Lost and Found

Read Luke 15.

"The Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered..." (15:2).

Have you ever been in Jesus' position, to have people muttering about you? It's a weird-sounding word, isn't it? Mutter. Say it slowly: mut-ter. It sounds like what is happening. It starts as a quiet whisper, maybe on the edges of the crowd. Then one person passes the complaint on to another, and then another, and soon the muttering spreads through the whole crowd. It left unchecked, it won't be long before everyone's upset and everyone's complaining. Muttering. It can be dangerous and destructive to community or to a mission.

The religious leaders are muttering about Jesus because he is hanging around with the wrong people. Sinners. Tax collectors. The ones no one likes. The kind of people that good, religious people don't associate with. And here's Jesus, seeming to welcome them, eat with them, care about them. To the religious leaders, these people are hopeless. They are not welcome at the table.

But to Jesus, they are lost sheep. They are a lost coin, a lost son. They are people that God has not forgotten. They are not hopeless. In fact, the parables seem to say that God will spare no expense to find the ones who are lost. In fact, God did spare no expense; he sent his only Son to find the lost and to give his life for theirs. Jesus says that when a lost one is found, the very angels in heaven rejoice. A lost one found causes a party in eternity.

The Pharisees and the teachers of the law would keep the "holy" people (them) separate from the "sinners and tax collectors." The two should not meet or the "holy" people will be corrupted—so goes the thinking. But if we don't rub elbows with the lost, we have no chance to reach them, to introduce them to the Savior who is looking for them, the Jesus who finds the lost. No matter what those who think they know better say, no matter the muttering that goes on, our model is Jesus, who would hang out with anyone who is lost so that they might be found.