Luke 15:1-10

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. ² But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered,

“This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

³ Then Jesus told them this parable: ⁴ “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? ⁵ And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders ⁶ and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ ⁷ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

When you lose something of great value, finding it brings great joy. What was the last thing you lost that left you devastated, like there was suddenly a hole inside that you could no longer fill? I often lose things now, regularly retracing my steps to find my keys or wallet. I do not know what corners of the dark web suck my essential emails from the inbox. And when I find these things, I do not rejoice, because I feel like I’m losing my mind. Some losses can’t be replaced, which is why we have such joy when the lost can be found.

As a child, I had two small turtles, Lancelot and Elaine, who lived in a plastic terrarium in my room. Turtles didn’t do much, but I liked watching them tuck into their shells and poke their heads out to see if they were safe. They had a ramp, like a handicap ramp, to go to their food, so it didn’t get wet. When I fed them, they would “race” (sort of) up the ramp to eat. I found it reassuring that such slow creatures survived as a species for millions of years. One day, Lancelot disappeared. My mother wondered if I had left him out and forgotten about him. I had seen turtles climb on top of each other to get a boost higher, so I thought we might find him. But after 24 hours of searching, I had lost hope. I felt terrible about losing my pet and was sad for Elaine, who was alone in her terrarium.

Another day later, my mother was dusting under the bed, and she noticed a dust ball, moving, not with the air flow, but inching along on its own power. Lancelot was found. When I came home, there was great rejoicing. The lost was found, and my little world felt together again. As with all three lost and found parables, the outcome is not only joy, but also restoration. One sheep restores the flock, one coin completes the precious necklace, one prodigal son restores the family.

Jesus had a reason for telling these parables. Religious leaders criticized him not only for eating with tax collectors and sinners, but he welcomed them. The original word means an eager welcome. Jesus responded, “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, because the sinners have much more fun.” (OK, that was Billy Joel in “Only the Good Die Young.) Jesus understood that when someone demonized him, it didn’t work to be defensive and criticize back. He told parables to help release the grip that ideology has on opinion. Parables create a different conversation about values.

Instead of saying, “We should welcome everyone, what’s the matter with you?” Jesus says, “Let’s talk about a shepherd who has lost his sheep.” No one wants to lose a sheep. Even one lamb out of a hundred cuts into your profit margins. But would you leave the 99 to search for the one? What if a predator attacks the flock while you are out searching? Is the risk to the whole worth the search for the one? Jesus gives a little commentary in verse 7:

I tell you that in the same way, there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

Jesus is telling us what God is like, that divine love searches for us when we go astray, even when it is risky. Jesus also gets crowd psychology. When you stand up for one marginalized person, the 99 sometimes don’t like it. We see that in the third parable of the prodigal son. His older brother was a good boy and stayed home, and he is angry when the father rejoices at the return of the lost brothers.

Jesus could have stopped with one parable, but he quickly tells about a woman who lost a coin. This parable repeats the diligent search for what is lost and the joy of finding it. What does finding one of ten silver coins add to Jesus’ message? Women often wore a headband made up of ten coins that was also their dowry. For a woman of modest means, this would be the most precious thing she owned. To lose one coin was not only losing the equivalent of a days’ labor. The headdress symbolized hope and security. The lost coin is part of set, that is more valuable when complete. It’s loss isn’t decreasing her wealth by 10 percent, it is breaking the set. When we alienate ourselves from others, the set is broken. Some people try to find belonging by creating an “us vs. them” world. Jesus says that isn’t real community, that is breaking what belongs together.

Since we celebrate the Seasons of Creation this month, I was thinking of these parables in terms of our relationship to the environment, and all living things on this earth. We are living through a great loss, a time of mass extinction. Entire species are vanishing, like sheep scattered from the flock. These parables remind us that what is lost is not disposable, but precious — worth searching for, worth restoring, worth rejoicing over when life is renewed.

The most hopeful story of environmental lost and found comes from our backyard. Marine biologist Rachel Carson lived on Southport Island. She played a crucial role in eliminating chemicals that were killing birds. Carson could have written an essay like, “The Dangers of DDT to the Egg Shells of Bald Eagles and Osprey.” Instead, she brilliantly titled her book Silent Spring. She asked readers to imagine this kind of morning:

Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song.” — Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

What Carson did was call us back to joy and wonder to remind us that we all belong to the cycle of life, and we are all diminished when species are lost. It made us think about the many times we sat outside listening to the morning birdsong, the glimpse of the eagle soaring past. Carson later wrote in her book, The Sense of Wonder:

There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.

The human soul needs the wonder of creation, not to mention air to breath, water to drink, soil to grow our food. The earth is the basis of our economy.

What we need to learn from Rachel Carson is that reminding us of joy and interconnections motivates people to act and restore things to our common good. While I am deeply distressed about climate change and the lack of current commitment to our environment, I’m hopeful because we did remarkable things in the past. A decade after Silent Spring, the Clean Air and Clean Water acts were passed, and the Environmental Protection Agency was created.



Now back to that little boy who lost his turtle. I had not read Rachel Carson in elementary school, but my mother had. I remember wearing a T-shirt that said, “DDT bugs me,” with a little hornet creature on it. I was looking online for a copy of the T-shirt, but instead I found a T-shirt created by a chemical company that said, “DDT is good for me!” It pictured happy cows and apples singing and dancing with a mom wearing an apron. The claim was that DDT made for better agricultural production. It helped me understand what Carson was up against by asking, “At what cost?”

While I wore that T-shirt, my dad was crop-dusting fields with pesticides. My daily bread came from that work. I grew up with cognitive dissonance. It reminds me that self-righteousness doesn’t change behavior. We are all caught in an economy that creates imbalance and destruction of the source of life, the nature around us. To unravel ourselves from this dilemma requires different thinking than how we got here. Creating environmental law and regulation took us part of the way and restored our environment, but it didn’t alter the economic forces that devalue the earth, nor change our relationships to the species around us. That will require more of us. We must find the energy and diligence to restore a hope for what is possible, and a community of joy that celebrates creation. Imagine this-what if we got it right?

Jesus’ parables end not in loss but in rejoicing. God does not give up — not on one sheep, one coin, one person, or one fragile piece of creation. When the lost is restored, heaven breaks into song. Paradise may be wounded, but it is not gone. By God’s grace, paradise can be found again. When we join God’s search, share in God’s restoration, and lift our voices in joy — all creation sings once more.