“100 Sheep” based on Psalm 14 and Luke 15:1-10

These parables don’t make any sense. For some of us they’re familiar, so we’re used to pushing them into a framework of meaning and then mostly ignoring them. That framework is often the one that Luke imposes onto them, “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” But it is clear to scholars that the whole sinner/repentance angle is Luke’s and isn’t what Jesus was doing with the stories. It is also likely the stories actually go back to Jesus.

And, when they stand alone without Luke’s interpretative help, they’re really quite weird.

“Supposed you had 100 sheep.” And…we’re off on the weirdness already. First, we’ve got the bias against shepherds going on, people didn’t want to imagine themselves as shepherds because shepherds were a disrespected group of people. In particular, shepherding required being with the sheep all the time, and so required a man to be away from his family. “Being away from home at night, they were unable to protect their women, hence considered dishonorable. In addition, they often were considered thieves because they grazed their flocks on other people’s property.”1 But, also, we have a romanticization of shepherds in the Bible, including with King David, we have Psalms celebrating God as a shepherd, and this is the book of Luke which informs us that it was shepherds keeping their flocks at night who were first told the good news of Jesus’ birth.

So, the shepherd thing is complicated. But so is the 100. Because 100 sheep is a lot of sheep. It is more sheep than a shepherd would be expected to have, they represent an unusual amount of ovine wealth. It is likely, at a flock that size that we’re dealing with a family of shepherds rather than a single shepherd because one person simply didn’t take care of 100 sheep. Well, in real life. But this is a parable of Jesus, and it’s weird, so we don’t know.

OK, so we’ve established that Jesus is asking people to consider having wealth, derived from a hated occupation.

Huh. Rather despite myself, this is starting to make a little bit of sense. Because the OPENING of the Gospel story isn’t a walk straight into the parable. Instead, it says, ‘Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ So he told them this parable:” (Luke 15:1-13, NRSV) This whole thing is set in the context of responding to those who are grumbling about Jesus hanging out with tax collectors and sinners.

Amy Jill Levine explains this really well.

“The problem with ‘tax collectors’ is not that they denied the covenant; it is that they work for Rome and so would be seen by many within the Jewish community as traitors to their own people.

Sinners are not ‘outcasts’; they are not cast out of synagogues or out of the Jerusalem Temple. To the contrary, they are welcome in such places, since such places encourage repentance. The Gospels generally present sinners as wealthy people who have not attended to the poor. That is a dandy definition of the term. Thus, in a first century context, sinners, like tax collectors, are individuals who have removed themselves form the common welfare, who look to themselves rather than to the community.”2

She goes on:

“As for sinners – that is those who think about themselves and not of others- Paul provides the standard instructions. In 1 Corinthians 5.11, Paul advices his fledgling church, “But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother or sister who is sexually immoral or greedy, or who is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber. Do not even eat with such a one.” They are the ancient drug pushers, insider traders, arms dealers, and, especially, colonial collaborationists. And yes, Jesus eats with them – that’s part of his genius, that he recognizes that they are part of the community and goes out to get them.”3

So, Jesus takes the grumbling about his eating with sinners and tax collectors and invites people to consider being a wealthy shepherd. OK. We’re caught up. What happens next again? "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? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep.’” (Luke 15:4-6, NRSV)

But, here is the thing. The question, about who would leave 99 really vulnerable sheep alone in the middle of no where to go find one lost one… generally speaking, one should not leave 99 vulnerable sheep alone to go get one sheep. If you did that, you’d come back to maybe 80 sheep, and then if you went to get another sheep, you’d have maybe 60 and truthfully it just wouldn’t work. Sheep without a shepherd get lost easily, they fall, they get snagged, predators get them, they can fall in water and sink or fail to find “still waters” and get dehydrated. Grazing sheep are intensive, and you can’t leave the group to go get one.

