Description
Today’s Luke reading comes from the start of a section of parables about Lost things: lost sheep, lost coin and lost son/brother. Central to our understanding of what it means to follow Jesus, we have heard these stories many times. However, it is important to acknowledge that parables are complex stories without one simple meaning. Jesus intends us to wrestle with these stories and to hear new and fresh meaning for ourselves and our discipleship journeys each and every time we come to these passages: whether we’re hearing them for the first time, or the hundred and first time.
Today we have the first two paired episodes: the lost sheep and the lost coin. Both speak of God’s crazy, abundant love for the one lost, who is found.
So what is the fresh message for us in the parable of the Lost Sheep?
Firstly, what does this parable tell us about the one who is the Shepherd? The Shepherd cares so much for the one who is lost, that the Shepherd is prepared to leave the other ninety-nine sheep in the sheep fold and go out looking for the lost one. This is crazy behaviour: the Shepherd risks losing many more of the sheep in the fold than the one searched for. Yet this is the extravagant over the top nature of God’s love: God and the whole heavenly court rejoice more over the one who has been saved than over the ninety-nine who need no repentance. What lengths God goes to bring the whole of creation back into relationship with the creator!
How do we respond to this story of God’s extravagant love for us? Those of us who have been obedient people of faith our whole lives may well feel annoyed at the heavenly joy that is expressed when the sinner returns to the fold, carried in the arms of Jesus like a lost sheep. Yet those of us who are obedient followers of Jesus are already safe in the sheepfold, experiencing the love and care of the Shepherd for his sheep. Ought we not rejoice along with God and the whole of heaven in the return of the one lost sheep who has been brought back to the fold?
