Posts Tagged ‘Lost sheep’

Who is lost? Do we really want them to come home?

September 13, 2025

Pentecost 14 – 2025

Luke 15:1-10

Marian Free

In the name of God who seeks the lost and is not content until they are safely home. Amen.

In her book Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean tells the story of her relationship with Elmo Patrick Sonnier, a man who is on death row in Louisiana State Penitentiary. Sonnier has been sentenced to death for his part in the kidnapping and murder of two young people and the rape of the young woman. Sonnier is not a particularly attractive individual. He is sullen and defensive, and he refuses to take any responsibility for his actions. Prejean in no way condones the young man’s behaviour, but she does see behind the tough exterior a vulnerable human being who loves his mother and his younger brother.

Prejean’s visits to Sonnier and her increasingly vocal opposition to the death penalty do not make her popular and are a source of pain and confusion for the parents of the murdered youths. They simply cannot understand how a good Christian woman can give Sonnier the time of day, let alone show him some kindness. They want her to join them in calling down God’s judgement on him. They want him to pay for what he has done, and they firmly believe that God’s fury should be poured out on him. It is beyond them to comprehend that anyone could have sympathy for a person who has committed such evil acts. 

Prejean persists in her friendship, consistently urging Sonnier to admit to and take responsibility for the crime. It is only when Sonnier is within hours of facing the executioner that he finally acknowledges that he took part in the murder and that he raped the girl. He was still executed – not as someone who was still lost, but as someone who, through the love of God regained his humanity and was redeemed.

Who is the most loathsome person you can think of? Hitler or Idi Amin might come to mind, or perhaps those who attacked Camp Sovereignty in recent weeks[1]. Top of your list might be those members of Hamas whose murderous rampage on October 7, 2023 began the current war in Gaza.  It could be that the perpetrators of domestic violence or chid sex offenders might cause you the greatest sense of revulsion. To be honest, having put my mind to it, I can see that there are many categories of people whose actions put them beyond the pale and who, because of those actions seem to be out of the reach of forgiveness or redemption. Even to think about the perpetrators of such horrendous crimes causes such disquiet that their removal from society seems to be the only way to create a safer more harmonious world.

Can you even begin to imagine that God might love Sonnier, or Rowan Baxter who incinerated his wife and three children in their car? Can you envisage God’s loving the murderers, the sex offenders, the terrorists, the oppressive dictators so much that God’s heart is breaking for them until God can bring them back to Godself.  It is a shocking, horrifying thought – that God should love the reprehensible, the destructive, and the violent. Doesn’t God constantly call us to obey the law – love our neighbours as ourselves and so on? Are we not right in expecting God to rain down judgement on all those who go against God’s laws? Aren’t we justifiably affronted when an evil person apparently gets away with the evil they have committed?

Is it not an insult to ourselves, but more particularly to the victims and their families that one day a murderer will be set free when they themselves will have to live with grief and absence for a lifetime or even that a murderer will live when one whom they have loved will not?

In the light of such thoughts, can you imagine then how confrontational the parable of the lost sheep would have been to Jesus’ listeners?  What on earth is the shepherd doing going off after the foolish sheep that has got itself separated from the folk – the one that has wandered off, the one that was unable to conform to the standards expected? What self-respecting shepherd would abandon a flock (or 99% of a flock) – to wolves, to thieves – for the sake of one percent – the rapists, the extremists, the violent offenders, those who defraud? 

We have lost the offense of this parable by associating ourselves with the one lost sheep instead of understanding that the lost sheep is the rank outsider, the one who has made choices that put its life and the lives of the others at risk. Jesus tells the parable in response to the Pharisees and scribes who are disgruntled because Jesus welcomes and eats with sinners. Jesus tells the parable to make explicit God’s love for and desire to save all people – especially the sinners. Those who are already saved – the law-abiding, the church-going – have no need to be sought out and brought home. They are already at home.

