Love Lost Causes (Sermon 9.21.25)

Have you ever felt like a lost cause?

I don’t ask that glibly or as a joke—I mean it sincerely. I wonder, have you ever felt like a lost cause?

Maybe you thought you’d never find the strength to leave that unhealthy relationship. Or never manage to let go of a habit that was doing you harm.

Maybe you felt crushed under the judgment of others, or as if you’d never escape being stigmatized for past choices.

Maybe you feared that you’d never be a success, or that you'd never stop making the same mistakes over and over again.   

No matter how fleeting the feeling, I imagine that many of us have felt this at least once. 

I wonder too, have you ever been surprised by someone you thought was a lost cause?

Maybe it was someone you believed was lost for good to some hateful cult.

Or someone you never imagined would ever get sober.

Maybe it was someone you had long stopped expecting to receive an apology from.

Or someone you felt would never stop judging you unfairly. 

Or perhaps you realized it was you who had misjudged them.  And then one day, you witness another side to them, and you realize you'd gotten it wrong.

In today’s Gospel lesson from Luke, we see some people get angry with Jesus for hanging out with the wrong sort of people., people who were perhaps considered “lost causes.”  In response, Jesus tells some parables about things being lost and found. 

Let us set the scene… 

Jesus is sitting at a table eating a meal with a group of “tax collectors and sinners” who have all gathered around to listen to this controversial rabbi.

Jesus has already gained a reputation for subverting the religious, social, and political expectations of his society, particularly those who hold positions of power and authority. His habit of breaking bread with the wrong sort of people is just the newest irritation to members of the religious establishment—the Pharisees and scribes. 

As a reminder, the Pharisees were members of an influential religious movement that sought to revive an emphasis on ritual purity and strict observance of the Torah and oral tradition. The Apostle Paul would come from among their ranks. 

The scribes were scholars who dedicated their lives to studying, copying, and interpreting the Jewish scriptures, and thus held significant authority in interpreting Mosaic law. 

According to Luke’s account, it is some Pharisees and scribes who witness Jesus and his dinner guest sitting around this table, and begin grumbling, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” 

As modern-day Christian readers, it's important to remember that stories like this were moments of intra-religious debate—ongoing dialogues between people who, despite their disagreements, shared the same faith and the same God. 

We see Jesus, throughout the Gospels, engaged in dialogue with the Pharisees and scribes. Sometimes their conversations got heated, but at other times they were marked by mutual care and respect. Just one chapter earlier in Luke's narrative, we heard the story of Jesus attending the Sabbath meal in the home of a prominent Pharisee. They disagreed frequently, but they also shared fellowship.

Seeing these stories as intra-religious debates is important because much of Christian theology, for much of Christian history, has used stories like this to paint Judaism as bad and Christianity as good. The Way of the Mosaic Law is made to look rigid and judgmental compared to Jesus’s Way of Grace and Love.   

However, in truth, these were not yet distinct religions. The way Christian scriptures describe ancient Jewish communities is shaped by bias, reflecting the perspectives of their writers. So we should be cautious about drawing conclusions of our own spiritual superiority—lest we become like the Pharisees in the Gospels, those individuals with whom Jesus so often argued.

Now back to the story… 

The grumbling among the Pharisees and scribes must have been pretty loud, because Jesus hears them and responds by telling a parable.  

In the first, a shepherd has a hundred sheep. At the end of the day, he counts—ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine… and one is missing. He looks out across the hills, and he knows—somewhere out there, that one sheep is alone.

So what does he do? He leaves the ninety-nine and sets out. He climbs the rocky paths, calling out, listening for the faintest cry. And when he finally finds that sheep—shivering and tangled in thorns—his heart leaps. He doesn’t scold it. He doesn’t drive it back with a stick. He lifts it, lays it across his shoulders, and carries it home.

But the story doesn’t end there.

Upon his return, he bursts through the door, calling his friends and neighbors, “Come on—celebrate with me! The one that was lost has been found!”

This first story would have felt very familiar to Jesus’ listeners. In the world of ancient Palestine, life revolved around the land. Shepherds weren’t just background figures; they were essential. Not everyone would have been so wealthy as to have 100 head of sheep themselves, but everyone knew the work of the shepherds and the risks and care they took to protect their flocks.

