Lost and Found, Part One

Text: Luke 15 (first of three reflections on this familiar chapter)

Have you ever been chastised, criticized, belittled, or otherwise denigrated because of the company you keep? Perhaps in school, especially in the later elementary grades, when the lines of acceptable and socially untouchable are being drawn in some detail. And it doesn't seem to stop there. Middle school, or junior high school for those of us from another educational era, are notorious years for defining whom one will and will not associate with according to those ever hardening lines. We continue to distinguish between "us" and "them" for too many of our years.

In reflecting on the parable of the prodigal son, we often overlook the entire sweep of the chapter which gives it its poignancy. It needs to be read as a whole in order to catch the contrasts and indictments Jesus intended. It begins with Jesus crossing those lines of proper and improper associations--and being roundly criticized for doing so. "Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear him." Wait a minute. When is the last time in your experience that such people gathered to hear what Jesus has to say?

It is difficult to believe that people do not want the gospel of grace, of mercy, of God's overwhelming desire to accept and embrace, to give meaning and hope where none has been known. That's why they all gathered around Jesus. But it's not difficult to believe that the very people charged with that message are the one who turn the hurting ones away with their attitudes of superiority, for whom God is a possession limited to those who meet certain standards of respectability. It's not difficult because we continue to see it, and maybe even practice it ourselves. The whole point of the parable is to change our focus regarding who is acceptable to God. He wants us, dare we say he needs us to see people as lost, and their return as cause for celebration. A sheep is lost, a coin is lost--and no one hesitates to celebrate with their owners when they are found. Indeed, the sheep and the coin were characterized specifically by their lost condition.

Are we any better than grumbling Pharisees if we fail to see the marginal, the poor, the drug addicted, the sexually confused as anything but the lost children of the heavenly father? Are we the older brother? Lord, what attitudes, and what characteristics of our hearts need to change before these lost ones all gather around your body, the church, to hear you?