that if you think you’re found, at least more found than other people, you might well be more lost than you realize.”

Jesus concludes the parable of the lost sheep with, “I say to you that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” And again, I think he’s messing with the scribes and Pharisees here, because did you ever meet anyone who needs no repentance? No repentance at all, ever?

No, you didn’t. So maybe the ninety-nine sheep are a brilliant set-up. Maybe the real meaning of the one and the ninety-nine is that the one lost sheep is all of us: the whole human race as it really is. The ninety-nine sheep who never get lost are the whole human race as we think we are, or maybe wish we were. The ninety-nine, therefore, are not really at risk here from wolves or anything else; they don’t exist; they don’t represent a real group of people. The one lost sheep stands for all of us, because in different ways, at different times, certainly to different degrees, we all get lost. We’re all in the same boat: tax collectors, so-called “sinners,” Pharisees, scribes, everybody, regardless of when or how we’re “lost” or whether we even believe we are. Not because we’re all miserable or fallen sinners as the Church has sometimes taught; that was never Jesus’ view of people. We’re all in the same boat because we’re all equally worthy of God’s love.

We’re all equally worthy of God’s love. And so, Jesus says, it is more important to God than anything else that we be found. Found and brought to the table. Found, and restored to life lived in the presence of God, so that we can be transformed bit by bit into people who live our lives, day by day, as though God is our God, instead of all the small “g” gods that we allow to rule our lives – the gods of money, status, possessions, popularity, fear, power, hatred – anything we let rule our lives instead of God. We may think of ourselves as searching for God, but it is God, says Jesus, who searches for us. Even if, like the coin, we never even know we’re lost.

God doesn’t give up on us, and so we’re not supposed to give up on each other, either. If God thinks we’re worth pursuing, then we are. And when all is said and done, Jesus’ real critique of the scribes and Pharisees is that they won’t come to the party. In the end, writes one commentator, Jesus tells the scribes and Pharisees “check your superiority at the door and join the dance.”

Or as someone once summarized the Good News of the Gospel: “Lost. Found. Party!”

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Gary E. Peluso-Verdend, “Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost,” in New Proclamation, Year C, 2007 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2006).
Robert Farrar Capon, “The Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin,”
http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/capon_4012.htm.
Mary H. Schertz, “God’s Party Time,” in The Christian Century, September 4, 2007, http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso.
Sarah Buteux, “Lost and Found,” September 15, 2013, http://firstchurchhadley.org/index/sermons/130915