Perspective: Be Careful Whom You Call "Lost"

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Be Careful Whom You Call "Lost"

For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.

Luke 19:10 (NRSV)

Hello, it's Me

I couldn't sleep

I was just counting sheep

And I'm missing you

From "Bring You Back" by Paul Alan

If I had to choose a favorite kind of Bible passage, I would have to choose the parables of Jesus.  The parables, I believe, are not meant to teach us a singular lesson, but are rather meant to engage our imaginations with the goals of disrupting our normal ways of thinking, liberating us of our assumptions about reality, and revealing to us important truths about ourselves.  In other words, they mess with our heads.  It seems that, no matter how deeply I've dug into a parable, there are always more riches to be mined if I just keep digging.

Jesus had a reputation for associating with the types of people who were generally ostracized by the "good, upstanding religious folk" of the day - tax collectors, prostitutes, and the like.  One day, while teaching a crowd, He overhears some of His critics expressing their disapproval for His hanging out and eating with so-called "sinners," so He begins telling a series of parables.¹

First, Jesus tells a story about a shepherd who has one hundred sheep in his charge.  One day, the shepherd notices that one of the sheep is missing, so he leaves the ninety-nine where they are and heads out to look for the missing one.  When he finally finds the missing sheep, he picks it up, places it on his shoulders, and carries it back home.  Overjoyed, he calls on his friends and neighbors to join him in celebrating the recovery of the lost sheep.

Next, Jesus tells a story about a woman who has saved up ten drachmas - silver coins each of which is worth a day's wages.  One day, the woman notices that she is missing one of her coins, so she starts cleaning and searching her house.  When she finally finds her missing coin, she calls on her friends and neighbors to join her in celebrating the recovery of her lost coin.

These two parables establish a certain pattern:

1. Somebody realizes that something important to him or her is missing.
2. He or she searches for it until it is found.
3. Full of joy, the searcher celebrates because he or she has recovered what was lost.

In the first parable, a shepherd realizes that he is missing one of his sheep, so he searches for the sheep until he finds it and then invites his friends and neighbors to celebrate with him.  In the second parable, a woman realizes that she is missing a coin, so she searches her house until she finds it and then invites her friends and neighbors to celebrate with her.

Jesus then goes on to tell what is probably His most famous parable, a story about a rich man who has two sons.

One day, the younger of the two sons approaches his father and requests his share of the family fortune.  The father gives his son his inheritance, and, a few days later, the son moves far from home and begins living a life of wine, women, and song.  Eventually, his money dries up, and, to make matters worse, a famine strikes the land.  Desperate, the young man starts working for a pig farmer.  As he turns a lustful eye toward the junk he's feeding the pigs, he remembers how well his father treats his servants.  He decides to return home, apologize to his father, and beg his father to hire him as a servant.

When the son arrives at home, his father sees him from a distance and runs out to embrace him.  Before the son can even make his spiel, the father has him dressed in fine clothes and throws him a welcome home party.

Jesus' third parable seems to break with the pattern established by the first two.  A son leaves his home with his inheritance and squanders all of it by living a debauched lifestyle.  When he returns home, his father celebrates by throwing him a welcome home party.  It could be said that the father "loses" a son and celebrates when this son is "found," but, unlike the shepherd who searches for his lost sheep and the woman who searches for her lost coin, the father does not search for his "lost" son.  The shepherd is concerned enough about his lost sheep to leave his other sheep and search for it, and the woman is concerned enough about her lost coin to turn her house upside down looking for it, but the father doesn't seem very concerned about his "lost" son.

I wonder if maybe the father doesn't go out and look for his younger son because he knows that his son isn't really "lost" in the first place.  All the time, sons and daughters forsake their upbringing, spend some time living their lives on their own terms, come to realize how foolish they have been, and then get their lives back on track.  Are these sons and daughters ever really "lost," or is straying from one's upbringing only to eventually return to it just a part of growing up?  Perhaps the father realizes that his younger son is just going through a rebellious phase and that he will come to his senses eventually.

