Homily on the Parable of the Lost Sheep & Coin
September 12, 2010 - Pentecost 17 + Holy Baptism
Nine years ago, I didn’t imagine I’d spend a September 11 weekend doing a wedding and a baptism, two of the happier events in a couple or a family’s life. In fact, several people asked me whether it was appropriate to do a wedding on September 11, and I replied that I couldn’t think of anything more appropriate than to celebrate the love of two people on that day – and the same goes for the baptism of little Paul Stasaitis.
I don’t know if this directly relates, but I thought here of an essay I recently read from Wendell Berry, an writer and poet, who said that sometimes, while walking around the fields near his home in Kentucky, he likes to think about all the wonderful things that will happen on the same day he’s laid in the ground: the flowers that will open, the babies that will be born, the new discoveries made and people who will fall in love. Which is perhaps to say, it’s good to remember that love always manages to outlive and triumph over our tragedies, both personal or corporate. And isn’t this what Christian resurrection is all about? So what two better symbols of that could we ask for than marriage and baptism on a weekend like this.
Changing gears for a moment, before we move to the baptism, let me just say a few very brief words about our two parables for today, the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin. To summarize, in the first parable, a shepherd loses one of his sheep, and so, leaving the other 99 behind, he goes out in search of the one until he finds it. Similarly, in the parable of the coin, a woman loses one of her coins and searches every last nook of her house until she finds it.
These are such beautiful parables, and I’m well aware that talking about them puts me at risk of fulfilling Wordsworth’s warning: “Our meddling intellect mars the beauteous form of things.” But still, meddle I will (that’s what priests do!), and I hope you’ll forgive me.
Most good parables contain some small problem - something that doesn’t quite add up – and these are no exception. With the parable of the shepherd, one of the things that’s hard to explain is why the shepherd would leave ninety-nine good sheep just to seek out the one – a problem even more pronounced when you consider that the Greek word here for “wilderness” (where he leaves those other sheep) implies a place of real danger and vulnerability.
Similarly, in the case of the parable of the coin, the question that usually comes up is Why would Jesus hold up as an example this woman who upends her home and wastes a day rooting around for one coin when she has nine others – particularly in light of his teachings elsewhere about not worrying about money?
I found it interesting to learn this past week that some have tried to get around these problems by actually placing a value on the things that the people go in such desperate search of. For instance, in the 2nd century Gospel of Thomas, one of the Gospels that didn’t make it into our Bible, Thomas adds to his version of the parable that the lost sheep was the largest of all the sheep, and thus the one of most value. That’s why the shepherd would take such a risk. With the parable of the coin, some commentators will suggest that the lost coin was worth an entire dowry; or that the woman was poor and that her coins amounted to a lifetime of wages. In fact, the Greek is probably more likely something like a day’s wages – not enough to seem to warrant such a frantic search.
I suppose this just goes to show that tidying up the parables is a sort of silly endeavor, and, moreover, one that risks missing the very point they’re trying to make – in this case, that God seeks out those things and people that are of the least value in the world’s eyes, not the greatest. If anything, a better explanation might even devalue these sought after items.
As we baptize little Paul and he begins his long journey in the Christian faith, one of the most important lessons we can help teach him is to value what God values - and that’s not the largest sheep in the bunch or the biggest coin in the stack, it’s not the toughest guy in the room, the smartest or best looking person in the class. It’s the humblest, the weakest, the poorest and the most vulnerable.
And when he’s one of them, as we all are at some point in our lives, may also he understand the joy of being sought out and found by God. And you know what? When that time comes, for him and for us, it doesn’t really matter if all of this makes sense. In fact, we’re grateful that it doesn’t.
