Lost & Found - One Sheep and one Coin

“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? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” (Lk. 15:4-6)

The lost sheep
Jackals, hyenas and wolves are the sworn enemies of sheep. For the most part animals kill out of necessity, but wolves, however, are not content to just kill a sheep and eat it in peace. On the contrary, their aim is to slaughter the entire flock and not relent as long as there is a sheep still left standing; it seems that they take great pleasure in killing.

When I was a child and a shepherd, I used to take my small flock far away from the village to the mountains; there, in unchartered territory, to prove how indispensable I was to the sheep, I used to play a sort of hide and seek game with them -- I would hide from the sheep and watch their reaction. So long as I was in their sight the sheep would eat in peace keeping one eye on the grass and the other on the shepherd, but once they lost sight of the shepherd, the bell around their neck would immediately go silent as they would stop eating. Then, after raising their heads and looking in all directions and not seeing the shepherd, they would disband and break into a mad dash towards the direction of home. I would then come out from my hiding place, give a loud whistle and they would return and graze again in peace.

Keeping this in mind, if a shepherd was taking care of a flock by himself, it is truly inconceivable that he would leave the flock, placing the 99 sheep in danger, to look for the one lost. He would at the very least first ensure the safety of the 99 and only then go look for the lost one.

This shepherd is special, however, for he uses an unusual type of mathematics: for him, 99 is equivalent to 1, and 1 is equal to 99. God does not have the same priorities that we humans have; the 99 were left behind for the single one. When a mother of nine who lost one of her children was told as a way of consolation that she should not cry as she still had eight left, she promptly responded, “I know I still have eight left, but I do not have the one I’ve just lost”.

The place where we occupy in God’s heart cannot be occupied by anyone else and in this fact that we are all unique to God resides the dignity of the human person. Therefore when someone is lost, God awaits patiently for his return and eventually when he does come back, as we see in the parable of the prodigal son, he is given the very same status that he had before he went away. Upon his return, he once again occupies the place in the Father’s heart that belongs to him alone which had been left empty since he went astray.

According to our ways of thinking, however, the 99 have every reason to be resentful, and we see this very sort of resentment being acted out by the older son in the prodigal son’s parable. One can only imagine that if the 99 sheep had a say, they would voice out their resentment towards the lost sheep by saying that no one had thrown him out of the flock but he had chosen of his own accord to leave the sheepfold and therefore must now suffer the consequences of his actions.

To top it off, when the shepherd finally finds the lost sheep, he does not drag it home kicking and screaming, but rather lays it on his shoulders, and not only gives a great feast but has the audacity to say that ‘there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous who need no repentance‘(Lk. 15:7).

Ministry or Evangelization?
Unlike this Divine Shepherd, the Church tends to pay little attention to the lost sheep, saying that we still have the 99 to take care. To look after these 99, a multitude of ministries came about:  campus ministries, youth ministries, ministries to the sick and homebound, etc.

According to statistics, however, time has reversed the parable; now only one remains in the flock while the other 99 are lost. This change in reality should have triggered a change in the pastors’ attitude and yet they remain as passive as they were before, now devoting themselves to fattening up the one and only sheep in the fold, and probably consoling themselves by saying that they still have one left…

Since we have only one sheep left in the sheepfold, are we not deceiving ourselves with the use or abuse of the word ‘ministry’? When we talk about campus ministries or health ministries, is it not a great assumption on our part to consider the thousands of students in a university or the hundreds of patients in a hospital as part of our flock?

If we were to use the word ‘mission’ in lieu of ‘ministry’ we would do more justice to the reality; we would then be more honest with ourselves and perhaps by confronting this harsh reality head on we would change our passive attitude of a shepherd to the proactive one of ‘fisher of men’, which Jesus wanted so much for us to be.

Mercy & Mission
‘For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus.’ (Rom. 15:4-5)

In this sense, we can relate to mercy as a form of Mission and Mission as a work of mercy. It is precisely this message that is depicted in the logo of the Jubilee Year of Mercy proclaimed by Pope Francis. To go in search of the lost sheep is at the same time a work of mercy and the mission of the new evangelization. In fact, in the logo, the guise of the lost sheep upon the shoulders of the Good Shepherd comes not in the form of a sheep but rather of a human being, that is, the prodigal son.

Not having a better consolation than to live out the Gospel which cherishes us, let us be its witnesses to others so that they too can experience the same consolation that we do, and be missionaries in the same sense as Isaiah who says, ‘Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.’ (Isa. 40:1)

The lost coin
‘Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.“ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’ (Lk. 15:8-10)

We would not be outraged at Jesus’ attitude towards the 99 if we thought that for him the 99 were as lost as the one; the difference is that both the lost sheep and the prodigal son were lost outside the fold; whereas the coin, the older brother, and the 99 sheep that never left the house or the sheepfold, were nonetheless also lost, divorced from God and from their own selves.

A silver coin was a day’s wage in those days and therefore, it was much that was lost. The woman swept the house in the hope of finding it, and in finding it she celebrated just as God celebrates for each one of us who is found.

