August 24, 2025 Reflection

“Now 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 [Jesus] told them this parable:”

While this might seem like a simple lead-in to some of the parables of Jesus, it actually requires some unpacking before we go any further. Parables were short stories told by Jesus to describe the kingdom of God. They came down through the centuries as oral tradition, and of course through time and different languages their original intent started to get layered over with different interpretations, and depending on the context. Luke wrote later than Matthew and Mark, and part of his concern was to explain why the kindom hadn’t come yet. Time has passed and those who expected the return of Jesus and the fulfillment of the prophecies started to have questions. Tensions had risen between the Jesus followers and the Romans and the Jewish community.

Luke is responding to his time and the shifting understanding of how the kindom was going to roll out.

He places some of delay on the Jewish community who did not embrace Jesus as the Messiah, and his writings reflect this. He pits the Jewish Law, the Torah, against Jesus’ teachings about grace, twisting things a bit to make it seem like the scribes and Pharisees are legalistic holdouts, even though he exercises his own legalism by saying that repentance is needed in order to win the grace and love of God. Luke turns the parables into allegory, where everything in the story can be identified as someone or something else – the lost sheep are the people of Israel who turned their backs on God, the shepherd is Jesus. But, parables are not that simple. They’re slippery. They’re opaque. Jesus tells them to illustrate the kingdom of God, and, the kingdom of God is an upside down world, so the stories need to also be looked at as not easily understood, as having a twist that reveals the unexpected nature of God’s realm. Something in them did not and should not make sense if interpreted through our understanding of how this world works.

In looking more closely at the parables I’m leaning on the work of Dr. Amy-Jill Levine. Dr. Levine is a professor of Christian and Jewish Studies and has written multiple books about the original context and intent of Jesus’ sayings and the reality of Jewish life and practice. She has also tirelessly pointed out where Christians get it wrong and helps us to uncover other possibilities regarding what was and is being said about the nature of God, the kindom of God, and God’s people.

            Luke starts with: “Now 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.’” (Luke 15:17) Right away, we see Luke’s bias here, casting the scribes and Pharisees as the bad guys. Dr. Levine writes that in truth Jesus eating with these people, sinners as Luke would have it, would not have been such an outrage, and that Luke is exaggerating the upset.

Yes, tax collectors were disliked. Not so much because they were rich, but because they worked for the Romans. They were seen by the Judeans as collaborators, as traitors. And yet, they were welcome in the Temple and in the synagogues. They were welcome to come, to worship, and seek repentance.

When Luke wrote about sinners the people he was referring to “…were generally wealthy people who have not attended to the poor, who have removed themselves from the common welfare and looked only to themselves rather than the community and common good.” (Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi, Levine, 37) They were not breaking the fine detail of Jewish law but the foundational imperative that we love neighbour as self. Even though it was disturbing to the scribes and Pharisees Jesus also welcomed these people, regularly joined them at their tables.

One thing you’ll notice about Jesus is that he loved a party – dinners, banquets, picnics. And the more, the merrier. Kind of like the kingdom of God.

The scribes and Pharisees, the people doing the complaining, were religious leaders doing their best to help the community abide by the laws of their faith, and to uphold an uneasy peace with the Romans. Throughout Christian history, in part because of Luke’s portrayal of them, the scribe and Pharisees have been cast as the ‘bad guys’, as hyper-rule-based bureaucrats impeding the spread of the grace of Jesus. But we have our own Pharisaic behaviours in church: ‘We’ve never done it that way before’ being the nicest way I can express it. 

A shepherd has 100 sheep, and one goes missing. Eventually the shepherd notices – I wonder how he does? I mean, picture it – 100 sheep. How on earth would you see that you were missing one? I had three sons and sometimes had trouble keeping track of them. Maybe the shepherd actually saw it wander off. Maybe he caught sight of it on a distant hill. Anyway, he notices one is gone and goes after it, leaving the others behind.

Here’s the first surprise. Jesus says, who of you wouldn’t go looking for that sheep? None of us, would be the response of the listeners in Jesus’ time, and in ours. We have 100! Well, 99. It’s cold and it’s raining and there are wolves out there. We’re good thanks Jesus.

There’s something odd about a shepherd really sweating the loss of 1 sheep.

We are so used to the Christian overlay here that we assume this story is about 1 person wandering off from faith, one sinner who has turned away, and God going after it. But the Jewish listeners would not have heard this. They would have instead faulted a careless shepherd. He had one simple job – keep the flock together. Now the flock is incomplete, and the shepherd engages in an exaggerated search. Once found he brings the sheep back and asks his friends to rejoice with him.

