Luke 15:1-10

Last week, when large crowds were traveling with him (Luke 14:25), the lesson was about the cost of following Jesus.

This week, now that tax collectors and sinners are coming near to listen to him, the lesson is all about celebration that the lost have been found (without any cost on their part).

In Luke, the religious leaders try to get a reading of what honour (or dishonour) to bestow on Jesus by inviting him to dinner, Chapter 14. But now they start grumbling about him. Hanging with tax collectors and sinners is definitely not an honourable thing to do, and by now associating with these people, Jesus is bringing dishonor on the leaders for their previous association with him. (They could now be publicly ridiculed for not having correctly assessed Jesus' character BEFORE they had invited him to dinner - they should have know that he was the kind of guy who would

later associate with disreputable types.)

In Jesus' day, shepherds were a despised occupation. And so Jesus' words, "Which one of you, having a hundred sheep" contain a highly insulting inference. It would be like one of us saying, "Which one of you, having a hundred dumpsters to dive ..."

These two parables both use people at the bottom of the social ladder to describe the character of God. This is not an inconsequential choice on Jesus' part. Rather, consistent with the reading last week, it calls us to imagine God as socially despised, without honour or possessions. I wonder how much our glorification of God prevents us from truly knowing God's glory?

The "moral" that is attached to these parables doesn't really jibe with their content since, in fact, neither the lost sheep nor the lost coin "repent." They do nothing. The content of the parables is actually about the searching by the shepherd and the woman. There may indeed be joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, but the parables are more about the joy to be had on earth from hearing the good news about the one God who searches for us. Our God isn't sitting passively off somewhere waiting for someone to bring news that a sinner has repented today. Our God is actively searching.