One of the old Sunday School pictures that hung on the wall of thousands of Sunday School class rooms is of the shepherd, leaning precariously over a steep and ominous precipice, reaching down to rescue a lamb caught in a scraggly bush.
A shepherd, Jesus said, had one hundred sheep. One strayed and became lost. The shepherd left the ninety-nine—in the wilderness—to go find and retrieve the one lost sheep. “Which of you,” Jesus asked rhetorically, “would not do the same?” The answer is “none of us.” No sensible, prudent shepherd would endanger the owner’s investment by risking 99 percent to recover 1 percent. So the story contradicts common sense.
The shepherd finds the lost sheep, lays it on his shoulder, rejoices, calls friends and neighbors to a celebration. “Wouldn’t you do the same?” Jesus asks, and again the answer is no. Obviously a party for neighbors and friends—food, drink, bar bill, caterer—is going to cost a lot more than the value of that one sheep.
There’s a funny economics operating here. The shepherd is unlike any shepherd anyone knows and places a higher value on one individual sheep than is practical or pragmatic.The story is told for the benefit of good, responsible religious people. Its obvious beneficiaries are the lost sheep, the outsiders, those who have strayed but have not strayed from the searching, compassionate love of the shepherd.
Dr. Willy L Mafuta Pastor,
Hopewell United Methodist Church, Hopewell, NJ 08525