In a reflection for Proper 19C, we look at what precipitates the parables of The Lost; and what it means for us.
For Sunday
Proper 19C
Collect
O God, because without you we are not able to please you, mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
Reading
From Luke 15:1-10
“Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?”
Reflection
Some Pharisees and scribes are grumbling about Jesus. Talking to each other in whispers about who he is hanging out with. Who he treats as friends. Obviously the wrong sorts of people.
Part of why they’re angry and gossipping is the normal in-group/out-group stuff. But a big part is that Jesus is one of them. One who has station by vocation. And people like them avoid those people. They are unclean.
This is a sentiment we recognize in our own experience. With race, creed, gender, and sexual orientation. And we’ve seen people like these Pharisees and scribes and how they treat people not like them. And we don’t like it.
Secret conversations
The phrase I learned in seminary to describe this grumbling and talking was “parking lot conversations.” This isn’t referring to the kind of conversations that are extensions of coffee hour, when you like the people you’re with and you just keep chatting on your way to the car.
These parking lot conversations are the secret kind about people and about how wrong Person X is for even talking to Person Y. The kind that solidify the in-group’s unity at the expense of who “doesn’t belong” or “didn’t play by the rules.”
Notice how Jesus responds to this. He tells three parables about losing and finding: the lost sheep, coin, and sons.
What anyone would do
And he begins by saying “which one of you…does not… [leave the many to find the one]?”Jesus makes it sound obvious, elementary. What anyone would do. And also, what everyone does. If there are 100 Pharisees and scribes, then 99 of you would obviously go looking for the lost. Which one of you wouldn’t?
Jesus offers a bit of the shame that they were throwing at him [which definitely feels good to us, doesn’t it?]. But he does it on behalf of the lost. To save the lost. Helping remind his people that they are called to this work. Not to abandon, but save.
This, of course, continues in the reading. For we are called the same way. To save. For we are not abandoned. We have one another. We are here, inheritors and collaborators with Jesus’s Way of Love. So we aren’t in any danger when the shepherd seeks out the lost. Or when we seek the lost.
For who wouldn’t do this? Because Jesus does.