Dear Friends,
We hope this week's devotional will encourage you in your spiritual walk. We give thanks to Michael Lund, Library Manager, for writing this devotional.
You are welcome to share this and include it in your church newsletters if you wish; we just ask that you please give credit to NTC and the author. Thank you!
Luke 15:1-10 (NRSVUE)
1 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
3 So he told them this parable: 4 “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? 5 And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
8 “Or 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? 9 And 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.’ 10 Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Devotional
Today’s devotional looks at the first two in a group of three parables looking at the lost. This passage occurs after Jesus eating with the Pharisees, his parables of the great feast (14:1-24) and his teaching on the cost of discipleship (14:25-34). Seeing the tax collectors and sinners drawing near to Jesus and listening to his teaching, the Pharisees and scribes begin to grumble and murmur. This grumbling, echoing the Israelites’ grumbling against Moses in Exodus (Culpepper, NIB: Luke, pp. 295), is because Jesus’s response to the sinners and tax collectors wasn’t sending them away, nor withdrawing from them, but accepting and befriending them.
It's in this situation with the religious leaders’ self-righteousness and disparaging of sinners (and Jesus) that Jesus begins to teach. He builds from lesser to greater, from parables about lost livestock and coins to lost people. Throughout there’s contrast of the relative wealth of the man who owns a hundred sheep compared to relative poorness of woman with ten silver coins. It’s noteworthy that Jesus’s parables here don’t contrast the righteous and wicked like other parables or many of the OT passages do, but highlights the lost and the found (Neale, NBBC: Luke 9-24, pp. 136-37). As Neale notes, the coin [and the sheep] is not lost because of its wickedness, but because it wasn’t in its ‘usual place’ where it belonged with the other coins [or sheep].
The owner of the sheep uproots his usual routine, leaving the 99 sheep in relative safety, to find the lost sheep. Similarly, the woman turns her house upside down in seeking the coin. The focus of these parables isn’t on the sinners’ repentance as such (vv. 7, 10), but on the communal celebration when the lost are found and restored to their rightful place in community. “Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep,” and “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost” (vv. 6, 9).
We must ask ourselves, does the lost sheep get travel sickness on the shoulders of the dancing shepherd (v. 5)? More importantly, are we looking down on others, or too busy focusing on our own lives that we don’t divert from our routines to seek the lost? Do we celebrate when the lost are found and returned to their home within God’s community? Do we have the same “concerns of a father’s heart for his own children, each one of whom is singularly precious in his sight?” (Nolland, Word: Luke, pp. 766)
Prayer
Dear Lord, we pray you soften our hearts for the lost. Help us to love them, and reach them so they can be returned to their place as your child in loving community, even if they have never experienced this before. Helps us to see each person as precious in your sight. Amen.
Kind regards,
Michael Lund (Library manager)