One day Jesus is teaching and his audience includes tax collectors and other “sinners” who have gathered around him (Luke 15). Also nearby are some Pharisees and teachers of the law, listening in, but mostly just bad-mouthing Jesus for even talking to these sinners.
Jesus tells three parables, stories with meaning, stories with lessons to learn. One story is about a lost sheep, another of a lost coin, and a third about a lost son. If we listen carefully, we realize that his lesson is really about lost people—people lost in their sinful condition.
Jesus compares the lost sheep to the good shepherd who finds it, the lost coin to the good woman who finds it, and the lost son to the good father who waits paitiently with open arms. Three stories of something lost and something (or someone) found.
I love that Jesus often includes a woman in his parables. Or women’s objects when he teaches—like comparing something valuable to pearls or mentioning the leaven in bread. This woman in the parable has lost one of her ten coins. It appears to be a drachma which like a Roman denarius is worth about a day’s wage.
It is possible that this coin is part of her only savings. It’s also possible that it is one of her ten coins that forms a strand worn across her forehead. Maybe given at her wedding and worn on special occasions.
We have the idea that the coin is part of something that is highly precious to her. She’s sure that it is in her small house, but with little light through coming through one or two windows, she can’t find it. She lights her lamp and sweeps the earthen floor in earnest search.
In both of these stories, Jesus makes the comparison that the joy of finding these lost things is like the joy in heaven when when a sinner repents.
Jesus is talking to sinners, but he hopes the Pharisees and teachers see the point as well. Perhaps a parable about a shepherd or a woman doesn’t compute for these men, but the final story might make an impression.
A well-to-do man has two sons. The younger son wants his portion of the estate even before the father dies. The generous father allows it and the son goes off to sow his wild oats and comes back smelly and penniless hoping just to be a slave to his father. The patient, loving father welcomes him home, dresses him well, and provides a celebration party.
Look back at the listeners to whom Jesus is telling this parable. The “sinners” might be thinking, That’s me he is talking about. Could the heavenly father possibly treat me with such love and forgiveness? Whereas the leaders may be thinking, The boy has dug his ditch, let him lie in it!
When we hear the older son’s rant, I can almost hear the Pharisees and teachers thinking, Yes, you tell the father that the younger son doesn’t deserve anything. He’s a sinner!
Jesus closes with the father’s (and also Jesus’) final point, “We had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”
Likely the Pharisees didn’t quite catch it. If a couple of women happened to be there, I bet they felt so included in the parable example. Read the full parables in Luke 15. See it through the eyes of all the groups in Luke 15:1-2.
~ Joyce ~