Scripture: Luke 15:1-10; Isaiah 5:1-5
Jesus tells parables not to transfer knowledge but to transform us, and Luke 15’s lost sheep and lost coin reveal a God who relentlessly and inefficiently seeks the lost and says yes to every sinner.
Illustrations: aladdin-lamp, stained-glass-parables-window, banking-model-of-education, ai-bill-gates-ap-bio, riding-a-bike, inefficient-shepherd
August 17, 2025
The Parables
Isaiah 5:1-5 Luke 15:1-10
I will sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded rotten grapes. And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield rotten grapes? And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. - Isaiah 5:1-5
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” 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? And 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 lost sheep.’ 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.
“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? And 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 15:1-10
One of the movies I loved when I was a child was Disney’s Aladdin.
I can show you the world
Shining, Shimmering, Splended.
Tell me princess now when did you last
Let your heart decide.
I loved the music and the style and the world it built. The idea of the genie and the lamp. Robin Williams as this genie and the journey the hero makes to the Cave of Wonders. I don’t know this for sure, but I feel like the stained glass artist who made our beautiful stained glass windows might have recently watched that movie when he designed this one for the Parables of Jesus.
See, there’s no label on the window. You wouldn’t know it’s for the parables of Jesus unless I tell you. This window signifies the parables of Jesus. I haven’t been clear on this before, but this set of windows signifies the gifts of Jesus, this side signifies Our Committment. So we will go through the gifts of Jesus first before we get to the committments.
And one of the great gifts of Jesus is the parables. There are many times, though, when Parables do not feel like a gift. They can often feel like a test, though some of them are gimmes, like the image shown here.
The image is from one of the shortest parables, but it is a very vivid image. This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
It’s the lamp. If you light a lamp, put it on a lamp stand. Don’t cover it with a bushel basket.
We’re continuing our series on the stained glassed windows in Covenant. And today we’re on window number three on the parables. I think this is fitting for Backpack Blessing in a direct way. The parables are a method that Jesus uses to teach. The parables are about education. They really are, and they are about education not simply as knowledge transfer. This view of education is called the banking model. The banking model of education is that there is a set of facts or knowledge that schools have, teachers have, somebody has. And the point of school is, over the 12 or 13 years of your public education, to have enough of the bank of knowledge deposited in your personal account so that when you exit school, when you graduate from high school, you have a large account of knowledge.
I mean, this knowledge transfer view of education is the easiest thing to cheat if it’s just regurgitating what you’ve recently heard. This is what AI was literally built for.
When OpenAI first went to Microsoft looking for investments in 2018, Bill Gates was skeptical. He said that he would believe in the product and trust it if the AI could get a five on an AP bio examination, Microsoft would invest in this technology. Bill Gates was only a member of the board at this point, though an influential member. That version passed AP Bio with a 3 and OpenAI got Bill Gates’s vote.
The major AI platforms were designed to pass tests in order to show intelligence. They were designed to write essays for school in order to show intelligence. One of the trickiest aspects for Artificial Intelligence researchers was that they didn’t have a good definition of human intelligence to begin with, and so the best they could do was look at school tests and try to pass those. Thus, Large Language Model AI was created to be the greatest cheating tool known to humanity.
AI is not the end of education. In some ways, it will hopefully be the end of banking models of education. The best teachers we all had were not the ones that conveyed the most information. They impacted our lives.
Jesus doesn’t believe in education as knowledge transfer. We should call the people who follow Jesus around the most students, not disciples. Disciple comes from the word for student in Latin. They’re his students and they’re following along and they call him Rabbi or teacher. He teaches them, but he doesn’t teach them directly. The goal is not knowledge transfer, just like the goal of being a Christian is not to memorize the Bible. Jesus seeks transformation. Jesus seeks changed lives.
And this is where the parables come in. The parables are a pedagogical technique for transformation, for us to reflect on the meaning, find the meaning, seek the meaning, have the meaning become part of us.
If Jesus spoke all with his messages directly, we would just, poof, put them in a knowledge transfer and they would fade away in our mind. They would fade away and we would think, okay, we understand, got it. And then move on with our life. Think about things that you have mastered in your life. Maybe riding a bike. How much do you think about riding a bike? Even if you haven’t done it in a few years, it still comes right back. Think about brushing your teeth or one of the basic aspects of your job. Sure, there may be ways to improve things, but you’ve got the basic concepts down so much that you don’t have to think about them. You understand.
For Jesus, understanding is not the point, conversion is the point. Transformation is the point. New life is the point. Mercy is the point. And the words of Jesus, the parables of Jesus work together with the Holy Spirit in our lives to move us towards transformation.
Jesus didn’t invent the parable, as we see in Isaiah 5.
Parables come in very different shapes. Luke chapter 15 has my three favorite parables. The Parable of the Lost Sheep, the Missing Coin and the Prodigal Son, all back to back, all bangers.
We can understand the power of the parables by a simple counterfactual of only saying the explanation at the end. Here is the end of the Lost Sheep Parable.
there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance
What a great notion, Jesus. More joy in heaven sounds good. Sinners repenting sound good. Nothing memorable, though. If you are in the midst of a pit. If you have made a terrible mistake and hurt someone in your life and you feel like no one could ever forgive you, more joy in heaven won’t give you any comfort. You probably won’t even remember it.
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? And 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 lost sheep.’
Okay, something different is going on here. Not only does Jesus welcome sinners, Jesus seeks sinners and celebrates them. The parable opens our eyes to a new way to see God and a new way to see ourselves. Jesus not only welcomes sinners, Jesus is incredibly inefficient in the process. Jesus isn’t trying to be efficient. Jesus isn’t trying to follow the way of the world. It would be an incredibly bad business practice to leave the 99 unguarded so that he can rescue one sheep.
You could imagine a situation where the thief uses the lost sheep as a distraction in order to get the 99, but Jesus isn’t concerned about that or about all the things that could go wrong. He is concerned about that sheep. So when you are trapped and stuck and lost, Jesus will not give up on you. Jesus will not see you as a distraction. Jesus will not see you as a tax write-off.
We can do the same for the parable of the lost coin.
there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.
Nice sentiment. No staying power.
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? And 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.’
Again, the parable holds power beyond the words themselves. The parable illustrates for us how far Jesus will go find us when we are lost.
No matter the teaching, no matter the parable, humans still have an amazing ability to keep our distance from God. We have an ability to rationalize away God’s love and mercy. We have a way to turn it into book knowledge and not transformation.
It is another way of being lost; being sure of ourselves. God does not forget us even then. Let yourself be found by God. Let yourself be loved. Let yourself be forgiven. You don’t need all the answers. You don’t need to pass a test. God has said Yes to you. Say yes to God. That is the point of transformation for Luke 15. At no point or distance will God give up on us. At no point or distance will God give up on you.
The kingdom of heaven is not like a test you have to pass. The kingdom of heaven cannot be purchased.
The kingdom of heaven is like a shepherd who leaves the 99 to find the one.
And 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 lost sheep.’
When you come into this holy place and see this window, don’t think about Aladdin, think about how God has said yes to you. You are loved and forgiven. You have a light, let it shine. When you’re lost, God will find you and bring you home.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.