Dock Resource Kit
Sunday sermon, 8 February 2026
Summary
This week Brigid spoke to us about Jesus’ parables in Luke 15, introducing a new series exploring how Jesus’ stories reveal God’s character and the nature of God’s kingdom. Speaking to criticism from the Pharisees, Jesus tells three parables — the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost sons — each showing a pattern of loss, finding, and joyful celebration.
These stories reveal a God who actively goes looking for what is lost, whose love is not earned by goodness nor withdrawn because of failure. Through the two sons, Jesus exposes different ways we misunderstand belonging: seeking it through independence and escape, or through obedience and moral effort. Both miss the truth that God’s love is already given.
The parables invite us to trust God’s extravagant compassion, to receive the welcome he offers, and to join the celebration of grace when others are restored.
Key Points & Takeways
God is the one who goes looking - In all three parables, the lost thing does nothing to earn being found. God’s love moves first.
Lost and found are spiritual, not moral, categories - These stories are not about reward and punishment, but about compassion, restoration, and life.
Both sons are lost in different ways - The younger son believes he has disqualified himself from love; the older son believes he has earned it. Both misunderstand the father’s heart. We are not loved because we are good, nor rejected because we fail — we are loved because God is love.
Heaven is joyful — and invites our participation - Each story ends in celebration. The unresolved ending asks us whether we will join the party or stay outside. God’s kingdom is about shared joy, welcome, and the flourishing of others.
Dock Discussion Questions
Which of the three parables stood out to you most this week, and why?
In what ways do you find yourself relating more to the younger son, the older son, or both?
Brigid said that redemption is something God does for us before it is something we respond to. How does that challenge or comfort you?
Where do you tend to look for belonging or worth when you struggle to trust God’s love?
How do these parables challenge ideas of fairness or deserving that we may carry?
Long-form, edited transcript
Parables of Luke.
Lost things.
Luke 15
We are starting a new series today, taking a few weeks to look at a handful of the stories, parables, that Jesus told. They are stories that tell us something about God’s character and God’s kingdom, and they are very likely to flip the expectations that we hold about both. We are going to be reading them from Luke’s account of Jesus’ life, and today we are starting in Luke 15. It contains three stories that have been quoted throughout history, inspiring literature, art, and more.
Scripture
15 Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
3 Then Jesus told them this parable: 4 “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.
The Parable of the Lost Coin
8 “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins[a] and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? 9 And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ 10 In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
The Parable of the Lost Son
11 Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.
13 “Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. 14 After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. 16 He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
17 “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ 20 So he got up and went to his father.
“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
21 “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
22 “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.
25 “Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. 27 ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’
28 “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. 29 But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’
31 “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”
Context
This chapter starts with the context for our parables. The tax collectors and the sinners and sitting together to hear from Jesus. And the Pharisees - the religious leaders - are muttering and grumbling about it. They aren’t curious, or hungry to hear more. They are irritated.
Jesus is hanging out with tax collectors, who no one liked, and sinners. Those who weren’t following God. Who, in the minds of the Pharisees, weren’t working hard enough to follow God’s law. The Pharisees were very careful to follow God’s law, as had been laid out in the Scriptures, and it’s important to be clear that the law isn’t bad. God gave the law to help his people flourish, to help them live well together.
But the Pharisees had taken it to an extreme. They were using the law to decide who was in and who was out of God’s care and love. In their minds, you would only qualify for holiness if you earned it, same with belonging. Almost like God’s love could be measured by how carefully you followed the rules.
What troubles them is not that Jesus is teaching forgiveness. But he seems to be giving it all away too easily. So Jesus tells these three stories that share similar themes. Something is lost. That something is found. And there’s a celebration.
Jesus told these stories to demonstrate what God’s character and kingdom is really like, rather than how the Pharisees were interpreting it. He wants to reveal something about God that unsettles their - and perhaps our - instincts about goodness, belonging and fairness.
I love the way that N.T. Wright sums it up:
“The point of the parables is then clear. This is why there’s a party going on: all heaven is having a party, the angels are joining in, and if we don’t have one as well we’ll be out of tune with God’s reality”.
God Goes Looking
Jesus starts these stories with a shepherd. This shepherd has one hundred sheep, and one wanders off and gets lost. Now if you had to choose between taking care of the ninety-nine sheep in the open country, or going after one foolish one that gets lost, which is the strategic choice?
Obviously the ninety-nine. Anything else feels irresponsible. But Jesus doesn’t tell the obvious or strategic choice in this parable. The shepherd searches for the sheep until he finds it. And when it does, he doesn’t punish or scold the sheep. He lifts it onto his shoulders and heads home to throw a party.
Jesus tells another story. A woman loses a coin. A tenth of her wealth. Perhaps this one feels a bit more strategic - maybe this is her savings pot or her dowry. This is important not to lose. She searches diligently across her home. She sweeps the house and searches carefully.
When I was a child, I used to lose things all the time. Tell tale sign I was feeling a bit stressed or worried - I’d start losing things. To start with it didn’t matter too much, but when my parents had to buy a third iteration of a new full pencil case in one term, they started to get a bit irritated.
The most embarrassing time was when my mum thought I probably hadn’t looked hard enough - probably true - and came into school to look for it. Mortifying to an 8 year old! She found it. After that I did start looking more carefully but I’m not sure it beats how hard this woman looked.
So this woman searched and searched until she found it. And when she does, she again calls her friends together to throw a party to celebrate. In both of these stories God is the primacy actor. The shepherd who searches, the woman who searches. The lost thing doesn’t really do much at all.
The sheep wanders out of foolishness. The coin is lost, and it doesn’t even know it’s lost. The lost thing contributes nothing to its being found. The lost thing is found simply because the shepherd or the woman deems it important. It is found before it corrects its behaviour or knows its own identity. And that is to be celebrated.
In the same way, Jesus tells us in verse 7 and verse 10, is just like in heaven. There is rejoicing in heaven, with all the angels, over one sinner who repents. Over one person who decides to follow Jesus’ way rather than going their own way that gets them lost. Over one person who allows themselves to be found by the God who is searching for them. Over one person brought back home and redeemed into God’s family.
Author and artist Jan Richardson puts it like this: Redemption is something God does for us before it is something we respond to.
God is not reluctantly merciful because he has to be. God is joyfully invested in you finding your home with him. In the moment that we turn back to God, we are unlost. But it’s always God who moves first - to find us. And one found person, one found person who was lovingly created by God, God considers that worthy of celebration. That’s the message Jesus is trying to tell us. And tell the Pharisees listening.
Where we look to be found
The story now shifts from God’s action to our response. Not whether God is looking, but where we look to be found. Jesus tells the story of two sons, and maybe you’ve wondered which son am I like? But actually I wonder if there are bits of both sons in all of us. Both sons have something to teach us about the ways we try to secure belonging when we don’t fully trust that God’s love is already ours.
The younger one asks for his inheritance early. That would have involved splitting the father’s land in two, and giving up half of it then. Essentially he’s saying ‘I wish you were dead now’. In a world where land, honour and family were everything, this would have been deeply shameful. But he believes he will find himself with freedom. He wants independence, self-definition.
The father could have thrown him out. But instead he lets him go. The son wastes the money, ending up feeding the pigs. About as low as it gets in the Jewish imagination. He searches for unconditional love where it cannot be found—in money, distance, reinvention, escape.
Henri Nouwen wrote:
“I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found.”
Eventually, the illusion collapses and he begins to consider the horrendous option of grovelling home to his dad. He rehearses a speech full of shame and bargaining as he walks back to his father’s land. But a long way off, the father sees him. And he runs.
In that culture, senior men did not run - it would have been undignified - but driven by compassion and love, the father throws dignity and honour out the window and runs to his son. He embraces him, he welcomes him home, he restores his identity as his son, and he throws a party.
The word prodigal actually means ‘wasteful extravagance’. It’s easy to think that that extravagance is attributed to the younger son’s spending. But actually I don’t think that’s the craziest extravagance in this story. It’s the father’s. He gives the son the freedom to leave. He runs with abandon. He throws a huge party for a son who shamed and mistreated him. Instead of judgement or rejection, the younger son receives the wasteful extravagance of his father who loves him because he loves him.
