What is your opinion?
If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray
Our opinion usually appears to be that we ought to cut our losses, to remain frozen in a posture of self-protection, and to try our best to forget about those who have gone astray. It appears we tend to think of values in the aggregate, balancing the good of the many against the good of the few. And to some degree this makes sense for we ourselves are finite creatures with finite resources. But God's heart is not like this. He is utterly unable to overlook any single individual who wanders. He is never content with 'good enough' but desires all to be saved and come to knowledge of the truth (see First Timothy 2:4).
will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills
and go in search of the stray?
What does it mean for God himself to leave the ninety-nine? Their large number doesn't render the lost sheep irrelevant but neither does it turn them into a faceless mass without hearts of their own. They still retain individual desires and fears. God would not, by leaving them, put them into a condition similar to the one who was lost. Instead he left them in the hills, safe under the auspices of his protection. Yet his activity was only obviously visible in the way he went to seek out the lost sheep. He was with all of the sheep, all one hundred, by his presence and his power, but he was active in a special way for the sake of the one who was lost precisely because the one who was lost had a special need, the need to be found, that could only be met in this way.
And if he finds it, amen, I say to you, he rejoices more over it
than over the ninety-nine that did not stray.
The way God intervenes spectacularly to save the lost is often to the chagrin of those who have long been numbered among the mass of the faithful, safe in the hills of the Church. But the fact is, in these hills, we don't require the same intervention as do those who have truly gone astray. We ourselves remain safe under the ever watchful protection of the shepherd. But he seeks the lost in a special way because his entire mission could be summarized when he said, "the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost" (see Luke 19:10).
We tend to feel neglected when we see the celebration surrounding the return of lost sheep to the fold. We tend to be similar to the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son, refusing to join the feast because we ourselves feel slighted. Yet for us, as for him, all that the Father had was already ours. We were able to enter daily into a feast beyond comparison. The joy of sheep returning is meant to be something that we can not only accept and understand but also celebrate, something in which we ourselves can participate. Their joy in returning, the Father's joy in having them return, can be a joy in which we ourselves, though not lost, can nevertheless partake. It is this joy that motivates us in our mission as evangelists. In learning to know it, rather than knowing jealousy, our own hearts are conformed more and more to the Father's heart, the heart of the Shepherd who alone is truly good.
Comfort, give comfort to my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her
that her service is at an end,
her guilt is expiated;
Our exile, our slavery in the spiritual Babylon, was the result of sinfulness that put self first and placed obstacles to God in our own hearts and in our society. But God did not respond to our fault by leaving us in the condition into which we wandered. Rather he taught us to prepare the way for our return from Babylon.
Every valley shall be filled in,
every mountain and hill shall be made low;
The rugged land shall be made a plain,
the rough country, a broad valley.
This path that we prepare was not so much the way that we would come to God, as though we were lost sheep that suddenly acquired Google Maps or some other GPS and could now find our way ourselves. It was rather than path by which God himself would come to rescue us. We could not even prepare the way for his coming without his help. Why else would he send prophets to teach us how to welcome him if not because we did not know and needed to be taught? The appropriate response was meant to be one of faith. It was only by faith that mountains could move (see Matthew 17:20), only by providence that the bitter valley would become a place of springs (see Psalm 84:6) or that they could be decked with grain (see Psalm 65:13). The prophets words, then, are not so much an invitation to simply work harder as they are an invitation to believe more in what the Lord himself wants to do, how he himself wants to prepare his way to us. There are still many ways in which we too need to be found. His compassion for us is no less than the one lost sheep of whom he spoke.
Like a shepherd he feeds his flock;
in his arms he gathers the lambs,
Carrying them in his bosom,
and leading the ewes with care.
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