A Homily for the Third Sunday after Trinity
I will open my mouth in a parable; I will
declare hard
sentences of old.
—Psalm 78:2
The two parables in today’s Gospel lesson are lost-and-found parables. In the context of Saint Luke’s Gospel, they are followed immediately by a third lost-and-found parable, the parable of the prodigal son, which will be read at Mass some six weeks from now. The three parables are known collectively as the “parables of mercy.” All three parables refer to the joy of finding that which is lost, and Jesus himself indicates that the parables signify the joy that is in heaven when even a single sinner repents.
Nevertheless, these are not just three versions of the same story, or even three different stories with the same moral. There are differences as well as similarities among the three parables. In the first two, the two that were read today, the principal figure (the shepherd and the woman) actively seek what is lost; in the third, the father of the prodigal son, although he is glad to have the boy back and goes out to meet him on the road, has not been actively seeking him.
In the parables, there is a difference, too, among the lost items. The prodigal son knows that he is lost, and he strikes out to find his way home. The lost sheep, too, knows that it is lost, but does not do anything about it. Sheep are such creatures that, when they become lost, they simply sit down and wait until somebody comes along—if they are lucky, it is the shepherd; otherwise it may be a rustler or a wolf or a mountain lion. The silver drachma, of course, does not even know that it is lost.
And there is a difference in proportionality among the three parables. In the parable of the lost sheep, one of one hundred is lost; in the parable of the lost coin, it is one of ten; in the parable of the prodigal son, it is one of two.
We have it on good authority* that at least some of the Lord’s parables are as “transparent as glass.” Nevertheless, we must also take seriously Jesus’s own statement that his parables are meant, in some sense, to be obscure. Parables are particularly suited to ironic speech; that is, they may convey different meanings to different hearers, or even convey multiple meanings on different levels.
Jesus himself told his disciples that his use of parables fulfilled the prophecy of the seventy-eighth psalm: “I shall open my mouth in parables; I shall utter thinks kept secret from the foundation of the world.” In saying this, he indicates that he is conveying serious truths that require preparation to be understood properly, truths that have not previously been revealed. The disciples were prepared to hear Jesus’s teaching, but others, hearing the same things, would not understand.
Over the centuries, Christians pondering the parables have gleaned other meanings, deeper, perhaps, than might appear to a casual hearer. For example, one commentator, writing many years ago, suggested that the three parables in the fifteenth chapter of Saint Luke’s Gospel are not really three parables at all, but only one. The shepherd, seeking the lost sheep, represents Jesus seeking out and saving a sinful human being; the woman, recovering the lost coin, represents the Church, keeping him in the right way; and the father, greeting the prodigal, represents God the Father welcoming him to heaven.
One bishop of the Eastern church, addressing in particular the parable of the ten pieces of silver, found another meaning. The coins, he said, could be understood to represent God’s ten rational creatures: that is, human beings and the nine choirs of angels. The lost piece of silver corresponds to the human race.
The
woman in the parable had ten silver drachmas.
It may be that they were her dowry:
we are told that it was a custom in the
The tenth drachma was not simply misplaced among the woman’s other possessions. It is clear in the parable that the coin had fallen. The loss of that drachma corresponds to the fall of humanity, and the woman’s search for the coin corresponds to God’s action to redeem fallen humanity, namely the incarnation of the Word of God.
The drachma fell to the floor, to the dirt floor of a Middle Eastern house. The coin was lost in the dust.
When we think of humanity’s fall into sin, do we think only of particular sins? Did humanity fall into idolatry, for example, or murder, or theft, or adultery? No. These particular sins are the manifestation of what is called “sinfulness,” or simply “sin,” that is, of rebellion against God. The state of sinfulness predisposes fallen human beings to the commission of particular sins. That state of rebellion, that predisposition, is what the Church calls “original sin.”
Every human being shares in the fallen condition of our race. Every child that is born, even while he or she remains incapable of doing the least thing without help, shares in that condition of sin. The psalmist says: “Behold, I was shapen in wickedness, and in sin hath my mother conceived me.” And the curse of death, which came into the world by sin, hangs over even the tenderest infant. A newborn baby or a small child may appear to be innocent, and in no need of God’s grace, but even a baby shares in the rebelliousness of the human race of which it is a part.
And so the human race is like the drachma, fallen to the earth, lost in the dust and dirt. And we, like the coin, are unable to do anything to restore ourselves to our proper place. We have no power of ourselves to help ourselves.
One of the recurring errors in human thought over the centuries has been the belief that the human race can somehow pull itself up by its bootstraps, or, at the very least, that individual human beings can attain unaided a wholly virtuous state of life.
Many centuries ago there was a British monk named Pelagius who taught that every human being is capable of either virtue or vice and of shaping his life by imitation either of Adam and Eve, who disobeyed God and so fell from perfection, or of Jesus Christ, who was obedient in all things.
In the last couple of centuries, social science and education theory have been based upon the premise that human beings are by nature good, and that they are corrupted by society. Therefore, reform of society or the proper education of children can be so engineered to insure the progress of humanity toward perfection.
Both of these theories, the ancient and the modern, deny that humanity is like the fallen drachma. And both lead people away from Christ and his Church.
What did the woman have to do to find her lost coin? She had to light a candle and so bring light to bear on the subject, and she had to sweep out the whole house. This is what happened when Jesus came into our world. He brought light: “In him was light, and that light was the life of men. . . . That was the true light, that lightest every man that comes into the world.”
The woman had to get down to the earth, she had to sweep up the dust in the house, before she could find the lost drachma. Even so, to recover fallen humankind, the incarnate Word had to come down to earth; and he swept away the dirt and dust of human existence.
The drachma did not know that it was lost. The drachma did not cry out to the woman and ask to be found. The woman herself knew that the coin had fallen, and on her own initiative, she did what was necessary to find it. Neither did the human race realize that it was lost. The initiative for salvation was God’s alone. “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. . . . God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
When the woman found her lost drachma, when her treasure was again complete, she held a party and invited all of her friends to come and celebrate with her. The woman’s party for her friends in this parable, like the banquet where the fatted calf is served in the parable of the prodigal son, represents to us the joy of heaven.
Of this heavenly joy we have a foretaste this morning, as we have each Sunday, in the Eucharist. Here we partake in the heavenly banquet and share in that joy which is among the angels of God.