Chapter fifteen of St. Luke’s Gospel gives us three parables that appear only in his Gospel. We hear two of them today. The third is the famous parable of the Prodigal. That parable is saved for use as a Lenten reading.
What is remarkable about these three parables is that they are preached to the Pharisees and scribes – not Jesus’ usual audience. It was the poor people who used to follow Jesus around waiting for him to tell them another story through which he would reveal who God is and was for these people, who God is for us.
The Pharisees and scribes were not able to listen to Jesus. They were too busy judging him to listen to the wisdom of his preaching. All they knew about Jesus was that he ate with sinners, with tax collectors and prostitutes. As I mentioned on Tuesday, in the days when Jesus walked this earth, you were known by the company you kept at table. Because Jesus ate with sinners, he was considered a sinner by the Pharisees and scribes.
St. Luke was the lone Gentile evangelist. These two parables which we hear today all speak to the issue of those who were outside the normal boundaries of good society. Shepherds were considered sinners because they lived out on the fields with their flocks and were unable to follow all the laws of ritual purity because of their occupation. The woman with ten coins is possibly a Bedouin bride who proclaimed her status as a married woman by wearing a headdress of ten coins on her forehead. The third parable, the story of the Prodigal, also speaks of someone who was considered a sinner because he kept company with prostitutes and was forced to tend swine. Yet all three of these people are held up as examples of the kind of people for whom God is searching.
St. Paul reminds us that he was the best of the Pharisees in the reading from the Letter to the Philippians. However, he has come to realize that all of his status as a Pharisee is nothing but rubbish when it is compared to knowing Jesus Christ’s presence in our lives. This is the only thing that is worthy of pursuit. All else is loss.
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator