Jesus and the Lost Parables

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus.

But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them."

Then Jesus told them [these] parable[s]:

Luke 15v1-3 (TNIV)

Jesus tells a parable about a lost sheep, a lost coin, and two lost sons; you might be familiar with these stories. The essential point of these parables is to help explain why Jesus is welcoming and eating with sinners of all types: Jesus comes to people who are lost on the way to God in order to find them and bring them back to the Father.

* God is like a shepherd (which should evoke some Scriptures from the Psalms and Ezekiel...) who goes after straying sheep - and he throws a big party for everyone when he gets back to the fold.

* God is like a woman (which should raise eyebrows...) who loses a days worth of wages, and who searches and searches until she finds it - and then spends that money to celebrate finding it!

* God is like a Father (which is an old and new idea...) who loses both of his sons, and doesn't go after them, but is ready to receive and throw a big party for them when they are willing to return.

God doesn't want humanity to be lost, and he will come to us, where we live, to help us find our way back home to him. Humans are not quite like sheep (though there are some similarities) and we are not quite like coins (though there is some sad similarities), but we are like sons who stray, make our own choices, and then have to live with the consequences. But like the sons in this story, they can always choose to return to God the Father. Or not.

Return, in the Hebrew language, is the same word for Repent. For humans, being lost doesn't always mean we don't know how to get back home; being lost can also mean we walked away from home. To get found often depends on us choosing to return, to repent, to want to be found. God has come close to us in Jesus (Immanuel/God with us); we can get found anytime we want whenever we take the steps towards returning home.