A Word from Joel - April 2, 2025

“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? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices.”
Luke 15:3-4

As human beings, we like to think of ourselves and the world in absolute terms—good or bad, righteous or unrighteous, lost or found. We think the goal of religion is to change us from one to the other. We love the idea that we can change and grow into something better than we used to be. We love stories of people who once were lost but now are found, as Amazing Grace sings, but the world isn’t that simple. Our lives are not that simple. Jesus tells a parable to illustrate how poorly we judge what it means to be lost and found. 

He asks the crowd which of you would leave ninety-nine sheep in search of one. I imagine there were people laughing who said, “I wouldn’t do that!” That’s just bad economics. I think this parable is part of Jesus’ stand-up routine. He’s highlighting the comic absurdity of the gospel. Which of you would leave the 99 for the 1? None of us would! But God does. That’s the joke. God doesn’t have the same values as we do and thank God for that. 
God is like the shepherd who travels far and wide to find just one lost sheep.

Jesus compares the shepherd finding the sheep to sinners who repent, saying “There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” This is a strange comparison. We think of repentance as something we do, but in this story, the sheep doesn’t repent. It does what sheep do, which is wander, and that’s not a blameworthy behavior. In fact, it's the shepherd’s job to watch carefully so that no sheep gets lost, because on their own, they will. God doesn’t blame sheep for wandering, or sinners for sinning. God takes it upon God’s own self to find what’s lost, to do for us what we cannot or will not do for ourselves, which is repent. God is the one who finds us, repents us, and throws a party for us. 

In this parable and in life, everyone does what they do. Sheep get lost. Humans sin. That’s what we do. Meanwhile, God finds us and throws a party. That’s what God does. We think we know who is lost and who is found, but we have no idea. The people we think are found are lost. The people we think are lost are the ones Jesus has already found. The good news is this: we are all some combination of both, it is God who takes responsibility to bring us all home, and that’s cause for celebration.