Thomas J Parlette
“The Company You Keep”
Luke 15: 1-10
9/14/25
When I was entering Junior High for 7th and 8th grade, my parents started reminding me about the effect that my friend group would have. I remember them saying to me and my sister, “People will make assumptions about you based on who you hang out with – so be careful that you choose the right kind of friends.”
By that, I know they meant for us to hang out with kids who didn’t do drugs, or drink or smoke. They wanted us to hang around with more clean-cut kids, our friends from church, those kinds of kids. They were reminding my sister and I of the age-old wisdom – “You are known by the company you keep.”
That bit of wisdom goes back a long way. The oldest mention I found was from the Greek philosopher, Euripedes, who died in 406 BC. His version of the saying, while a bit sexist today, still holds up – “Every man is like the company he is wont to keep.”
This saying also appears in the Bible, you can find it in Proverbs 13, v. 20- “whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools suffers harm.”
In other words, “You are known by the company you keep.”
It’s interesting that Jesus seems to fly in the face of this advice, even though we find it in the Book of Proverbs. Jesus doesn’t seem to care a lick about who he hangs out with. He is perfectly content to spend his time rubbing elbows and raising a glass with the worst sort of people – tax collectors and sinners. I like the way Eugene Peterson puts it in The Message – “By this time a lot of men and women of “doubtful reputation” were hanging around Jesus…”
The Pharisees, the important religious leaders and the upstanding members of society were not pleased with this. They started whispering behind Jesus’ back, or as Peterson puts it, “they growled.”
“Look at him,” they whispered – “he takes in sinners and eats with them. He treats them like old friends. What does he think he’s doing?” Their complaining, whispering, growling and grumbling is not lost on Jesus. As he looks around the room and sees all the grumbling and growling going on, he decides – it’s time for a couple of stories.
He stories we hear this morning, starting with Chapter 15 and continuing through the first 10 verses of Chapter 19, make up what the prominent biblical scholar Luke Joseph Fitzmyer refers to as the “Gospel of the Outcast.” (1) The stories in this section of Luke show God’s concern for those who tend to be despised, excluded or condemned. Stories included in these 4 chapters are ones like the dishonest manager, the dishonest judge, the rich man and Lazarus, the 10 Lepers, the Pharisees and the Tax Collector and the well-known story of Zaccheus. These stories form the heart of Gospel of Luke.
The stories from Chapter 15, continuing into chapter 17, appear to be told on a single occasion. The over-arching theme of the three stories in Chapter 15 is the theme of repentance – but perhaps not quite in the way we expect. When we hear that word “repentance”, we likely jump to advent or lent when we are called to change our ways or turn back to God. That’s how we usually see repentance – an activity that we make an active choice to participate in. We choose to repent – or we don’t. But these stories change the definition of repentance just a bit. As usual, Jesus has some surprises in these two short parables for today.
The first story is about a shepherd who goes off looking for 1 sheep who is lost, leaving the other 99 to fend for themselves. As I said, there are some surprises in this story.
Surprise #1 – God is likened to a shepherd. This would have offended everyone in the room. Shepherds were considered to be like those people we see with cardboard signs asking for money. They were of the lowest social caste, akin to a vagrant and quite possibly a petty criminal. In our modern interpretation, we have romanticized shepherds as clean-cut, blue collar, everyday sort of guys – but that wasn’t the image that came to mind for people in Jesus’ day.
Surprise #2 – the shepherd leaves 99% of the flock on their own while he goes off in search of the 1 who is missing. Most people in Jesus’ audience would have thought to themselves – “What? What’s he doing? You can’t leave all those sheep on their own. Sheep are dumb, they’re going to get themselves in trouble. What kind of a shepherd is this guy?”
Then, there’s surprise #3 – After finding the 1 lost sheep, the shepherd throws a party to celebrate. Jesus wraps up his parable by saying, “Just so, I tell you there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous people who have no need of repentance.” So, who repents in this story? The sheep?
The second story has some surprises in store as well.
Surprise #1 – This time God is likened to a woman. Again, this would have offended everyone in the room. How could this be, God as a woman? No – that can’t be. In fact, this is the only time that Jesus tells a story that casts God as a woman. There are several parables that feature women as the hero – there’s the story of the persistent widow who demands justice, the widow who puts all she has into the Treasury at the Temple, and the woman who changes Jesus’ mind when she points out that “even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from their Master’s table.” But this is the only time that Jesus likens God to woman.
