Lost and Found

Luke: 15:1-32

I have thought about these passages before and believe I have a good grasp on much of  what is being said. The first two parables are understandable picture-images and illustrate activities we can relate to; that of looking for something lost and finding it. My mother has worn glasses all her life and I remember spending much of my early years looking for things. It is a tendency I lean toward even today these years later. But this looking that is described here has a frantic quality to it; the heart search of something dear that causes great happiness once it is found, and the unspoken unhappiness if it weren't to be found. If one only had 10 coins the loss of one would be very hard to take.

So then we have this third parable, placed as it is with the first two. Why is it here is what I wonder. What has it in common with the others? The coin was inanimate, its lost-ness could not have been of its own accord. The sheep, though could wander off foolishly or could have been lured away by thieves, or it could be in danger of being eaten or of starvation; I remember some of the things I discovered in reading the 23rd Psalm.

Now the first son we hear about is the younger of two sons, under normal circumstances his share would be less than his older brother's. But he says to his father 'I don't want to wait until you are dead, give me my inheritance now.' We see that he is not only insensitive, and greedy, he is not mature enough to care for what he is given, and soon loses it all. Then comes the phrase I am pondering today; that where he says to himself and then to his father "I am not worthy to be called your son." Of course this worthiness was never of his own doing anyway. We are who we are and have no control over our birth or our parents. Somehow he thinks he is still in charge of his status. But his father knows more about the relationship and responds to him out of compassion and love, and grace. His father brings him back into his household not as one who has earned his way or deserves it but as one who is loved.

When we consider this second son who is in fact the first son, we can relate emotionally to his hurt response, but when the father says "this brother of yours"...he lets the young man remember the relationship, again that he has no control over; they are both sons of the one father. When the father says 'everything I have is yours' this is literally the truth. The first-born is the one who inherits the estate, and whatever the younger son might have inherited is wasted now, so they two must learn that all that they have is but a gift from their father and the inheritance is not the things but the relationship with one another and the love of their father.

We as children of Abraham...or inheritors of the promise are like these sons; we can not earn this love, we have no right to it. It just is. Our job is to remember the love and be thankful.

See you tomorrow.
-maggie