Luke 15: The Three Protagonists - The Shepherd, the Woman, and the Father
Luke 15: The Three Protagonists - The Shepherd, the Woman, and the Father
4 Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?
8 Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it?
24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found. So they began to celebrate.
Luke paints chapter 15 with the theme of "finding what was lost." The protagonists Luke chose for chapter 15 are not the sheep, the coin, or the prodigal son who squandered his wealth, but the shepherd who lost a sheep, the woman who lost a coin, and the father who lost his son. The shepherd does not concern himself with the quantitative comparison of having one sheep versus ninety-nine. Similarly, the woman who lost one coin does not think about the nine coins she still has. While the older brother is indignant about his younger brother’s mistakes, the father focuses on finding his lost son. It is not the prodigal son we are familiar with, but the lost son. Luke never changes the protagonists. Even if the father had lost his first son, his waiting would have remained unchanged. The protagonists in chapter 15 point to God and Jesus, whom Luke introduces to Theophilus. The Jesus Theophilus is to believe in does not recognize the boundaries between Jew and Roman but simply has a heart torn into pieces because he has lost a child. The woman who seems to think she must hold on tighter to the nine coins so as not to lose them finds the single coin so precious that she invites her neighbors to share in her joy of finding it. Similarly, the shepherd, even if all one hundred sheep were scattered, would find each one and hold them in his arms, inviting his neighbors to celebrate. Now, all Theophilus has to do is embrace the one whom Luke’s three protagonists point to, and the feast that follows from chapter 14 will begin.