It is the self-righteous indignation of the 99 (the scribes and the Pharisees, the “saved”) that is expressed by the elder brother in the third parable of the lost – the forgiving father. The 99, the good, the well-behaved, those who already have everything that salvation has to offer have not need to be sought out by God. 

Today’s parables tell us of the lengths God will go to ensure that absolutely everyone – the good, the bad and even the ugly – know the warmth of God’s love. If that offends us we have not grasped the nature of God’s all-inclusive, unconditional love for all God’s creation and nor have we grasped just how blessed we are that we are recipients of that love.

If we are truly secure in God’s love, rather than in our own sense of self-righteousness, we too will want the whole world to know the warmth of God’s embrace.

[1] The site of an Indigenous ceremonial place and burial ground on which a number of indigenous people camp and which was attacked following a “March for Australia” leaving four people injured, two with severe head wounds.

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A son who brings shame and dishonour and a father who couldn’t care less

March 29, 2025

Lent 4 – 2025

Luke 15:11-32

Marian Free

In the name of God who, on our part endures humiliation and shame in order to show love to and to welcome home the worst of us. Amen.

(You might like to watch the Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane’s one minute reflection on today’s gospel.)

There are two parables (only found in Luke) that have become part of common parlance.  These are known as the parable of the Good Samaritan and the parable of the Prodigal Son. Unfortunately, our over familiarisation with these parables (and with parables in general) is that they have lost their capacity to shock, to pull us up short. In the first instance, Jesus’ parable about the Samaritan is not a call to do good works, but a critique of those – good Christians all– who think that in some way superior to those whom they consider as somehow lesser than themselves. In the second instance, Jesus is challenging the view of those who thought that Jesus should only eat with/associate with those who kept the law and those who observed the niceties of social expectations (Luke 15:1).

In the case of the Prodigal son, as the name suggests, the focus tends to be on the son. When we read the parable, we put ourselves in the place of the son and feel immense gratitude that God overlooks our faults when and if we repent. What we fail to see, is what the parable tells us about the Father – by implication what it tells us about God and Jesus. In fact, scholars today call the parable the forgiving father, because that more accurately represents Jesus’ meaning.

The focus in this parable is not the repentance (if it was repentance) of the son, but on the father, who, ignoring ridicule and having no regard to his position in society, not only indulges the son, but who watches day and night for the son’s return and who runs to greet him on the road. In this parable, Jesus turns the honour/shame culture of the Middle East on its head. 

At that time (and in some places today) the concept of honour/shame was central to all relationships in the Middle East. There were complex protocols governing all human behaviour because honour was a finite resource and if you wanted to increase your own honour you could only do it at the expense of someone else’s honour. In an interaction between people of differing status, there were quite specific codes to follow so that each person, whether of higher or lower status, was not in danger of threatening the honour of the other.  

A loss of honour was equally the loss of respect and status in the community. This is the reason why Herod felt that he had to honour the request of his step daughter to behead John the Baptist. To have failed to do so would have meant that he would have lost face (respect, status) before his guests.  If a person lost their honour, it was lost for good. Had Herod not fulfilled his promise, he might have been able to maintain his power by force, but not through his status in the community. (He would have become an object of ridicule, someone who could not be expected to keep his word.)

In a collective (not individualistic) society, honour was collective. A man’s honour was dependent on the behaviour of his family – so much so that homes were often open to the street to demonstrate that the head of the household had nothing to fear. In this case the actions of the son reflect badly on and diminish the father’s honour.

This is what makes Jesus’ parable of the forgiving father all the more surprising, even shocking to his audience. From beginning to end the story is about a father whose honour is challenged and diminished and about a father who doesn’t care less about honour, his dignity or the regard in which he is held by his neighbours.  He cares only for the well-being of the son.

According to the parable the younger son asks for his share of the inheritance. Not only is this son greedy, selfish and impatient he is, by asking for his inheritance, implying that wished his father dead. Jesus’ audience would have understood that the son’s request was in clear violation of the fourth commandment to honour your father and mother. Further, anyone dependent on making a living from the land would be well aware of the financial burden that paying out the son would put on the father (and the remaining brother). The son has brought shame on the family, possibly impoverished the family and has thought only of himself and his short-term pleasure.

