Lost and Found

As Jesus’ ministry and influence continue to grow, an increasingly clear and polarizing divide is established in the response to him. The tax collectors and so-called sinners are attracted while the religious establishment is agitated. Tax collectors in that day were universally despised by all Jews. They had exchanged their ethnic heritage for the right to collect taxes for the Roman Empire with their full backing and authority. As a result, synagogues would not accept their alms. Their testimony was not received in Jewish courts. The rabbis said a house would be unclean if a tax collector entered into it. This is why they are naturally lumped in with “sinners” - a term describing those whose sin is most blatant, flagrant, and undeniable.

However, these are the types that find Jesus so appealing and who he also closely associates with, much to the chagrin of the Pharisees. Was Jesus compromising by his connection to them? In response to the Pharisees’ grumbling, Jesus tells two parables describing what it means to be both lost and found. The illustration of a sheep shows that to be lost is to have wandered away without any hope of finding our way unless someone else rescues us. But in the case of both the shepherd and the woman searching for lost coin, joy is the result of finding that which was lost. In both parables, the finding and rejoicing are paralleled to the repentance of sinners. It may be unpalatable to fully realize our lostness as sinners, but that is the only way to know the joy of being found. Only the lost are found; only sinners can be saved.