READING:
Luke 15:1–15
The Priority of the Marginalised
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is once again under fire from the religious leaders. His offence is not an abstract theological error, saying the wrong things about God and faith , but something far more concrete: he eats with the wrong people. Tax collectors, sinners, those whose lives placed them on the edge of respectability – these are his table companions. The Pharisees and scribes grumble: “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” In reply, Jesus tells two of the best-loved parables in Scripture: of a shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep to search for the one that is lost, and of a woman who turns her house upside down until she recovers a single coin.
These short, familiar stories remind us that God’s attention is drawn not to the powerful or secure but to the vulnerable, the overlooked, and the excluded. They show us that heaven rejoices when what is lost is found. They also challenge us to recognise that our instinct to write off the missing, the marginalised, the awkwardly absent, runs against the grain of God’s priorities.
The Divine Economy of Value
At the heart of these parables is a radical reordering of worth. In the economies of the world, the lost one is expendable. One per cent loss of sheep? Acceptable. A single coin out of ten? An irritation, but not ruinous. Yet in the divine economy, the one who is missing takes absolute priority.
This is more than warm sentiment. Jesus is saying that the person on the edge, the life overlooked, the community deemed surplus to requirements, is the very centre of God’s concern. God’s preferential option is always for the poor, the excluded, the unseen. It is not that God has no care for the ninety-nine. But the one who is vulnerable, the one out of sight, draws God’s attention with particular urgency.
A Pastoral Word
This truth is profoundly pastoral. Many of us feel lost at some point in our lives – through grief, through failure, through doubt, or simply through that hollow sense of not belonging. These parables assure us that God notices when we slip out of sight. We are not expendable. We are not written off. God seeks us, carries us, rejoices over us.
Think of that person who has lost a wedding ring: it might even have happened to you. On the face of it that wedding ring is a small piece of metal. But it is also rich with love, memory, promise. Its recovery brings tears of relief… and tears of joy. That is how God regards us. When we feel overlooked, when we fear that our absence would not be noticed, the Gospel says otherwise: you are worth finding, and heaven will not rest until you are restored. So much joy and rejoicing over you!
A Challenging Word
But these parables do not end with reassurance for us as individuals. They also confront us with what God’s priorities mean for the community of faith. The shepherd does not stay put with the ninety-nine. The woman does not shrug her shoulders and settle for nine coins. Both take costly, disruptive action. God’s mission unsettles comfort and routine.
The challenge is sharp: Who are we overlooking? Who is absent from our pews, our tables, our prayers? The church cannot rejoice in God’s grace while quietly writing off those who are too costly, inconvenient, or difficult.
Modern examples spring readily to mind. Migrants left at borders, treated as statistics rather than neighbours. A homeless person on a city street, invisible to the hurried passer-by. A child excluded from school, their future quietly eroded. A person living with mental illness, left isolated. Society calculates such lives in terms of usefulness or productivity. God does not. God calls them treasures to be sought, carried, celebrated.
From Prayer to Action, From Action to Prayer
What, then, does this mean for our life as people of faith? At its simplest, these parables call us to reorder our prayer and our action.
Turning prayer into action, we might begin by praying with names and faces in mind: those who are lost in our community, those we know who are adrift. And then we ask: what action flows from that prayer? A phone call? A letter? An act of offering help? A commitment to volunteer?
Turning action into prayer, we learn to see acts of compassion as prayerful in themselves. Serving at a food bank, sitting with someone in hospital, campaigning for justice. Theses are not distractions from prayer but a form of being with God in the world. In the words of St Benedict, “to work is to pray.”
Deepening our faith lies in holding these together: prayer that leads to action, and action that is itself prayer. For individuals, this might mean pausing each day to name before God someone on the margins. For the church, it might mean building habits of rejoicing whenever the “lost” are restored, whether through baptism, reconciliation, or simply welcome at the table.
Conclusion – The Joy of Heaven
These parables assure us that no one is beyond God’s love. Challengingly, they tell us that God’s priorities are not ours: the missing matter more than the secure, the marginalised more than the comfortable.
To follow Christ is to share in the shepherd’s search and the woman’s persistence, to risk leaving the ninety-nine in order to find the one. It is to see the overlooked as treasures, and to join the angels in rejoicing when what was lost is found.
The God who notices our absence, who carries us home, now calls us to notice who is missing, to seek them with urgency, and to discover with joy that heaven itself celebrates every life restored.
Photo Credit: Quang Nguyen Vinh (Unsplash.com)
