From the Gospel of Luke:
Jesus told a parable: “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? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Luke 15:8-10 – November 14, 2012)
This story of the woman seeking her lost coin follows on the heels of the parable of the lost sheep in which the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to seek the lost one. That story is much more familiar and, I suppose, is more popular because of romantic notions of some emotional bond between sheep and shepherd, supported no doubt by those lovely Sunday School images of Jesus carrying a lamb on his shoulders. As we modern (and now post-modern) 21st Century urban Christians have moved further and further from agrarian reality, those romantic misconceptions deepen and the less-palatable aspects of the parable’s metaphor are forgotten.
Sheep are not the shepherd’s beloved pets! He is not going to take the animal into his home (unless, perhaps, it is sick and needs to be nursed back to health). He is going to use the animal for his (or his employer’s) economic gain. At best, the sheep will be fleeced and/or milked on a regular basis. It will be bred and its lambs will be taken from it to be slaughtered for food, sold in the markets for profit. At the worst, it will find itself slaughtered, its meat sold as mutton, its hide used for leather. Surely these aspects of the sheep-shepherd relationship are outside the scope of Jesus’ metaphor; he did not mean us to see in them an analogy to the human-God relationship! And yet, there they are, background to the parable, limiting its scope and possibly confusing our understanding.
The parable of the woman seeking the lost coin is much more open ended, much richer in possibilities. Where the shepherd’s sheep have their limited future, the woman’s coins have a future that is wide open. What might she do with them? Anything! Taken to the marketplace, they could be spent with any vendor, purchase any product, follow any path of commerce. And the vendor then can similarly pass the coin on to any of a variety of other vendors, and so on into the future. Stretching before the coin I see a future filled with the branches of an unlimited decision tree, filled with unlimited possibilities, not unlike the myriad futures and alternative realities of quantum mechanics and superstring theory!
For the sheep . . . the future is fleecing and possibly slaughter. For the coin . . .the future is the multiverse! Of course, neither sheep nor coin has any say in what their future may be. As human co-creators with God, we do. Neither the sheep nor the coin has any choice in whether to cooperate with the shepherd or the woman. As human co-creators with God, we do. But like the sheep, we are not as knowledgeable as the shepherd; like the coin, we are not as wise as the woman. So like both, we must trust in the wiser, more knowledgeable Lord who saves us. A prayer in The Book of Common Prayer speaks of this; when I think of the future faced by either sheep or coin, I think of this prayer:
Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to thee, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly thine, utterly dedicated unto thee; and then use us, we pray thee, as thou wilt, and always to thy glory and the welfare of thy people; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. (BCP 1979, Prayer 61, “Of Self-Dedication,” page 832)
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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
Perhaps among the most familiar words from St. John’s apocalypse, “Blessed are they who are invited to the marriage feast of the Lamb.” They are used as a fraction anthem or invitation to communion in many churches. But in this brief passage from Revelation, the most powerful image for me today is the angel saying, “I am a fellow-servant with you and your brothers and sisters.”
Doing that which is right in the face of an opposition which has tradition and law on its side. That’s what this gospel story is about. This is not simply another story of Jesus’ healing someone. 
Today, following church tradition, we step away from the calendar of Ordinary Time and, instead, commemorate the Feast of All Saints. That festival is specifically held on November 1, but tradition allows us to celebrate the saints also on the Sunday after that date, so here we are.
Jesus is so demanding! Follow me and you won’t have a place rest; leave your dead; if you look back, you aren’t worthy! 
I’ve been thinking about this little bit of Scripture all day! It’s nearly 10:30 p.m. – time for Compline! – and I’m still thinking about seven words from the morning gospel: “Let these words sink into your ears” . . . . 
Heart, spirit, body. These two verses speak to me of the necessary investment of one’s whole self, the whole person, into the spiritual and religious life. One of the most influential lay theologians of the middle 20th Century, William Stringfellow wrote: “Spiritual maturity or spiritual fulfillment necessarily involves the whole person – body, mind and soul, place, relationships – in connection with the whole of creation throughout the era of time . . . . Spirituality encompasses the whole person in the totality of existence in the world, not some fragment or scrap or incident of a person.” (The Politics of Spirituality, Westminster John Knox: 1984, p. 22) If Stringfellow is right, and I think he is, then a plan for spiritual growth should follow the Psalmist example and “set the Lord always before” the person seeking to grow. Always . . . not just an hour or so on Sunday morning.
“Who do you say that I am?” Better writers and more erudite theologians than I have noted that this is the question at the heart of the gospel, the question that each person must answer for him- or herself. C.S. Lewis addresses it in one of my favorite of his writings, Mere Christianity:
“Take nothing!” That’s not an instruction to be footloose and fancy free! When Jesus sends out the twelve with these instructions he is making them utterly dependent on the communities to which they may go; they are to rely completely on hospitality of others. Like Blanch Dubois, they are always to depend on the kindness of strangers.