And with this Jesus has sets up a pattern for these stories; they include loss, frantic search, recovery, and great rejoicing.

The point was not, when told initially in Jesus’ time, about repentance on the part of the sinner and grace on the part of God who welcomes the sinner back. Sheep would not repent for wandering off; they aren’t even bright enough to know they have wandered off. Remember that the power of parables is the shock value, the surprise in how Jesus describes the kingdom of God. Jews in that time would not be surprised to learn of a searching and gracious God.

The Psalms and the Hebrew testament are full of stories of God searching, seeking, yearning for God’s people. Psalm 23 – the Lord is my shepherd. God wanders in the garden of Eden looking for Adam and Eve. This parable is not about illustrating how welcoming God is of the lost/sinner. It’s about noticing something is missing, about noticing not everyone has yet been touched by an awareness of God’s grace. About noticing when in our efforts to reflect the kingdom of God that someone and something is missing, and going after it.  

When the church was full to the rafters in the 1950’s and 1960’s I wonder if we spent much time asking ourselves who was missing? We had huge flocks – did we think to look around and ask who wasn’t in the pews? Who wasn’t at the table? Did we notice we were predominantly white, English speaking, middle to middle upper class, and ask ourselves about the new immigrants? The indigenous, the black, the Asian? Did we ask ourselves about the lack of homeless people at the table? The lesbian and the gay? Levine writes that “[If the shepherd] can notice the missing one and diligently seek to find it, he reminds listeners that perhaps they have lost something, or someone, as well, but have not noticed it.” She suggests the story might be better called the parable of the Initially Oblivious Owner. (Levine, 38) Part of our work in the transition time will be noticing who is missing from our circle and wondering what the search might look like.

Let’s turn to the woman who lost a coin. This is a woman who had significant funds – 10 silver coins was a lot of money. She had her own home, her own agency. When, after a frantic search, turning on all the lights and sweeping in every corner, she finds the coin, and she too throws a party. She invites all the girls over – the noun used is feminine to indicate there were no men.

Maybe some refreshments were passed around, some time enjoyed before the kids get back from school. Again, the story is not about repentance, but about valuing something that was missing, even when she already had quite a bit, and going after it, and being delighted when the collection is whole, complete. Loss, frantic search, recovery, and great rejoicing.

I wonder how we search for the ones who are missing? The seniors who have to give up their driver’s license and so can’t drive to church? The young families for whom getting out the door by 9:45 is a nightmare. The harried workers who yearn for one morning, just one morning, when they don’t have to rush out the door. The newly arrived refugees, the underemployed who can’t make a cash offering, the ones lost in the wilderness or under the couch. How do we seek those people out? What efforts will we go to in order to find them? Will we turn on the lights and get out the broom?

In these stories God is not the shepherd nor is God is the woman looking for the coin. It would not be shocking, or even news for Jews of Jesus’ time to hear that God loved the sinner, that God’s grace would welcome their return.  

The surprise, one of the shocks of this parable, is that no one is left out of God’s kingdom.

No one is considered less valuable than the others. No. One. Not the tax collector. Not the sinner. God’s nature and our call is seek out everyone. The searching, waiting, gracious embrace is for everyone. Not, let’s be clear, just in order to welcome them into the congregation, nor to convert them to Christianity, but to simply remind them and ourselves that everyone is welcome to the abundance of God’s kindom, and that it’s our job to make sure everyone is benefiting from that abundance. Sept 7 is our Outdoor Worship and Welcome Service, and it will be followed by a catered lunch. Outdoor because we want to revel in the beauty of the gardens and the grove of trees. We want to bless the bench that stands in memory and honour of Nancy Stonkus and have an outdoor communion that will remind us of the picnics the risen Christ shared with his friends. And a catered lunch because I love celebrations that are grace filled. That mean you don’t all need to mess with potato salad ahead of time or at the last-minute run to Savary Island to buy a pie or fiddle with making sandwiches at 8:00 in the morning. A lunch where you can experience the grace of abundance and where all you need to do is bring a lawn chair and visit with each other.

To celebrate being together again, like the sheep and the coin. To celebrate the steps you are taking to make sure everyone is here, including those you haven’t ever met before.

To experience the completeness of God’s banquet table. It’s not a party for a party’s sake but a parable of the kindom of God. It’s giving witness to the people passing by that there is joy in being together in God, and that all are welcome. So be sure to come, and to bring a friend.

Parables, these short stories of Jesus have layers and layers, and they bear being told over and over again. Not as cozy bedtime stories but in the way Jesus intended – to make us sit up and look to ourselves and to God in Christ and see the radical nature of their love. And how each one of us is also counted as precious in God’s eyes.

Thanks be to God. Amen