The Amish, who are known for their separation from modern society, their simplistic lifestyle, and their strict religiosity, have a practice called Rumspringa.  The enforcement of the Amish communities' rules are relaxed for teenagers, and a certain amount of misbehavior is expected and even overlooked.  Some youths even leave their homes for a while to see what the world is like outside their communities.  Ultimately, Amish youths will have to choose for themselves whether they will join their church and take on the expectations of their communities or leave the communities entirely.  A majority choose to remain within their communities, and even some of those who initially choose to leave eventually return.²

There is a second part to Jesus' third parable.

While the younger son was out living life on his own terms, the older son has been at home, working hard for his father.  While working in the field, the older son hears music and dancing, so he asks one of the servants what is going on.  The servant tells him that his brother has returned and that his father has thrown him a welcome home party.  The older son is livid.  His worthless brother leaves home, squanders their father's money doing God knows what, and then has the damn nerve to show his face at home, and then the old man throws him a party.  The older son has worked hard for his father and has never given him any grief whatsoever.  Where was his party?

The father notices that his older son is absent from the party, so he goes out to look for him.  When he finds his son, he pleads with him to join the celebration.  The son tells his father off, comparing himself to a slave and criticizing his father for his apparent lack of appreciation of him and for his favoritism toward his brother.  The father replies, "Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.  But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found."

It is the latter part of this third parable that more closely follows the pattern established by the first two.  While throwing a welcome home party for the younger son, the father realizes that the older son is missing, so he goes out and searches for him.³  There is indeed a "lost" son in this parable, but perhaps the lost son is not the rebellious younger son who leaves home to live life on his own terms for a while, but rather the well-behaved older son who stays at home, does everything that is expected of him, and silently grows resentful.  In the words of Kent Dobson, "Maybe the one you've lost is sleeping in your own house."⁴

Unfortunately, we do not know if the father gets to celebrate the recovery of his lost son.

With the first two parables, Jesus teaches His critics that He came to seek the lost.  With the third parable, He subtly suggests that they, and not the "sinners" who are drawn to Him, are the ones who are really lost.  "Sinners," represented by the younger son, are drawn to Jesus because He offers them the grace they need, grace denied to them by the typical religious folk, represented by the older son.

We need to be careful whom we label "lost."  People who screw up and make big messes of their lives are not necessarily lost.  Many of them would happily return home, spiritually speaking, and turn their lives around, but they need to know that they will be welcomed and accepted, in the same way that Jesus embraced the tax collectors, prostitutes, and other so-called "sinners."  The people who are truly lost are the ones who sit in churches every Sunday and look down their noses at the rest of the world.  They honor Christ with their lips, but their hearts are actually far from Him.⁵  What is truly tragic is that they don't even realize how lost they are.

The hazard of being religious is the temptation to forget how messed up we are.  We think that, for some reason, we have a special relationship with God, and we set ourselves apart as insiders among outsiders.  We focus on the wrongdoings of others, while developing a giant blind spot around ourselves.

Like so many of Jesus' parables, the Parable of the Prodigal Son is, I think, meant to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.  It is a comfort to those of us who are far from home, spiritually speaking, for it reminds us that we are always welcome to come home.  It is an affliction to those of us who have become complacent and self-righteous, for it warns us that we might be further from home than we think.  We're truly lost when we don't realize how lost we are.  May we be self-aware, and may we put aside our judgment as we seek to become like the One who welcomed the outcasts.


Notes:

1. A majority of this blog post is based on Luke 15.  Quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version
2. Wikipedia: "Rumspringa"
3. Kent Dobson.  "Parables: Prodigal Son."  Mars Hill Bible Church podcast, 06/21/2015.
4. ibid.
5. Adapted from Isaiah 29:13

The Return of the Prodigal Son was painted by Pompeo Batoni in 1773.