Persistent Love..
Luke 15:1-10
This morning we hear two parables of Jesus that are often called the parable of the lost coin, and the parable of the lost sheep. I have heard them called the parable of the persistent shepherd, and the persistent woman - and those titles seem to make a lot of sense to me.
Actually there are three parables in Luke 15 - we heard only two this morning, does anyone know what the third one is? It goes along with the same theme. It is the parable of the persistent father - or the prodigal son.
We hear in each of these parables, how much God loves us and reaches out to us….the images that they bring forth are ones of intense searching for the lost.
Can you see the woman frantically cleaning her house? Or the father standing on the edge of his property looking, scanning the horizon for a hint of his lost boy.
Or the shepherd leaving the 99 to go and get the one who is lost.
Sometimes we are a bit shocked, and feel like we stand with the older brother in the prodigal son story, how dare the father love the younger brother that much!
We can get a sense of that in this morning's reading too. Did you notice what it says after "leave the ninety-nine..: It says " in the wilderness" Jesus is talking about how the 99 are left not safely in a shed or barn, but in danger, in the wilderness. We want to say NO JESUS, NO GOD, this doesn't make sense…keep the 99 safe and it will be all right. - the best you can do.
But the good news is our God does not just leave it at that . He leaves the 99, he searches, and searches and searches for … us.
In the final analysis, he sends his son to die, so that we might have life.
These parables were told to a particular crowd. He meant the listeners to hear about the leaving - he was talking to a group of Pharisees. He wanted them to hear that the lost and the downtrodden have a special place, not an inferior place, but a special place in God's heart.
He wanted them to hear that they were in danger. In fact I think he really wanted them to move from understanding themselves as the found, the safe, the chosen… as those who almost didn't need God, but just needed rules about how to live,…to the lost, the in trouble, but also the chosen and much loved in that state too.
Jesus consistently talks of people estranged from God as the lost, and as a heart break, to God.
There are few things in this life more difficult to experience than the loss of one's child. Jim Wallis, tells about a sad and terrifying incident that occurred during the tragic war in Sarajevo a few years ago. A reporter who was covering the violence in the middle of the city saw a little girl fatally shot by a sniper.The reporter threw down his pad and pencil and rushed to the aid of the man who was now holding the child. He helped them both into his car and sped off to a hospital.
"Hurry, my friend," the man urged, "my child is still alive." A moment or two later he pleaded, "Hurry, my friend, my child is still breathing." In little later he said, "Hurry, my friend, my child is still warm."
When they got to the hospital, the little girl was gone. "This is a terrible task for me," the man said to the reporter. "I must go tell her father that his child is dead. He will be heartbroken."
The reporter was amazed. He looked at the grieving man and said, "I thought she was your child."
The man replied, "No, but aren't they all our children?"1