The Lost Drachma – James J. Tissot
In the Luke Chapter 15 Jesus is confronted by the Scribes and Pharisees about keeping company with sinners and the Savior’s response is to tell three stories about lost things. The meanings of these stories are enhanced if you can see and feel the stories the way Jesus’s audience would. The first story is about a lost sheep.
Alford Usher Soord – The Lost Sheep
Israelites, the Jews were not sheephearders they were shepherds. To a shepherd’s sheep are pets, companions, a trust and survival. The lost of even one sheep would be a tragedy.
This is a Shepherd in modern Bethlehem. Note he isn’t herding the sheep they are walking with him. He knows his sheep and they know him.
Sheep tend to get a bum rap on the smartness scale. Ask a sheepherder, not a shepherd, how dumb they are and they can hold forth for an evening with dumb sheep stories. But the essence of sheep is grass. If a lamb finds a nice stretch of grass, down will go his head and he won’t look up until the grass runs out or he gets thirsty and by the time that happens he has no idea where he or the other sheep are. Shepherds know if you want to find a lost one – you follow the grass. So the heart of this story is – if you want to find a lost person, figure out what has disengaged their focus – diagnose their distraction. They didn’t mean to get lost, they just got preoccupied with something else. A Shepherd knows this, deduces the grass, follows it until he finds his friend and then lets them know they’ve been missed and leads them back.
Parable of Lost Coin Painting by Domenico Feti
The next story is about a lost coin. In our modern world we think of budgets, grocery, feeding a family and keeping a home on a meager allowance, a few coins. The mother urgency on these terms makes sense, but there may be another meaning. What if the Ten Coins were her Dowry?
In Jesus’s day a woman would wear her dowry on her head and around her neck. The Bride of Bethlehem, by William Holman Hunt
The woman, in the story the Savior told, had lost one of her ten coins – 10% of her actual value gone. This was devastating. In our modern age do people lose their sense of value. What would you do to get your sense of worth back? Were there devalued women among the “sinners” Jesus was keeping company with.
The final story he told was about a lost son. Might there have been fathers who had lost sons and daughters amongst the Master’s critics.
This story is different from the other two. There was something that could be done by the shepherd and the devalued woman, but in this story the father can do nothing, but wait and watch the road. Luke 15: 17 gives us the secret – “And when he came to himself,” the father could only wait for the son to realize – his best option was home. Dad could only pray and wait his boy to return.
One final thought on lost things and being a parent.
Mother Eve should be our heroine. She gave us all life, but the first mother lost many of her children.
Annie Henrie painting of Mother Eve
It is true, without our first mother, none of us would be here. President James E. Faust notes that Eve choice to eat the fruit was a gift only a woman could have for “Spiritual Intuition has its roots in the Garden of Eden. Mother Eve was caught in a dilemma. She could either avoid partaking of the forbidden fruit and stay in the Garden of Eden, or she could partake of the fruit and have a mortal existence, becoming the mother of the human race.”1. But at what price. I suspect that sweet Eve blamed herself for the harshness of mortal living. The hard work of her husband, Adam, the suffering of her sons and daughters, Eve watched and grieved. But one day an Angel came and explained the Atonement. 2. The scriptures tell of Eve’s relief -“And Eve, his wife, heard all these things and was glad, saying: Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient.” 3. Eve knew she had acted in harmony with the plan for eternal parenthood. Now she should wait for lost things to be found – be patient and watch the road.
1. Personal Epiphanies – President James E. Faust BYU Speeches January 7, 1996.
2. Moses 5: 5 – 10.
3. Moses 5: 11.