You Belong Here
You Belong Here
Luke 15:1-10
Series: Belonging-Part 2
August 31, 2025
Rev. Cynthia Cochran-Carney, First Presbyterian Church, San Rafael, CA
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus, men and women of doubtful reputation. The Pharisees and religion scholars were not pleased, not at all pleased. They growled, "He takes in sinners and eats meals with them, treating them like old friends." Their grumbling triggered this story."Suppose one of you had a hundred sheep and lost one. Wouldn't you leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the lost one until you found it? When found, you can be sure you would put it across your shoulders, rejoicing, and when you got home call in your friends and neighbors, saying, 'Celebrate with me! I've found my lost sheep!' Count on it - there's more joy in heaven over one sinner's rescued life than over ninety-nine good people in no need of rescue. "Or imagine a woman who has ten coins and loses one. Won't she light a lamp and scour the house, looking in every nook and cranny until she finds it? And when she finds it you can be sure she'll call her friends and neighbors: 'Celebrate with me! I found my lost coin!' Count on it - that's the kind of party God's angels throw every time one lost soul turns to God." Luke 15:1-10 The Message
Losing Things and Being Lost – How many times a day do we lose things? Keys or glasses or water bottle or phone or the list I just made or phone? Very human experience.
Also the experience of being lost
One experience we had of being lost was when our family went to Scotland. Our boys were about ages 13 and 17. We were on the island of Iona, which is not a very large island. We want to hike to Columba’s Bay. They gave us basic directions and told us it was a little tricky to find. We walked and hiked and never found the bay. We were lost. We ended wandering in bogs. Our shoes were soaking wet. But it was a sunny day in a beautiful place. Our sons said it was one of the best days of the trip. Sometimes being lost and wandering can be positive.
Being lost in a place that is unfamiliar can be stressful. What if we are driving and the GPS signal is suddenly gone. Now we are lost.
Looking for someone – finding someone who is lost - Child at a department store or Disneyland
When the lost is found there is relief, gratitude, joy.
Our parables today is part of a set of 3. Lost sheep, lost coin, lost son (Parable of Prodigal Son)
Sinners and Tax Collectors
Jesus has both tax-collectors and sinners coming to hear his teaching and preaching.
Tax collectors – so many taxes collected by the Romans. And the collectors added some extra for themselves. Religious leaders labeled them as outsiders. This professions was not acceptable. And yet Jesus had talked with them, had eaten with them. Eating with someone gave them honor.
Sinners – could be the whole range of thieves, etc. Wrong behavior against the religious laws. But in Luke sinners often defined as the wealthy who do not help the poor. Sinners of all types came to hear Jesus. Jesus embraces the very people the rest of religious society rejects.
Pharisees and scribes
Pharisees and scribes, revered religious leaders. Keeping the law, the Torah. What is holy. They disapproved of Jesus – his actions and particularly his guest list for dining.
They could not accept that he ate with sinners and tax collectors. So the text says they were grumbling, complaining.
With whom do you identify in the text? The parables are addressed to the grumbling Pharisees. We might identify with the Pharisees because we know we have our own biases. Or we might identify with the sinners and tax collectors. Feeling that we are not acceptable to religious authorities or others. Another possibility exists, however, and that is the sheep and the coin. We are the lost ones. We are the ones the Holy One is searching for. Of course, it is worth considering that the grumblers are also the ones who are lost.
And what about the shepherd and woman in her home? I like Amy-Jill Levine's description of the searching shepherd in the first parable: "The parable presents a main figure - the owner, not the sheep - who realizes he has lost something of value to him. He notices the single missing sheep among the ninety-nine in the wilderness. For him, the missing sheep, whether it is one of a hundred or a million, makes the flock incomplete. He engages in an exaggerated search, and when he has found the sheep, he engages in an equally exaggerated sense of rejoicing, first by himself, and then with his friends and neighbors." (Short Stories by Jesus, p. 41)
So this is really the parable of the frantic shepherd. It is about the main figure - the shepherd and not sheep. Action verbs predominate for the shepherd, and not the sheep: leave, go after, finds, lays it on his shoulders, rejoices, comes home, and calls together his friends.
Lost Coin
The same holds for the woman: light a lamp, sweep the house, search carefully, finds, and calls together her friends. God is like a woman who searches for a lost coin. Sweeping, looking, The Parable of the Frantic Homemaker.
But I think there is more going on here.
A friend told me about a conversation she had with a college student who had never attended church and heard these stories for the first time. She said he blew the parable of the lost sheep wide open for me. “I had never heard this story before,” he told a friend of mine in campus ministry, “but I guess I think of it as the parable of the incomplete community.”
Maybe this is a story about God’s relentless love creating a community of belonging and authenticity. It’s about the ways in which we exile one another or exile ourselves. It’s about separation and, more importantly, it’s about grace.
There are many ways religious authorities have created systems of pure and impure, insiders and outsiders, a hierarchy of who is acceptable to God and who is not, who belongs, who welcome at this table or any table. But Jesus, the Christ, changes that.
As we read who Jesus talks with and eats with and welcomes, we continue to see that this is how the kin-dom of God is. The true deeper eternal wisdom and belonging I talked about last week. Jesus is restoring, bringing wholeness, seeing incomplete community and making it complete.
If this is true and the Church is supposed to be a ‘come as you are’ gathering, we realize that for any number of reasons, our experience may be that we and others can’t really come as we are. Over time we all learn how to continually read the room to determine the exact parameters of our personal mess that we can reveal without alienating ourselves in the church, at church. My prayer is that this is not true. That here and the church at its best, we can be authentic and know we belong.
The good news is that God offers us a deep sense of belonging. The good news is that we’re all welcome at the table because Jesus invites us.
That’s why this story from Luke’s gospel speaks so powerfully to me. Moving from separation to community, and then from community to celebration, it compels us to consider how we all need God’s healing to remove barriers that keep us from envisioning the ever-expanding table of the feast we practice for whenever we celebrate communion. This is true for ourselves. And we envision a bigger table to includes all people.
Joy -- These parables are about joy. We understandably focus on issues of being lost, of being found, of the Pharisees and scribes displeasure. But what we often miss is the common denominator of both these stories is joy. “there will be more joy in heaven….” Rejoicing.
Today, as we go from the sanctuary to lunch in Canoles —remember this communion table, remember Jesus’ calling previously separated groups to crowd together around the dinner table, and anticipate the heavenly banquet table, where all will be celebration and abundance.
Friends, whatever your stories, trust that you have worth, and you belong here at this table. And we gather each week to imagine and live into making a bigger table of welcome.
As our gospel stories has reminded us, we are known and beloved by a God who seeks us out…
to bring us into community,
transform us by God’s grace,
send us out to help God transform the world.
Individually, we are invited.
Collectively, we are called.
And it’s not a party until all the lost are gathered in God’s love! Amen.
Resources
John Pavlovitz, A Bigger Table: Building Messy, Authentic, and Hopeful Spiritual Community. Westminster John Knox Press, 2017. Pages 57-64
Rev. Dorothy Piatt-Esguerra, “You Belong Here,” Central Presbyterian Church, Denver 6.1.25
https://centraldenver.com/blog/you-belong-here/