I assume that at some point in your life, or many points in your life, each of you has had that experience of losing something or misplacing some item – and not knowing where or if you might find it. So, I am curious, what are some of the things that you have lost. Just call them out: keys, wallet, tickets, jackets, etc. (Interact with what is called out). We all lose things.
Sometimes the item is not so valuable – some food, a piece of clothing, maybe a book. You are sorry it is lost, but you can go without it and move on. The thing I seem to occasionally lose are spring jackets, that get left behind somewhere when the day warms up, and sure, I miss it, and sometimes I find it again, even a half year later like I did a few weeks ago, but life goes on and you kind of forget about it. But some things are a little more important, like car keys or wallets. There is this panic when you can’t find them. You look everywhere and tear the room or house or area apart trying to find them. I lost my van keys at Killarney Provincial Park one year near the start of a road trip to Winnipeg and never did find them. They are probably still in the woods there somewhere. Thankfully, Rachel still had hers and we could go on. And I remember that feeling in the gut when I came out to my hung jacket in a church lobby and my wallet was gone. It actually had been stolen, but I soon found the wallet in the bathroom garbage, all the ID intact and only the cash missing. Whew! You can lose people too. My Dad would take my brother and I to Edmonton Oilers games about once a year growing up, and one time Kendall someone how left the bathroom before us and got separated in the huge bustling crowd, and it was much later when my panicky Dad heard the loudspeaker announcement in the deep voice call out that the father who was missing a young child could go to Gate 17 to claim him.
I think my moist panicky losing and finding something came with my Canadian passport. In the Fall of 2019, I was part of a Rockway Mennonite Collegiate delegation of staff and board members heading to Lancaster, Pennsylvania for a big conference. I packed for the trip like I usually do, starting about 9pm the night before. Rachel and I only have one place in our house where we always, always, always keep our passports. And no, I won’t share where that is. So I looked there, and all the family passports were there, in proper order … except for mine. I didn’t worry too much right away – there must be a simple reason. But then after a bit I still couldn’t find it. And despite knowing that we have never stored our passports in any other place, I began to tear apart the whole house and attic and closets and desks looking for it, like some sort of lost treasure. It wasn’t rational. It was motivated by fear and some sort of deep primal instincts. I finally stepped back to try and remember the last time I had used my passport. It was the previous July coming home from the MC Canada Assembly in Abbottsford, BC. Ok, my discount ticket Swoop plane (remember them?) landed in Hamilton and I caught a ride home with Yoel Masyawong to Kitchener, but almost immediately left with Rachel and our tent trailer to go camping at The Pinery. Hmmm… did I need to got out in the dark to the farm where we stored the trailer, open it up and start searching there? Instead, I started ripping through all the many personal item sized carry-on backpacks in the house. I did also give Yoel a phone call, and he knew nothing. I even checked the Canadian Passport website to see how quickly they can issue an emergency passport, and no, they can’t do that between 11pm at night and when Principal Ann Schultz would be waiting with the travel van at 8 in the morning. I was sunk! And so were my spirits. Then the phone ran a little before midnight. It was Yoel. ‘I have your passport in my hand.’ You see, way back in early July, on that car pool ride back in his car, my passport had slipped out of my left side pocket and fell between the front seats, and had been buried there for these last 4 months. My heart leaped. There was great rejoicing! I wanted to party! I drove over there so fast, grabbed my passport, and finished packing, embarrassed, but totally relieved that the lost had been found.
I think it is when we get in touch with that awful inner gut feeling of having lost something valuable, that we start to understand the 3 parables of Jesus from our Scriptures this morning, that all end with the joy of the lost being found. These are parables about rejoicing, as a community, when the lost is found.
The story that we usually call the Parable of the Prodigal Son comes up as a main Scripture in Lent once every three years. Typically, we just look at the parable itself, alone, without any other context around it. It is such a rich story, with countless sermons that have emerged from it. We never get tired of this classic story. But this Lent, we have been following the broader sweep of the gospel writer in Luke, and seeing how stories fit into the larger story and narrative. So I love how this Sunday not only includes the Prodigal son, but also the two other parables about lost things, as well as the opening verse of Luke 15. This is really where we need to start. Two Sundays ago, we had the story of Jesus at the home of a Pharisee having a big meal with other Pharisees and leaders, as they jostled for social position and status. It is into that setting that Jesus told them the story or Parable of the Great Banquet and the inclusive invitation to the poor and disabled, the blind and the lame…. and then even to those most disadvantaged in the highways and byways. Chapter 15 continues from there in that same vein. Now it is all the tax collectors and sinners who were coming near to Jesus to listen to him, and the Pharisees and scribes are grumbling about it, and saying that this fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them, or as some of our translations said at the Bible study Wednesday night, notorious sinners, or those of doubtful reputation. That is the problem and issue identified that shapes Chapter 15. The Pharisees still don’t get it. Jesus is one who eats with those you do not expect him to eat with – he expands the table, he welcomes all, he is in there with those who would most be considered ‘lost.’
