Reading Luke Together #35 – Lost and Found Parties

I’ve often said that if Paul had written nothing else besides the 8th chapter of Romans, we would count him as brilliant, theologically profound, one of the all-time greats. So now I think this: if Luke had only shared his 15th chapter, and nothing else with us, we would love him – and we would love his subject, Jesus the storyteller. Jesus’ stories, as we see here, aren’t merely catchy, memorable, even moving stories. As they expose what’s broken but also lovely in us, they reveal the very heart of God, our healing and our hope.

You have to love the smug grumble from the pious that opens the chapter: “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” And we say “Thanks be to God.”

Story #1: Jesus asks ‘Who among you having 100 sheep wouldn’t leave the 99 to seek out the 1 lost?’ Wrinkled brows, maybe a chuckle: “Actually, none of us would. That would be foolish. Sheep are foolish, nibbling themselves lost all the time. Protect the 99, let the 1 go. 99% is a high return!” But Jesus depicts a tender-hearted shepherd who simply can’t bear to lose even 1. And notice, when at great length he finds the 1, he “rejoices,” and calls all his friends and neighbors to rejoice with him. This chapter is about joy. And counting – as in who counts, who’s counted, how God counts.

Story #2: After she’d gone to Washington from our staff, I had Rev. Alisa Lasater back with me on stage. With zero preparation, my 1st question to her was What is God like? She sighed, sighed again, smiled and reminded us of the woman who lost just 1 coin, but swept, lit a lamp, got on her hands and knees and digging her fingers into every crack in the stone floor until she found it – and said “God is like that with us.” Story #3. Almost too familiar to appreciate. Let me commend to you Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son – which may be my favorite all-time book on things spiritual. He meditates profoundly and beautifully on Luke 15, and Rembrandt’s greatest painting. And then, there’s this riveting, moving video segment from the 1977 miniseries Jesus of Nazareth, featuring Jesus telling this story – brilliantly envisioning to whom, and in whose hearing. Best Biblical TV ever. You’ll thank me for sending you to it.

My freshest thoughts on the familiar: we sigh fondly when we think of that father embracing and throwing a party for his renegade son. But Jesus’ first listeners had to have been perplexed by such a father. People would have raised eyebrows: “His son did… what? Just up and left? And with half his father’s accumulated wealth?” And then rumors he’d lived lasciviously as a party boy, frittering the money away? To the father’s face, his neighbors probably doled out pity – that dreaded parody of compassion. But away from him? Not pity, but blame: “Wonder what he did wrong?” He’d clearly not lived up to Proverbs 22:6, “Raise up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

But then, more shame on him: they’d all noticed him gazing down the road day by day, longing for the boy’s return. Had he no pride? Move on! And then the day the boy actually came? The father ran to him. Dignified men in those day didn’t… run! And then, he didn’t fold his arms and exact righteous penitence, but instead flung his arms around him and threw a party – paid for (and unwanted!) by the man’s other son? And then he endured berating words from that other son? My oh my. A shamed father indeed.

There is no indignity, no suffering God and his son Jesus would not endure to save and then celebrate us. God’s realm is like this: nothing matters except that the lost are found, the wayward have come home – and there is buoyant joy.

Yes, the older son seethes in resentment. “You never threw a party for me.” Many identify with this older brother – including many of the kinds of people who read emails from me! We stayed, did the right thing, denied ourselves tempting pleasures – and the one who indulged in them gets the show of love? All us older brothers reveal in our judgment, and in our pity and resentment, that we are still addicted to the calculus of earning and deserving. We do not yet understand the glories of mercy and grace. How much delight and joy could that older brother have had upon his brother’s return that he missed by being just as indulgent, not in riotous living but in boring rule-keeping and self-justification?