God's Economy :: Only a Full House

If you ask an economist to look at this week’s text in which a shepherd leaves the 99 sheep to find the one lost sheep, they would run a cost benefit analysis and tell you that it would be better to leave the one lost sheep, cut your losses and stay with the 99. “Which one of you,” Jesus says, “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?” Um, Jesus, none of us.

I asked my brother-in-law, who is an economist, and he told me, maybe it's like the Vikings: leaving behind 99 quarterbacks for Brett Favre. And, well, we can see how good that has been so far this season.

This isn’t the first time and it certainly won’t be the last that Jesus tells us a parable that causes us to tilt our faces and scratch our heads and say, ahh, I don’t get it. Who would leave 99 sheep in the wilderness, where predators and danger lurk around every dark corner, to find one lost, probably stupid and confused solitary sheep?

What’s more, who would go through the lengths of searching high and low, far and wide, over hills and through valleys, through briars and thorns and then, upon finding the lost sheep, carry it back on his or her own shoulders? Again, no one.

And, which one of you, if you lose one coin, which is worth a day’s wage, would spend a whole day to light a lamp, sweep the house, and turn over every cushion to find it, thus wasting a whole day’s work. And then, which one of you wouldn’t then throw a party at possibly twice the cost of the coin you have found in order to celebrate what was found. Again, no one.

Nevertheless, when the lost are found, rejoicing—not harshness, judgment or punishment—is the appropriate reaction. It is God’s delight to show compassion and mercy, to rejoice at the repentance of one who was lost.

Such a venture—leaving the whole flock to find the one and then calling your friends together to celebrate—is foolhardy, to be sure, inefficient at best, and what’s worse, it’s just plain bad economics. But in the economy of God, it is the only way.

In the economy of God, efficiency and cost benefit analysis cannot exist. If they did, none of us would be found. The 99 would be safe in their pen with their shepherd and the 9 coins would just have to make do. None of us would be found if left to our own devices. God must go out and seek because all of us have been lost and we would be lost without God.

All of us have been the lost. While we are neither sheep nor coins, God has sought us out and still seeks us out. Yet we still wonder, if God is willing to search so hard to find the lost, why hasn’t God found me? Why hasn’t God gone through the effort to search out my son or my mother or all the other lost people wandering the earth, seeking a home?

I don’t know the answer to this hard question—if anyone did, it wouldn’t satisfy us. Some might say that some people are just lost and have not correctly repented. Or maybe that some people have just chosen to stay lost. But in this text, neither the sheep nor the coin find their own way home. They are always found. Even when we dip into the next text, the famous one about the prodigal son, we learn that repentance is just to be lost and to know it. And even so, there is rejoicing in that awareness.

I don’t know the answer to the hard question, but what I do know is that for God, only a full house is going to have a prayer. Though some people stay lost to us and though some people have lost God, no one is ever lost to God. Only a full herd and a full purse will satisfy God who will go and has gone through great lengths to find us: the cross.

In the cross Jesus became the lost in order to find and restore all of creation. On the cross Jesus cries, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When we stand and affirm our faith, we stand and say, “He was crucified, died and was buried, he descended into hell.” We confess our faith in the Christ who isn’t afraid of lostness, death or the grave and will continue to go to great lengths and widths and heights and depths to find the lost. And there will be great rejoicing: a feast; celebration; resurrection.

But now, where there may not be much to feast on or celebrate, we who have been lost but now are found are called to buy into God’s economy, seeking out the one while we leave the comfort of the 99 behind, and then, when we have found them, to bring them back to a place of celebration—not judgment—a place of welcome and belonging. Because the truth of it is, we can’t be found unless we have a full flock. We are lost unless all our found. We are not complete without the other; the missing; the lost. For God, and truthfully for us, only a full house will do.

“This fellow,” say the Pharisees and scribes, “welcomes sinners and eats with them.” And we, joining at his table say, Amen, come Lord Jesus.

Comments

[Jesse C]

Dude. Great thoughts. The benefit of teaching at a community that doesn't strictly follow the lectionary is that I get to preach this text for this upcoming Sunday, after having read your wonderful ideas. I looked at this text a couple weeks ago and shared similar thoughts on the foolishness of abandoning the 99 to track down the 1. The other thing that struck me was that what Jesus is addressing is the profound us/them mentality that the elders in the temple seem to put forth. The two groups of people that are lifted up are the tax collectors and the sinners. In other words, the people that we don't like (tax collectors), and the people that God doesn't like (sinners) (according to the religious elite). Jesus comes in and slaps the religious elite in the face and says, "These people are a part of my flock. You say they have no value, and I say they are the whole value."