Those who go to church are the worst
It is true that this grumbling has served many as a poor excuse for not going to Church and participating in the sacraments, and yet still considering themselves as Christians though non-practicing ones. However, the bad examples that the practicing Christians give, in the paths of life, make this statement unfortunately quite often true; in many churchgoers there is little evidence that their participation in the Church liturgies and sacraments has had any positive impact on their lives.

So it would be helpful if we could create some sort of mechanism by which Christians can make an examination of conscience as to the real reasons why they participate in the sacraments. They need to verify the place that religious practice occupies in their lives and to check if it is the engine of a new life of continuous conversion and progress, or if on the contrary, it alienates and justifies a certain manner of living or the general state of things i.e. modus vivendi or status quo…

When I lived in Ethiopia I saw how ignorance killed many people stricken with tuberculosis. The Ethiopian patients after taking the antibiotic Streptomycin for only two months would consider themselves cured and discontinue the treatment. We well knew that they were not completely cured and that when the illness returned, it would be caused by the much more virulent and drug-resistant strain of the bacteria from which many died.

Consequently, the World Health Organization alerted to the misuse of antibiotics for small inconveniences because this abuse rendered important antibiotics ineffective as the bacteria acquired resistance to the drugs. Similarly, this also happens at the ecclesial level, the sacraments are like the authentic antibiotics that kill harmful bacteria or in this case, the tendency to sin; but when they are abused, or they become a routine, they too cease to bear any fruit.

The same can be said of the Word of God which the practicing Christians hear often but not with a right state of mind, hence it runs the risk of sounding ‘déjà vu’ as these Christians become so accustomed to it like a body that becomes so used to an antibiotic, that the Word no longer exposes and kills the harmful germ of sin that it would normally be able to quash.

Furthermore, using the metaphor of the parable of the sower, if the Word of God sounds déjà vu, it means it no longer penetrates into our hearts since we are as hard as the soil on the pathway where the seeds are eaten up by the birds before they had the chance to penetrate into the soil and germinate (Matt. 13: 4). This is what happens to the Word of God that is proclaimed to a wandering mind, a mind that does not pay attention.

At the end of this reflection, and examining the message behind both the parable of the lost sheep and of the lost coin, we reach the conclusion that the 99 sheep were not any less lost than the one that drifted away. In the Lord’s sheepfold, not all that stay in it belong to it, and similarly not all that belong to it are in it.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Lost & Found - Who are the sinners?

In big shopping centres, churches and generally anywhere where large crowds gather, there is always a designated place to look for things that were lost or to leave things that were found. Children are frequently lost because they are not yet independent and do not know their way around. Existentially there are a lot of lost people and many of them are not even aware that they are lost. The Gospel is the best store for the lost and found. It gives you the awareness that indeed you are lost and at the same time shows you the way to find yourself.

There are no chapters more renowned in all of the New Testament than Chapter 15 of the Gospel according to Luke. It is called the gospel within the Gospel because it presents and represents the essence of Jesus’ message of mercy towards sinners. In fact, it is called the Gospel of Mercy.

To eat with sinners
The Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ (Lk. 15:2)

The Master speaks in parables whenever he needs to explain something abstract, such as the Kingdom of God, or when people question or criticize his behaviour. Chapter 15 of this Gospel is composed of three parables on mercy; these parables were motivated by the criticism of the Pharisees over the fact that Jesus eats with sinners, that is, the socially outcast.

Who were the sinners? – St. Augustine once said, “Homo simul justus et peccator” - we all regard ourselves as being a bit righteous and a bit of a sinner. To consider ourselves fully righteous would be like saying that we are already holy, and for all our conceit, none of us would dare to say this.

In Jesus’ time, however, this was not so; the teachers of the law, the scribes and the Pharisees, looked on themselves as being righteous, and on everybody else as being sinners. Sinners were the tax collectors because they were allied with the Roman invaders, the prostitutes for their immorality, the shepherds for spending much of their time apart from the community, and as a general rule, all the people who were not as dedicated to the fulfillment of the Law with the thoroughness of religious professionals as the Pharisees.

To eat with sinners – “Mix with the good people and you will be like them, mix with the bad ones and you will be worse than them” says a proverb – Jesus had already been accused of associating with sinners, now however the accusation is even stronger, he sits at the table and eats with them. In our modern western mentality, this act of eating with a bad person does not have any negative implications attached to it, but this was not how people thought in Jesus’ time. In the Middle East, food was seen as the fountain or the source of life and those who shared of the same source were united to one another in the way they lived.

This is why in Ethiopia, even today, the Muslims do not eat the meat that the Christians eat, and vice versa. In the cities where the Christians and the Muslims live together, there are butchers for the Muslims and butchers for the Christians. In the act of slaughtering an animal, proper prayers are said, so that if the animal is killed by a Muslim then the meat is for the exclusive consumption of Muslims; if a Christian eats of it then he would be considered a Muslim.

In order to point out this way of thinking as wrong and contrary to the Gospel, one of my colleagues ate of the meat that had been slaughtered by a Muslim butcher; when the Ethiopian Christians heard of this they no longer considered him a Catholic priest and would avoid receiving the Eucharist whenever he was the celebrant.