Unless, of course, the shepherd works in a team, like we might think given how many sheep there are, in which case it makes sense to go get the one. So that’s one good point – that it is better to work in a team when caring for the vulnerable – but Jesus doesn’t set it up that way. Jesus has the ONE person go do something ridiculous. And succeed. And throw a party. AT WHICH, given the number of people have been invited, it would be reasonable to assume that there may be a need to butcher a sheep.

Have I established my point that these stories are weird yet?

The second story is a bit of a retelling of the first. A woman has 10 coins, which isn’t an obscene amount of wealth, but is a pretty lovely nest egg. The coin referenced is the standard daily wage for a laborer. Two of the coins would feed a family of four for 5-7 days at 3000 calories a day, or for 9-12 days at 1,800 calories a day. We don’t know who is in the woman’s household but we know it is her house and her coins and relative to the truly impoverished people of that era, she was doing relatively well. She loses a coin, she finds it, she throws a party for her female friends, which probably cost more than the coin.

These two stories build up to the Parable of the Lost Son, but they also stand on their own.

What on earth do we do with these weird stories? They are stories of people making financially bad decisions. The people are overly generous in their gratitude. They’re unrealistic. Perhaps they’re living kingdom values and not the world’s values. That’s probably worth some consideration.

But the crux of a parable is to make us think. To help us see how things are, and help us consider if we’re happy with how things are. A single shepherd wouldn’t leave 99 sheep. A party shouldn’t cost more than what it celebrates. That’s not how things work.

And yet…. What are the exceptions? What are things that exist in the world where if you had 10 of them, lost 1, and got that one back, you’d throw a part regardless of cost?

I think one important answer is: people. If I had 10 kids and lost one, and found that one again, I’d throw a party. If I had 10 friends and lost one and got one back again, I’d throw a party. If I lost a person and got them back again, I’d throw a party. If a child, or anyone really, was lost, I’d go after them.

I will say, as a camp person, that I get back to that team idea on this. If a camper is having a problem, we always have two counselors with a group. So one counselor takes care of the rest of the campers and the other counselor sits with the camper and talks through what is going on. They’re both imperative. You can’t risk the 99 for the 1, but you can’t ignore the 1 if the 1 has infinite value either! Which definitely means we have to work together.

And, kingdom math doesn’t math like capitalistic math. Capitalistic math says people are expendable and wealth matters. Kingdom math says wealth is dispensable and people matter. That’s really the crux of the weirdness of these parables. They’re in kingdom math.

I’ve never lived in fear that God’s love is insufficient for any person, so I don’t worry a whole lot about the mechanisms of traditional sin, repentance and forgiveness. But the Gospels aren’t really working with mainstream Christian teachings either;) To repent is to turn around. My favorite image of it is of a person who is veering down a difficult path, who hears God’s gentle whispers, and turns around to see God and God’s love. When turned around, they attend to where God is looking, and decide to follow that path instead.

In practical terms, that turning around often happens when we’re hurt and tender and someone listens to us. It happens when the women sweeps for the coin or the shepherd goes after the lost sheep, and the tenderness of being sought out and cared for changes our lives.

Jesus seems to be telling the religiously faithful that the tax collectors and sinners needed to be loved back into community. Not to be judged, or ostracized, not to be condemned or even ignored. To be loved back into community.

I think the people of the day would have had plenty of objections to this. I think we have plenty of objections to this if we’re honest. But, if we took the powerful people who are living out greed rather than seeking the well being of all God’s children, and we thought of them like lost sheep in need of tender care, that would be listening to Jesus. That is the way of peace, and the story of the power of love, that is the kindom values at work, that is the profound rejection of the world’s violence and tendency to dehumanize.

Hmmm.

Help us all, Holy One. Amen

1 Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual Notes: Luke 16:1-16” p, 232

2 Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus (USA: HarperOne, 2014), p 33.

3 Levine, 34

September 14, 2025

Rev. Sara E. Baron 
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 
Pronouns: she/her/hers 
http://fumcschenectady.org/ 
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady