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High School & College-level Sunday School Class Agenda for Sunday, November 9, 2003 |
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THINKING OUT OF THE BOX: Brief intro to each of Jesus' pithy, consciousness-altering parables -- and its relevance to you today Lost Coin |
Luk 15:8-9 [+ 10]
8 “Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9 When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ [10 Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”]
Jeremias vividly fills out the details: "'She lights a candle,' not because it is night, but because the low door lets very little light into the miserable, windowless dwelling, and she 'sweeps the house' with a palm-twig because in the dark the broom may make the coin tinkle on the floor.'...
What the woman seeks, a lost drachma, is one of ten. A drachma was a Greek silver coin equal in value to a denarius, which is equivalent to a peasant's subsistence wage for a day's work. Thus its intrinsic value is not great, certainly not that of a kingdom, but is is worth searching for if one is a peasant.
The woman's searching ... gives it [the drachma] value and draws a hearer into the story. Even more, a woman searches, not a man. Luke ... does not repeat the question of the first [Man with a Hundred Sheep] parable, "Which one of you?" To address males so would be an insult...
A hearer is caught up in the search, the search of a woman, the search of a woman for a thing of little intrinsic value. Thus is the kingdom. This parable is a burlesque... The burlesque may even dampen a hearer's enthusiasm for the search. And it is a woman's search, not that of a mighty warrior or even an eminent rabbi. On reflection, a hearer begins to understand that the parable's proposed metaphorical network for the kingdom is less than anticipated and may even be a burlesque of the traditional expectations. Yet more serious is the scandal of identifying God's ruling, kingly activity with the unclean.
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