Lost Sheep, Lost Coin, Lost Son

The Parables

So he told them this parable: "Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance."

Luke 15:3-7

"Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

Luke 15:8-10

Then Jesus said, "There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.' So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but 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 before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands."' So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his slaves, 'Quickly, bring out a robe — the best one — and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!' And they began to celebrate.

"Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, 'Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.' Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, 'Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!' Then the father said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.' "

Luke 15:11-32

Chapter Summary

As told in the Gospel of Luke, these three parables (most often called the parable of the Lost Sheep, the parable of the Lost Coin, and the parable of the Prodigal Son) are about human repentance and God's forgiveness. However, this interpretation turns the parables into allegories, and this clearly isn't how a first-century audience would have heard them. The Prodigal Son might have repentance on his mind, but it's hard to imagine a sheep or coin with the ability to repent. In Amy-Jill Levine's estimation, the younger brother in the third parable isn't motivated by repentance, either.

Parables should not need outside answer keys to help us interpret them. In a first-century context, the stories have to have some meaning that the people could understand. More, if Jesus wanted to talk about repenting, he could easily do so without using a parable. As he states, quite directly, "Repent, and believe in the good news" (Mark 1:15).

What if we reconsidered the titles of the first two parables? "The Shepherd Who Lost His Sheep" and "The Woman Who Lost Her Coin" move the emphasis to the one doing the losing, and might capture something closer to what the parables originally meant. Here we already know that, at least on a first reading, neither the sheep owner nor the woman represents God, because God does not lose us.

Next, moving that same emphasis to the last parable yields, "The Father Who Lost His Son(s)." Might the father have been partly responsible for what happened? We tend to focus on the Prodigal, but since the parable begins, "There was a man who had two sons," we should also pay attention both to the father and to the older brother.

Across history, these parables have had various titles revealing various interests among interpreters. Among these have been "The Prodigal and the Prudent" (St. Jerome [347–420]), "The Clever Son" (Lebanese Christians), and Levine's own contribution (on more cynical days), "The Absent Mother." Titles matter.

As we read in the Introduction, parables are not allegories. Remember that allegories are texts that require decoder rings to understand, where each element symbolically represents something else. An allegory would be the beloved Narnia books by C. S. Lewis; those who have the answer key know that Aslan the lion represents Jesus. Another famous allegory is George Orwell's Animal Farm, which on the surface is a book about farm animals, pigs and horses and sheep, but which, for those who have the answer key, is really a cautionary tale about Russian communism.

Closer to Jesus's own time period are the allegories known as "Aesop's Fables." For example, Aesop's story of the Tortoise and the Hare has both a surface meaning and a deeper meaning. This story is about a hare and a tortoise engaging in a footrace: surprisingly, the slower tortoise unexpectedly beats the usually fast rabbit. In this story, the hare represents people who have natural talents, such as being able to run fast, but either waste them or rely only on what comes naturally to them rather than on working hard. The tortoise represents those who work hard and diligently, and who succeed even if they were not born with certain talents or abilities. The race represents life itself. Thus, the story tells us that we must work hard and persevere, like the tortoise, and we should not rely only on the talents that come naturally to us. In this story, the decoder ring would reveal, the tortoise equals hard-working people, the hare equals lazy individuals, and the race equals life.

But Jesus's teachings are not simplistic allegories like Aesop's fables or Animal Farm. Nor are they extremely complex allegories like the Narnia tales. They are short stories designed less to teach us something new than to remind us of those Kingdom values that we have buried deep down, that we'd rather not let up to the surface. Jesus tells us that "the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life ..." (Matthew 7:14). The parables help us go through the gate and stay on the path by challenging us.

An allegorical interpretation of the parable of the Lost Sheep might cast the sheep as a believer who wandered away from the flock and the shepherd as Jesus doing everything to bring the lost sheep back to safety. The ones who are celebrating at the end represent the rejoicing church. This is certainly a good message, but it lacks the challenge that Levine sees in parables. It also requires us to turn the man who has a hundred sheep (that is, a fairly wealthy man) into a shepherd. Jesus can certainly use the term "shepherd" when he wants to, so we should pay attention to the words he does use. Likewise, readings of the parable of the Lost Son that turn the father into God, the prodigal into a repenting Christian, and the brother out in the fields into a Jew (or, even worse, a "Pharisee," which is never a compliment) bring on anti-Jewish readings, mask the challenge, and disregard how Jesus's own audience would have heard the parable in their context. Parables, like these three, are best interpreted not as allegories but as straightforward stories meant to challenge or provoke. Sometimes a story is just a story. And that story can be amazingly profound and challenging.

The Parable of the Lost Sheep

Most traditional interpretations hold that the lost sheep is a believer who has wandered away from the flock, the one searching is Jesus or a representative of Jesus, and the friends who feast at the end are the church. Such allegorical readings miss the challenge of the parable. They are not "wrong" per se, but they do not appreciate fully the genius of Jesus's teaching.

We are first introduced to the idea of the parable as an allegory by Luke, the evangelist who relates this story. He writes, "Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance" (15:7). Here, the lost sheep represents "one sinner who repents," and the flock stands in for "ninety-nine righteous." However, the parable suggests no behavior difference among the lost sheep and the ninety-nine remaining in the flock. The allegory doesn't match the parable. There was no sin. There was no repentance. And anyway, how can a sheep either sin or repent? The sheep were presumably just standing there, bleating. Except for the lost-then-found one, who might have been annoyed to find himself hoisted on the man's shoulders. Sheep can be very large, and carrying a sheep on one's shoulders wouldn't have been easy — or comfortable — for either the sheep owner or the sheep! If Jesus wanted to talk about how God loves us and forgives us, he could do so directly. Moreover, that was not a point he needed to make to his Jewish audience, because that audience already knew that God loves us and forgives us. Something else must be going on with the sheep owner who lost his sheep.

