The Good News about God!

Luke 15:1-10

By this time a lot of men and women of doubtful reputation were hanging around Jesus, listening intently. 2 The Pharisees and religion scholars were not pleased, not at all pleased. They growled, "He takes in sinners and eats meals with them, treating them like old friends." 3 Their grumbling triggered this story. 4 "Suppose one of you had a hundred sheep and lost one. Wouldn't you leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the lost one until you found it? 5 When found, you can be sure you would put it across your shoulders, rejoicing, 6 and when you got home call in your friends and neighbors, saying, 'Celebrate with me! I've found my lost sheep!' 7 Count on it--there's more joy in heaven over one sinner's rescued life than over ninety-nine good people in no need of rescue. 8 "Or imagine a woman who has ten coins and loses one. Won't she light a lamp and scour the house, looking in every nook and cranny until she finds it? 9 And when she finds it you can be sure she'll call her friends and neighbors: 'Celebrate with me! I found my lost coin!' 10 Count on it--that's the kind of party God's angels throw every time one lost soul turns to God."

Food for thought!

There is no chapter of the New Testament so well known and so dearly loved as the fifteenth chapter of Luke's gospel. It has been called "the gospel in the gospel," as if it contained the very distilled essence of the good news which Jesus came to tell.

The parable arose out of real life situation. It was an offence to the scribes and Pharisees that Jesus associated with men and women who, by the orthodox, were labelled as sinners. So Jesus told them the parable of the lost sheep and the shepherd's joy, in order to tell us something about God.

God the Father, says Jesus, is as glad when a lost sinner is found as a shepherd is when a strayed sheep is brought home. As a great saint said, "God, too, knows the joy of finding things that have gone lost."

There is a wondrous thought here. God is kinder than men. Many of us would write off the tax-collectors and the sinners as worthless, and as deserving of nothing but destruction; not so God. We may give up hope of a sinner; not so God. God loves the folk who never stray away; but in his heart there is the joy of joys when a lost one is found and comes home. It is a thousand times easier to come back to God than to come home to the bleak criticism of men.

Another stiry is of a woman's lost coin. The woman swept the floor in the hope that she might see the coin glint or hear it tinkle as it moved. But why would anyone look for a lost coin like this woman did?

It may have been a matter of sheer necessity. 4 p does not sound very much but it was more than a whole day's wage for a working man in Palestine. These people lived always on the edge of things and very little stood between them and real hunger. The woman may well have searched with intensity because, if she did not find, the family would not eat.

It is easy to think of the joy of the woman when at last she saw the glint of the elusive coin and when she held it in her hand again. God, says Jesus, is like that. The joy of God, and of all the angels, when one sinner comes home, is like the joy of a home when a coin which had stood between them and starvation has been lost and is found