Luke establishes the scene for the chapter with these words, Now the tax collectors and "sinners" were all gathering around to hear him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them" (1-2).
Tax collectors and sinners… not a pretty group and certainly not the ‘in-crowd’ or the people you will find gracing the covers and insides of Greenwich Magazine or frequenting ‘The Ave’. And yet, these are precisely the people who were attracted to Jesus and His message. Jesus obviously didn’t mind the company.
Pharisees and teachers of the law hung around Jesus, too, but not so much to hear His words as to catch Him in a compromising situation or statement.
Now comes the meat of the chapter… lost things being found and the joy of finding.
With each of the three lost and found vignettes, the message multiplied. Finding the lost brings joy to the inhabitants of heaven! Finding the lost no matter where they have been or what they have done or who they have become brings joy to the inhabitants of heaven. Along with this refrain, the parables sing three stanzas of searching, looking, scouring dirty places for the lost… the shepherd searches, the wife scours and the father looks and never stops looking.
There are lost people all around us. We can write them off as the Pharisees did for tax collectors & sinners or we can catch the melody of Jesus and be about the task of looking and finding…
“Think about it,” whispers the Holy Spirit. More than that learn to sing and live Jesus’ melody…
God, make me into to a ‘looker and finder’, increase my searching skills so that my legacy this side of eternity will be one who found the lost. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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