It’s no surprise then that Israel’s poets and prophets had often reached for this image to describe God. “God will feed the flock like a shepherd, gather the lambs into his arms, and carry them close to his heart” (Isaiah 40:11). That picture—of God as the shepherd—runs all through the Psalms and the prophets: Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah. Again and again, God is imagined as the one who seeks, protects, and carries the people.

And now, when Jesus begins to tell a story about a shepherd who will not rest until the lost sheep is found, his listeners recognize what this story is about: this is a story about the heart of God. 

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He immediately tells a second story. 

This time, a woman has ten silver coins, and one slips away. Maybe it rolls into a dark corner, maybe it hides somewhere on the floor. Either way, it’s gone. And for her, that coin isn’t just pocket change—it could be a day’s wages. Or part of her dowry. Losing one was not like misplacing a quarter in the couch cushions—it could have meant the difference between having enough and having too little. 

So what does she do? She lights a lamp, takes up her broom, and sweeps every inch of that house. She searches high and low, turning everything upside down, until at last—there it is! That glint of silver in the dust.

And when she finds it, she runs to her friends and neighbors and calls out, “Come celebrate with me—I’ve found the coin I lost!”

Once again, this story is about the heart of God, who is cast (to the delight of all feminists!) as the woman. The second story echoes the same themes as the first—loss, searching, completion, and joy. They are stories about wholeness, about restoration, about finding what has been lost.

And then Luke has to get all preachy.

“In the same way, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who changes both heart and life than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need to change their hearts and lives" (Luke 15:7).

We may not even notice that this is an inclusion on the part of our narrator. You may have assumed, like I did, that it was Jesus saying this. That was until the biblical scholar Amy-Jill Levine pointed it out.

I know that some of you are familiar with Levine’s fascinating book, “Short Stories by Jesus.” In the book, she critiques the way that many traditional Christian interpretations have dulled the original power of Jesus' parables. The parables were intended to be provocative! To challenge assumptions and disrupt cultural patterns! And yet, we’ve made them so domestic, overly allegorical.

Levine reminds us that the parables do still contain this power to provoke and transform—if only we can resist foreclosing their meaning too quickly, and instead allow them to keep stirring dialogue and inviting honest self-reflection.

It is her commitment to the intentional open-endedness of Jesus' parables that Levine finds Luke’s allegorical interpretation intrusive rather than illuminating. 

Levine wants to investigate different pathways of dialogue, such as the role of responsibility in the loss of the "lost items." She playfully suggests that perhaps the Parable of the Lost Sheep could be retitled the Parable of the Absent-Minded Shepherd? For isn’t it his responsibility to keep the flock together? 

Levine perceives meaning in a small difference between the two stories. In the first, the shepherd does not claim responsibility for losing his sheep, referring to the sheep as “the lost one.” In the second story, Levine, the woman, does take responsibility, saying, “the coin that I lost.” 

So perhaps Luke has flattened this story into one of repentance and sin, when we could be having a more generative conversation about responsibility? 

I agree with Levine on many of her points, including the assertion that we could be having better conversations about the meaning of parables. However, I also respectfully disagree with her own interpretation of these specific parables and her disregard for Luke’s contributions. 

First, a few quibbles with Levine’s point that the woman takes responsibility for her lost coin whereas the shepherd evades responsibility.. 

The shepherd is dealing with sheep, and sheep are living creatures—prone to curiosity and capable of venturing outside of their set bounds. In contrast, the woman is dealing with coins—precious objects, but inanimate. In neither English nor Biblical Greek would you say the coin lost itself. 

So, do I agree that it is the shepherd's responsibility to bring back the lost sheep—yes! I say this as someone who has had to run full speed up a massive hill in the middle of a muddy crop field (in crocs!) to chase down runaway sheep. 

It is the shepherd's responsibility to go after the sheep, which he does once he has realized one is missing, but I think the “distinction” Levine could simply be the result of the function of language and not a meaningful inclusion on Jesus' part.

And so the dialogue continues! Just as Levine encourages.

Perhaps, instead of attributing responsibility to the one who has lost a sheep or coin, we should look instead at the category of “sinner,” and the responsibility of those who label people as such. After all, it was the presence of such people at Jesus' table which so offended the Pharisees and scribes in the first place. In truth, Luke’s interpretation does not introduce new themes but simply draws our attention back to the original debate.

So what's up with these tax collectors and sinners? What are members of the religious establishment so offended by Jesus eating with them? 

