Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes murmured, saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them."
- St. Luke 15:1, 2
There was something about our Lord’s stories and how He told them, that many people found attractive. If a person had been living in a way that was contrary to God, there was something about Christ’s words that made him stop and think. Certainly, not everyone repented. But hearts were touched, if even for a moment, at Christ’s simple revelation of the immense love which God has for every one of His children.
On the other hand, there were many others, especially among the scribes and Pharisees, who were utterly scandalized by Christ’s words. And they were equally scandalized by the sorts of people who listened to Him. According to the Gospel accounts, there was a lot of murmuring going on among the scribes and Pharisees. They would complain about Jesus. “How can he even think of being around people like that?” they would say. “He should know that they’re bad people, and that he’s taking the risk of making himself unclean by hanging around with them,” they would state, in a very self-righteous tone. So lines were drawn in the sand.
“This man receives sinners and eats with them,” the scribes and Pharisees murmured. And in response to their condemnation, our Lord Jesus Christ tells some parables.
The first parable tells the story of the shepherd who has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. He looks for it, finds it, puts it on his shoulders, and returns joyfully to the sheepfold. Then we hear of the housewife who possesses ten silver coins, and she loses one. She searches the whole house, finds it, and invites her neighbors in to celebrate the recovery. And the third parable in this set of parables is the story of the Prodigal son. We know well the parable of the father who has two sons. One wastes his share of the inheritance while the father anxiously looks for his return. When he finally returns home, his father welcomes him with open arms and celebrates with a great feast.
Although each one of these parables focuses on something different, the point in each story is the same: it has to do with the joy of finding something after losing it. In slightly different ways, they all tell us the same thing: that if God is filled with joy when a sinner is converted and repents, then we should be as joyful. This was Christ’s message to the scribes and Pharisees, and it is His lesson for us.
The shepherd, the housewife, and the father are all anxious to recover what they have lost, and Jesus is reminding us that so is God eager to recover what has been lost, when it comes to each one of us. It doesn’t take a profoundly theological mind, in the light of these parables, to grasp right away that we all are the lost sheep, the lost silver coin, the wandering son. But because of His infinite and tireless patience, the Lord will not abandon any one of us. He is concerned about each individual. He wants to restore His relationship with every person who has rejected it. He will never force anyone, but He will always show His love for each one of us, because He wants every one of us to have the experience of being found.
This is what St. Paul described in his epistle to St. Timothy, when he wrote, “I formerly blasphemed and persecuted and insulted Christ, yet I received mercy… and the grace of the Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” St. Paul was a man filled with the joy of having been found. He had been far off from God, but then he was reconciled, and he can scarcely contain his joy. And we can understand that. Who hasn’t suddenly felt overwhelmed with joy when a broken relationship is healed – when a marriage headed for breakup gains a new footing and a firmer foundation – or when a friendship which has exploded in anger is finally repaired? If that experience of healing is important to us in our human relationships, certainly it is vastly more important in our relationship with God.
There is a phrase in St. Paul’s epistle which states clearly the aim of God: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” And Paul presents himself as a prime example of someone who has benefited from this mercy. He tells us his own circumstances so that we might realize that we are all pardoned sinners, that we will need pardon until the very end of our lives, and that our salvation does not come from ourselves, but through God’s mercy.
We learn from these parables that God is infinitely patient in His care and in His searching for us, and that being reconciled with him – being forgiven and restored to communion with Him – is a very wonderful and joyful thing.
But there is another lesson, and it comes at the end of the parable of the Prodigal Son, which is why the three parables really go together. Remember the older son? He returns from the fields, and he hears the noise of the feast and he asks what all the excitement is about. And when he hears, he goes into a fit of jealousy. He makes the point loud and clear: his brother has been a good-for-nothing, and now they’re holding a party just because he’s come back home? He, as the older son, has always done the right thing, but he’s never received a thing. Jesus makes this point in direct answer to the scribes and Pharisees – and also to plenty of us today. There is that attitude among all too many that really doesn’t want to see others benefiting from forgiveness. They would rather carry on the grudge, they would rather be seen as “the good ones.” There are those who want to think that God couldn’t possibly love that person over there every bit as much as He loves me! Christ includes this last part of the parable to remind us: we are all sinners in need of pardon. He even included it in the prayer He taught to His disciples: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…”
Our whole life needs to be grounded on pardon – the pardon we need to give to others, and the pardon we ourselves need to receive from God. And if we acknowledge that we are sinners, constantly receiving pardon from God, then we should be anxious and happy to pardon others, and we should be overjoyed when God finds them and forgives them, just as He has found and forgiven us.
Instead of being scandalized, the scribes and Pharisees should have been happy to see Jesus concern Himself with sinners. And there is a lesson for us: we, too, need to know how to rejoice over goodness, whoever is doing it, and whoever benefits from it. We need to learn the joy of forgiving others, just as we have experienced the overwhelming joy of having been forgiven ourselves.
Each of us should think carefully: is there someone whom I need to forgive? Today is the day to do it.
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Image: "The Lost Sheep" by Sir John Everett Millais, Bt (1829-1896)