Offered to the United Presbyterian Church of Alpha, NJ
October 25, 2026, Mel Prestamo [Ruling Elder, PCUSA]
These three parables from Luke 15 can be called the greatest story ever told within the Greatest Story ever told. The Bible Scholar William Barclay has referred to Luke 15 as “the Gospel within the Gospel.” The three parables preserved for us by Luke provide a wealth of meaning, richness, and insight into how Jesus knows God, the Father. And that is what we want to discover today and next Sunday.
Some of the key religious leaders of Jesus’ time disapproved of the kinds of people that Jesus attracted and then as a Rabbi would sit to teach and then even eat with. They passed judgment that these sinners [these people of the Land as they were referred to] were unworthy of the inheritance promised to the righteous People of the Law made through God’s covenants. But Jesus gives us God’s perspective. Jesus wants us to learn more about who God is and how God views us, as sinners. In Luke 15, we get to see all this through Jesus’ eyes.
Jesus displays to us a God who is steadfast in the covenant promise and is ever faithful. Jesus’ God is unwilling to allow Creation to wander without the promise and hope of reconciliation and does not give up on it. True to God’s promise, God seeks out the lost and broken until God finds and offers healing to them. Then God is joyous [to an extravagant extent] in celebrating over the healing of the brokenness of even one sinner. (Luke 15:8)
Jesus wants to open our eyes to this Truth about God. Without the benefit of Jesus’ vantage point of what he knows about God, the God depicted in Hebrew Scripture can at times be distorted. Distorted because that god was often depicted in the image of man rather than the God Jesus knew being the Creator and humankind the reflection.
Through these parables in Luke 15, Jesus is giving us a glimpse into who God is and with each glimpse Jesus reveals a more expansive vision of God. At the same time, he reveals to us what and who we are called to be. These parables are meant to show the crowd surrounding him, especially Israel’s religious leaders, how their own life choices and Israel’s own bad decisions as a nation had separated them from a right relationship with God leading to their failure to fulfill their role as God’s Chosen People. And to be clear, Israel’s role as God’s Chosen People was to share God’s message of Shalom and reconciliation with all of humankind.
Before we begin to read these parables, it is important for us to be aware of who Jesus is teaching these stories to. While Jesus is seated teaching the sinners and tax collectors, there are also religious leaders who are described by Luke as grumbling in disapproval. “This man is friendly with sinners. He even eats with them.”
It is important to understand that comment. Strict observers of the Law would never sit down to “eat” with people they considered to be sinners, these People of the Land.
Jesus is aware of the presence of these religious leaders. He is aware of their disapproval. But rather than moving away to avoid their condemnation, Jesus turns to confront them. He offers them the first of three parable stories.
Now pay attention as Jesus tells these three parables. He reveals to us the many ways we can become lost. He uncovers how our everyday decisions can lead us to separate ourselves from the love of God.
Jesus begins with the parable of the Lost Sheep.
Now the thing about sheep is they can get themselves into some hilarious predicaments. During a trip to Scotland, my wife and I spotted a group of sheep on a grassy mound. They were offshore feeding on this lush area that had been exposed by a low tide. But by the time we arrived they were being surrounded by a rising tide. In their search for food, they had wandered onto this lush spot offshore. They had their heads down as sheep will do following their noses to food. However now, what was once a lush feeding area exposed by the low tide was being quickly washed over. The rising tide had started to come back in and oblivious to it all these sheep were now trapped, completely surrounded with no escape back to dry ground.
It was actually quite comical. But it provides a real-life picture of what Jesus was describing in this story. Sheep wander off with their heads down, nibbling here or there just following their noses and they don’t realize where they have wandered off until suddenly, they are in need to be rescued.
Sometimes, that is how we can get lost. We can lose sight of where we are going in life. We lose sight of whose we are. Sometimes, we put our noses to the grindstone, and we go plodding through our nine to five jobs never looking up to see where we have wandered off to.
More importantly, we lose sight of whose we are. We get overcome by necessity and we allow our work to become the most important thing in our lives. We forget that we are a beloved of God. Suddenly, we find ourselves lost in unfamiliar surroundings. It might be a business career, or a relationship which distracts us from who we should be; or one that sends us spiraling off in a destructive direction. Regardless, we have lost sight of whose we are. And because of that, we lose sight of where we are going, and we find ourselves in perilous surroundings lost, alone and in need of being rescued.
This parable points out that this is one of the ways we become lost. Sometimes we just go astray. We put our heads down, and follow our hunger looking for fulfillment, trying to satisfy ourselves with what this world can provide us. And when we cannot find fulfillment in the things of this world we are lost and in need of rescue.
In the parable, Jesus tells us the Shepherd [who represents God] searches diligently for the lost sheep and when he finds it, he hoists it upon his shoulders and rejoices. Upon returning home, the shepherd calls his friends and neighbors to come and celebrate with him in his joy for he has found the lost sheep.
