Luke 15:1-10 (NRSV Updated Edition)
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
So he told them this parable: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
“Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
[Note: The Roman Catholic lectionary for Proper 19C includes verses 11-32, the so-called "Parable of the Prodigal Son."]
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"I'd like to submit to you today that that is always the most essential act of repentance: namely, that we would change our minds about who God is. This is the first step, the key, to total repentance. In order to have one's whole life changed, I think that the first step is always to first have our minds changed about who God is.
"We need to know to the bottom of our hearts that the true God has always been a merciful God. It is we human beings who make God out to be someone else, to be a punishing, wrathful, violent God. It is we who are wrong about God and need to change our minds. Isn't that the very heart of the Christian Gospel? That through Jesus Christ we most truly get to see who God is?"
- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from a sermon delivered on 30 September 1995 (https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper19c_1995_ser/)
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"The first thing is Luke frames them very clearly. “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying: this fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So that's the background: Jesus is talking to a mixed group as so often of those who are normally regarded as bad, and maybe for good reasons, and those who think of themselves at least and maybe are officially appointed to be good and sometimes for good reasons.
"But what he's wanting to do in his answers is to completely alter the nature of their conversation about good and bad, and introduce something entirely different - the note of joy which is at the heart of the Gospel. Because each one of these three parables ends with the demand for a party, and ends with the demand for joy because anything to do with God ultimately is to do with joy."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Twenty Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (link below)
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"A man with 100 -1 sheep cannot rest before he has restored the number to 100; the woman with 10 -1 coins is compelled to search until they are ten again; the man who had 2-1 sons cannot find joy until the missing one returns and they are two again. What is it, the meaning of this riddle?
"Clearly the numbers are important; each riddle puts them first, “There was a man who had 100 sheep” (vs. 4), a “woman who had ten coins” (vs. 8), “a man who had two sons” (vs. 11). Is this a clue? Yes it is! The riddle invites us to think about sets that are broken: the set of 100 is now 99, the set of 10 is nine and the set of 2 is 1. In each case there is something missing and the hole it leaves cries out to be filled.
[...]
"It now occurs to me that the Hebrew word “shalom” which is still the accepted greeting in Hebrew, cognate with the Arabic “salaam,” means “wholeness” before it comes to mean “peace.” This discloses that peace in our tradition means communal wholeness, and when I greet you with “shalom” I am saying, “I recognize you as part of the whole to which we both belong, and so there should be no rivalry between us. The Hebrew for “righteousness” (tzedakah) is another word for the state of “shalom,” that is, having been reintegrated after having been expelled. The “righteous” person is one who is in good standing with the community. The duty of the judge is to find ways to bring someone who, because of his deeds, has expelled himself from the community, back in.
"The Apostle Paul calls the work of God in Christ the “justification of sinners,” which means the restoring of those cast out, to standing in the community. For this reason he can say that those who believe in Christ and thus allow him to rectify (justify) their good standing in the human community, beyond the distinctions of religion, class and gender, are all one in their common humanity. Thus the healing of the violence-wracked world goes through the expelled and then reintegrated scapegoat – the social outcasts, the scoundrel sons, the smelly goats and the politely unacceptable. These are the ones God's kingdom desires most. [...]
"Note that the reintegration takes place before the outcasts are worthy of being welcomed back. Repentance is the decision to return, like the lost son, in order to be changed and restored by membership in the group. One does not change so as to re-enter the group; one re-enters the group in order to change. This is the very meaning of grace- the acceptance of the unacceptable. If it were otherwise it would not be grace but justice, not a gift but just desserts."
- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, from sermon delivered on September 12, 2010 (source no longer available online)
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"One does not change so as to re-enter the group; one re-enters the group in order to change." I would like to add that when one who is lost or outcast re-enters or is welcomed back into, the group, the group also changes. In Marilynne Robinson's novel Home, the returned 'prodigal son' sadly does not get the full, unequivocal, unconditional welcome of his father. And one of the main reasons for this, I think, is that the father, and to a large extent the rest of the family and their home community, are not willing to accept the unconventional and unsettling reality of the son. They are not willing to expand their horizons and to say that this one, too, is one of us, and belongs with us, because to do so would mean admitting that the 'us' as we define it is incomplete, limited, imperfect. The 'us' cannot truly receive the prodigal without a transformed vision and enactment of 'belonging'.
~
"[The] two small parables act as a very well-coded introduction to the longer one, and by well-coded I mean they're saying something about God as well because each one of the images is quite familiar to Jesus's audience. First of all the shepherd of Israel to whom many of the psalms are addressed, or "shepherd of Israel, hear us". Here is the shepherd of Israel saying what the activity of the shepherd of Israel looks like. The activity of the shepherd of Israel looks like going and finding a reason for rejoicing.
"And in the second story, we have the business of the ten silver coins. The most common reason why a woman might have ten silver coins is the dowry, it would be the sign of her ability to get married or indeed to have been married; [incorporated as] either as a bracelet or as a necklace, it would be a very important part of her life. It wasn't simply a that she was a numismatist and collected coins - no, these were a significant part of her bridal meaning. So what's happening? She's lost part of her bridal meaning and she goes and looks and finds it and rejoices. But what sort of rejoicing is this? - Israel the bride is rejoicing because the possibility of marriage comes alive again - the promise of marriage comes to fruition with Israel as the bride of God.
"And that's when we turn to the third of the parables - the one with only two people who might be lost or found: from 99 to 1, to 9 to 1, to one to one - two. And this is the key thing. And who is the representative figure for God here? Well, it's the one who I refer to as the self-effacing father because now that Jesus is coming down from mighty images to images of one to one, he brings out something astounding that rather than God being the judge between people who are good and bad, that God is a self-effacing father who never puts himself at a level above the two brothers. In fact, [he] effaces himself in the presence of the brothers so as to make it possible, if at all possible, for them to come together in common rejoicing.
[...]
"[T]he father says to [the older brother]: child - 'teknon' - you are always with me. He uses the word 'teknon', not son, as in our translation; it's a tender word but it's not the same as son, I think probably because it refers to the whole of Israel. And, “all that is mine is yours.” In other words, when we divided the property at the beginning I gave one-third to your brother and two-thirds to you, it's been yours all along. We've had it together, it's been yours to give and use. Your brother used it [dissolutely], you have used it in a withholding way. And you've used that to project yourself as better than your brother. But all that is mine is yours. “But we had to celebrate and rejoice because this brother of yours” - [he] doesn't refer to him as my son - “this brother of yours was dead and has come to life. He was lost and has been found.”
"The great rejoicing. The self-effacing father doesn't want to get in the picture at all. His rejoicing consists in brothers separated by views of superiority, jealousy, moral differences, getting over all that, and coming to meet each other and rejoice. And what are we asked to do but to understand from Jesus that God is a great rejoicing. If only we can imagine that we can let go of our self-importance, our fear, our need to jump through hoops, and all that other stuff, and start to enter into the great rejoicing."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Twenty Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myI3tJbCbvw)
[Source of link to Paul J. Nuechterlein sermon, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper19c/]
[Luke 15:11-32 (the so-called "Parable of the Prodigal Son") is also in the lectionary for Lent 4C (which I missed this year due to illness). I recommend James Alison's video "Homily for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlWg-SNJX9I)]
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