The Found Parables – Sheep and Coins (Luke 15:1-10)

God desires all people to be saved. (1Timothy 2:4; 2Peter 3:9) No favourites. But how does that work with Israel as the Chosen People? Whatever it might mean, it doesn’t mean that Israel is chosen to the exclusion of everyone else. It might mean that all those who are saved will be included in the people of Israel, but that is a different thing to saying that that the Chosen People are a small elite of the saved. The purpose of God choosing the people of Israel was not to specify a small band of people for salvation to the exclusion of all the other nations of the earth. The Chosen People were chosen to bring a blessing to all the families of the world (Genesis 12:1-3) And this universal love culminates in Jesus. Jesus is not a change in course; he is the completion of that original choosing narrated in Genesis 12. And in his life, death and resurrection he becomes the invitation to all people.

The invitation that delivered went out to all those who had ears to listen. Many rejected the call, and often these people were those who thought they were already included in the Chosen People. (Think of the opposition to Jesus displayed by the Pharisees and others in the Gospels.) But many did not reject Jesus. And, often, these were those least expected to be invited or accept the invitation. (The poor, the lame, the blind, see Luke 7:22; 14:21) And still there was room in the banquet! (To steal from a parable from Jesus about this very point. See Luke 14:15-24) So, those who, the Chosen People agreed, could never be invited, gained a guernsey to the banquet. (To borrow from Australian slang.)

This universalism continued in the church. Baptism was offered to all people, not an elite. There were no preferred candidates: all were sought out, to the very ends of the earth. (See especially Matthew 28:19; Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:11) But there were other religious views that infected the church and attempted to subvert the universal call to salvation. Their agenda was elitist, and restricted the fullness of God’s love to a select few. Here is the parable of the Lost Sheep from the Gospel of Thomas. (A second century Gnostic Gospel.)

Gospel of Thomas, Saying 107. 

 Jesus said: The kingdom is like a shepherd who had a hundred sheep; one of them, the biggest, went astray; he left (the) ninety-nine (and) sought after the one until he found it. After he had laboured, he said to the sheep: I love you more than the ninety-nine.

That’s not the good news of Jesus. The religious impulse behind this distortion was successfully opposed in the second century A.D. But it is a useful contrast between an elitism that distorts the gospel and the universal call to salvation that is embedded in the hole Jesus event.

And just to show how far that distortion is from the good news, the trajectory of scripture and the tradition that follows it is to say that we are all lost! Not just the preferred sheep, but all of us. And all of us are being searched out by Jesus. (There aren’t any 99 righteous left behind!) But even then, the Gospel is sure that God doesn’t love the lost more than any who might still consider themselves in no need of repentance).

At the end of each of the parables in Luke 15:1-10, it is repeated that there is more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance. (Luke 15:7, 10) That doesn’t mean God loves the repentant sinner more. The repentant sinner might love God more than the unrepentant righteous person, but that is a different matter. (See Luke 7:47-48)

There are no favourites. God wants all to be saved. But equally, there are none who are beyond salvation. God’s desire is not easily thwarted. That’s why we have Jesus, crucified and risen.