Then Jesus introduces us to the older son. He is obedient, he’s hard-working, he’s faithful. And he’s furious about the party for his little brother. Listen to his language: “I have been slaving for you.”
In the face of his father’s wasteful extravagance to his brother, the older brother’s faithfulness becomes resentment. He refuses to join the party, and reveals his anger that the younger son has done nothing to deserve the celebration he’s receiving. And the injustice of it - he’s been working so hard all these years and never been thrown a party like this.
Now I’m the older sister of two brothers. There’s a lot I resonate with here. I have deep compassion for the frustration of inequality between siblings. But in all seriousness, I have had seasons of following Jesus where I didn’t doubt God’s existence, but I did doubt whether God was genuinely glad to have me around. I did the right things, kept showing up and so on, but I realised that I was living more like a really great employee than like a daughter of God. I wasn’t able to rest confidently in God’s love for me, because I wasn’t really sure it was stable enough to hold me even when I wasn’t sure of it.
The older son was trying to secure belonging, but through obedience, usefulness, and moral leverage. But there was no need for the older son to exclude himself, or work hard for that love - he had it already. So did I. So do you. NT Wright says this, speaking about the Pharisees: “If they insist on staying out of the party because it isn’t the sort of thing they like, that’s up to them; but it won’t be because God doesn’t love them as well.”
Both sons are lost. The younger son thought he had disqualified himself from the father’s love. The older son thought he had earned it. Both were wrong. We are not loved because we are good. We are not excluded because we are lost. We are loved because God is love.
One of the few things in our culture where we don’t earn a celebration is birthdays. Each year, time passes, through no effort on our part. Yet on one day, to commemorate a day where your mother—and maybe some medical team—put in a lot of effort, and you contributed nothing, we celebrate. We throw parties, enjoy food, spend time with those we love—simply because you were born. Isn’t that a good thing? We don’t judge someone’s moral character before we say happy birthday. Extraordinarily, it’s the same with God.
One theologian puts it like this: Lost, found, dead and alive are not moral categories that lend themselves to rewards and punishments. They are spiritual categories that lend themselves to divine compassion. The younger son thought he disqualified himself from love. The older son thought he earned it. Both were wrong. Because our relationship to God is not defined by your really bad decisions, nor is it determined by your virtue. It is simply determined by the wastefully extravagant love of God.
And when we fail to trust this love, we look for belonging in all the wrong places: money, status, control, moral leverage. None of that makes us unworthy to receive God’s love - it’s a gift given freely. It just makes the good news that we have an extravagantly compassionate God that much better.
Someone who understood this brilliantly was Josephine Bakhita. Josephine was born in Darfur, Sudan in 1869, and had a childhood, until aged 8 when she was kidnapped by slave traders. Over the rest of her childhood, she was bought and sold multiple times, and subjected to years of violence and degradation. Her captors renamed her, and her life was not her own.
Eventually, she was purchased by an Italian official who took her back to Italy. When her master was away on business, she went to live with some nuns in a monastic community. When the master returned, Bakhita refused to leave the convent and after a court process, it was determined that her enslavement was illegal and she was freed.
In her first act of free choice since she was 8, Josephine chose to stay in the convent where she had met Jesus. She was baptised and became an influential and peaceful woman of prayer and compassion.
Bakhita was the first female black Catholic saint in the modern era, canonised in 2000. Today is her feast day. Josephine Bakhita knew suffering. She knew humanity’s capacity to withhold any ounce of compassion. And yet she said this: “I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me, I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.”
Bakhita’s identity was stolen, but through the kindness of the nuns, God restored it. She was treated like property, but she knew God treated her as beloved. While others tried to define her life, she learned that her life was defined by God’s love.
Whatever happens to me, I am awaited by love. Whatever happens to you, love is waiting for you. God’s love is seeking you out.
The unresolved ending
Three times Jesus tells us that there’s a party in heaven when we set aside our stubbornness or foolishness or ignorance and are returned to the knowledge and experience of God’s love. When the lost are found. But the final story ends unresolved.
We don’t know if the older brother goes into the party or not. It’s as though Jesus isn’t just telling a story, but also asking us a question: Will we extend the same extravagant compassion that we have been shown? And will we join the celebration?
Love isn’t earned, and it can’t be controlled. It’s given freely by an extravagant, compassionate God. We don’t get to decide who deserves it. But we do get to choose whether we celebrate it.
This passage is a comfort - it reminds us that we too have been sought out by God and given a huge celebratory welcome home. But it’s also a challenge. To the parts of us that want to earn our love from God, to exclude those who don’t fit our model, to not extend compassion when we don’t feel like it. How often do we both need that comfort and need the challenge?
The father’s language to the older son is so interesting. He affirms him: “You are always with me, and everything I have is yours.” But then he says: “We had to celebrate.”
The kingdom of God is built on resurrection. Dead things coming back to life. Lost things being found. NT Wright reminds us that heaven and earth are meant to be in harmony. When we discover what’s happening in heaven, we discover how earth is meant to be.And apparently, heaven is joyful. Compassionate. And full of unlikely guests experiencing resurrection. Might earth be like this too.
Jan Richardson writes: “When what is broken and lost is restored and redeemed, it is worth a celebration. It is not complete, in fact, until some rejoicing gets under way.”
This passage leaves us asking, do we trust that we are loved by the compassionate father, the good shepherd, the God who won’t stop searching? Not one aspect of the sheep, the coin, the younger or older son’s behaviour had any effect whatsoever on the heart of the one searching. All the love that the father had for his children was theirs, no matter what. That love is trustworthy. And not only that, but we are invited to extend it to others. Because when we do, we see heaven extend into earth.
I love that the finder in these stories always chooses to throw a party. It’s like Jesus is reminding us that all of this doesn’t happen in isolation. Being found by God restores us not only to God but also to community. It challenges us not just to find our own flourishing but to work towards the flourishing of others.
NT Wright puts the challenge like this:
“How can we move towards becoming people through whom resurrection happens to others? How can we celebrate the party of God’s love in such a way as to welcome not only the younger brothers who have come back from the dead but also the older brothers who thought there was nothing wrong with them?”
Conclusion
Jesus leaves it in our hands. But he doesn’t leave it alone. We all need to be reminded sometimes that we can trust God’s love. That we are loved, that we are worthy of that love. That God is not an angry, punishing God - Jesus’ character shows us that.
And if we have lived in a way that forgets that love, or if we look for belonging in other places, all the mercy, forgiveness and compassion when we turn back to God is already ours, because God isn’t running a reward and punishment system at all. Even if you haven’t forgiven yourself yet, even if you are not quite what you intend to be yet, even if you aren’t ready fully. The table has been prepared and the party music is playing. God is looking for us. We are a forgetful bunch, humans.
Henri Nouwen wrote a beautiful book called The Return of the Prodigal Son about this story, and in it he wrote this. I wonder which bits will resonate with you.
“For most of my life I have struggled to find God, to know God, to love God. I have tried hard to follow the guidelines of the spiritual life: pray always, work for others, read the Scriptures and to avoid the many temptations to dissipate myself. I have failed many times but always tried again, even when I was close to despair. Now I wonder whether I have sufficiently realised that during all this time God has been trying to find me, to know me, and to love me. The question is not “How am I to find God?” but “How am I to let myself be found by him?” The question is not “How am I to know God?” but “How am I to let myself be known by God?” And, finally, the question is not “How am I to love God?” but “How am I to let myself be loved by God?” God is looking into the distance for me, trying to find me, and longing to bring me home.”
Closing Prayer
Loving and compassionate God,
We thank you that you are the one who searches, who welcomes, and who rejoices when what is lost is found.
Help us to trust your love — not as something to be earned or protected, but as a gift freely given.
Where we have looked for belonging in the wrong places, gently draw us home.
Where we have struggled to celebrate grace for others, soften our hearts and widen our joy.
Teach us to live as people of your kingdom — compassionate, joyful, and open —
so that your resurrection life might be seen in us and through us.
Amen.