For the Pharisees therefore, if Jesus eats with sinners then he too is a sinner and he shares in their sinfulness. But Jesus thinks differently, he eats with sinners not to become a sinner or sinner-like, but so that they can become like him. In being friends with the sinners and eating with them, Jesus shows that God’s kindness is intended to lead sinners to repentance (Rom. 2:4).

The mystery of the Incarnation – Jesus lived with sinners not to join them in their sinful ways, but to show them that the good news of repentance is available for everyone, including them. There were many sinners who in fact, after experiencing Jesus’ welcoming openness, absence of criticism, kindness and unconditional love, recognized their own sinfulness and repented; a clear example of this is seen in the case of Zacchaeus (Lk. 19:1-10).

From the psychological point of view, Jesus’ ‘savoir faire’ approach to sinners in order for them to change their lives, is unparalleled. Indeed, he used the best strategy for as we say nowadays, “one does not catch flies with vinegar”. It is not with criticisms that we win sinners over and get them to change their ways.

Jesus always accepted people just as they were, unconditionally entering into their homes and eating with them, despite of knowing that according to the Mosaic Law that in so doing it would render him impure. In life, far too often husbands, wives and friends establish a set of unspoken conditions in how they relate to one another and some even going as far as requiring and demanding a change of behaviour in others.

Instead of accepting others unconditionally as they are thus proving that we love them, we try to customize others to meet our needs like we customize a computer for our own personal use, thus proving that who we really love is ourselves. Contrary to this, if we followed Jesus’ approach as shown in the episode of Zacchaeus, it is when we accept others as they are that they eventually change. On this same note, it is not with hatred that we win over our enemy, but with love since hatred makes the enemy more hateful and more antagonistic. In other words, hatred makes our enemy stronger while love helps us triumph over our enemy, turning him or her into a friend.

Jesus died for us when we were still sinners (Rom. 5:8). Jesus’ death is the culmination of the mystery of the Incarnation by which, according to St. Irenaeus, “God became man so that man may become God”. By lowering himself, Jesus is working to elevate us to the category of children of God.

The mystery of the Incarnation was already foretold in the message of the prophet Hosea. This prophet deliberately married a prostitute, so that she may become chaste and return to the time of their courtship. With this action, the prophet wanted to say that God was married to an unfaithful people, who was prostituting themselves with the false gods of Baal; in contrast, God, represented by the prophet, is faithful and did not lose hope to guide the people back to the faithfulness of the betrothal days, that is, during their crossing of the desert from Egypt to the Promised Land.

Call everyone because all are sinners
When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does you teacher eat with tax-collectors and sinners?’ But when he heard this, he said, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’ (Matt. 9:11-13)

Jesus could not have said this to the Pharisees and the doctors of the law without a touch of irony amid some sarcasm. God does not want from us impersonal sacrifices and rituals, but rather that we recognize our sinfulness and acknowledge that we are indebted to him, accept his forgiveness and his mercy, and afterwards, as it is seen in the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matt. 18:21-35), that we in turn be merciful to those who have sinned against us and are indebted to us.

“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1John 1:8). For Jesus there is no one who is righteous before God, we are all sinners and in need of his divine mercy. As St. John perceived very well, those like the Pharisees and the doctors of the law who consider themselves righteous are liars and dishonest, they not only have a false image of themselves but also of God.

The three parables which follow one another in Chapter 15 of the Gospel according to Luke are also called the Gospel of Mercy as they all show the reason why Jesus not only associated and ate with sinners but also why he chose some of them to be his apostles.

The first two, the parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin, serve together as an introduction to the greater parable of the Prodigal Son; the subjects that are drafted in the first two parables are later best explained and developed in the third. On their own these first two parables also have a lesson to impart but more importantly, they serve the purpose of getting the listener's attention to the upcoming parable of the Prodigal Son.

Luke sets off the alarm in the common sense of listeners with the most unusual behaviour of a shepherd who risks the welfare of 99 sheep by abandoning them in the wilderness to the mercy of wolves, to go looking for one single sheep that is lost. To top it off, unaware of the danger the 99 are in, he goes off and celebrates a feast after having found the lost one. In the same manner, it also seems very extravagant that a woman calls her neighbours to celebrate after finding the one coin that she had lost inside her own house! However, it all makes sense when these parables are followed by the parable of the Prodigal Son; they serve the purpose of awakening a listener’s attention and heightening his concentration and expectation of the third parable.

By making the main character in the first parable a man and the second a woman, Jesus wants to tell us that he has come to call all sinners without distinction of gender, nationality, social status, or any other distinctions. On the other hand, when we examine the three parables as a whole, Jesus wants us to realize that we are all lost but can be found, that is, we are all sinners who can be recipients of the divine mercy available to all mankind.

Therefore the sheep and the prodigal son, who became lost by going outside the flock and who abandoned the Father’s house, are as likely sinners as the coin and the oldest son who stayed lost while inside the house. The first group of sinners who left the flock and house were the publicans, the prostitutes and harlots in general; the sinners inside the flock and house were those who considered themselves righteous like the Pharisees, the doctors of the law and the scribes.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC