You have probably seen the memes on social media, a sentence made up of words that may share pronunciations or spellings but have completely different meanings, or maybe punctuation that makes the difference between whether we are calling grandma for dinner or serving her up slow-roasted on a bed of couscous.
They all poke good-natured fun at the English language, which is, if we are honest, weird and difficult on a good day.
English is the linguistic equivalent of a Lamborghini marrying a Volkswagen and having a Land Rover love child, part Romance, part German efficiency, part bulldozer, with good old earthy Anglo-Saxon profanity on the bumper stickers for good measure.
Never mind the countless loan words from other cultures, absorbed as the English colonized the world, the sun never setting on the once great and horrible empire that was, in truth, the first globalization, exploitation and racism on a scale that made Imperial Rome seem like rank amateurs.
One bit of that British empire was the Indian subcontinent, many small kingdoms administratively and forcefully unified, then artificially carved up again upon release, and still reeling from that partition to this day. And there, on the west coast of what is today India, we find folks who speak Marathi, actually the tenth largest language in the world in terms of native speakers, outnumbering the entire population of Germany and then some. There is a cinema tradition, Mollywood, and a rich literary history.
Marathi is the language that names the animal at the heart of the English colonialist classic tale “Riki Tiki Tavi” by Kipling, for mongoose is a Marathi loan word, and Riki Tiki Tavi is a courageous and loyal mongoose.
Like so many loan words, mongoose does not follow even the Frankenstein rules of English, for the plural of mongoose is not mongeese, even if the plural of goose is geese. There are no mongeese, only mongooses.
Goose and geese, mouse and mice, sheep and … sheep.
There is no difference between one sheep and ninety-nine sheep.
Now, the word sheep comes from the Germanic line, and there is exactly zero chance that theology had anything to do with how the word was absorbed into modern English, but I think it is a neat coincidence that the theology in today’s reading and the word itself match.
Sheep and goats played a significant role in the Ancient Near East, and the Bible is filled with references to them. They play a role in Jacob’s great fraud, the theft of his brother’s birthright. It is lamb’s blood that marks the lintels and doorposts at Passover, the flesh a meal for the journey. David is out with the flock when Samuel comes around looking for a future king. Shepherds out watching their flock at night receive the good news that a savior has been born down in Bethlehem. The master divides the sheep from the goats for judgment in the parable, though I think this borders on goat slander. And, of course, we have the image of Jesus himself as a shepherd, and this story of one lost sheep.
This is the prodigal son all over again, the core concept being no more nor less than this: the good news that Jesus preaches is not for those who already have in-group status, who are considered redeemed. It is not good news to invite those at the party to the party, or to tell the righteous that they are righteous. The good news of Jesus is for those who are not sure they belong at the party, and most of all for those who have been turned away at the door. Jesus is willing to go find that one sheep and bring her back into the fold.
Of course, there is bad news in the teaching of Jesus as well, though we tend to avoid it. The bad news is for those who are certain that they belong at the party, who are convinced of their righteousness. And Jesus says, well, maybe not.
The parable of the one lost sheep is taken seriously by Evangelicals. Sure, they think they are saving people from an angry and violent god, so their motivation is theologically problematic, but their instinct is right. The purpose of church is to be externally-focused. We are meant to change lives, for the better, to bring the prodigal home, to go out searching for that one lost sheep who might fall victim to the wolves of the world, and there are plenty of wolves out there.
Instead, all too often, the church is ninety-nine sheep with ninety-nine problems, starting with the grass which is unusually bitter this year, and this hilltop which is just a little too breezy and doesn’t have nearly enough shade, and if there is shade to be had, it is thrown at that lost sheep who has diverted the shepherd’s attention because, you know, there are ninety-nine of us, and the shepherd should be focused on us, not on that sheep who is lost, for surely that sheep made its own bad decisions and is lost because of its own fault. I stayed on this windy hilltop eating this bitter grass. Why should he be rescued?
Which, is to say, the color of the carpet upsets us and that awkward hymn we don’t know (who even put that in the hymnal!) and we used to print that in the newsletter and that kid was making noise when I’m here for the Sunday morning concert if there are any kids at all.
Every sheep is all sheep.
God’s grace is not earned. You did not do anything to call yourself into the world. Most lost sheep are not lost because of decisions they made, and even if they were, Jesus calls us not to judge the mistakes of others, not to see the splinter in our sister’s eye, not to cast stones at our brother.
Feed the hungry. Clothe the poor. Visit the prisoner. Declare a jubilee of debt forgiveness.
Go find the sheep, the one sheep out there who is lost. The ninety-nine in here seem pretty lost too.
And, of course, it is not just the church that has a problem with lost sheep. Rather than discuss colonization, racism, the rapacious nature of our economy, we have allowed those with privilege and wealth to concoct a narrative in which the poor are poor because they deserve to be poor, because in an economy that is like a caged death match, they didn’t show up with Daddy’s chainsaw.
People are freaking out because folks, folks just like me, had to borrow money to get through college, and are being crushed by loan structures that the government would never let a mortgage lender get away with, and heaven forbid we might get a little grace, while large corporations and multi-millionaires received loan forgiveness worth billions during the pandemic. Not you and me getting free money. Not the restaurant down the street. Millionaires!
Which sort of makes sense given the trillions transferred to corporations and the super-rich in recent years. Because when it comes to the economy, it isn’t even the ninety-nine sheep who are in charge, but is instead Wolves LLC, and the ninety-nine are convinced that the real threat is that one emaciated sheep trying to get into the fold.
There is a kid, human not goat, who is hungry right now. There is an addict looking for a score that might turn out to be fatal and there are no beds in a treatment facility. There is an LGBTQ+ teen wondering if that light fixture is strong enough for them to hang themselves. There is a family deciding whether they can run back in and find that scared cat before the wild fire gets there.
So many lives were lost, when religious extremists attacked the Twin Towers, in the senseless wars that followed, innocent Iraqis and Afghans, the coalition forces killed and injured, and even if they made it home in one piece, at risk of PTSD and moral injury, every single life a miracle, not one sheep sacrificed for the ninety-nine, because the one is worth just as much as the ninety-nine. Just ask Jesus. He’ll tell you.
Let us look for the sheep. Let us celebrate when they come home, every addict that makes it to a red chip, every unsheltered person who gets into supported housing, every ex-con who lands a job.
Amen.