Don’t you just love parables? It’s delightful to imagine Jesus sitting around telling these stories, trying to help us humans understand what God’s love is like – truly, an impossible task, believe me I try every week and I certainly can’t claim to understand it fully. Jesus told these stories while gathered on a mountain, while walking from place to place, while sitting together sharing a meal. Sometimes he had to try a few different stories to get his point across, or adapt the story for a different audience – and sometimes he found one that was such a hit, he likely brought it out numerous times as he travelled around sharing his message.
We usually just read one parable at a time, but like the rest of the Bible it’s important to zoom out and ask “where was Jesus?” “who was he talking to?” “was this little chunk a part of a larger, longer conversation or event?” because these stories and recollections were never meant to be read in little bits and pieces, broken apart from the rest of the narrative.
When we zoom out we can often see that Jesus uses a series of stories to make his point; sometimes I imagine he shakes his head and then tries a different approach because the people were Just. Not. Getting it. The parable of the lost sheep actually goes along with two other stories: the parable of the lost coin, where a woman spends all night looking for a coin and then calls her neighbours together for a celebration, and the parable of the prodigal son, you probably remember this one, where there are two sons and one goes off and wastes all of his father’s money and then comes crawling back and his father greets him with joy and a giant party, much to the irritation of the older, more responsible, sibling. All three of these parables are examples of an over the top celebration for something that has been missing.
The other thing I love about parables is that they invite the original listeners, and us today, to step into the story and look around, try on different perspectives, see something unexpected. We know that quoting a bunch of facts and statistics is unlikely to change someone’s mind or persuade them of anything, and Jesus clearly knew that too – we never see him presenting graphs or telling the disciples that their lives will increase in joy by a certain percentage if they would just follow him… instead, he tells stories and offers the invitation to “walk a mile in another’s shoes.”
We’re going to try that today – inserting ourselves into the story in different places. The first role is an easy one – I’ll call these people “The Grumblers.” They’re actually hearers of the parable, not in the story themselves, but the extra layer here is that Jesus is inviting them to step into the parable in a specific way. So let’s meet them first.
We all have experience being grumblers don’t we? No need to be embarrassed or feel judged, even the ancient Israelites started grumbling to Moses and God almost immediately after they were freed from slavery in Egypt and crossed the Red Sea. We grumble about our governments, we grumble about our neighbour’s dog, we are EXPERTS at grumbling about the weather, and I think we can pretty easily imagine being the grumblers in this story.
It’s the Pharisees and the Scribes who are ticked – they’re grumbling because Jesus has been welcoming and eating with sinners. And just to be clear about the word sinners here – New Testament scholar Amy Jill Levine clarifies that these were individuals who were bringing harm to the whole community. They were collaborating with Rome and making the lives of their families and neighbours more challenging. Sin in this context doesn’t mean individual moral failings like lying, envy, theft, or hypocrisy. Levine uses the examples of arms dealers, loan sharks, inside traders, or collaborationist with occupation governments as the modern equivalent, or we might consider gang leaders at a more local level who perpetuate violence and extortion in a community. I think we can definitely imagine ourselves grumbling if Jesus had a dinner and invited these types of “sinners” to join him.
Jesus pointedly tells these three parables – the lost sheep, the lost coin, the prodigal son – directly to the grumblers and he specifically invites them to consider stepping into the role of the sheep owner, the woman, or the father to imagine that perspective, so let’s do that ourselves right now.
There are many references in scripture to shepherds, the people who were hired or sent out by their family to go and look after the sheep and would spend days at a time sleeping in the fields with them. This story isn’t about that. The person at the centre of this missing sheep tale is actually the sheep owner, a person of means, whose hired shepherd likely dashed back to let them know that one of the sheep has gone missing. Thus alerted of the missing sheep, the owner dashes out to the field to search for it and throws a big celebration when the sheep is found.
Sometimes we need Carly Simon on loop in the background when we are reading scripture, especially parables. “You’re so vain… I bet you think this parable’s about you.” We think the point of every story is to tell us how to live our lives, what we should believe, how to get into heaven, how to be better Christians.
But it turns out, it’s NOT all about us. Shocking, I know. Most of Jesus’ parables are actually about God, or God’s kingdom, or God’s dream for what this world could look like. The parable of the banquet, the parable of the sower and the seeds, the parable of the fig tree, the parable of the vineyard workers… these aren’t stories that instruct us in living an upright and moral life, though we often mistake them as such. These stories are what Fredrich Beuchner calls “jokes about the outlandishness of God who does impossible things with impossible people” and what a gift that is to hear.
Jesus sometimes tells stories that make us go “who would DO that?” to point out just how outlandish, how ridiculously over the top God can be. When he talks about a sheep owner who would leave the 99 sheep to go and look for one… it sounds absurd. We know if 99 sheep are left behind, one or more could go running off or get cornered by a wolf or fall in a ravine or who knows what else. It makes no sense to us, with our human perspective and our constant weighing of costs and benefits to go off in search of one and risk the others. But… GOD would do that.
This series of parables also highlights how ridiculous God’s love is by describing extravagant celebrations – the shepherd who calls together his friends and neighbours to rejoice over finding one lost sheep – just 1% of his herd? It just doesn’t make sense. Who would DO that?
The woman who calls together her friends and neighbours to celebrate finding one lost coin, likely spending some money to host the celebration party…. it just doesn’t make sense. Who would DO that?
And then we come to the most ridiculous of all – the celebration for the wasteful son who has come crawling back. His older brother fills in for us in that moment, I can certainly identify with his resentment towards his irresponsible younger brother receiving such an extravagant welcome home, when he, the hardworking one, had never been thrown a party. The older brother would agree: “this just doesn’t make sense.” Say it with me friends, who would DO that?
I don’t think many of us would do these things. The Pharisees wouldn’t either, they’ve clearly demonstrated that by excluding those who they consider outsiders and sinners, and grumbling about Jesus eating with them. They were certainly not about to throw a celebration to welcome them into God’s kingdom.
And that’s the point that Jesus is trying to make – that even though WE do not often engage in these over the top actions and celebrations, in fact we find it hard to even imagine doing such a thing, God does all the time. It’s God’s primary mode of being – just showering love and grace and comfort everywhere like it’s unlimited, because it is.
Sometimes, friends, we are part of the 99 sheep, just doing our thing, part of the herd. We’re living our lives, feeling good or at least ok about how things are going, we are part of the community and know what our role is within it, and we know that we are loved.
But sometimes, sometimes we are the lost sheep. We are disconnected from our family or our community, we’re distracted by other, shinier things or we’ve said or done things that harm others and broken relationships with each other and with God. And Jesus reminds us that we are loved so extravagantly that God will do things that literally make NO sense to us in order to restore that connection with us. We know at some point in our lives we will all be the lost sheep – and what a gift, what a comfort, to know that God will always be there, will always come looking for us, when we are at our lowest and most lost. May we remember this during those times – that we are never, ever alone. Thanks be to God for a love like that. Amen.
