09-20-23

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
September 20, 2023
As I shared yesterday, we will begin a new series on the importance of the "one." This Sunday, I will focus on Luke’s Gospel, and the three parables about the lost — the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son (15:1-32). Many people read the first of the three parables and throw the sheep under the bus for getting lost. "Thank goodness," people will say, "for a shepherd who was willing to go and find the lost one." Yet that may not be entirely accurate, as vs. 4 says, "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?" The word "losing" does more than imply the shepherd’s failure in keeping the sheep together, but Jesus, in telling the parable, outright throws the shepherd under the bus. That is not the way I have read this parable. I have pictured the sheep wondering off or getting distracted and not noticing how the flock has moved on. I have never pondered the shepherd as the one to blame, and I think it is because I have always thought of Jesus as the shepherd character in this parable. But maybe in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is not depicted as the "Good Shepherd" (John’s Gospel), but understands the shepherd to be someone else or something else. What are your thoughts?

The stories of scripture are not always as straight-forward as I wish they were, Merciful God, and there are times when I am caught off guard by the unexpected. So often, I try to read into the words what I assume is in the words, but there are times when what I thought was there is not there. Continue to walk alongside me as I learn and grow and rethink and find you anew. Amen.