Parables: The Stories of Small, Lost Things

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Parables: The Stories of Small, Lost Things

By Jane Tawel

September 10, 2026

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Parables are stories that are meant to withstand: outliving culture, time, space, and author. For this reason, parables, such as the brilliant and beautiful parables of Jesus, have been wrongly cluttered with solidifying interpretations, both those interpretative prison bars we put around so many of the Scriptures themselves, added on by the authors and not Jesus, and also those constricting structures added to ancient words today by preachers, priests, and common folk (such as I). Parables must be flexible enough to bend to new times and places and thereby relate something about our human experience no matter where or who we are. And perhaps parables, for those of us on the Eternal Search, show us something just out of reach about what God is like as well. Parables are always meant to be just out of our reach, like that pesky gnat that keeps flying around your face that you just can not swat away for the life of you. And parables are for “the life of you”. The best parables of the Wise Ones, should irritate us like the gnat. They should also, however, touch some place deep inside of us, beyond our little and much over-rated minds. I love a well-defined philosophy and I adore poetic expression, but my soul is touched by the paradoxes and deep-well water of a parable. Like all great stories, parables push me beyond belief and into experience; and to live inside of the experience of being human with the Mystery of what is not human — call it God, if you like — is too often cast aside in the quest for some idolatry, some offering of false assurance or some ever-dissatisfying temporal pleasure.

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I will simply copy and paste below three parables attributed to Jesus by someone who we know today as Luke. What I am wrestling with (as one must do with parables) is how these three parables together can effect me today — how I can let them effect me. And yes, I refuse to use the modern word “affect” — there is far too much “affection” in the world as it is: I want the “Cause” of these parables to have an “Effect” in my heart, soul, mind and actions. For this is the truest Truth I know: we humans are created to “Love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength” and to love our neighbor with all our “heart, soul, mind and strength”, and to love myself with all my “heart, soul, mind and actions”. This is what I want to find in these three stories of lost things. Because I see so much loss in my world today. We have lost the belief, the driving force that one single human being is infinitely important. If you interpret as many do, that one of the characters in these parables is maybe, kinda, sorta God or Jesus, then, you would be interpreting God and Jesus as willing to completely ignore all the rest of the sheep, and all the rest of the coins to search for or celebrate the return of the one lost dumb, and the stupid sheep, the one lost insignificant, can’t buy much coin. You would also have to accept that God doesn’t punish the returning lost son, the useless, horrible, no good very bad, child, but instead throws a big party. God searching for a little, insignificant person out of the billions of humans walking the planet today is pretty unbelievable. This is frankly a very, very stupid thing to do. Compare it to one of our current billionaires ignoring his stock portfolio to go search for the quarter he dropped on the sidewalk. Compare it to a ruler ignoring all the CEOs and religious and political leaders in his party to throw a banquet for the homeless. (Jesus has a good parable about that too, but I digress). So, if you are going to want to see the “Searchers” or the “Father” in these parables as God, then you would have to admit that God doesn’t actually care what you have done or not done or where you worship or who you love: God loves each person, unconditionally, absolutely, and longingly. In his famous “Sermon on the Hilltop”, Jesus puts it like this: “The rain falls on the good and evil, on the just and the unjust”. Eeessh. Sometimes I wanna say to Jesus when I see him, “you gotta be jokin’?!” I mean, seriously, this puts into question my whole idea about fairness. Which is what so many of Jesus’ parables do, including the three lost things parables.

And here is the thing that a lot of Scripture-readers maybe don’t want to see but that I learned from the brilliant Jewish writer, Amy-Jill Levine, in her book Short Stories by Jesus. In the last of Luke’s parables about lost things, the father does NOT go searching for the lost prodigal. Yes, the prodigal returns and the father celebrates him, as any parent is so very happy to do when a child becomes safe after a dangerous choice, but the father does not go out looking for the younger, so-called prodigal son in this story. The Father DOES go search for the older son, the “good” son. This son has been so misinterpreted by our need to pin down the parable’s meaning for our own beliefs or time and place. But the story ends, like the other two, with the human being going to search for the one lost thing, even while everyone else is partying and having a good time with the returned son. The father does not realize until later that the older son, the one who has, in his own words, “done everything right”, is missing. And the father goes to find him. The shepherd with a lot of sheep, strangely goes to look for one lost lamb. The woman with a lot of coins, oddly notices that one little coin is missing, and searches high and low for it. And the father with a big household, and his spoiled (maybe favorite) younger son, returned, and all his servants serving, and his friends and extended family having a huge celebration — he goes out from all the joy and hoopla and pride and partying — to find his one lost older, son who despite all he has feels neglected, and sad, and angry, and lost. Oh, how I want to believe in a God who comes again and again to find me even when I am angry at Him and sad about the world and the responsibilities I feel towards it, and when I just feel hopeless and like no one, not even God, cares enough to do something, to care. Jesus is reminding me that no matter how I feel, and although God may seem absent and off celebrating something and someone else, I am never, never alone and even silly little ole’ me is someone worthy of God’s searching heart and absolute love. So, as Jesus might say, we must “go and do likewise”.

