The Gospel doesn’t make any sense.

The Gospel doesn’t make any sense.

In fact, it’s foolish—so foolish that we usually try to twist it, tame it, or build rules on top of it so it feels more useful to us.

This week’s Gospel from Luke 15 gives us three examples of just how ridiculous the Gospel really is.

Foolish Stories

The scene opens with a crowd gathering around Jesus — the wrong crowd. Tax collectors and sinners, Luke says. And right on cue, the right crowd - the Pharisees and scribes - start grumbling: “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” They weren’t wrong — the Scriptures did warn against sitting with the wicked.

So Jesus tells them three stories.

First, a shepherd. “Which one of you,” Jesus asks, “having a hundred sheep and losing one, would not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost?”

The obvious answer? None of them. No shepherd in their right mind risks ninety-nine sheep to rescue one. A single sheep can be replaced — ninety-nine cannot. It’s absurd.

Then Jesus tells a second story. A woman has ten silver coins — ten days’ wages — and loses one. She turns her house upside down until she finds it. That much makes sense: losing the equivalent of $100 or more would make anyone frantic. But then comes the ridiculous twist: when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and throws a party — probably spending the very coin she just found!

And then the third story: a son blows his inheritance and comes crawling home. The father doesn’t make him beg or work it off — he throws a feast. Even the older brother is angry, and who can blame him?

Jesus doesn’t soften any of these stories. They’re not about teaching lessons or punishing sin or rewarding hard work. They’re about the extravagant, foolish love of God — a love that refuses to make sense.

What We Do With It

And because we can’t stand how foolish it is, we change it. 

We build religion on top of it so it tells us who is in and who is out, who the good people are and who the bad ones are, who to fight for and who to fight against. We turn it into a framework for social order: baptizing our babies, confirming our teenagers, socializing with like-minded folks one day a week at our clubhouse, celebrating marriages, and burying our dead.

Then we turn it into an industry — with paid religious professionals (like me), book and music empires, Christian film studios, and celebrity pastors. Those at the top become influencers and drag religion into politics to enforce a “Christian worldview.” Even prayer and hymn-singing can be turned into propaganda when they’re used to rally a tribe rather than point to God.

At its worst, we make it a threat: follow the rules, say the magic prayer, or God will torture you forever. We turn the wild grace of Jesus into fire insurance. And one day, we say, that meek and mild Jesus will return on a war horse to smite all his enemies.

All along, the real Jesus is still sitting at the table eating with tax collectors and sinners.

Even Paul admitted the Gospel sounds ridiculous: “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,” he writes, “but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18).

The Gospel in Four Lines

The good news is useless and absurd by the world’s standards, but it isn’t complicated. In fact, one of our most familiar Christmas carols says it better than most sermons:

Truly He taught us to love one another; 

His law is love and His gospel is peace. 

Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother; 

And in His name all oppression shall cease.

Most people hear O Holy Night as background music at the mall and never notice what they’re singing. But those four lines might be one of the clearest proclamations of the Gospel ever written.

The Invitation

Jesus didn’t just teach this Gospel — he lived it. He broke bread with the wrong people. He put no barrier between them and himself. He didn’t check their theology or politics or make them recite a prayer before joining him.

Yes, Luke’s Gospel calls people to repentance — but notice how that works. When Zaccheus meets Jesus in Luke 19, he repents by giving half his possessions to the poor and paying back what he stole fourfold. That’s what grace does: it transforms lives so extravagantly that it looks foolish.

Zaccheus sounds like a shepherd crazy enough to leave ninety-nine sheep, or a woman reckless enough to throw a party over a single coin, or a father who celebrates a runaway son’s return.

The true Gospel is not fear, punishment, or retribution. It is love and peace.

I’m not saying we throw out our traditions, hymns, rituals, and prayers. Jesus didn’t. He prayed in the synagogue and worshiped at the Temple. But he taught us that these things only matter when they serve the God of love, not when they make us slaves to them. Paul says it plainly: spiritual gifts, prophetic powers, encyclopedic knowledge of Scripture, generosity to the point of poverty, even mountain-moving faith—without love, it all counts for nothing.

So if our faith ever drives us to choose outrage over compassion, vengeance over mercy, or division over love — then maybe it’s time to sit down with Jesus and listen again.