Jesus is the shepherd who would leave the ninety-nine secure sheep for the one lost sheep. I recall a Sunday school curriculum image of a shepherd on a rocky hillside, wooden staff in hand, gently pulling the hoof of a little lamb from a crag. I probably colored the rocks purple, because some kid was already using the gray crayon.
Look at that shepherd, exerting such undo energy, abandoning the majority of his livelihood for a fraction. What is that?
It is an impulse for completion. He doesn’t cut his losses or choose the lesser of two evils. In the shepherd’s mind, he is the shepherd of a hundred, and certainly not ninety-nine. One sheep is the difference between whole and unwhole, the perfect standard and the rough approximation. One hundred is heavenly peace, and ninety-nine is a hellish, aching discord.
The shepherd’s search is also love. It is love for a certain sheep, for an individual. It is a love strong enough to count meticulously, to run cold at the disappearance of one, to scower the fields. It is a love that overrides the practical notion of simply moving on because more sheep will be born in due time. It is a love that sees beyond the species “sheep” and sees instead many different “ones,” irreducable and irreproducable ones. The shepherds heart does not take comfort in the vast sea of wool that patters as one across the pasture; instead, he lives for the moment when he says “one hundred,” because that means every indispensable creature is safe and near.
This is an age of lost sheep. Sheep lost in droves, stuck in billions of lonely crags. It seems there’s one counted for every ninety-nine lost. Lonely and disparate bleating echoes across the chilly heath. What of this accumulation of the lost? What of these innumerable losses, each devastatingly precious?
The multiplication of humanity has multiplied the lost. Lost beget lost, and loss multiplies in the heart and mind with every new generation. But Christ also multiplies Himself, through the generations of the church. The shepherd lives in His disciples, lives and grows in reach.
The church cannot operate on the basis of cutting losses, of the lesser of two evils. The church cannot conduct itself like a corporation, sending out general advertisement, hoping to reach a large majority. It cannot live for the impression of fullness. The church cannot do its work predicated on human assumptions, because our assumptions are always short of glory, short of one hundred. In an age of massive states and schools that fail to account for great numbers of their charges, in an age of passing the buck to a government agency, in an age of lost sheep leading lost sheep and wolves devouring, the shepherds of the church must seek after the ones. And it must be selfess, because it will go unrewarded in this life. It will make you un-famous, inefficient, and exhausted. You will be hated by some, because you insist that every last person should be a Christian, instead of those already predisposed to traditional Western values. The church is truly the church when every last shepherd is in pursuit of every lost one. The true church is a scowering shepherd on every craggy hill.
I write this as a hypocrite, freshly incited.
