When Value Outweighs the Price Tag
(Lk 15:1-32)

Fr. Jijo Kandamkulathy CMF
Claretian Missionaries

Jesus discusses three parables: 1) the parable of the lost coin, 2) the lost sheep, and 3) the lost son to establish the compassionate heart of God. The reason for saying these parables begins with the derisive look of the Pharisees and Sadducees at the sinners and tax collectors, and their disapproval of a teacher eating with them. They had judged the sinners and tax collectors as unworthy of God. The three parables that Jesus discusses come in different degrees. A coin is inanimate, a sheep living, and a son is closer to the father than a coin to the woman, or the sheep to the shepherd. If the progression is understood, we can better peek into the deeper import of the three parables put together.

A coin has more value than what it can buy if it is a hard-earned. Ten dollars earned as interest is cheaper than a ten-dollar bill earned by physical labor. Often the value of the money is not calculated by what it can buy but by how much is left in the savings after you spend. Here, it is a woman who is in search of the coin because she earns her money with much more difficulty than a man. She has stronger emotional bond to what she earns than a man.

In the second instance, a shepherd who has an emotional connection is in search of his lost sheep. His reason is suspended and risks the loss of the other ninety-nine because of the emotional connection to what is lost. The numbers do not count here at all. The statistics officer who takes the number of annual deaths will never feel the pains of the families who lost one of their loved ones. There are intangibles that cannot be judged based on financial or numerical valuation.

The third parable of the prodigal son shows the progressing intensity of the loss and the joy in regaining what was lost. What match is a shepherd who lost one sheep from a hundred to a father who lost one out of two sons! The intensity is multifold. Jesus explains how God is emotionally connected to his children, saint or sinner.

It is a Pharisaic mind, that looks at the relationship between the father and his children with detached emotions as a matter of numbers. Only a schizoid detachment can separate the children as good or the bad, and abandon the bad ones. It is, of course, easy to judge the children of others, but when it comes to one’s own children, objectivity becomes out of place. The Pharisaic mind imagines that God belongs to the righteous, and the sinful ones do not belong to God. When God is pictured as the father, it undermines the strength of that basic premise of the Pharisaic religion.

People often judge one another based on one’s own preoccupations. The most recent example of this principle I heard is from a film, of which I forgot the title. A husband whose wife had just chosen to divorce him accused her of a relationship with another man. The woman had been suffering from this paranoid husband for a long time. Someone then confronts the husband, “You are worried about her fidelity because you have not been faithful.” This was the truth. This man was not good at being faithful, but he was preoccupied with her fidelity.

The Pharisees and Sadducees had “unfriended” the tax collectors as bad ones and unworthy of their respect. What was then their preoccupation? They were worried about two things: 1) popularity, and 2) sinfulness. They were worried about the number of followers that Jesus was gathering, and they tried to judge Jesus— that he was gathering cheap popularity from sinners and traitors. Jesus names the judgment of the Pharisees and the Sadducees as hypocritical. The Pharisees are not caught in their sinfulness not because they are holy but because they are shrewd enough to make mistakes that will not be discovered.

What should be our parameters in judging another person? First of all, we should not judge at all. What we can develop is to have a divine perspective to look at the people around us. God judges based on the law of love for God is love. Accordingly, the sinners and mistaken ones need more attention and care than the righteous ones. Jesus finds sinfulness not as a disqualification to establish a relationship with sinners. He knows that his Father considers saints and sinners alike as his children.

We keep judging others. The metrics of our judgment is our own value systems which vary from person to person. A person who has gone through poverty might develop the tendency to evaluate everything and everyone around him/her based on how affordable something is. A priest might keep judging his community based on church attendance, so those who do not go to church become bad people. Someone who has a preoccupation with cleanliness makes friends with hygienic freaks, and the rest become bad people!

I am reminded of the visit of Pope Francis to a prison in Italy, and talking to a prisoner he was heard saying that he did not know why he was the Pope and not in the prison. We really do not have any merit of our own for where we are. We are where we are because God has designed it so. We can only be thankful for what we are, and not judges over the plight of others.

© Claretian Missionaries
Cum Approbatione Ecclesiastica 2022