August 30, 2026
The Joy of Finding
Luke 15:1-10
In Luke chapter 15, there are three parables about God’s joy when a person who was lost is found. Last week, we heard the most famous of the three, the prodigal son. Today, we hear the other two, a sheep and a coin, shepherd and a woman, and great, great rejoicing. Listen for the word of God.
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
So he told them this parable: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
“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? 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.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
I did not realize how much of a cultural icon Dolly Parton was until she died this week. Born and raised about two hours from here, I knew that people around Asheville love Dolly – we love Dolly, and Dollywood – but it turns out everybody loves Dolly.
Depending on your age, you may have met her through “Jolene,” “9 to 5”, “I Will Always Love You,” Dollywood, the Imagination Library, or even a guest appearance on Hannah Montana. Her death on Tuesday at eighty years old, has prompted something close to a national time of mourning. Tributes have been made from every corner of public life: from Fox News, to the Wall Street Journal, to the New York Times, to the New Yorker, Christian Century, Christianity Today. (Who today can pull that kind of across the board appreciation!) And people of all ages have been reaching for her music.
In 2009, she gave a 60 Minutes interview with Morley Safer, and he asked her directly how she developed her “look.” She said that as a kid back in Sevier County, there was a woman in town everybody called the town tramp. She had peroxide hair, acrylic nails, bright makeup. As a little girl Dolly saw her and said her family, I want to look like her when I grow up. Her family said, “Oh, she ain’t nothing but trash.” Dolly said, well, I still want to look like her. And she did.
Now, hold onto that story—we’ll come back to it.
Our text opens with a scene that tells us why Jesus told these stories. Tax collectors and sinners are coming near to Jesus, to listen to him. The Greek tense tells us this kept happening, week after week, a crowd of people the religious establishment had already sorted into a “ain’t nothing but trash” category. The Pharisees and the scribes are grumbling. This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them. It’s one thing to show some charity; but don’t socialize.
Grumbling is not a small word in scripture. It’s the word used for Israel in the wilderness, grumbling against Moses, against the daily manna on the ground, against God’s own provision. It’s more than a complaint. Grumbling has a note of ingratitude, blindness to God’s goodness, almost of unbelief.
Imagine your car has broken down in a place with no cell service and someone stops to offer you a ride, but you complain about the kind of car they drive, how they dress, or talk. That’s biblical grumbling. Luke chooses it here on purpose.
Jesus has a ministry of welcome that is a divine rescue mission for people who are lost, and the religious leaders treat him the way their ancestors treated bread from heaven: as something to resent rather than receive.
So Jesus tells them two stories.
Suppose you had a hundred sheep. One goes missing, out in the wilderness, and the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to go after the one. We might hear that and think it’s reckless. It probably wasn’t. Sheep grazed in a shared pasture, watched over by more than one shepherd, so the ninety-nine were very likely fine where they were. But what matters in the story isn’t the math. It’s the priority. In that moment, that one sheep was the only thing on that shepherd’s mind.
He searches until he finds it. He does not stop when he gets tired or give up when he’s gone too far. He goes until he finds it. Then he lifts it onto his shoulders, and it’s heavy—could have been over a hundred pounds – and he rejoices the whole way home. That word carries Luke’s point.
This parable is about God’s joy, plain and unguarded, laughing and dancing. And when the shepherd gets home, he doesn’t just breathe a sigh of relief and then go to bed. He calls his friends and neighbors together. Rejoice with me, he says. He must share his joy, or it isn’t finished.
Jesus says that’s what heaven is like when one sinner repents, when one person is reconciled to God. The grumblers were missing the big picture.
Or, think about this story. A woman has ten silver coins and loses one, about the size of a nickel. We don’t know exactly what it was worth, but it was a tenth of her savings and it mattered a lot. She lights a lamp in a dim one-room house, and then sweeps every corner – down in the dust bunnies and the spider webs and the dog hair – and searches under everything she owns, until she finds it.
And when she does, she calls her friends together too. Rejoice with me, I have found what I had lost. Her joy is overflowing, and it is only complete in her celebration. This is what God’s joy is like when a person comes home, when a lost one is found.
Sometimes in these stories people get lost in the details of the sheep and the coin, and how a sheep repents and how a coin can be like a sinner. But you can press so hard on a story that you miss the point. The parable of the prodigal son, which we heard last week, gives us a picture of what it looks like when someone chooses to come home or chooses to stay apart. That story is richly textured with human agency.