The problem with tax collectors was that they worked for Rome. Many in the Jewish community considered them traitors because they collected money from their own people to fund the empire that oppressed them. Tax collectors were also known for taking advantage of their positions of authority. In Luke 3:12-13, John the Baptist warns tax collectors: “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you”—suggesting that corruption was widespread. 

I wonder if this explanation might help us recognize why it was controversial for Jesus to hang out with them. Who might be our own modern-day equivalents to the Roman Empire’s tax collectors who fill their own coffers at the expense of their people? 

The category of sinners is a little less easily defined. Levine points out that the Gospel generally presents "sinners" as wealthy people who do not attend to the poor.  They were people who thought of themselves and not others. People who removed themselves from the common welfare of the community. Levine points out that these sorts of sinners were not “outcasts" in the sense that they were cast out of synagogues or from the Jerusalem Temple. They were welcomed in these places because that was where people were readily encouraged to repent. 

However, the point remains, this group does not like that Jesus has chosen to break bread with these “sinners.” 

We might ask questions then about the role of the labeler—those who determined who was a sinner and in need of repentance. For it was not just wealthy people who neglected their communal responsibilities, who were judged to be “sinners.” But others, too, who were being lumped in—adulterous women, people sick with demons—these people, too, were judged to be lost causes.  

Perhaps the point is not that they were outcasts physically, but that by calling them “sinners,” they were being outcast socially. Perhaps Jesus is critical of the way individuals were being deemed unworthy of fellowship or intimacy until they’d repented. 

Who might be our own modern-day equivalents of these “sinners”? The ones we label and then ignore until they realize what they’ve done and repent. The ones we consider "lost causes."

This question reminds me of this story.

Back in 2011, there was a young Orthodox Jewish college student named Matthew Stevenson. On campus with him was another student, Adrianne Black.* Adrianne is the child of Don Black, founder of the Stormfront online community, and godchild of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke. At the time, she was herself a rising figure in the youth white supremacist movement. It was the only world she knew, and so she believed awful things about Jewish people and people of color.

Most of Adrianne's classmates, understandably, wanted nothing to do with her once they learned who she was. But Matthew Stevenson approached things differently, and his actions surprised everyone. 

Each week, Matthew hosted a Shabbat dinner in his dorm room, welcoming others to eat at his table and share in his tradition. Instead of shunning Adrianne, Matthew invited him to join his Shabbat table. Shockingly,  Adrianne accepted his invitation, week after week—first out of curiosity, then out of friendship. Over time, through many shared meals and some brutally honest conversations, Adrianne's hardened ideology began to unravel. Eventually, she renounced white supremacy altogether.

Reflecting on why he felt like inviting this avowed white supremacist to his dinner table, Matthew said, “As an Orthodox man, no one was going to look at me and think I supported Derek’s beliefs.”

Was it Matthew’s responsibility to do something? I’m not sure it was. I don't think it is the responsibility of those most targeted by hateful ideology to change the minds of people who espouse that hate. And yet. Matthew discerned he could respond, and so he decided to act, and his bold welcome and patient love utterly transformed Adrianne Black's life. Matthew loved someone whom he could have so easily dismissed as a "lost cause."

At the center of all three of these parables—two from Jesus' time, one from ours—is joy. Not shame or blame. Not labels or attributed responsibility. But Joy. The Joy of a God who is Love. A Love which will not rest until all the lost are found, until the whole is restored, until we are reconciled with one another. 

And so the dialogue continues. 

These parables are not stories about one religion being better than another. Or a debate about righteousness. 

They are stories about the heartbeat of God — a Divine Love that resounds through the Hebrew prophets, through the Gospels, and into our lives today.

It is a Love that refuses to give up.

A Love that asks us to rethink the boxes we’ve put others in

A Love that calls us to welcome one another at the table.

A Love that rejoices when wholeness is restored, when reconciliation takes root, when what was lost is brought back into the circle of God’s embrace.

So if you have ever felt like a lost cause — hear this good news: in God’s eyes, you were never, ever a lost cause. You have always been beloved by the God who seeks to make all whole. Though at times we wander, and even get lost, God is always right there with us, ready to carry us home. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Preached by Rev. Delaney Piper on 9/21/25.

Note: Adrianne Black came out as trans in her 2024 memoir, The Klansman's Son: My Journey From White Nationalism to Antiracism.