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 into 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 whole 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.

Luke 14:25-35

 

The saying of Jesus to hate is harsh. But in the time of Jesus it didn’t carry the meaning we attach to it. It is more about attitude and action than emotion. It’s akin to choosing one over the other. But it is more than this, for the hyperbole points to the way in which the good in our lives so easily usurps the place of God in our hearts. (See Luke 16:13) Noting that ‘hate’ in this passage doesn’t mean exactly what we mean by it does reduce the shock somewhat. But there is still no escaping Jesus’ radical call to discipleship. His call remains urgent and uncompromising. And that’s classic Jesus. 

Situating this passage in the broader context of Luke 14 (and beyond) will help us understand it a little better. In Luke 9:51 Jesus sets his face to Jerusalem. He has predicted his death in Jerusalem, and he will do so again along the way. He will enter Jerusalem in Luke 19, and on this journey to his death and resurrection, Jesus will teach about discipleship, call people to follow him as disciples, and have this call rejected. This is important. The radical call matches his own self-sacrifice on the approaching cross. This call is so important that it even takes precedence over the (potentially) best parts of our lives. And subordinates to it even those duties that are rightly required of us. (See Lk 9:57-62.) 

So that is point one today: The urgent and resolute call to discipleship matches Jesus’ own determined movement to Jerusalem. He is not asking us to do what he has not himself done. He is the pioneer and perfector of our faith. (Hebrews 12:2) Most of Luke 14 occurs at a dinner party held by a leader of the Pharisees. (14:1) And Jesus teaches those present about the kingdom, humility, disgrace, and cost of discipleship and the cost of rejecting his call to discipleship. One of the parables he tells, and it occurs immediately before our current passage, is the parable of the invitation to a great dinner, and all the invitees decline. They decline because of important things like family and possessions. So, the slave is sent to gather in the poor, crippled, the blind, and lame. But there is still room! So anyone and everyone is then brought into the banquet. And those who rejected the invitation, we are told, will not taste the dinner. (Lk 14:16-24) 

(And as an aside, this three-fold structure of invitee – those who reject the invite, the poor etc, and anyone passing by – matches the flow of the gospel’s movement in Luke/Acts. The invitation that is Jesus is given to some who reject it, then it goes out to the poor, lame, etc, and finally (in Acts) whoever is passing by, including the Gentiles.) 

And now notice what Jesus says in today’s passage we must renounce if we wish to be his disciples. Family and possessions (Lk 14:26, 33), exactly what prevents the original invitees of the parable from accepting the invitation to the banquet. (Lk 14:18-20) So, today’s passage doesn’t come out of the blue. It follows directly the parable before it. This is part of the explanation of why the language in today’s reading appears so harsh. The other part of the reason why Jesus is so harsh today is because he knows the propensity of the human heart to let that which is good in our lives usurp the place of God. This is point two today: If we find Jesus’ resolute, radical call to discipleship and the accompanying admonition to ‘hate’ disturbing or offensive we are living in a bubble. The human heart is made for God but the universal tendency is for us to fill our hearts with that which cannot satisfy us. And we do this at the expense of God and our own good. 

People often say to me that they haven’t fallen into this trap. But if Jesus had made the characters in the parable of the invitees who decline the invitation speak, they would say the same thing! And sometimes people say to me it is a matter of balance. I like that, the problem is that I can’t find in scripture where Jesus says it. And – you’ve heard me say this before – the path for most people is not to give up everything to the point of destitution. 

For most people it is a matter of living in a world of responsibilities that include the use of wealth and family, both of which in scripture are blessings from God. And yet, all is to brought under the rule of the crucified-risen Christ in the lives of people like me whose heart is too easily swayed. Where to from here? (And what I am about to say applies to any of the hard sayings of Jesus and just as equally to any sin that weighs us down.) 

Point three today: let us follow Jesus. Let us learn to love him. Let us learn through Jesus to love God and each other, and our neighbours as ourselves. At this point you and I can be terrible disciples. Nevertheless, accept the call afresh and regularly. In prayer, in repentance, in life choices, through renewal that is often accompanied with a sense of failure. Notice that Jesus, when he calls disciples, never tries to discover if the new disciple is worthy. It is Jesus who makes us worthy while pilgrimaging with him on the way of the cross to the heavenly Jerusalem. We aren't worthy to be disciples because we are already perfect. We are made perfect through following Jesus.

Deeper into Sin to be Freed from it.

Walking the way of the cross during Easter is traditional. You can do it in Jerusalem (the via dolorosa), or closer to home you can do it at your local church. We are invited to 'walk' the path of the saviour each time we read the story from Gethsemane to tomb in dramatic form. I like the latter best when we (the congregation) take all the parts other than the role of Jesus. We walk the road from Gethsemane to tomb not out of guilt and as an excuse to self-recriminate. Nor do we grovel as we walk in a religious version of a show-trial. Nor is the journey an occasion of (inner) chastisement leading to catharsis, like some kind of pagan festival. We walk as sinners, sinners who know they need a saviour. It isn't hard to know our need: one only has to look at the newspaper of history, or one's own heart and experience, to see the universality of sin and our need to be saved from it.

People these days recoil from the term 'sinner'. In my experience, they cite either the self-recrimination that has gone with 'sinner' in the past, a self-recrimination aimed at controlling 'the sinner'. Alternatively, some people cite the way 'sinner' has been used to point the finger at others, with 'sinner' in this version of history partnered with judgementalism. 

Ironically, a culture that has given up on 'sin' and 'sinners' is captive to the very consequences it wants to avoid. Denying the universality of sin/human failure - that is, pretending that there is some part of me that is quarantined from the imperfect world I have grown up in - makes those very consequences more likely. In naivete about the world ("Let's all just be kind to one another" or "Why can't people just love each other?"), to extreme narcissism (think identitarian politics), and then onto scapegoating and cultural polarisation (think social media), we have core features of the contemporary cultural landscape.

Instead, Christians walk the via dolorosa as sinners in need of a saviour, and a saviour appropriate for our mutual sinfulness. Walking the via dolorosa as a sinner is, ironically, to get off the see-saw of self-recrimination and criticism of others. Walking the way of the cross with the saviour also brings with it freedom, and should make us more difficult to control through guilt. 

Why is this? Mostly because we are loved, that's the point of the whole Jesus thing. And as beloved, we don't have to hide from our sin. We can receive the salvation of the saviour. We don't have to be in the centre of the universe: we can let God be the centre and receive God's love and forgiveness, renewal and freedom.

 God's way of dealing with human sin is to go deeper into the human predicament by being a victim of sin. And we must go deeper into our sin by acknowledging our need for a saviour. This is the path that yields genuine repentance (not guilt), and we emerge with a new empathy for the human condition, which we share.