The unity that lives behind our broken vision
Lent 4C | Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Jesus tells this incredible parable in response to the Pharisees who scoff at his choice of dining companions. Ritual purity prevents the devout from dining with tax collectors and sinners, yes, but so does custom and expectation. They seem to be saying that Jesus is hanging with the wrong kind of people. And to this, Jesus tells three parables of loss and finding: a sheep, a coin, and a son. I think most of us have little trouble recognizing these teachings suggesting that Jesus’s focus ought to be on the people in need of redeeming — because the redeemed are fine.
But it is in this third parable, that we feel the emotional energy of what that means. What it means to love those people others would exclude. To make that his mission over maintaining the comfort of the comfortable.
This parable plays with our understanding of inside and outside. Inside the family circle and outside it. In and out. A binary either/or. And both sons utilize this thinking. They mind who is in and who is out — including themselves. And notice the father never does. With him, there is only us. …
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