Welcome the rejected and lost?

Luke 15: 1-10

Now all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. ²And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’3 So he told them this parable…..

Have you ever felt so unimportant and alienated that it’s as if you exist all alone in an infinite universe called solitude? It’s as if we have lost all connection with those around us even those closest to us seem remote and isolated from how we really are physically, socially and psychologically. In the story we are reading today Jesus emphasises the importance of the individual. We can have great churches, missions and ministries where all seems to be well but lose sight of the importance of the one person in their need that is frustrated to the point of alienation from all that surrounds them. The audience in this set of parables is of interest. There are those on the margins and those in power within the dominant regime of power. Jesus is noted to eat and associate with the marginal, those on the edge of society and those outside of it. This causes great offence because as we all know change comes from the powerful when they deem the time is right; when it’s in their interest. ‘We don’t have to live among the poor we just have to dole out our charity (Alms) to them; in fact they become the vehicle of our good works and thus we end up with the best here in this time and the time to come; sorted!’  Jesus rejects this view; Jesus identifies with the lost to: society, family, work, housing, intimate relationships and health and seeks them out to form a new inclusive community where everyone matters where ‘all of us come first’ through ensuring the needs of each other are met. The ‘common good’ can only be achieved by ensuring individual wellbeing of the most vulnerable; alienation to some extent affects us all and becoming aware of it gives us the opportunity to reassure each other of our worth and the need to participate in the community that reaches out to the individual: the community of followers of Jesus. In our story today Jesus is telling a parable; He is engaged in a form of care for others called ‘advocacy’. Jesus is advocating not for ‘food banks’ but for social inclusion and a new society where family in its diverse forms, work that pays, housing that’s safe, intimate relationships that are respected, old age that is secure, childhood that is played in in love and security, adolescence that can be lived out in exploration and discovery; this is ‘health’ that can be experienced by all and should be available to all according to Jesus. Nobody need be lost and left behind and if they are we need to reach out and find them. I sometimes wonder if we get the ‘repentance’ part of this story right. Who needs to repent?  Is it those of us excluded by prejudice and economic exploitation or those of us who exclude and economically exploit? We need to recognise our tendency to ‘victim blame’ and to see how ‘they need’ to change their lives; change is be required of all of us if we are to live inclusive non exploitative lives; we will all need to experience a little more precariousness if any of us are to experience security. This is the ‘interdependence’ of the Luke 15 parables.