A TLANTA FALCONS WIDE RECEIVER and former Foley Lion Julio Jones lost an earring during a jet-skiing excursion on Lake Lanier in northern Georgia. He was tossed from his watercraft after hitting a boat wake. So he did what any normal person who wears $100,000 earrings would do: He hired a team of divers to try to find the lost diamond.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work. The team led by a diver named Bobby “Scubaman” Griffin scoured the lake floor 65 feet below the surface hoping that the diamond would glint in the light. They came up empty.
How much time and effort does a person spend on recovering a $100,000 diamond earring?
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WHEN LISA AND I WERE in Thessaloniki, Greece a few years ago, I lost a hearing aid. It was cold weather and I was wearing one of those stocking caps — we called them toboggans when I was growing up. When I moved north I was told a toboggan was some kind of snow sled.
Anyway, I guess the hearing aid got caught in the stocking cap and fell out somewhere. I didn’t notice until I was in the lobby of the hotel. This was 10:00 at night. Lisa and I got a flashlight and rewalked the mile hike from the hotel to the local coffee shop named Starbucks, hoping the hearing aid would glint in the light. Didn’t work. By the time we arrived at Starbucks, the place was closed. We hunted around outside with the help of some local youth who were glad to practice their cryptic English. How much time and effort does a person spend on recovering a $2,500 hearing aid in the middle of the night in a foreign city?
You’ve been in a situation where you have to do a cost-benefit analysis of a lost item versus the time involved in an attempted recovery. Maybe it’s a bill you don’t owe. How many hours do you wait on hold or get tossed from one representative to another before you decide it’s not worth pursuing? Or how long do you spend searching for your wallet before you decide to stop, hoping that it will “show up” sooner or later?
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JESUS TELLS THESE TWO STORIES in response to the religious folks grumbling that Jesus welcomes and eats with tax collectors and sinners. Now eating is more than sitting at the same table. To eat with is to spend time, conversation, sharing life. It is the gift of time, community, fellowship. It is a relationship. Eating with sinners means taking sides.
Jesus tells two short parables of God’s searching. They are similar in structure.
● The first: A shepherd has 100 sheep. He loses one. The shepherd leaves the 99 sheep to fend for themselves in the wilderness to go search for the one missing.
Shepherds, in Jesus’ time, had acquired a bad reputation as shiftless, thieving, trespassing hirelings. Shepherds worked in a despised trade, according to rabbis. They were in the same category as camel drivers, sailors, gamblers, and tax collectors. Quite an unsavory lot.
● The second: A woman has 10 coins. She loses one. The woman lights a lamp, sweeps the floor, and searches carefully until she finds it. Women, as we know, were not highly regarded in Bible times. Ten coins worth about two weeks’ pay. Not chump change but also not wealth.
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GOD IS LIKE A SHEPHERD who searches. God is like a woman who searches. Neither is regarded in culture or society as people of value, yet Jesus uses those images to portray God. Jesus doesn’t hesitate to equate God with people viewed as outside God’s love and grace.
Both stories end the same. The shepherd finds the lost sheep and calls his friends and neighbors to rejoice. The woman finds the lost coin and throws a party. God finds the lost tax collector and the heavens rejoice.
It doesn’t make sense. Why doesn’t God use a cost-benefit analysis on searching and finding? Who in their right mind would leave 99 sheep in the wilderness to hunt for one? Who would take that risk? What if you lose the 99 while searching for the one? The woman finds her coin but then spends it, perhaps even more, on throwing a party to celebrate. Yay, I found my $10 now I’m going to spend $20 to celebrate!
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HERE LIES THE CUTTING EDGE of the passage: Jesus embraces the very people the rest of religious society rejects.
Jesus searches relentlessly, uncompromisingly, without ceasing. Searches and searches. For the lost sheep, the lost coin, the down-and-out, the confused, the lost, the frustrated, the hurting, the unwelcomed, the strays, the folks you and I easily write off. The prisoner. The immigrant. The homeless. The purple-haired, nose-ring-wearing girl at school. Who would search for them? Jesus searches and searched until Jesus finds them.
Jesus shares a meal with people we cast off as unworthy. Jesus welcomes people we ignore. Jesus walks with people we shame. Society names its losers, and the church’s task is to take sides with the underdogs.
— Keith Cardwell