You might say, “yes, but he did come to his senses’. But did he? Was he really repentant or was he still putting his own needs first. Peter Hawkins (among others) observes that there is something quite calculating in the son’s thought process[1]. His speech is even rehearsed: “I will say to him.” There is no mention in the account that he is sorry, only that returning home would be a solution to his state of starvation. 

If anyone has/had any doubt that God was not a God of judgement and condemnation, but a God of compassion and second chances, this parable (and the two that precede it) puts paid to any questions on that score.

The father (probably representing God) has asked nothing of the son but has freely given him what he wanted, released him from all responsibility and let him go. Then, day after day, it appears, he has kept a lookout for this lost boy – forgoing pride and any sense of social respectability (the son has made it clear that he doesn’t want to be part of the family and has brought dishonour on his family name). 

Finally, the father sees the son and, without thought for his personal dignity and paying no regard to the diminished esteem in which he will be held by his neighbours, he runs (runs not walks) to take his son in his arms before son has any opportunity to give his well-thought out and well-rehearsed speech. If that were not enough to indicate to his neighbours his lack of self-respect, he then calls for the best robe, a ring for the finger, sandals for his feet AND a feast with the fatted calf, any one of which would be shocking and incomprehensible to his community.  A member of the family who had brought them into such disrepute and brought such shame upon them, should at the very least be shunned if not severely punished.

By turning upside down the social conventions of the time, Jesus wants his audience to let go of an idea that God only welcomes those self-righteous people who keep the law and set themselves apart from the sinner and tax-collector. Just the opposite, God’s primary concern is for the sheep who has wandered from the fold, the coin that has found its way into a hidden corner, and the son or daughter who has cut themselves off from God’s love. 

God of the lost, giver of second chances – is not a God who wants to condemn and exclude, but a God whose open embrace welcomes all who would turn to him – without question, without recrimination and certainly without judgement.

[1] Christian Century. Sunday’s Coming. 25/3/25

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Searching for the lost

September 9, 2022

Pentecost 14 – 2022
Luke 15:1-10 (Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28)
Marian Free

In the name of God who searches for the lost and brings them safely home. Amen.

I have often said that I am not sure what lies behind the thinking of the compilers of our lectionary. When read out of context, passages such as those from Jeremiah this morning, make little sense. One wonders about the relevance of the words of a prophet, spoken to a faithless people, apply to us today. Certainly, in view of the current climate crisis, we could argue that the water crisis in many parts of the world is God’s punishment for the world’s turning away from God. The problem with that argument is not only that we are appropriating the prophet’s words for our own purposes, but worse is the implication that follows – that (for example) those forced to flee their homes to refugee camps in northern Syria, and who are now facing water insecurity, brought the situation on themselves.

If one reads: “I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins before the LORD, before his fierce anger” (Jer 4:26) and other such passages out of context, it is not difficult to understand why there are many Christians who find the Old Testament writings to be both disconcerting and discouraging. They find in its pages a vindicative, demanding and angry God – a God who is vastly different from the one that they experience in the pages of the New Testament – and so they abandon the Old Testament (and the riches it contains).

It is true that the writings of the prophets (as Jeremiah this morning) are often judgemental, bleak, and full of foreboding; but, despite this, many will tell you that the Old Testament is God’s love letter to God’s people.

To understand this concept, we need to understand that (despite the story of Abraham), establishing a faith in the one true God did not happen overnight. The Israelites (the children of Abraham) found themselves in the midst of nations who worshipped a multitude of gods and, it appears that it was sometimes difficult for the Israelites to hold fast to a God whom they could not see when their neighbours worshipped idols whom they could see and touch. (Among other things, this led to the creation of the golden calves when Moses, who was receiving the ten commandments from God, left the Israelites alone in the desert and the building of the ‘high places’ and worship of Baal in Israel.)

