Lost And Found

September 16, 2007     Proper 19 C

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28             Psalm 14

1 Timothy 1:12-17         St. Luke 15:1-10

A rabbinic tradition cautions: "Let not a person associate with sinners even to bring them near to the Torah" (Mekilta 57b on Exod 18:1). Feeding sinners is praiseworthy; eating with them is forbidden. "Hosting" or "welcoming" sinners, as Jesus does here  (15:2), makes the Pharisees furious.

Jesus routinely deals with opponents by insulting them plainly and directly. The central characters (shepherds and women) of the twin parables are deeply offensive to the Pharisees.

In Luke 15, which includes this Sunday's gospel, three back-to-back parables establish the following pattern. Someone loses something: the man loses a sheep, the woman a coin, the father his son. Each then gets it back. Then each invites neighbors and friends to celebrate. Everyone celebrates with the man who found his lost sheep; everyone celebrates with the woman who found her lost coin. The third breaks that pattern. It is the parable of the prodigal son. The discussion of that particular part of chapter 15 will have to wait for another Sunday.

The parables here address the issue of sin and its affect on fallen creation. They address God's possession lost by sin, but also found by grace. The effects of this finding have ramifications not only on earth, but also in heaven.

There will be joy in heaven over one sinner who repents. Finding something we have lost gives us a fresh joy, and we are happier at having found the lost object than we should have been had we never lost it. This parable, however, is concerned more with divine tenderness and compassion than with human behavior, and it expresses a great truth.

Humans are too greedy to forsake things of value for love of anything inferior. That is something only God can do. For God not only brought what was not into being, but he also went after what was lost while still protecting what he left behind, and found what was lost without losing what he had in safe keeping.

This story, then, speaks of no earthly shepherd but of a heavenly one, and far from being a portrayal of human activity, this whole parable conceals divine mysteries, as becomes clear from the number mentioned when Christ says: Which of you, if you have a hundred sheep and lost one of them...

You see how the loss of a single sheep made the shepherd grieve as though the whole flock were no longer in safe keeping but had gone astray, and how this made him leave the ninety-nine to go after the lost one and search for it, so that its recovery might make the flock complete again.

But what is Jesus really trying to get his listeners, including us, to understand about Gos seeking the lost?

The man who owns the hundred sheep is Christ. He is the good shepherd, the loving shepherd, who in a single sheep, that is in Adam, fashioned the whole flock of humankind. He set this sheep in a place of rich pasturage amid the pleasures of paradise, but heedless of the shepherd's voice it trusted in the howling of wolves, lost the protection of the sheepfold, and was pierced through by deadly wounds. Sin had entered creation. Humanity became lost.

Christ therefore came into the world to look for it, and he found it in the Virgin's womb. He came in the body assumed at his human birth, and raising that body on the cross, he placed the lost sheep on his own shoulders by his passion. Then in the intense joy of the resurrection he brought it to its heavenly home. And he called his friends and neighbors, that is the angels, and said to them: Rejoice with me, for I have found the sheep that was lost.

The angels joined Christ in gladness and rejoicing at the return of the Lord's sheep. They did not take it amiss that he now reigned over them upon the throne of majesty, for the sin of envy had long since been banished from heaven together with the devil, and it could not gain entry there again through the Lamb who took away the sin of the world!

The twin parables emphasize the prevenient action of God in seeking and saving the lost. Thus understood, the parables are linked with the atonement, which, as we have seen, runs like a thread through the readings of the day.

While the earlier readings employed the Christ-to-God aspect of the atonement, the gospel balances this aspect with the movement of God through Christ to humankind.

The atonement is not the human act of the Son appeasing an angry Deity, but God's gift to his people, in which he undertakes to do for them what they could not do for themselves. Christ is the presence of God in human form for our sake, seeking and saving the lost.

What was lost has been found. The love of God is shown in these parables in that even though humanity turned its back on God, God did not turn his back on humanity. No grandiose story of man's search for God is shown in these parables. Quite the opposite. These parables demonstrate God's search for humanity, blinded and lost to sin. Where there seemed to be no hope, there was God, in human form, finding and returning what was lost. The joy over this return is felt not just among us, who were one time lost, but now found, but also among the angels. 

May we share in God's joy by welcoming those who were lost, but now by the grace of God, found.