If you want heaven and earth to become one, and if you are a Christian this is your hope and prayer, then you have to know what it is they are doing in heaven and join in. Because what is going on there is what is to be going on here, the two spheres of God's one good creation being brought together, married, with no more missing of the mark as it were, 'Oh, how I long for the bride of my youth!'. Heaven is more than some mysterious place you go when you die, it is on fact the control room for earth and is deeply and continuously become integrated into the fabric of earth as God's Word permeates all things making them new. That is what is going on in Jesus next three parables in Luke 15. Here we'll look at the first two...
The Pharisees and legal experts were getting upset because Jesus was partying with 'tax collectors and sinners'. 'Sinners' was a general term that probably meant someone who's station in life did not afford them to practice the Law or properly worship in the temple, gentiles, tax collectors who generally had to deal with gentile infidels and were therefore unclean, etc. Now to be clear, nowhere does Jesus say these sinners are accepted as they are, they have to repent. The sheep wandered off and was lost, the coin was gone and in the next parable the prodigal son had to come to his senses.
The difference is the definition of repentance. For the Pharisees and scribes, it meant a return to the Law and strict personal holiness according to the law in ordinances and oral tradition. This is how the Pharisaic movement was trying to bring the life of the temple (the place where Heaven and Earth met) into the everyday lives of the people in an effort to restore Israel to its glory. This however would be an act of God, not of men...the Word is the light and glory of men. So for Jesus, it meant following Him and His teachings. The Word, the Logos, that which holds all things together...giving and sustaining and making to flourish...Life. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God, and He tabernacled (pitched His tent) in our midst. To turn from your ways of doing things(of thinking, acting and feeling) and to follow Him was to truly repent.
And so, what is going on in Heaven when one 'sinner' repents? Party time! That is what Jesus was doing and they didn't understand it. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. It is a time of celebration and singing and feasting and if you are that woman who found her coin, which was likely part of her dowry, much more than your finances were redeemed! The Pharisees and scribes did not like this.
Jesus, never missing an opportunity to bring the hills low, that the valleys might be filled, jabs them in verse 7...'Righteous people who don't need repentance' he says with a smile and very pointed glance. Think...let him without sin cast the first stone...Think about how these parables affected the sinners and tax collectors as they heard it. :-)
When is the last time someone asked you..."Why are you doing that?" Something that would call for a story just like one of these, one about finding something that has been lost.
May we take up the yolk of our master and seek that which has been lost. And when we find it may we party and rejoice and celebrate! May Heaven and Earth, God and man join together!
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