Parable of the Lost Coin

  • A Little Big Story

    ·

    a homily for Proper 20C Text: Luke 16:1-13 A strange little story Jesus is a master storyteller. He’s pulled off a sequence of three parables: a kind of meditation on a common theme: that culminate with the most beloved parable of them all, what we call the Parable of the Prodigal Son. It is a…

    Read More

  • The Challenge of the Coin

    ·

    There is nothing worse than recommending someone not come to your church. It pains me to say it, then and now. A young seeker, looking to reconnect with church wanted to talk. We knew each other from previous work, so it was a different kind of awkward. It wasn’t the usual talking-to-strangers kind. She was…

    Read More

  • Let’s get this party started

    ·

    a homily for Proper 19C Text: Luke 15:1-10 In or Out? There are a million different ways to enter into this gospel. It is a familiar enough one that some of our long-tenured members are likely to have heard them all. The favorite approach is this one: these are two of the three “lost” parables:…

    Read More

  • Hate the sin? Chances are you hate the sinner.

    ·

    a Sermon for Lent 4C Text: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 Two Sons Most depictions of this story focus on the first half: the sinful son, the return to the farm, the generosity and mercy of the father, and the embrace. It is a wonderful and evocative image. I have a book full of these images, art…

    Read More

  • The parable you never knew

    ·

    Sandwiched between two of Jesus’s most famous parables is a small teaching about a lost coin. And it cracks the whole thing wide open. Two of the most recognizable parables sandwich a poor, misunderstood parable in Luke’s gospel.  A parable of revolutionary proportions, often mistaken for an afterthought.  A small, instructive parable that speaks today…

    Read More

  • Finding the lost

    ·

    As I prepared for the sermon a little over a week ago on Luke 15:1-10, I was bowled over by a thought—too tangential for what I was hoping to do on Sunday, but too important to ignore. Jesus introduces a trio of “lost” things in parables: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost…

    Read More