The Ones Who Were Lost, and the Man on the Road

Wherever he went now, people came to hear him — and they were not the people anybody would have expected. Tax collectors came: men who collected money for the Romans from their own neighbors, and kept a little extra for themselves on the way, so that nobody in any town liked them. And all sorts of other people came too, people everybody called sinners. They kept drawing closer and closer so that they could hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes — the careful men, the ones who kept the rules and taught the law — grumbled. They said, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Sitting down to a meal with somebody was not a small thing there. You ate with your own people. If you shared a table with a man, you were saying out loud that he was all right with you — and he was eating with the wrong people, in front of everybody, day after day. So he told them a story — and then another one, and then a third. In every one of them, something gets lost.

He said, “Which man among you, if he had a hundred sheep and lost one of them, would not leave the ninety-nine out in the wild open country and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lifts it up and lays it across his shoulders, glad. And when he comes home, he calls his friends and his neighbors together and says to them, ‘Be glad with me — I have found my sheep, the one that was lost!’ I tell you, in the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who changes his mind than over ninety-nine right-living people who have no need to change their minds.” Ninety-nine sheep are still ninety-nine sheep. But he goes anyway, and he does not come home until he has it — and when he comes, he is carrying it.

And he said, “Or what woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one of them, does not light a lamp, and sweep the house, and hunt for it carefully until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls her friends and her neighbors together and says, ‘Be glad with me — I have found the coin that I lost!’ In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in front of the messengers of God over one sinner who changes his mind.” Each of those coins was a drachma, a little piece of silver worth about a day’s pay for a working man. And a house then had a floor of packed earth and hardly a window in it. A dropped coin could lie in the dark for a long time. So she lights her little lamp and gets out her broom and goes over every corner of the floor, and she does not stop until it is in her hand.

And then he told the longest one of all. “A man had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that is coming to me.’ So the father divided everything he had to live on between the two of them.” When a father died, his land and his animals and his money were shared out among his sons, and the oldest son got a double share; that was the law of Moses. So with two sons, the younger one’s share was a third of everything his father had. And he asked for it while his father was still alive. And Jesus said, “And not many days later the younger son gathered everything together and went away to a far country, a long way off; and there he scattered his money about, living wildly and recklessly. And when he had spent every last bit of it, a hard famine came over that whole country, and he began to go without. So he went and got himself taken on by one of the men who lived in that country, and the man sent him out into his fields to feed pigs. And he would have been glad to fill his stomach with the carob pods the pigs were eating — and nobody gave him anything.” Pigs. The people listening did not keep pigs; the law of Moses called them unclean, and everybody knew it. Carob pods were long, hard, brown pods that farmers fed to their animals. That is where the boy had ended up: far from home, out in somebody else’s field with somebody else’s pigs, wishing he could eat what they were eating.

And Jesus went on, “But he came to himself, and he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have more bread than they can eat — and here I am, dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and in front of you. I am not fit to be called your son any more. Make me like one of your hired men.’ And he got up, and he went to his own father. “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him — and his heart went out to him, and he ran. He ran to him and threw his arms around his neck and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in front of you; I am not fit to be called your son any more.’ “But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quick! Bring out the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and be glad — because this son of mine was dead, and he has come to life again; he was lost, and he has been found.’ And they began to be glad.” The best robe in the house, for a boy who had come home with nothing. A ring for his hand. Sandals for his feet. And the fattened calf — a calf kept back and fed up for a great day, with enough meat on it for a whole crowd of people. He had come home meaning to ask to be one of the hired men. He never asked it.

But Jesus was not finished. There were two sons in that house. “Now the older son was out in the field. And as he came in and got near the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servant boys over and asked what all this might be. And the boy said to him, ‘Your brother has come home, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has got him back safe and well.’ But he was angry, and he would not go in. So his father came out, and stood there pleading with him. “But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I have slaved for you, and I have never once disobeyed an order of yours. And you never gave me so much as a young goat, so that I could have a party with my friends. But when this son of yours came home — the one who has eaten up your money out there on a wild life — for him you killed the fattened calf!’ And the father said to him, ‘Child, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad — because this brother of yours was dead, and he has come to life; he was lost, and he has been found.’” The father ran to the son who had come back, and he came out of the house to the son who would not come in. And there Jesus stopped. He never said whether the older brother went in to the party or stayed outside. The last words were the father’s, outside the house, pleading with his older son.

On another day there was another question, and this one came from a lawyer — a man whose whole work was studying the law of Moses. He stood up to put Jesus to the test, and said, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit everlasting life?” And Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” And the man answered, “You are to love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole strength, and with your whole mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” The first part of that came from the law of Moses, and people said those words every morning and every evening. And the second part came from the law of Moses too: love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus said, “You have answered rightly. Do that, and you will live.” But the man wanted to set himself right, and come out of it looking right, so he asked one more question: “And who is my neighbor?”

And Jesus took it up and said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers. They stripped his clothes off him and beat him, and went away and left him lying there half dead. And it just so happened that a priest was going down that same road; and when he saw him, he went past on the other side. And a Levite did the same. He came to the place, and saw him, and went past on the other side.” That road was a real road. It runs from Jerusalem down to Jericho, about seventeen miles, and it goes downhill nearly the whole way — more than half a mile down from the top to the bottom — through empty, rocky country. And a priest served at the temple in Jerusalem, and a Levite worked there beside him; they were the holy men; and they both walked on. And Jesus said, “But a Samaritan who was on a journey came to where the man was; and when he saw him, his heart went out to him. And he went over to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. And he put him up on his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and looked after him there. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Look after him. And whatever more you spend on him, I will pay you back when I come back this way.’” Wine to wash the cuts clean, and oil to soothe them: that was how people looked after a wound then. And a denarius was a day’s pay for a working man, so he left two days’ pay behind him — and promised more. Samaritans and Jews had not got on for hundreds of years. They lived next door to each other and kept apart, and each of them thought the other had God wrong. Out of everybody who could have come down that road, that is the man Jesus put in the story. And then Jesus asked the lawyer a question back. “Which of these three seems to you to have become a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” And the lawyer said, “The one who dealt with him in mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “Go, and you do the same.”