If we read the Old Testament in its entirety, instead of picking and choosing passages, we will see that over and over again, the Israelites abandon God and serve the gods of the surrounding nations. Over and over again God (through the prophets) expresses disappointment and warns them of the consequences of deserting the faith of their forbears. Over and over again God urges the people to return to God and promises to make them a new creation. And, over and over again, God reaches out in love to bring God’s people home. For example, were we to read further in Jeremiah we would find the beautiful words of reassurance in chapters 30 and 31: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you” (31:3).

Neglecting the Old Testament means that we never discover the image of God with which the book of Hosea concludes. After several chapters in which God expresses anger and frustration at a people who constantly chase after other gods, God seems to pull godself up, remembering that it was God who taught Ephraim (another word for Israel) to walk, God who lifted Israel to God’s cheek. Then follow these heartrending words of yearning:
“How can I give you up, Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, O Israel?
How can I make you like Admah?
How can I treat you like Zeboiim?
My heart recoils within me;
my compassion grows warm and tender.
9 I will not execute my fierce anger;
I will not again destroy Ephraim;
for I am God and no mortal,
the Holy One in your midst,
and I will not come in wrath”.(Hosea 11:8,9)

“My compassion grows warm and tender, and I will not come in wrath.”

A solid knowledge of the Old Testament reveals it to be a revelation of God’s love for God’s people. It is important that when we read the Old Testament, we read it in context, but more than that, we have to remember that it was foundational for Jesus’ image of God, that the God depicted in the Old Testament was the God whom Jesus knew. This means that when Jesus speaks of God, or the kingdom of God, he is informed by his faith, a faith rooted in the Old Testament ideas of God. Jesus knew the story of Israel and of God’s longing that Israel be restored to God. Jesus knew the shepherd/guide of Psalm 23; the God who, in verses omitted in today’s reading from Jeremiah says: “If you return to me and remove your abominations from me .. then the nations shall be blessed by him” (4:1,2); and the God of Isaiah who: “will feed his flock like a shepherd; gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep” (40:11). Jesus shares God’s compassion for and love of Israel and, while he too gets frustrated by hypocrisy and waywardness, Jesus shares God’s longing that the lost be found and restored to the people of Israel.

So, when Jesus tells the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, he is saying no new thing, he is describing the actions of the God of his forbears – the God of Jeremiah, the God of Hosea – a God who never loses hope in God’s people, a God who, no matter how far God’s people stray, never abandons them and a God who continually seeks out the lost and brings them home.

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So easy to get lost

September 14, 2019

Pentecost 14 – 2019

Luke 15:1-10

Marian Free

In the name of God who searches out the lost and brings them home rejoicing. Amen.

Will Patterson describes himself as an ordinary man – an ordinary man who went to jail. He was married with one son, had a good job in an insurance company, a house, a beach house and mounting debts As he explains it, it was when he extended his home that his finances got out of control. One day a cheque bearing his name came across his desk at work. Normally, Will would cancel any returned insurance payments but he put this this cheque in a drawer. After a few days of feeling guilt stricken, Will realised that no one had missed the cheque and he banked it into his account. So began a process of using, not only his own company identity, but also those of his wife and co-workers. Over time, he defrauded the company of $300,000. He explains that while he never felt good about it, once he had committed the first deceit subsequent deceits became easier. After all, he seemed to be getting away with it. When finally the company caught on to what was happening, Will felt an enormous sense of relief and freely admitted to what he had done.

His story, like that other other white collar criminals demonstrates how one false move can be the first on a slippery slope to ruin. Every fraud is the ‘last one’; the perpetrator often does not act without a sense of guilt and a fear of discovery; often they commit the fraud believing that they will pay the money back and, while seriously embarrassed, they are glad when they are finally caught out as that means that the stealing must stop.