Surprise #2 – When she finally finds the lost coin, she does the same thing the shepherd did when he found his sheep. “She calls her friends and neighbors and invites them to rejoice, I have found the coin that I had lost.” Both stories feature parties and celebrations when the lost are found.
Surprise #3 – We return to the theme of repentance. In the first story, it appeared that the sheep repented – which is kinda strange. But the surprising weirdness of this second story is that a coin – an inanimate object – is what is lost, and apparently repents. A sheep and a coin repent – is this what Jesus is saying? Very strange.
These two little parables challenge us to reconsider how we approach the idea of repentance. Ken Bailey is biblical scholar who spent his career teaching the bible at Seminaries in Egypt, Lebanon and Jerusalem. This gave Bailey the unique opportunity to connect with Middle Eastern scholars and students who gave him a different outlook on familiar bible stories. He has written numerous book, such as Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes and Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes – but one of his main scholarly interests have been the stories in the Gospel of Luke, especially Jesus’ birth narrative and the 3 stories of Luke, chapter 15, in particular, the story of the Prodigal Son, which follows up these stories for today.
Bailey points out that since sheep and a coin cannot actually repent, the possible action in these stories which could constitute is the finding of the lost. Repentance, therefore, could be defined as our acceptance of being found. (2) That’s radically different from our usual approach to repentance. Usually we think of repentance as an action WE decide to take. We initiate repentance. And that is one aspect of it.
But that’s not what happens in these stories. In these stories, repentance is defined as our acceptance that God has found us in Jesus Christ. So, repentance is not a decision WE make, but an action initiated by God. It is God, through Jesus, that initiates repentance. Through Jesus Christ, God has found the lost.
Of course, this means that we must acknowledge our own “lostness.” If you’ve ever been in the position of having to ask directions, you know how difficult this is to do.
In the days before we all had GPS on our phones, we would occasionally be put in the position of having to ask for directions. Men in particular had the reputation of never asking for directions. Oh no – that would be admitting weakness, not something that men, or women for that matter, like to do.
I can remember sitting in the backseat of our family station wagon and listening to my mother and father discussing how to get somewhere unfamiliar. My Mom would ask, “Why don’t we just stop and get directions?”
“Because I don’t need directions,” my Dad would say. “I know where I am.”
“I know you know where you are,” my Mom would answer, “but we don’t know how to get to where we want to go. Let’s just stop and ask for directions.” That last comment was not a question.
Eventually, my Mom always won out and we stopped at some gas station in the middle of the nowhere and got directions. Sometimes the directions we got where wrong – and my Dad would just smile.
Nobody likes to admit they are lost. Nobody likes to admit that sometimes we all just need to be found. The good news for us today in these two little parables, is that God will always come find us. When we wander off from the flock – God is like a shepherd who comes looking for us. When we are lost like a single, silver coin – God is like the persistent woman who will not rest until she finds it. And in the end, God rejoices, God throws a party – because the lost have been found.
During the children’s time this morning, I read a book called The Runaway Bunny. It’s a simple story that’s been around since 1942 – but I think it tells of a profound theological truth. I think Jesus would have been proud to have told it himself. The little bunny wants to run away – be on his own.
“If you run away,” says the mother bunny, “I will run after you.
Then I will become a fish and swim away.
And I will become a fisherman, and fish for you.
Then I will become a rock on the mountain, high above you.
And I will become a mountain climber, and climb to where you are.
Then I will become a bird and fly away.
And I will become a tree that you come home to.” (3)
Whatever escape plan the little bunny comes up with. Mom has a plan to come find him.
God is the same way with us. Whatever escape plan we come up with – God, through Jesus, will come looking for us. No matter how lost we are, intentionally or not, no matter how stubbornly we refuse to ask for help – God will come looking.
It is said that we are known by the company we keep. Jesus knew this. He wasn’t contradicting what is found in Proverbs. He was just putting his own spin on it. He chose to be known by the company he kept – the sinners, the outcast, those who were lost and needed to be found. In his life and the company he kept, Jesus demonstrated that God will always come looking for those who are lost. And nothing makes God happier than when the lost are found.
May God be praised. Amen.
1. Joseph Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke, X-XXIV (new: Doubleday, 1985), p 1072.
2. Kenneth E. Bailey, Finding the Lost: Cultural Keys to Luke 15 (St. Louis: Concordia, 1992.
3. Margaret Wise Brown, The Runaway Bunny 1942, HarperCollins Children’s Books
