onthly MeditationMeditation for March 2010
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Judith reads:
The meditation for the month of March 2010 is on the Parable of the Lost Coin. This is the tenth parable of Jesus unique to the Gospel of St. Luke.
Suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and sweep the entire house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it she will call in her friends and neighbours and say, “Rejoice with me because I have found my lost coin.” In the same way, there is joy in the presence of God’s angels when even one sinner repents. Luke 15: 8 - 10 (New Living Translation).
How many times, I wonder, have I misplaced something and have searched all over the house, perhaps even outside in the garden or in the car for it, and still it remains lost? I was sure that I had put the lost item in a particular place, (isn’t that where I always put it?), and yet, when I go to retrieve it from its usual place, it is not there. The sense of frenzy that I have in such a situation escalates the longer the lost object remains hidden from my sight.
This, I imagine, is the sort of feeling the woman in the parable was experiencing. She had nine of the coins safely in her possession; why was the tenth coin not with them? What could she have done with it? She searched everywhere and, finally, was rewarded with the revelation of its hiding place. She was so excited and relieved at its retrieval that she rushed out to share her good news with all her friends and neighbours.
The Pharisees took offence at Jesus who claimed to have come down from God and yet took time to be with sinners—to talk and eat with them. The Pharisees thought that someone who claimed to be holy should not associate with irreligious or sinful people, as if the association with them would take away Christ’s holiness or show his lack of holiness. Jesus told this parable to show the Pharisees that there was no need for him to seek out those who were already safe—it was the ones who were lost who needed to be found.
Many of the parables that Jesus told were directed at the religious leaders for, though they knew the law and the prophets very well and could work their way through any religious argument that was presented to them, they had difficulty in understanding the ordinary people. Through the once-upon-a-time stories that Jesus told them, the eyes and hearts of the Pharisees would perhaps be opened and they could come to understand the difficulties of the average, everyday person.
Jesus was not trying to offend the Pharisees by fraternizing with sinners; he was trying to show the tax collectors and others who had been labelled as sinners that God loved them and wanted to bring them into a relationship with him. They were the ones who needed his attention—it was for these very people that Jesus had come into the world. He was sent into the world by the Father to save those who were lost and bring them to God’s love.
Sometimes, people who think of themselves as religious, those who attend church, sing in the choir, or are part of the church hierarchy, see themselves at the centre of God’s world. They may begin to think of others who are not religious in the attending-church kind of way, as beneath them or perhaps beneath God’s love. Jesus came to show God’s concern and love for all humans and in this Parable of the Lost Coin he shows that God is overjoyed when one lost soul is found—when one sinner repents.
© Judith Lawrence March 2010
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