“The Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them’.” (Luke 15.2)
In nomine, etc..
Our Lord gives us very little leeway in interpreting the two parables in today’s Gospel: the parable of the lost sheep, and the parable of the lost coin. Although Our Lord doesn’t actually say so in plain words, we are led to understand that the lost sheep represents a repentant sinner returned to the flock, and the story of the lost coin likewise is meant to convey joy in heaven, as a widow rejoices over the recovered coin. It is odd, it seems to me, that a sheep should represent a repentant sinner, since a sheep would apparently be incapable of acting on his own, of finding his own way back to the flock, but needs to be recovered by the action of others. And the coin is an even odder symbol, at least superficially considered, in a story about sin and repentance. But let us listen closely to these two stories, to discern the teaching that Our Lord is presenting.
We begin with a crowd scene. “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him.” All the tax collectors and sinners! As we know, the tax collectors were contractors working for the Roman government, who paid themselves as well as the government by extracting as much as they could from taxpayers. It is easy to understand why Luke includes them with sinners, with all those who, one way or another, are in violation of the Law of Moses, at least as that Law is understood by the Pharisees, who regarded themselves as exemplars of obedience to the Law. And, indeed, right off, the Pharisees complain about the tax collectors and sinners, and imply that Jesus should not be welcoming them or eating with them.
Jesus responds to the crowd scene, and the Pharisees’ grumbling, with a story about another crowd scene, that of the lost sheep returning to the flock, and the shepherd’s gathering with his friends and neighbors to celebrate. The differences between the Pharisees’ reaction to the gatherings, and Jesus’s response to them, reveal Jesus’s attitude to sin and repentance.
You’ve heard me, and other preachers too, I’m sure, talk about the Greek originals for these words, sin and repentance, and what they actually mean. The English words have a moralistic, individualistic cast to them which distorts, even hides, the original meanings, and adds a load of self-punishing guilt, which does not need to be there. As we have probably heard, sin translates ‘hamartia’, ‘missing the mark’, and repentance translates ‘metanoia’, ‘mind-changing’. The lost sheep makes the first meaning clear; the sheep has lost his way, and needs to be found by the shepherd and returned to the flock. The shepherd helps the sheep to change his mind, so to speak, to find his way back to the community. When Jesus describes himself as the good shepherd, he is saying that that is what his task is, to find those who have missed the mark, and lead them back towards it.
What is the ‘mark’ that the lost one has missed? What is the lost one looking for? What is it that keeps the flock together, to which the lost one seeks to return?
In the case of the flock, it is the shepherd that the lost sheep has lost track of. It is the common life of sheep and shepherd that is the source and goal of the life of the flock. This common life, this simple agrarian image of shepherd and sheep, is a way of describing the nature of Christian life, which is life shared with God; we are being brought into communion with God. We are created to participate in his life. The Church is the Body of Christ in the world, and our lives are being led into communion with God, not merely as individuals, but as members of a community intimately living with each other. We participate not only in God’s life, but also in each other’s, held together and guided by the great shepherd, whose flock and body we are. The goal is life with God in this world and in eternity, for the community, the flock, as a whole.
That is what the widow’s lost coin represents. The coin reminds us of the pearl of great price in Matthew’s Gospel, the one thing more worth having than anything else. That one thing, that pearl, that silver coin, is life with each other and with God in the present, and in eternity.
That is what the rejoicing of the widow and her friends, and the shepherd and his friends, is about. It is a hint of what the experience of life with each other and God in eternity is like. “Rejoicing” is probably the least of it. The experience is beyond what our words can only point at.
It is not merely an individual event. Life with God necessarily includes everyone, past, present, and future. The friends and neighbors of the shepherd and the widow have to be there; they represent all those beings who share life in God with us. They complete the experience for us and with us. This reminds us of the Buddhist Bodhisattvas, who put off their own final release from the wheel of rebirth, until they can bring all beings with them. So too the great shepherd will find all the lost sheep, all those seeking to return to him and life with God. Then, and only then, there will be “joy in the presence of the angels of God.”
Pharisees, in the Church and out of it, try as they may, cannot exclude anyone from life with God. Life with God is not about adherence to Law, to external rules and regulations and practices. Jesus came to fulfill Law, that is, to complete it, to meet its requirements and get it out of the way, and, he said, “I am come that they may have life.” “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them,” the Pharisees say, disapprovingly but correctly. In our liturgy of bread and wine, we are welcoming the lost seekers, past, present, and future, and eating with them. We are welcoming all those finding their way to life with God. And we humbly rejoice that the great Shepherd has led even us to his flock, has welcomed even us to life with God. May we remain in the flock, may we find the lost coin, and rejoice with friends, neighbors, and angels, here and in eternity.
In nomine, etc.. (10-11.IX.16 Advent)
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