In his own words: “The problem with breaking your moral compass is that nothing tethers you to your morals anymore. And after a week when you haven’t been caught and you’ve worked out that ‘here’s a way where I could maybe help me make ends meet’, you do it one more time. But it’s just one more time, and then you do it one more time but that’s the last time — and then you get used to having the money.”

In relating the story and his time in prison, Will states that there were a number of instances of grace that got him through to the other side and back into the workplace. One relates to his confessing his crime to his son. Will had used his wife’s security identity as part of the deceit. Not surprisingly, she informed him that he could not live with her anymore. Will moved in with his father, but did not immediately tell his son the reason why. One day the 12 year old asked why he couldn’t live at home anymore. Will told him what he had done and was surprised to hear his son take a leaf out of his own book.

Again, quoting Will: “The year before [he] had an incident where he bullied at school, and I had said to him ‘I am so mad at you right now, I can’t tell you what the consequences are going to be but there’s going to be a consequence because if you do something badly wrong you have to pay the price. When I told him what I’d done, he said to me ‘you will go to jail, dad’ and I went, ‘well that’s a possibility’. “He said ‘well good, because if you do something wrong you have to pay the price’.” Will could not have known the previous year that his response to his son’s behaviour would enable his son to cope with the possibility of his father going to prison.

Another instance of grace (and there were many) occurred when Will returned to the community and got a job with a Funeral Parlour. At first he didn’t share his criminal record. It was only when he was promoted to a position in which he was handling money that he felt that his employer should know of his past. To his surprise, when he confessed his employer said something to the effect of ‘that’s behind you now, we’ll leave it there.”

Will feels that he was able to resume his life thanks to the moments of grace that he experienced along the way. He knows what he has done and how easy it was to slip into it and he has put things in place to ensure that it never happens again.

When Jesus is criticized for welcoming sinners and eating with them, he tells the parables of the lost – those who have slipped from the path, taken a wrong turn, broken the law or done any number of things that separate them from from ‘law-abiding citizens’ and ‘decent folk’. The shepherd doesn’t ask why the sheep is lost or consider the safety of the 99 left behind. The shepherd doesn’t ask the 99 if they will welcome back the one who has gone missing. The shepherd knows and accepts the brokenness of the one who has strayed, knows how easy it is for someone to slip from good to bad and knows how easy it is to fall into despair when it seems that there is no way back. And so the shepherd, knowing the good in those who are lost, seeks them out and brings them back into the fold.

Jesus welcomed sinners and ate with them. He offered (and offers) moments of grace that proved salvific. When we, like Jesus, extend a welcome (share moments of grace) to those who have crossed a line, we are like the woman and the shepherd who know that a person who is lost is very often waiting for someone to find them and bring them home.

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September 10, 2016

Pentecost 17 – 2016

Luke 15:1-10

Marian Free

 

In the name of God whose love and mercy confounds and astounds us all. Amen.

It all comes down to this – what sort of God you believe in. How do you envisage the nature of God? Do you believe in a fire-breathing, hell damning, judgemental, unforgiving God or is your image of God one of boundless, unconditional, all-encompassing, all forgiving love? The answer is important, because I believe that the answer lies at the heart of understanding the radical, shocking nature of the God depicted in today’s gospel.

Those who believe in an exacting, demanding rule-focussed God tend to have a view of the faith community as exclusive and limited, restricted to those who are willing and able to adhere to a set of stringent guidelines. They will be quite certain as to what behaviours determine who is in and who is out of the group and therefore who is in and out of God’s favour. A clear set of standards will enable them to measure their own goodness against that of others and at the same time will inform them of their (and others) status before God.

Those who believe in a compassionate, welcoming God will have a completely different view. They will understand that the community of believers is not exclusive or perfect but is made up of people who try but fail to achieve the godliness for which they aspire. As a consequence the boundaries of their community will be porous and ill-defined. They will welcome into their community the frail, the damaged and the imperfect. This community will also hold a clear set of standards, but they will accept that few, if any, will reach that ideal. Knowing their own imperfections and failures, they will think very carefully before measuring themselves against others and before standing in God’s place to judge.