These two stories give us something starker and more clarifying. They are not about what the lost one did right. They are about what the seeker does, the determination of the seeker, and how much joy is there is in finding. The sheep, wandered off on its own, but we don’t know why—maybe it just got distracted and was just dumb. The coin does nothing at all. A coin has no legs, no will, no capacity to stray. It simply got lost.
Which, maybe, resonates with more people that we realize – folks who just feel lost, unseen, and aren’t sure how it happened, or whose fault it is. They just feel lost.
These two stories are about God’s rescue mission, and God’s overflowing joy in finding.
Which brings us back to Dolly.
Over sixty years, Dolly Parton built a public persona very carefully, out of her own roots and her own life. She was clear about that, she created a character, rooted in her own life and heart, and offered it to the world with empathy and ambition.
She kept the Tennessee twang, when plenty of people in the industry told her to soften it. Anyone who has ever been laughed at for how they talk felt seen when she spoke. She told the story of her upbringing, again and again, sleeping in a shared bed with lots of kids, a roof that leaked, pitiful food on the table, but it was food. Anyone who has been poor or hoped to make it out of poverty felt seen when she told those stories.
The Imagination Library, which sends a book every month to children whose families can’t afford them, was created in honor of her father, who never learned to read. Because he could not do that himself, she was on a mission to give away books to millions of children so they would not share his fate.
My grandfather never learned to read or even write his own name; he signed his North Carolina driver’s license with an “X”. It was a shameful thing he carried his whole life. Behind Dolly’s library is a version of that same shame, turned by someone who loved her father into a great blessing for others. One in seven children today receive a book from the Imagination Library.
Even her look, the wig, the rhinestones, the exaggeration of the appearance, coupled with a genuine smile and a gentle acceptance, made people who were outside the norm, or lost in the world around them, feel seen.
Beyond the news reflections this week, I was struck by a blog post from a hobby enthusiast I follow, who never mentions news.
But he wrote, “While celebrity deaths have never really affected me, I will say that Dolly’s did. Being a gay child in rural America, Parton’s persona offered a gentler, more loving version of acceptance than the one I often saw around me.”
That wasn’t by accident. It was a persona created on purpose over a lifetime, authentic and full of heart.
Dolly Parton was no saint, but she does gives us a picture of what Jesus’ stories are describing: of what happens when people are found, when they are seen with empathy and love; and the great joy that comes with the finding.
How much greater is the love of God in Jesus: a mission of purpose, a love that relentlessly seeks the lost, a joy that fills the whole place when people come home together.
It is an old and persistent temptation for religious people, and for religious institutions, to become counters of sheep. To know exactly how many are present, how many are absent, and to figure out which absences are worth the trouble of chasing down. That instinct isn’t a personal failing so much as a corporate reality.
We are not exempt from that instinct simply because we call ourselves open and inclusive. It still shows up, in who gets noticed and who doesn’t, whose absence prompts a phone call and whose doesn’t, which lost are worth searching for and which ones must “belong to another group of sheep.” The church, like any group, will drift toward tending what is already gathered and turning a blind eye to the ones who are still out in the wilderness.
These stories of Jesus will not let us stay there. Jesus hears our grumbling, sees our tunnel vision, feels our narrow mindedness, and tell us stories about God’s joy. These stories insist that God’s joy, heaven’s joy, is meant to be our joy. We are meant to rejoice with the angels when a lost one is found, when an invisible one is seen, when an alienated one comes home.
Our church has a great many doors. Side doors, garden doors, the door by parking lot with the elevator. But the largest doors in this building are the doors on Church Street, that open straight into the sanctuary. This week, a team of us were meeting with the architect, to fine-tune the renovation plans of our narthex and library, and as we discussed those doors, the architect marveled at how big they are. Double doors. Twelve feet high. Six feet across.
Those doors are much bigger than they need to be. They’re heavy, and hard to open. But they exist for a deeper purpose: when they stand open, they are a sign of welcome.
Much more than architectural ornamentation, those doors are a symbol of God’s overwhelming joy.
That when the lost one is found, God brings them home rejoicing. When a person is claimed by the love of God, God throws open the doors and calls the neighborhood to a celebration.
This is who God is. This is what makes God glad. Homecoming, reconciliation, restoration, a wider community than we ever imagined.
Let us not grumble about what makes God glad. Rather, let us share God’s joy, and may our lives be an illustration and a parable of the joy God feels when the lost are found, when the wandering ones are brough home to great celebration.
Amen.
Rev. Patrick W. T. Johnson, Ph.D.
First Presbyterian Church
Asheville, North Carolina