Join in the angels’ joy
‘Or suppose a woman who has ten silver coins loses one of them—what does she do? She lights a lamp, sweeps her house, and looks carefully everywhere until she finds it. When she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbours together, and says to them, “I am so happy I found the coin I lost. Let us celebrate!” In the same way, I tell you, the angels of God rejoice over one sinner who repents.’ (verses 8-10)
Read Luke 15:1-10
There is nothing that puts people off religion more than joyless, fault-finding piety.
That’s what characterised Jesus’ opponents, the Jewish religious leaders. They paraded their proud religious pretensions, and they coldly condemned anybody and everybody who did not measure up to their pernickety standards. So they grumbled loudly when Jesus welcomed and ate with tax collectors and other similar religious outcasts.
So Jesus told them two similar parables. In this second one, a woman finds a valuable silver coin that she had lost, after carefully looking through the whole house for it. Then she calls her friends and neighbours to tell them how happy she is to have found what had been lost, and she asks them to celebrate with her. Then comes the parable’s punchline: ‘In the same way, I tell you, the angels of God rejoice over one sinner who repents’.
If God’s angels rejoice, so does God. We are urged to rejoice with them.
Loving God, thank you for searching for and finding lost sinners like me. Help me to rejoice over that and then to join in the search. Amen.
by John Vitale, in ‘Guidance for each Day’ (LCA, Openbook, 2002)
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