Of course, these are broad-brush strokes and blatant stereotypes. Most Christian communities fall somewhere along the spectrum between these two extremes. Some will believe that God sets very high standards and, while imposing those standards on themselves will be open and compassionate towards those whom they consider to be “sinners”. Other communities that appear on the surface to be loving and compassionate may carry a weight of guilt at their failure to be more than they are.

I have described these two extremes to try to demonstrate just how shocking the parables of the lost would be to those who think of God as the arbiter of strict behaviours and who withhold love and approval from those who fail to live up to certain pre-defined standards. In fact as the opening verse reminds us, Jesus tells the parables in response to the accusation by the Pharisees and scribes that he eats with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus is answering the unspoken question: – who is worthy of God’s love – those who do what God requires or all God’s creatures, those who come up to standard or all people regardless of their failures?

Of the two parables, that of the lost sheep is the most shocking. Most of us find comfort in this parable. We see ourselves as those who were lost but are now found. It is interpreted as a parable that reminds us how much God loves us – that when we are lost God seeks us out and brings us home. That is certainly true – we can identify with the lost. However, what does the parable look like if we understand ourselves to be among the ninety-nine? Ninety-nine of the sheep are doing the right thing. Not one of them has wandered off. Not one has been absent-minded enough to lose track of the shepherd. Not one has been tempted to seek out better pastures. Not one thought that they knew better than the shepherd what was best for them.

No, only one sheep has been foolish enough or disobedient enough to wander from the safety of the group. Only one sheep has placed itself at risk by taking itself beyond the reach of the shepherd. Only one sheep has thought that it knew better than the shepherd. Yet – and here is the shock at the heart of the parable – despite the fact that one sheep hasn’t lived up to expectations, the shepherd abandons the ninety-nine compliant, obedient sheep and goes off in search of the one who did not conform. Instead of favouring those who behave according to expectation, the shepherd is making a big deal of the one that has gone its own way! The good sheep, those who are doing the right thing get no special treatment, no reward for their conformity – they might just as well not exist so concerned is the shepherd for the one that is lost.

If they could think like humans, the ninety-nine sheep would have every right to be indignant. What is the point, they might think, of doing the right thing, when the one who does the wrong thing receives special treatment. Why bother to behave in the right way when it is the one who behaves badly and creates so much trouble causes such joy to the shepherd when it is found? How can we feel smug about our own goodness when the shepherd (God) is obviously vitally concerned about those who are lost? If sheep could think I imagine that their reaction to the shepherd’s reckless behaviour would be much the same as the elder son’s response to the father’s extravagant welcome of the prodigal son.

In word and action, Jesus is revealing how much God loves ALL of God’s children. It is impossible for anyone to be beyond the reach of God’s love no matter what they do or how far they stray. When someone wanders from the fold, God is heartbroken and cannot rest until they are brought back in. God seeks the sheep that has drifted from the path, searches for the coin that has gone missing, and watches and waits for the prodigal to return.

Jesus’ parable is encouraging those who have responded to God’s love, who have remained within the fold, stayed with the other coins or remained at home with the Father to understand what a privilege it is to be so loved and to have the grace and generosity to allow – to desire even – that love to be shared with everybody – the good and the bad, the willing and the less willing, the conventional and the unconventional. .

In Jesus, God’s love for all people is made palpably visible. Do we, (like the scribes and Pharisees), resent the way that Jesus extends God’s love to those who do not deserve it? Are we (like the scribes and the Pharisees) so insecure of our place in God’s heart that we constantly compare ourselves with others to assure ourselves of our own worth? Or – are we so overwhelmed by God’s abundant, unconditional love and so confident that that love will never be withdrawn that we can join the rejoicing when the lost are found and God’s children come home?

To know God’s love and to begrudge that love to others demonstrates a meanness of spirit and a smallness of heart that makes us unworthy of the love that we have so freely received. God can love whomever God will. The wonder is that God has chosen to love us.

 

 

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