Sunday, March 23, 2025

Sermon Notes

We have heard a lot from Luke’s gospel account about the Kin-dom of God, and how different it is from the Kingdoms of humans. Most recently, asking ‘how can I be a neighbor?’ rather than ‘who is my neighbor?’

This week’s scripture is made up of three familiar stories, the parable of the lost sheep, parable of the lost coin, and (one of the best known) parable of the prodigal son and his brother. Jesus tells these stories because of a conflict between his disciples.

At this point, Jesus has gathered a large crowd that is following him as he moves ever closer to Jerusalem. It seems that some of them are pharisees and scribes. This may be surprising to us, since both have been critical of Jesus, and the more adversarial tone that they take in other gospels. This is a reminder that every community contains some measure of diversity.

Perhaps less surprisingly (for us), tax-collectors and ‘sinners’ were also a part of this crowd. Tax-collectors would have been considered to be collaborators with the Roman Empire, well known for enriching themselves by grifting from their own people. ‘Sinners’ is a general term for any number of people: sex-workers, unbelievers, gentiles, deviants, and generally those who were considered unclean or unrighteous (especially by people like scribes and pharisees).

This week’s scripture begins by telling us that the pharisees and scribes are grumbling because the tax-collectors and scribes are not only a part of the crowd, but are coming near Jesus to hear him (maybe even cutting in front of their social ‘betters’).

Jesus tells these stories to remind us that human value is one of the many ways that the Kin-dom differs from our human ways of thinking.

Questions

– What do you think about the shepherd leaving the ninety-nine? Do you think this is the way that shepherds normally operated? Is this different or similar from the way that our human institutions deal with very small populations?

– What do you think about the woman’s search for the coin?

– Who do you most identify with in the parable of the sons? The younger one? The older one? Someone else?