It is in response to this grumbling, that Jesus tells the three parables that we heard this morning – the lost sheep, the lost coin, and as Mary Schertz names it in her Luke commentary, the lost people. (Mary Schertz, Believers Church Bible Commentary on Luke, Herald Press, 2023, p.280). She writes, ‘Jesus immediately launches into three more stories that contribute to his point about the inclusiveness of the kingdom. They are all parables that end with parties enacting and prefiguring table fellowship in the kingdom of God.’ (Ibid, p.281). She and others note that there is a pattern in all three parables. They all begin with something precious and valuable that is lost – a lost sheep, a lost coin, a lost son, and then someone who will go to any length to find or welcome back the lost – the shepherd who leaves, even abandons and risks the safety of the other 99 sheep in the wilderness to go after that one sheep that is lost; the woman, often assumed to be poor, who lost one of the her ten precious silver coins, 10% of her limited financial resources, that lights a lamp, sweeps the house, searches everywhere carefully, no stone left unturned, until she finds that coin, and the father who waits in what must have been agony for a son who has left, and when he returns, runs out to greet him, and hugs and kisses him and throws a party, for he who was lost is found, the dead has come back to life. All three stories end with rejoicing and with a party, with the gathered community joining together in that joy. There is joy in heaven, joy in the presence of the angels and joy among a community gathered to celebrate with the fatted calf and a banquet meal. It is that buoyant joy we sang about in God lights a Lamp – ‘When she finds you, Oh, she sings – I have found my treasure, my precious silver coin. I have found my love. Even angels will hear the news: What once was lost is found!’ (VT 299) I think about the joy, and exuberance and literal squealing our junior youth and youth display when they play the hidden gem game in the dark throughout the church building, and find one of those precious gems and run it back to the basement.
Mary Schertz writes again ‘Kingdom parties are not just any parties. They do not celebrate some national holiday or religious ceremony. Kingdom parties are celebrations of joy over finding, restoring, and reconciling the lost – lost sheep, lost coins, lost people.’ (Ibid, p. 280). Someone commented Wednesday night, that we tend to only have a celebration party for success stories – a graduation, a new job, a wedding, and not just because the person is valued in and of themselves, no matter how lost they may have been. Notice too how these stories build upon each other, and what is lost gets exponentially more valuable and treasured. 1 sheep out of 100 sheep. 1 coin out of 10 coins. And finally about human beings now, one out of two sons, and really, the story ends up being about both sons, and the father – all lost.
So let’s look a little deeper at this third parable. I am relying on some very interesting articles by an Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish Professor of New Testament at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace. (https://chqdaily.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/levine-%E2%80%98prodigal-son%E2%80%99-forces-reassessment-of-bible%E2%80%99s-other-brother-pairs/ and https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2014-08/parable-and-its-baggage ) She looks at the cultural context of the parables of Jesus and how they would have been heard by the first listeners in the first century. Over the centuries, this parable has often been interpreted to be a story about repentance and forgiveness, and even with a slant that places the New Testament and Christianity as superseding the Old Testament and Judaism. ‘The prodigal son is the repentant Christian, the older son is the Pharisee or the Jewish People…, and the father is God… who graciously offers forgiveness and reconciliation.’ But that’s not what the first listeners would have heard. They would have recognized the common Scriptural pattern – ‘There was a man who had two sons,’ and they would have naturally identified with and wanted to cheer the younger son and presumed the same pattern as Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, being surprised ‘when the younger son turns out not to be like righteous Abel, faithful Isaac or clever Jacob, but an irresponsible, self-indulgent child.’ They would have also noticed that when the Prodigal Son returns, he doesn’t actually say ‘I’m sorry’ and the words he mumbles are not what determines the father’s response and actions. He hardly hears the son. The Father was not waiting for words of repentance before offering forgiveness. Rather, the Father on his own, as soon as he sees him, runs out to hug and kiss this lost Son – brings out a robe and ring and sandals and throws a huge party, ‘for this son of mine was dead and is alive; he was lost and is found.’ The son simply came home, hungry and desperate and was welcomed with warm arms and a party by his father. Levine points out that even if we take the Father as symbolic of God, this is not some sort of new gracious Christian God, as opposed to a cold, distant, wrathful Old Testament God. The Hebrew Scriptures were already full of images of God as full of compassion and mercy, a God who has always loved the wayward and welcomed back the lost with open arms. The Father in this parable confirms what they already knew about a God of welcome that rejoices when the lost is found again.