Now joy is a special word. It doesn’t simply mean that God is happy. Joy expresses an over-the-top, extravagant, and lavish display of love. This is how God celebrates when the brokenness of a sinner has been healed.
Now, let’s look at the story of the Woman and the Lost Coin.
In Jesus’ parable, he paints the picture of the young woman franticly searching for a lost coin. She sweeps. She crawls on her hands and knees searching for the coin. What is described here is another way we can become lost. Sometimes we just fall through the cracks of life.
Now picture the portrait that Jesus is painting of God. Picture God down on God’s hands and knees searching franticly or us when we become lost. That is an awesome image. Imagine God, the creator of the Cosmos, down on all fours searching for your lost soul. That is the enormity of your value to God. When you read Luke 15 keep that image in your mind. You are that valuable to God.
If we look at us as the lost coin in this parable, we have a depiction of how we become lost through no fault of our own.
I have a friend who as a young man growing up had a father who was the center of his life. His father was his rock. During his first year at college, his father passed away suddenly. The shock of his passing sent the young fellow into a tailspin that caused him to fall to the floor lost in the cracks of life. He spent the next several years of his life wandering aimlessly. It wasn’t until [in his married life] when he and his wife had begun to struggle and sought counseling that he was found again by God. He was lost through no fault of his own. He simply got lost. But God did not give up on him. God got down on all fours and searched until he was found. God returned him to a faith community in which he could be nurtured and grow in his faith.
William Barclay remarks that a Jewish scholar once admitted that this was a completely new teaching about God – that God would actually search for us. The religious leaders listening to Jesus’ parables that day could not conceive of a God that would do that. The religious leaders, whose lives were dedicated to observing the law, were blinded by that law. They could not see or experience God’s joy over the return of these lost sinners listening to Jesus and their worth to God. This was a painful and almost tearful irony.
At the conclusion of this parable Jesus provides another glimpse of God’s joy when a sinner is found. I like to imagine God in raucous celebration when my friend was found.
As we go deeper into Luke 15, we will see Jesus unveiling to the religious leaders that they had gotten it wrong. They misunderstood their God and what they were chosen for. In Jesus’ eyes, Israel was chosen to share the good news of God’s promise of salvation with all of humankind. They were not meant to withhold it for themselves, confining it tightly within a closed community.
There is also in these first two parables a framing of how Jesus thinks and feels about lost sinners. For him it is personal. He depicts the shepherd as personally going out and searching for the lost sheep. He did not send an underling. He describes the woman as personally getting down onto the floor to sweep and hunt for the lost coin. She did not call for a servant to search for it. To Jesus, we are that important. God and he are not so far distant or too far removed that they do not see or notice individual sinners. We are not to be lost swallowed up in the cosmos. His love for us is personal.
This is the God that Jesus is trying to reveal – not only to the sinners surrounding him but more specifically to the religious leaders of Israel.
Jesus wants us to know the Father that loves us deeply and cares for our safety. When we get lost, God will search for us. Jesus tells us that the God of the universe will crawl around on hands and knees until we are found.
This is the God that Jesus wanted them and wants us to know.
Now let’s begin to take a look at the third parable. In it we will see a completely different view of the Father God Jesus wants us to know.
But initially, let’s look at the additional ways that Jesus teaches us we can get lost.
In it we will see how we can choose to turn and walk away from the Father. That is the choice the younger son makes. And it exposes how we can knowingly make the choice to replace our right relationship with the Father with the material things of this world. When we become lost by choice. When we decide to turn our backs on God and walk away. Because God has given us free will, we can choose to reject God’s love. This is a different way of becoming lost from wandering off or falling through the cracks.
Concerning this parable, the key word used to describe it is “prodigal.” Prodigal can be either an adjective or a verb. As an adjective it is defined as sumptuously rich, elaborate or luxurious. As a verb it is defined as when an individual or community is generously extravagant in how they treat the other. The Elder brother in the story characterizes his younger sibling as having squandered or devoured the father’s property and for millennium the word prodigal has been assigned to the younger son. However, I looked through multiple Bible versions, and I could only find one that calls this story by that name. That’s the NRSVUE. It calls it “The Parable of the Prodigal and the His Brother.” But really, the title doesn’t work. Jesus never uses the phrase, and Luke never gives this parable a title referring to the younger son as prodigal. And assigning that name has probably hampered our understanding of it for millennia. Some Bible versions give this passage the title of the Lost Son. Bible scholar William Barclay calls it the Parable of the Loving Father. These, I think, are better names for it.
We will see next week that the word, Prodigal – when we use it – more aptly applies to the Loving Father. And that is the cliff hanger that I will leave you with until next week.
