The Trouble with Jesus
by Constance Hastings
Now ain’t this sweet. Jesus, you always are good for stories that make us go, “Awww, how nice.” They’re good for little kids with furry lambs and sweet pictures to hang on the nursery wall. To your credit, they also relate to how we live. We know what it’s like to go frantically searching for keys or phones, and when they turn up, we say, “Oh, thank god!” Yeah, this kind of thing gets you out of many a hole with your detractors. Nice work there, Good Shepherd.
Oh, you noticed? Every so often, and increasingly more often than not, the religious leaders had been showing up whenever an assembly of people gathered around to hear him speak. As much as what Jesus said, who he said it to brought an undercurrent of criticism. This time it was about “those” kinds of people who seemed to drop in when he spoke.
You’ve heard the phrase, “known by the company you keep?” Your mother didn’t make it up to steer you away from the wrong crowd. These teachers of religious law complained that as one who taught about God, Jesus shouldn’t be so familiar with “notorious sinners.”
Specifically, Jesus was known to have even shared meals with them. As your mother may have pointed out, people might think you are just like them. Or worse yet, they might influence you in negative ways, damage your brand. That old excuse how you’ll be an encouragement to them on changing their ways didn’t hold in the first century either.
True to form, Jesus answers with stories that speak both ways, to those “holy” gatekeepers as well as the low-lifes who follow him on the fringes.
What Kind of God…?
On the surface, it looks like Jesus talks about the familiar, in this case, the panic we know when something important goes missing. Step back a bit though and notice these stories of a Lost Sheep and Lost Coin are not so much about what’s nowhere to be found as much as about the one out there searching for it. And if you don’t mind taking a small interpretive leap, that seeker is God.
Here again, Jesus lands an insult. The seeking characters in these two stories are not well-favored among the upper echelon. One is a shepherd, the kind of laborer who gets the dirty jobs, like trash hauling or chicken house cleaning. Sheep are dirty and dumb, and you’ve got to be with them day and night if you want to get any kind of meager profit from your work.
The other is a woman, a person who had better keep whatever wealth she has accrued in her lifetime secured right into her apparel. Some think this coin was part of her dowry, and women would sew them into their headdresses for security. Women lived their lives not far removed in status from the filth the shepherds knew. God is of this kind? Yeah, sit with that.
Desperate Seeker
To identify God like this does reveal what’s important, integral to God. Persons who don’t have much keep close what’s essential to them. Ever see a homeless person with a grocery cart of belongings? They don’t have much, but what they do have, they don’t want to lose. This shepherd and woman knew great loss when that sheep wandered away and that coin rolled off into nowhere. No question they would do all they could to get back what was lost. No question God would do the same.
To retrieve the lost sheep, the shepherd had to accept major risk. While he gathered the rest of the flock safely in the sheepfold, he needed to go off in the “wilderness” in search of the lost one. Besides the time and energy it took, he also was making himself vulnerable to the very predators that could have carried off the missing sheep. Out there in the middle of nowhere, he faced the fact his efforts might not be successful.
Likewise, the woman has an immense search ahead of her. She sweeps every corner of her house hoping this small coin holding the value of as much as a day’s wages would turn up. If it’s gone forever, so is a measure of her very life.
Still, the shepherd had ninety-nine other sheep and the woman had nine other coins. All was not lost. Why not just let it go? Except they wouldn’t accept losing anything. God doesn’t either.
Heaven’s Joy
Admit it. People like these stories because they have happy endings. The shepherd finds the sheep and carries it home on his shoulders where it’s not going to get a chance to run off again. The woman finds her lost coin. Both are so happy about retrieving what was lost they share the good news with friends and neighbors who rejoice with her. In other words, their friends are as happy for these seekers as if they were in the same place having lost and then found what was valuable and gone missing.
However, note one detail here. It makes so much sense that it’s easy to overlook. But God doesn’t. In order to find the coin, the woman lights a lamp. How else are you going to find something in a dark house? Light is necessary to the seeker and must illuminate and reach into dark places. To be found, that which is not clearly seen must be made visible.
Why Find the Lost?
Jesus’ stories, though simplistic enough to stand as cute children’s lessons, probe into those dark places. Do the math. One out of ninety-nine, or one out of ten equals one to ten percent. While it may look like the loss is relatively small, to the shepherd and the woman it is not. Like any loss you may ever feel, their losses resulted in an incompleteness. The flock was supposed to number one hundred; the dowry was made up of ten coins. Missing any of it made the whole only broken.
Actively searching restores that brokenness. The broken, those who are lost, now found bring completeness to the whole. Thus, “there is joy in heaven when even one sinner repents.”
Interestingly, in Jesus’ stories the sheep and the coin are mere passive details. The lost sheep does not express regret, and the lost coin doesn’t say, “I’m sorry.” Emphasis rather is in the rejoicing, and by extension, who rejoices with God. Repentance by the lost ones is in another story.
To be clear, there are those who know they are lost, and there are those who don’t know how lost they are. Lost ones know they can’t be restored on their own. The reversals in living and restoration as valued souls desired and loved by God has to happen by God finding them and taking them home.
But those who don’t know they’re lost, don’t/won’t see it that way. Return to “the company you keep.” Sure, Jesus ate with shady characters, those who didn’t stay in the sheepfold. How else would they ever know him if he didn’t introduce himself, meet them in the places where they lived?
Notice as well, these persons of questionable morals came back with him to his place, the hills and homes in which he taught and willingly received everyone. Effectively, Jesus brought them with him into his kind of fold. He gave to them a value that outweighed a small silver coin. So who is still missing?
Oh yeah, the ones who won’t sit in his kind of mixed company, who maintain strict boundaries in the sheepfold and keep those who are different separate. And so, God’s desire for wholeness stays broken.
The Trouble with Jesus is he tells stories that make God look desperately unsatisfied, always on the prowl for more, regardless of whether they’re lost or don’t know how lost they are. God’s joy in heaven and on earth will not be not complete until all of them are found.
Named 2024 Notable Book Award by Southern Christian Writers Conference!
The Trouble with Jesus: Considerations Before You Walk Away by Constance Hastings
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