Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost; 11 September 2022; Proper 19C (RCL); Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; Psalm 14; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10.
Although we are reading Track 1, and the OT lesson and Psalm are not chosen relate to the Gospel reading, I do find an interesting progression in the readings for this Sunday. Jeremiah starts out bleak, with almost no hope of restoration — the whole land will be laid waste because of the sins of the people. Psalm 14 holds out just a tiny bit more hope (when the Lord restores the fortunes of God’s people). In the reading from 1 Timothy, the author acknowledges God’s forgiveness of grave sin, and in the Gospel reading, there is rejoicing over the restoration of even one.
Jeremiah, of course, is writing near the end of Jerusalem’s independent existence, and sees the looming catastrophe of Babylon’s advance. The verses we leave out are even bleaker than the ones we read — and all of this because of the transgressions and apostasies of God’s people. The one little glimmer of hope in Jeremiah is the phrase, “yet I will not make a full end.” There seems to be little possibility of repentance and restoration.
The author of 1 Timothy is likely not Paul, though someone in the Pauline school, writing as if he (almost certainly he) was Paul, to Timothy, a known associate of Paul. The author, knowing how Paul often referred to himself as a sinner and persecutor of the Church, uses that knowledge to show that God can forgive even so great a sinner as Paul, making of Paul an example of those who repent and come to Jesus for a share in eternal life.
But I find the progression of the story in the parables even more fascinating. Luke uses the complaint of the scribes and Pharisees that Jesus entertains tax collectors and sinners as a set up for a set of three parables (the parable of the prodigal son will follow the two we hear this Sunday — the lectionary skips it). All three stories are improbable at some level, and each pointed differently.
The parable of the lost sheep, as Luke uses it, is in fact an allegory. Any number of times in the Old Testament, the king is likened to a shepherd. God took David from following the sheep to make him king. In Ezekiel, the kings are compared to bad shepherds who eat up the flock, so God takes over the shepherding of the people directly (notice there is no king in the restored Jerusalem).
So, in the parable, the flock of 100 sheep is, to my mind at least, allegorical for Israel. The shepherd is either God, or the new king. But what makes the story improbable is that a shepherd would not be likely to leave 99 sheep alone in the wilderness where they might be liable to wander off, or be attacked by some predator, to go looking for one. In John’s Gospel, Jesus compares the Pharisees to the false shepherd, who climb over the wall of the sheepfold to steal the sheep (the bad kings of Ezekiel). In this instance, God is much more interested in bringing the marginal back into the flock than in the flock itself. The parable will stand on its own without Luke’s interpretative sentence about rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents.
The parable of the woman and her coin is not so easy to read allegorically, and it has a woman as the primary character. The woman has ten drachmae, a tiny sum of money (her dowry?). Whereas the parable of the lost sheep can be read in the tradition of Israel as God’s flock (remember, Jesus says to the Syrophoencian woman, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”), this parable is much more homey. What strikes me is the woman’s care for something so seemingly insignificant. If Luke intends us to read this parable allegorically (which seems likely, given his concluding remark about rejoicing among the angels in heaven over a sinner who repents), then God, as a woman, rejoices over the least among us who return.
The progression then runs from a lost sheep of the house of Israel to a drachma (less specifically indentifiable as an Israelite) to the story of the Prodigal Son. In that instance, I believe Luke is alluding to Chapters 1 & 2 of Paul’s letter to the Romans, which describes the Gentiles’ squandering of the knowledge of God given in creation. The elder son, in this case, is Israel, who has been with God all along, and done all that God has asked. The question left unresolved is whether the elder son will join the party or not. But now, we are no longer rescuing the lost sheep of the house of Israel, but Gentiles, too (the music the elder son hears on coming in from the field is symphonies and choruses — the music that accompanied Greek comedies and tragedies — in other words, the music of Greek worship of the gods).
We progress from God’s judgment against God’s people to the Profligate Father, who throws a party for everyone who returns. That’s a pretty astonishing shift in theological understanding.