One shepherd, and the Good Shepherd

The Shepherd and the Lost Sheep

Jesus told a story so simple a child can follow it and so searching that it has never stopped provoking his hearers. A shepherd has a hundred sheep and loses one. What does he do? He leaves the ninety-nine and goes after the single lost one until he finds it, and when he does he lifts it onto his shoulders and carries it home rejoicing. It is a small parable with an enormous claim buried inside it about the heart of God. Luke places this story in a pointed setting, spoken to critics who grumbled that Jesus welcomed sinners. In answer he tells of a shepherd who counts the one that is missing as worth the whole search. The cluster on the shepherds of the Bible arrives here at its warmest note, the seeking and rejoicing heart of God for the one who is lost.

“What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?”Luke 15:4

The shepherd in Scripture

Luke sets the parable in a specific and charged moment at the opening of his fifteenth chapter. Tax collectors and sinners were drawing near to Jesus to hear him, and the religious teachers muttered against him, complaining that this man welcomed sinners and even ate with them. Table fellowship carried weight, and to share a meal with the disreputable was to accept them. It was against this grumbling that Jesus answered, not with an argument but with a series of stories about lost things found. The first is the parable of the lost sheep in Luke 15:4. Jesus poses it as a question. Which of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? The question assumes the answer. Any shepherd would go. The lost one is not written off as an acceptable loss but pursued with a determination that lasts until the search succeeds. The words until he finds it carry the whole weight of the shepherd's resolve. When he finds it, the shepherd does not scold or drive it back. He lays it on his shoulders and carries it, and Luke says he does so rejoicing. Then, arriving home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and invites them to rejoice with him because he has found his lost sheep. The finding overflows into shared celebration. The joy is too large to keep to oneself. Jesus draws the meaning himself. He says that in the same way there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. The parable is immediately followed by the story of a woman who loses a coin, sweeps the house until she finds it, and calls her friends to rejoice, and then by the longer story of a father with two sons. All three stories move through the same rhythm of loss, seeking or waiting, finding, and celebration, and the sheep is the first and simplest telling of that single insistent theme.

What it comes to mean

At the center of the parable is the value placed on the one. Ninety-nine remain, and by any cold arithmetic the single lost sheep might be counted an acceptable loss. Jesus tells it the opposite way. The one that is missing is precisely the one the shepherd goes after, and the ninety-nine are left while he searches. This does not mean the ninety-nine do not matter. It means that being lost draws the shepherd's active pursuit, and that God does not shrug off the straying one as beneath his effort. The seeking is relentless, and the phrase until he finds it is the hinge. The shepherd does not search for a while and give up. He keeps on until the lost sheep is recovered. This is a picture of a God who takes the initiative, who goes out into the open country after the wanderer rather than waiting at home for its return. The movement is from the shepherd toward the lost, and it does not stop short. The parable presses the point that the finding is the shepherd's doing, born of his refusal to quit.