Nobody (Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost)
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So the answer is “nobody”. That’s the answer to Jesus’ question in today’s parables. And it wasn’t a hard answer for any of Jesus’ first listeners to figure out.
“Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?”
Nobody. Nobody would do that because nobody would leave 99 sheep in the wilderness where they’d be preyed on by wolves and stolen by thieves. Going after one sheep wasn’t worth it – in fact, losing one sheep might not even have been noticed. Besides, if the one sheep had wandered off far enough, it was probably already dinner for some wolf, so going out there after it wasn’t likely to be a good return on investment of your time. In Jesus’ society, even people who weren’t shepherds knew this. So, who would leave the 99 in the wilderness and go off and search for the one who was lost no matter how long it took? Nobody.
But the question continues, “When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’” Who would do that? Nobody.
If the shepherd was dumb enough to leave the 99 in the wilderness, and by chance happened to find the one dumb sheep alive and well, he wouldn’t advertise the fact that he had left the 99 in the wilderness. And rejoicing over one sheep? Again, one sheep is just not a big deal. He’d look like an idiot for running around wanting to gather his friends for a party to celebrate one sheep. Who would do that? Nobody.
But just to double this question up, “what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?” The answer: Nobody. The silver coin in question was a drachma or a denarius. It was worth a day’s pay for daily laborer. If the woman has 10 of them saved up, she’s actually fairly wealthy for a person in that society which didn’t hold many assets in cash. So if she can’t find one in the house, lighting a lamp and burning the oil may cost her most of the value of that coin. And after all, it’s in the house and it’ll probably eventually turn up. Unlike the sheep, it can’t wander off. And if this woman has 10 silver coins in her house, she’s smart enough to know that spending time searching for the lost coin is less cost effective than continuing to produce the things that earned her the coins in the first place. So what woman would do that? Nobody.
And then Jesus says, “When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’” Who would do that? Nobody!
Does she really want to advertise the fact that she misplaced money? Does she want to look like an idiot like the shepherd with the sheep? And is she willing to spend more than the coin was worth to throw a party for her friends and neighbors? Who would do that? Nobody.
And that’s why these two short parables were remembered. We often have read these stories and piously thought to ourselves, “well, of course, if you lose something you just go and search for it. I mean, when you put it that way, of course these are very reasonable things to do.”
But they’re not. Nobody would do these things. And that’s the point.
Jesus’ point is that God is willing to do what nobody else would do. God is willing to search for the person who isn’t worth it to anybody else. God is willing to spend time that nobody else would spend. God is willing – even happy to – look like a idiot who’s overjoyed at finding the one lost person. God does what nobody would do.
And this means that God is willing to do for YOU what nobody else would do. God is willing to search for you when everybody else would give up. And God is willing to rejoice over you in way that nobody else would, even your best and closest friends and relatives.
And of course, that can make each of us feel really good. But Jesus tells these parables because the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling about him and how he welcomed “sinners” and ate with them. That is, how Jesus spent time with the people who they knew weren’t “worth it.”
And so the point of these parables is also that God cares about people nobody else would make time for. God is willing to search for the people nobody else thinks are “worth it”. God is even willing to rejoice extravagantly when the people who wandered away of their own accord are found and loved again.
And that also, can make us feel good, when we hear that those who are (probably) unjustly labeled as “sinners” are also loved and searched for and rejoiced over by God.
But the real problem of these parables is that Jesus tells them first and foremost to the Pharisees and the scribes. They’re the people we don’t like in the Bible! They’re usually portrayed as nasty and judgmental and opponents of Jesus. And not too many of them ever seem to “repent” and change their minds.
And yet, in telling these parables, Jesus is also seeking them out. He’s presenting them with a message of hope and grace and love that’s also for the Pharisees and the scribes, who in a sense have wandered off from God’s love to sit and dwell in the wilderness of their own self-righteousness.
And that means that these parables also remind us that God loves the people we don’t like. These parables mean that God is actively seeking out the people who don’t like us and that God wants to bring them back into his fold as well. And these parables mean that God will rejoice over being able to include not just us and the people we love, but even the people we don’t like.
And that’s a really important part of these parables, especially for us who live in a hyper-polarized society where we’re explicitly told that “the other side” hates us and where we’re implicitly told that it’s OK to hate the people who hate us. But that just adds to the hate and creates the belief that there are some people even God doesn’t love.
But Jesus even loved the haters in the story. He didn’t have to. He could have told them off or sneered and walked away from them. But one of the reasons he told these parables in their presence was to show his followers that Jesus cares about every lost person, even – and perhaps especially – the people who didn’t like him.
Who would do this? Honestly, I’m fine with seeking out the people I love and the people I think are unjustly excluded. But seeking out and rejoicing over the people I really don’t like – and who don’t like me – that’s tough. Who would do that?
Jesus’ answer is that God would do what nobody else would do. More than that, Jesus shows us that in him, God is already doing it!
Sometimes, we read these parables as just cute stories about a sheep and a coin. But they’re much more than that. These parables remind us each day that God’s love for us is greater than anything we can image. These parables stand in the way of hate because they call us to see even the people who don’t like us as people Jesus is actively seeking out. And these parables call us to be disciples of Jesus by being willing to treat others as Jesus does, even and especially if nobody else would.
Amen.