Luke 15

1 Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them."
3 Then Jesus told them this parable: 4 "Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn't he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.' 7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.
8 "Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn't she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? 9 And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.' 10 In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."
11 Jesus continued: "There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger one said to his father, 'Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them.
13 "Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. 14 After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. 16 He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
17 "When he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.' 20 So he got up and went to his father.
"But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
21 "The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.'
22 "But the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So they began to celebrate.
25 "Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. 27 'Your brother has come,' he replied, 'and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.'
28 "The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. 29 But he answered his father, 'Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!'
31 " 'My son,' the father said, 'you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' "

Points of Interest:

• ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them’—are you, like me, starting to feel like the Pharisees and teachers are a broken record? Their tune hasn’t really changed since their earliest interactions with Jesus. Over and over again, they comment on the fact that he is eating with sinners and doing what’s unlawful on the Sabbath as if it’s a complete surprise, even though it’s exactly what he’s been doing all along.

• ‘one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them’—Doesn’t everybody look for lost things? Maybe you wouldn’t look for a dropped penny: it’s not that valuable. You might not look for someone else’s wallet: it’s not yours. But you’d definitely look for your own wallet: it’s yours, and it’s valuable. Likewise, Jesus eats with these people because they belong to him and they’re valuable.

• ‘Doesn't he leave the ninety-nine’— it might occur to you that, according to the logic above, the ninety-nine sheep are ninety-times more valuable than the lost one. Why would a shepherd abandon the whole valuable herd for the sake of the lost one? I think the idea here is that there’s safety in the herd. The ninety-nine serve as some protection for one another, but the one is defenseless. The shepherd isn’t abandoning the ninety-nine; he is temporarily leaving the ninety-nine to bring the one back into the safety of the herd.

• ‘he joyfully puts it on his shoulders’—the shepherd isn’t angry or annoyed at the lost sheep. He doesn’t scold it. He’s simply glad that the sheep is safe and has been found.

• ‘she calls her friends and neighbors together’—imagine the relief and excitement at recovering a large amount of lost money. The woman simply has to share her good news with her friends.

• ‘Rejoice with me’—her friends celebrate with her. That’s the immediate and natural response when a friend finds something they’d lost. By implication, since the Pharisees and teachers are muttering instead of celebrating, they are not friends of Jesus. It’s not Jesus who is acting strangely here—you always celebrate when you find something you’ve lost. It’s the Pharisees who are being rude and unfriendly.

• ‘Father, give me my share of the estate’—inheritances usually don’t come until after your parents are dead, but this son wants to hurry up the process. He’s essentially saying, ‘Look, Dad, can we go ahead and act as if you were already dead?’ Amazingly, his father agrees to his request.

• ‘He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating’—this is definitely hitting bottom: a good Jewish boy wouldn’t have even eaten pig, but he wishes he could eat with pigs.

• ‘my father's hired servants have food to spare’—he thought it would be better to have his father’s money than to be his father’s child; it turns out that having his father’s money isn’t even as good as being his father’s servant.

• ‘But the father said . . . this son of mine was dead and is alive again’—the son’s speech was supposed to end with, ‘make me like one of your hired servants,’ but before he can finish, his father interrupts to call him his son.

• ‘because he has him back safe and sound’—the father is not at all concerned about whether the younger son deserves to be welcomed back. He throws a party, not because his child has done something worthy of a party, but because he is happy: because someone he has worried about is safe and because someone he has missed has returned.

• ‘refused to go in’—in these three stories (the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost child), Jesus establishes a clear pattern: 1) something valuable is lost; 2) the lost thing is found; 3) the finder celebrates; 4) the finder invites friends and neighbors into the celebration. Here the pattern is broken. We determined earlier that, because they aren’t celebrating with Jesus, the Pharisees and teachers aren’t Jesus’ friends. Now, we see who they are: they are the angry older child.

• ‘his father went out and pleaded with him’—the father goes out in search of this missing son, just like he ran out to welcome the other one when he came home.

• ‘I've been slaving for you’—both children think of their relationship with their father as slavery. The younger son runs away from his father’s repressive regime, and then decides he’d be better off in slavery to his father than to anyone else. But the father doesn’t think of him as a slave at all; he thinks of him as his child. He first gives him an inheritance (even a bit earlier than usual); then welcomes him home as a son, rather than hiring him as a servant.
The older son stays with the father, but only out of a different strategy, not a different attitude. He takes the tack of the dutiful slave, patiently bearing with all of his father’s requirements—but resenting it the whole time. I get the sense that he too wishes his father were dead; he just isn’t bold enough to say it, like his brother was.

• ‘this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes’—the older child seems simultaneously disgusted by and envious of his brother. He doesn’t recognize what the younger child—through painful trial and error—has just figured out: his older brother had it better all along.

• 'you never gave me even a young goat’—I get the strong sense that if the older son had ever asked for one, his father would have been happy to give him that young goat, or much more. After all, he gave the younger son a third of his fortune because he asked. The father seems genuinely confused by the older son’s bitterness: ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.’ As far as the father knew, he was giving his older child the best: relationship with him, and the chance to work together to build up the older child’s inheritance. He thought it’s what his child wanted too, but all along the child was secretly bitter and resentful.
It’s the same thing with the Pharisees and God’s law. By muttering about Jesus’ relationship with the tax collectors and sinners, they’re essentially saying, ‘Look, we’ve been following God’s law all along. When are we going to get anything out of it?’ I think God’s answer would be, ‘The Law itself is the great thing I was giving you.’ The Law was meant to lead them toward a richer relationship with God and a more abundant life. The tax collectors and sinners haven’t been getting away with something; they’ve been missing out on something. The Pharisees and teachers, in theory at least, always had the better life within their grasp; but because they had the mentality of slaves rather than of children, they missed out too.

• ‘But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead’—the younger son has been found, but the older son is still lost in a self-imposed slavery. The younger son is in the party, but the older son is sulking outside. The big question, left hanging at the end of the story, is: will the older son join the party? Will he join the family, or remain a slave? It’s up to the Pharisees—and to any of us who identify with the older brother—to decide how the story will end.

Taking it home:

• For you and your family: Who are your ‘tax collectors’? That is, is there a group that, in your heart of hearts, you think is hopeless—or, at least, that they should have to do a lot of proving how sorry they are before God would welcome them? I think this passage is saying that that those very people belong to God and are valuable to him. All God wants is for them to be safe at home with him. What would it take for you to be happy to see God celebrating them? Ask God to rescue you from muttering, from envy, and from suspicion. Pray that he would give you what you need to step into the party.

• For your friends: Pray that your friends would increase in their knowledge that they are valuable to God and he misses them.

• For our city: Pray for the churches of our city. Pray that the people of our churches would know the joy of being God’s children. Ask God to protect us from a spirit of slavery.