Later interpreters also read the parable as an allegory. Still others bring anti-Jewish stereotypes to the text, assuming that Jewish audiences would have disliked laborers and refused to do the job of a shepherd. Thus, they assume that the parable recovers a positive role for shepherds and challenges social conventions. However, there is no reason to believe that Jews of the time would have had anything negative to say about shepherds, and Levine shows how Jewish texts bear this out. Nor, again, does the parable ever mention shepherds. The parable doesn't present negative images of Jews in order to make Jesus look good. The parable is not, at least without Luke's allegorizing, a story about repentance and forgiving. The sheep did not sin or repent; the sheep owner is actually at fault for losing the sheep. Finally, that party at the end is strange: Why would the sheep owner want to celebrate the finding of one sheep? Why in fact would the friends and neighbors care? Rather, Levine concludes, the parable is challenging in an altogether different way.

The shepherd realizes he has lost one of his flock. He sees that one sheep is missing out of the hundred sheep he owns. But how does he know this? He cannot ask the sheep to line up in groups of ten. The sheep are not wearing sweatshirts with numbers. The only way he knows his sheep is missing is because he has counted them. Once he realizes his flock is incomplete, he sets out to search. When he finds the sheep, he has an exaggerated celebration by himself, and then he invites his friends and neighbors to celebrate with him. What joy can we experience when we find what we have lost? And, this sheep owner knows when one of a hundred sheep is missing. Do we know what — or whom — we have lost? Do we count what — or who — is present? Do we take responsibility for losing something, or someone? And will we make an effort to find what, or whom, we've lost?

The Parable of the Lost Coin

Some commentators assume that the challenging message in this parable is the presence of a woman as a main character. They assume the context is a rigid Jewish social system in which women have no freedom, authority, or agency. However, anyone who thinks of early Judaism this way must have missed reading much of the Old Testament — Esther and Ruth, for two examples, are women who play significant roles. Some Christian Bibles also have the book of Judith, and she is quite a heroine. Just as a sheep owner would not have been an offensive or unattractive main character, a woman would have been equally unremarkable. In fact, the parable, like the other stories of women in the Gospels, shows us that Jewish women of the time had access to their own funds, could have their own celebrations, and owned their own homes! Luke even tells us that they served as patrons for Jesus and his other followers by providing them financial support (see Luke 8:1-3). And, just as with the parable of the Lost Sheep, this parable does not need to create a negative vision of Judaism in order to surprise and provoke listeners. Something else is going on.

The woman in this parable discovers that her collection of ten coins is incomplete and that she is missing one. She is likely a woman of some means, considering that she has a set of ten drachmas at all. A drachma was worth about the same as a denarius, one day's wage for a laborer, and two of these were enough to pay for a stay at the inn for the Good Samaritan earlier in Luke's Gospel (10:35). Like the shepherd who noticed one missing from one hundred, the woman counts and realizes that one coin is missing. Like the shepherd, again, she launches an exaggerated search. Unlike the shepherd, however, when the woman finds the coin, she celebrates "the coin that I had lost" (15:9); that is, she explicitly takes responsibility for losing the coin. Her comment provokes the listener. We celebrate finding what we lose, but do we take responsibility for losing?

She then throws a party. The Greek words let us know that she invited other women: the nouns are in the feminine. Thus, we realize from this parable that it was perfectly normal for women to entertain their friends.

As before, Luke comes in at the end and provides an interpretation. He writes, "'Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents'" (15:10). Even though neither the sheep nor the coin did anything of note, Luke assumes that they represent sinners who demonstrate a change of heart. As Levine points out, there is no such thing as either sheep shame or penny penitence. The coin and the sheep did not sin, and they did not repent. Nor do the sheep owner or the woman "forgive" their lost objects. Something else must be going on.

And for readers who take the allegorical route and conclude that the sheep owner in the first parable and the father in the third parable represent God, why not this woman with the coins as well? Levine would like this woman to be an image of God as well, but in her reading, she sees the sheep owner as a man with one hundred sheep, the woman as a woman with ten coins, and the father as a man with two sons. The challenge of all three parables is well placed without the allegory. Have we counted? When do we notice what we have lost? What do we do to find what we have lost? Are we sure we've counted everything, and everyone?

The Parable of the Lost Son

The parables of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost Son come as a set of three, and they are also connected by having basically the same outline: something is lost, there is a search, the lost item is found, and there is a celebration. They are also connected by their themes — loss, joy, and feasting. The first two parables end in feasting and celebration, but the third ends with the father and the older son out in the field. They are talking. We don't know how things end up between them. We aren't even completely sure by the end of the parable which son is the lost one. Perhaps they both are. Thus, the third parable offers particular challenges.

The parables thus follow a folkloric motif known as the "rule of three." In this storytelling, the first two examples set up the third. Two ugly and nasty stepsisters set up the kind and lovely Cinderella. Two pigs who do not know about engineering set up the third pig, who can build a house that will withstand a wolf's huffing and puffing. And the parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin set up the variation on the theme, the parable of the Lost Son.

The parable starts out like so many other stories before it: "There was a man who had two sons." This may sound familiar from tales in the Old Testament. Adam was a man who had two sons, Cain and Abel. Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. And Isaac had twin sons, Esau and Jacob. We are used to this kind of story, and we know the plot line. We expect the older son to engage in evil or stupid actions, and we expect the younger son to emerge as clever, righteous, responsible, and the appropriate successor to his father. In this parable, however, the younger son turns out to be "prodigal," that is, wasteful and reckless. He does not match up at all with those earlier younger sons: Abel, Isaac, Jacob, and so on. This is the parable's first surprise.