Read today’s gospel, The Parable of the Lost Sheep, last night with my mother. Here are the thoughts our discussion prompted:
How do the other 99 feel when the Shepherd leaves them behind to go and find his prodigal sheep?
Abandoned?
Sad?
Are they tempted to stray themselves?
Or are they too afraid to wander far from the familiar confines of the fold?
And that prodigal sheep? That’s not actually in the text. We assign lost to wayward and sinful. But all we know is he has strayed. Perhaps he is bold and courageous. Perhaps he went out in service of the Shepherd or the fold and lost his way. Perhaps he was pushed out by the others because he was different.
Perhaps he was a day dreamer and was lost in thought when the others moved on to greener pastures.
All we know is for whatever reason, he is not like the other 99 and this brought him closer, on the Shepherd’s shoulders.
This parable has always been a comfort when we recognize our own sinfulness. But what about when we feel comfortable in our faith? Comfortable in our spiritual life? What about when we identify with the 99?
We are certainly not called to sin. But perhaps we are called to stray from OUR ways. Push the boundaries of our complacency and comfort. Perhaps we are called to trust the Shepherd. Trust that if we try and live a radical life even just a little bit and fail, He will find us and put us on his shoulders.
Perhaps we are called to be afraid of the next step in our spiritual journey, but we take it any way trusting that what we fear is not going to take us a way from Him but closer to him.
Do we have to sin to identify with the lost sheep? I wonder. We certainly want to be him at the end of the story. Who wants to be the boring 99? We want the Shepherd to pick us up and carry us home.
So is there something we can do for him to achieve that place on his shoulders besides leave him? Maybe we aren’t leaving him but the 99. Maybe we venture away from the safety in numbers, in convenience or in convention.
Maybe it is a call to imitate the Shepherd’s own radical love which sets us outside the fold. And in straying from the status quo, on his shoulders we return.
