“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?” – Luke 15:4 [part of the Gospel reading for this upcoming Sunday, the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, RCL, Year C].
Jesus posed this question to Pharisees and scribes who were grumbling about his dinner companions—tax collectors and sinners who had drawn near to hear him teach. The religious leaders found his table fellowship scandalous, his choice of company questionable. So Jesus told them a story.
As was His practice, He began with a question—essentially, “Which one of you would do this?” The expected answer, of course, is virtually no one. What shepherd risks ninety-nine sheep in the wilderness to search for a single stray? Having grown up in the world of retail, I can tell you that one percent inventory shrinkage isn’t catastrophic—it’s a manageable loss. Most reasonable people would cut their losses and protect what remains.
Jesus follows with an equally puzzling scenario: a woman who loses one of ten silver coins—roughly ten days’ wages for a laborer. She lights a lamp, sweeps her house, searches carefully until she finds it. When she does, she calls together friends and neighbors to celebrate. The party likely costs more than the value of the recovered coin.
We miss our Lord’s point if we think these stories are about wise resource management. Instead, they’re parables about divine love that operates according to an entirely different economics—one that makes no sense by the world’s calculations but reveals how things really are in God’s kingdom.
The challenge with these familiar parables is that all too quickly we think we know what they mean. We’ve heard them countless times, reduced them to simple lessons about God’s love for sinners. Their original scandal has been domesticated by familiarity. We’ve forgotten how economically absurd, how socially offensive, and how theologically revolutionary they actually are.
The Scandal of Divine Seeking
And yet, the deeper scandal in these parables lies not in their economics but in their theology. Both the shepherd and the woman take complete initiative in the search. The sheep doesn’t bleat for help or find its way back—it remains utterly passive. The coin certainly doesn’t roll into view or call out from its hiding place. All the agency belongs to the seeker.
This contradicts many of our preferred narratives about spiritual life. We like stories where people “find Jesus” or “come to faith” through their own seeking and decision. We’re comfortable with conversion accounts that place human choice at the center. But Jesus locates the initiative entirely with God. The lost are not seekers; they are sought, found, and celebrated.
The theological term for this is prevenient grace—God’s love that comes before and enables any human response. It’s grace that seeks us out rather than grace we discover through our own efforts. The sheep and coin represent what we all are: utterly dependent on divine initiative for our rescue.
Jesus tells these stories in response to criticism about his fellowship with tax collectors and sinners. The sheep and coin become metaphors for these marginalized people who bear God’s indelible image. The shepherd’s relentless search and the woman’s extravagant celebration reveal something essential: they’re reclaiming divine image-bearers whose worth transcends any economic calculation.
This theological principle—that every person bears God’s indelible imprint—has repeatedly challenged religious institutions throughout history. The late Dr. H. Shelton Smith, James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of American Religion (Duke University), documented this tension in his groundbreaking work In His Image, But…: Racism in Southern Religion, 1780–1910. Written in 1972, Smith demonstrated how white Southern religious leaders invariably preached that “God created man in his own image,” yet with few exceptions assigned the Black race to an inferior place within the human family.
Smith revealed how churches developed elaborate theological frameworks that allowed them to maintain doctrinal orthodoxy while systematically limiting the practical implications of their stated beliefs. Churches rarely rejected the doctrine of imago Dei outright. Instead, they practiced institutional selectivity in applying acknowledged truth, accommodating cultural prejudices through careful theological reasoning rather than challenging them through prophetic witness. They maintained their respectability by avoiding the social costs that comprehensive application would have required. That pattern of institutional selectivity continues today across different issues and different communities.
For Jesus, the loss of a sinner is tantamount to losing part of God’s own self, since every person bears the imprint of the Creator. Recovery means recognizing that God’s imprint remains indelible even on those whom society dismisses as tax collectors and sinners—or whatever category we’ve become comfortable ignoring.
This reframes lostness entirely. We’re not lost because we’ve wandered from God’s presence. We’re lost because the divine image within us has become hidden—from others, and sometimes from ourselves—in a world that teaches us to overlook God’s likeness in unlikely places.
The Question We Avoid
If God’s seeking love is truly as comprehensive as these parables suggest, then we must confront an uncomfortable question: who in our society have we quietly decided isn’t worth the search?
Many churches rightly recognize the image of God in the homeless, the refugee, the chronically ill, the mentally unstable, and the socially marginalized. We mobilize to offer shelter, advocate for the displaced, champion civil rights, and stand in solidarity with the voiceless.
But all too often we practice this recognition selectively. We rally around some lost sheep while avoiding the ones that might invite criticism. We speak loudly for the categories that align with our politics or social comfort zones—and fall conspicuously silent about others.
The Pharisees and scribes weren’t opposed to compassion in principle. They just wanted it limited to the “right kind of people.” They had their reasons, their theological justifications, their cultural boundaries. We do too.
If we truly believe that God’s image is indelible and God’s seeking is comprehensive, then we cannot proclaim justice for some while ignoring others. Selective compassion erodes theological credibility. Justice isn’t justice unless it’s whole.
The Uncomfortable Mirror
The woman finds her coin and calls her friends to throw a party. The shepherd returns the sheep to the flock and invites his neighbors to rejoice. In both cases, the restoration of the lost leads to public celebration, to communal joy.
Alas, we’re not always ready to celebrate every recovery. We gather to support immigrants, organize food drives, and march for civil rights—acts that beautifully reflect God’s seeking love. Yet when it comes to the unborn—those most vulnerable, most voiceless—many churches, particularly those within mainline Protestantism, fall silent. We’ve convinced ourselves that advocating for the unborn is too divisive, too complicated. And so, we stay quiet.
But if divine love risks ninety-nine sheep for one, if it sweeps the house at great cost to recover what’s been hidden, if it rejoices over the return of any image-bearer—then we have no excuse for overlooking any category of the lost.
Who have we quietly decided isn’t worth the search?
The homeless under bridges? The refugee without a sponsor? The troubled youth estranged from family? The unborn child with no advocate?
When we lift our hands in worship, whose image—whose part of God’s own self—might we be ignoring?
And what would it mean to rejoice in the restoration of every image-bearer, with the same extravagant joy that Jesus describes in these wonderfully scandalous, economically absurd parables of comprehensive love?
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