Lost and Found

Proper 19/!4th after Pentecost, Year C, 2025; Luke 15:1-10

Sep 09, 2025

Earlier this year we read the famous parable of a Lost (“Prodigal”) Son. As noted then, that story belongs with the two parables that are now being read, but the lectionary had its reasons for making use of the longer dramatic story separately in Lent. Nevertheless Luke’s Gospel introduces all three with the opening verses of the chapter, which hark back to events recounted in the two previous weeks’ readings: “All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’”

So these “lost” parables are together interpretations and defenses of Jesus’ behavior. The first, the sheep parable, comes from the tradition Luke shares with Matthew (Matt 18:12-14), although Matthew has it serve the rather different purpose of urging protection of “little ones” in the community. The question “which one of you” (Luke 15:4), is a hypothetical, where the listener (or reader) is asked to consider how we would act; this aspect is common with Matthew’s version too.

The answer is actually far from obvious, even though rhetorically it seems as though we are initially meant to say “well yes, I’d go.” It is against all common sense to leave the safe ninety-nine sheep in the wild and to pursue the chancy one instead. The implausibility continues then in the unlikely picture of the successful sheep-finder persuading friends and neighbors to drop everything and celebrate this one disproportionate and risky act. Note that the idea seems to be an invitation to a party, the kind of event in Jesus’ real world that has led to the controversy in the first place.

The story then is not necessarily an image of normal behavior; at the end of the parable Jesus compares it to the extraordinary love of God: “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.^” This was not a story about how any of those addressed would really have behaved, let alone about shepherding, but about how God behaves, and about Jesus’ present mission to seek and save.

We as readers had probably made the move of thinking of the hypothetical sheep-owner as God, or as Jesus himself, well before that punchline. Shepherding imagery is applied to Jesus in a number of ways across the Gospels: he sees himself as shepherd in Mark’s Gospel (6:34), and more fully in John’s, where he is the Good Shepherd (see John 10).

The image is of course older than that too. Not only is there the familiar “Lord is my shepherd,” but there are even hints of a story like this one in the Old Testament. Ezekiel in particular has God as the shepherd who comes to seek the lost: “For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep and will sort them out… I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strays, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak…” (34:11,16)

Camille Pissarro, **Paysage avec berger et moutons, Osny,** **Yale University Art Gallery**

The second parable, the lost coin story, is unique to Luke—and an example of Luke’s tendency to pair stories about men and women—but directly parallel to the lost sheep story. It may not involve quite the level of implausibility, since the coin might be a tenth of the savings or capital such a woman had, so the hunt would be more understandable and less risky. Yet the quest is depicted as having the same all-consuming character, illustrating the single-minded concern of the one seeking. The same unlikely festivity after successfully retrieving the lost item however goes beyond the realistic. Again, this is not just a picture of village life, but a picture of the reign of God.

The place of joy as a theme connecting all these parables, just as much as things that are lost, is somewhat diminished by the omission of the last story. The exuberance of the father who runs to meet the lost son is one of scripture’s most moving moments (15:20), but we shouldn’t fail to notice that joy features strongly in both these first two as well. In these also the finder rejoices, and/or calls their “friends and neighbors” to rejoice (so all three parables end in parties, not just the “fatted calf” version), and each time Jesus draws the lesson that there is more joy in heaven over repentance than over the mere fact of righteousness itself. So this is not just the single-minded quest by God for the lost (it is) but the joy of God in the finding.

In much traditional interpretation, the tendency was to read these stories allegorically—correlating the specific characters and experiences with people and processes in our own world—which is not always an authentic or successful way of handling parables. Here though it works at a broad level, bearing in mind the contrasts as well as the similarities with our world.

This is relatively straightforward in the case of the shepherd, for reasons we have already noted; Jesus will be likely thought of as the shepherd regardless. It also means though that Jesus is the woman searching for the coin, which was how medieval mystic St Bernard of Clairvaux read the story. Bernard identified Jesus more specifically as that ancient figure of Holy Wisdom, who is feminine (partly because the words for “wisdom” in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin are all feminine in gender). Imagine, he wonders, our state…

…if Wisdom had not appeared in the flesh, had not turned the house filled with vices upside down, had not sought the drachma She had lost… (On Grace and Free Will 32)

These Lukan parables are not moralistic; they are not offered to prescribe our table company (although they defend that of Jesus), but to teach the scope of the Gospel.

Although Matthew’s use of the sheep parable urged protection for the little ones, Luke’s interprets Jesus’ own behavior, as becomes even clearer with the Lost Son story. Luke’s trio uses the unlikelihood of this “Prodigal Shepherd” (as we might say) and its companion pieces as a sign of the unlikely and costly way God works in Jesus, the Cross itself the rash act of love that indicates against all common sense how the logic of God’s reign works, and the joy of receiving God’s love as the joy of heaven itself.

Andrew’s Version

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