Levine also invites us to look at the story as a human story of 3 members of a very real type of family, rather than just seeing it as an allegory. Like our own families, it is more complicated and nuanced and the story is left unresolved. We haven’t got to the interaction with the older brother yet, and we don’t really know what happens to the younger son, or older son or the family unit moving forward. But if the story might be more about being lost and found, just like with the sheep and the coin, instead of repentance and forgiveness, it can be helpful to look briefly at each of the three characters – and how each is lost. At the Bible study on Wednesday night, we tried to put ourselves into the shoes of each of the characters, and how we might identify with each one. I invite you to do the same.
It is easiest to see how the younger son is lost. He left his family to see and explore the world – not all that uncommon. But he leaves on his own terms and cuts contact. There is a loss there of family ties, of relationship, a loss of some of the dreams his Father and family might have had for him, a loss of grounding, of identity, maybe even of purpose. It says he squandered his wealth in dissolute living, and then hit rock bottom, hired out to feed the pigs. It is a place of feeling unloved and alone, of no hope for the future, of feeling lost, feelings many of us may have had in different forms at some point in life. The hopes he had in his return must have been very low – maybe some food and a place to land. How much pride did he need to swallow to return home? Could he even imagine being found again? The text doesn’t tell us, but I wonder how he responded over the next months and years to this overwhelming welcome by his Father, and a party that valued the very essence of who he as a human created in the image of God, rather than being defined by his lost-ness.
I want to jump to the older son. He is not a visible part of the story until the end, but surely he must have watched the younger son claim his inheritance and leave the family unit and farm. There is a loss there for him too – a family come apart. Maybe he too wanted to travel, test his wings, but duty and obligation kept him put. We wonder if he feels just as distant from his father, even when working side by side, but feeling more like a slave. Maybe for him being lost feels more like being trapped. He has not been able until now to express his feelings, to give voice to a relationship that was broken, even in its geographical closeness. He expresses that anger at unfairness and unequal treatment. Can some of us identify with this older brother? I did find it fascinating that almost everyone at the Bible study said this was the character they most identified with. His reaction and words at seeing this party for his younger brother, points to his own feelings of being lost, and it is a lost-ness that is unresolved at the end of the story – we don’t know what comes next. Does his anger harden and crystalize, or does it melt?
And what about the Father, the parent. It could just as easily have been a mother? Can some of us identify with this character? How must he have felt when the younger son left so abruptly? What got lost in his soul? And how did that deep hurt affect the rest of his relationships, with his other son, with a spouse, with the broader household? For how long did he feel totally bereft and lost? What goes to the very core, the heart, of a parent when it feels like a child is lost to you? It eats away at you from the inside. You would do anything! So really, it is no surprise that the Father, with just a far away glimpse of return, drops everything, throws caution and reputation to the wind, and runs to an embrace. It is restoration that is possible now. And like both the lost sheep and the lost coin, there is a sudden outpouring of joy, and a one big party. The lost is found. Will this solve and resolve all the relationships and heal all the fractures. We don’t know. Probably not right away. But what has felt dead is now alive, come back to life. Levine again, summarizes, ‘A father had two sons, and if we lose one, the family is not whole…do we have to say “I’m sorry”? Perhaps we can be generous enough to say ‘You’re welcome. Welcome home. You’re part of the family.’
Which brings us all back to where we started – to the reason for these three parables in the first place – the grumbling that Jesus is welcoming and eating and partying with those society names as lost. In how he told these three stories, I can imagine both the Pharisees and the tax collectors and sinners, all finding themselves in the story of Jesus – all wondering how far God’s grace can go? Jesus names for us, how all of us, no matter what our background or situation or social status, can find ourselves lost. None of us are immune. The hope and promise is that God seeks us out and finds us, like precious treasure, like a lost wallet, lost keys, lost passport, like a lost sheep, a lost coin, like lost people. Mary Schertz writes ‘These stories of significant loss affect us at the heart of our humanity. Who among us has not been buffeted by the loss of something or someone? We relate to these stories on many levels…we are no strangers to the panic, the self-recriminations, the if onlys and what ifs that haunt us, the desolation and depression that often envelop us when we lose something or someone we care about. Losing is a universal human experience. Loss is also an important theological theme. We need to recognise ourselves as lost if we are to be found. We need to recognise ourselves as estranged to be reconciled to God. That recognition of our need for God, is critical to our coming home.’ (Ibid, p.286)
This is restoration from the outside and from the inside. All who are lost can be found. God searches out and finds all of us, and what breaks out is a party, pure joy, rejoicing on earth and in heaven. Oh she sings. I have found my love. Even angels will hear the news. What once was lost is found! For truly, nothing is lost on the breath of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.