What I had to see for myself, today, in this parable is that there is no one, no one, that I am not to care about enough to have compassion for, to try to find a connection with, to search for the humanity in, and to love without judgement, without favor, without prejudice, and without any desire to be “right”. It does not mean that all things are equal or that there isn’t right and wrong, good and bad, truth and un-truths. What is means is that the people I consider “pharisees” or “hypocrites” or self-justifying, prejudiced, whinny, self-righteous, just -playing- it -safe, stuck- in- the -rut -where -I -have -always -been people — or people someone else might consider prodigal, sinful, insignificant, illegal, are also absolutely, positively beloved by God. I know this feels like lemon juice poured on an open wound, but if that is true about the God we want to believe in and know and be a part of, then we are to search in our hearts for the God-given ability to go “find them” and find our common human connection, and find our mutual divinity, our Imago Dei, and we are to love “the least and the lost” and “the high and the mighty” and the “proud and the angry” and the Jew and the Palestinian, and the Hindu and the Jehovah Witness, and the homeless and the celebrity, and the wise and the foolish. And we are to simply without question, love them and invite them to the “celebration”.

There is an ancient and world-wide tradition that calls some humans to keep the voice of prophecy alive, and I admit that at times like these, in the culture and time I live in today, that the prophetic voice is needed and sometimes that voice doesn’t sound very loving or kind. We do not get to see the attitude of the shepherd towards the lost sheep when he finds it. I would have been reading that sheep the riot act: “don’t you go ever getting lost like that again, you naughty little lamb”. And while the woman who finds her one coin calls all her girlfriends to come celebrate, she probably starts to keep her money somewhere she won’t lose more, like in a drawer or a bank or a safe CD. And we never know what happens to the younger, prodigal son after the celebration of the father. He might as he suggested have to work now as servant, having wasted his part of the inheritance. He might take off again, not ready to be healed and whole and at home and the father may one more have to mourn the loss of the prodigal son. But we do know what happens to the older son that the father goes to find. The father tells him that “You are always with me, and all I have is yours”. So, yes, I want to experience the God-love lived through me that one single insignificant, worthless as a 2026 USA penny, coin is worth my search, and that one single stupid, blindly bleating, Kool-Aid-drinking sheep is worth my sacrificial compassion, and the child, the person who does everything I agree with, the one who is “good”, is also often lost in his own mind-traps and sorrowful yearnings and blaming of me and existential crises, and it my responsibility to go and not give a lecture, and not justify my behavior, and not badmouth the prodigals or perceived mutual enemies, but to assure the child in every person that they are loved and that in Love, there is All and More than All .

If we interpret the people in Jesus’ parables as the searchers who represent the character of the Hebrew / Jesus God, then we also have to interpret them as what God calls humans to be like, because that is what all the prophets, and stories, and analogies, and parables in Scriptures do. If you then interpret the people doing the searching and restoring as human beings, which they are in fact in each story, you would then have to conclude that we are to act like the God we want to see in the entirety of the Hebrew and Christian Bible (one big book, often tragically thought to be two). And I believe, that even if you toss out said Bible, any one — atheist, agnostic, Sufi, or Muslim — in their deepest heart of hearts, every one wants to believe in Love, the power of love, and the gift of undeserved Love. We want to believe that someone, somehow, like a good Mother, loves each and every, single, solitary, silly little me. And if we want that, then do we not believe every human wants that, and thus, we are, to riff on Ghandi, to be the person we want to see in everyone else in the world? And that means loving the one single human being who is right in front of us; the one who is in trouble, in need, hidden, misplaced, mistaken, irritating, or downright useless — loving them simply because they are right in front of us and need us, loving that human, that person, that nobody, that silly, little lamb because that is what makes a human being a human Being, “a little lower than angels”. And that kind of weird, crazy behavior that comes out of the kind of love that is quite frankly, bizarre when you think about it, is what makes the God of Jesus, Something, Someone worth at least sort of kinda’ thinking about as a real and loving Presence. No matter how things may seem at the moment, in our lives or in our time and place, every one of us is both lost and searching. We are at the same time the ones trapped in the rubble and the search party of rescuers. Our capacity as human beings for courage, for compassion and empathy, for paradoxical and profound thought, and for the beauty, and wonder, and mystery that lies inside each soul, is what makes us a unique and wonderful species as we live on this beautiful, beautiful Earth. The three parables of lost things are about seeing ourselves and each other, looking at and for each other, searching for and being found by each other with “heart, soul, mind, and actions”. There is something “lost” in each of us, something that has gone astray, something that is longing to be found. And there is something courageous and determined in each of us, something that is longing to keep up the search until the last bit of light has faded. Jesus left us to do the searching for the lost. God has inscribed on our hearts the desire to search and to search with love. And we are promised in the poetry of the Psalmists, “those who seek, will find”. But we each do need to ask ourselves, “what am I truly seeking, and what do I hope to find”? I can’t be certain of course, but the mysteries and parables told by Jesus keep me hopeful that the story ends and we all find the Love we have sought.

Here are some parables of Jesus about the God / Human Search:

Three Parables of Jesus as Remembered in Luke 15

(from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible)

1. The Lost Sheep

So he told them this parable: 4 “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? 5 And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 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.

2. The Parable of the Lost Coin

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 And 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.”

3.The Parable of the Two Lost Brothers (my re-titling, not Luke’s)

11 Then Jesus[a] said, “There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the wealth that will belong to me.’ So he divided his assets between them. 13 A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant region, and there he squandered his wealth in dissolute living. 14 When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that region, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that region, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. 16 He would gladly have filled his stomach[b] with the pods that the pigs were eating, and no one gave him anything. 17 But when he came to his senses he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18 I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” ’ 20 So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21 Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’[c] 22 But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe — the best one — and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate, 24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.

25 “Now his elder son was in the field, and as he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. 27 He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has got him back safe and sound.’ 28 Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. 29 But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command, yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ 31 Then the father[d] said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’ ”

© Jane Tawel, 2026