2.03 The Lost Sheep
III. THE LOST SHEEP.
Matthew 18:12; Luke 15:4 - Luke 15:6. This parable appears in a different context in St. Matthew and St. Luke. According to St. Matthew, Jesus, in answer to the question of His disciples, “ Who is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?” took a little child, and set him in their midst, and said: “ Unless ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” He thus indicated the simplicity and humility which were necessary conditions THE PARABLES OF JESUS 77 for attaining, not merely a high place, but any place at all, in the Kingdom. Then, after warning His hearers against the sin of scandal, and teaching them to be ready to suffer any evil rather than be eternally lost, He proceeds to dissuade them from despising one of those little ones, on the ground that their angels always behold the face of His Father in heaven a plain proof of the dignity and value of these little ones in the sight of God. He thereupon propounds the parable, “ What think ye? If a man have a hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine upon the mountains, and go in search of the straying one? And if so be he find it, verily I say to you that he rejoiceth more over it than over the ninetynine that went not astray. Even so it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones perish.” Here it is evident that the expression “little one” takes a different meaning in the parable from that which it had in the passages preceding, and stands, not for a child in years, but for one of those helpless ones who have gone astray; though, indeed, nothing opposes our identi- 78 THE PARABLES OF JESUS fying both, and referring the words of Jesus to the same individual at different stages in his career. In St. Luke the occasion of the parable is different. All the publicans and sinners were drawing near to Him to hear Him. The Pharisees and the Scribes murmured at this, saying: “ This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.” Jesus, wishing to disabuse their minds of their false notions, thereupon spoke the parable. “ What man of you that hath a hundred sheep and happeneth to have lost one of them, doth he not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go in search of the lost one, until he find it? And if he find it, he will lay it upon his shoulders rejoicing; and having entered his house, he calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying to them: “ Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost. I say unto you, that even so there shall be joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety-nine just that have no need of repentance.” We see how St. Luke reproduces the parable at greater length than the First Evangelist. In St. Matthew we miss the various touches that render the THE PARABLES OF JESUS 79 representation more vivid. The good shep herd does not lay the sheep upon his shoulders, nor does he call together his friends and neighbours to share his joy at the recovery of his lost sheep; and for the positive statement in St. Luke, “ there shall be joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety-nine just that have no need of repentance,” we have only the negative one: “ it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones perish.” The mountains in the First Gospel, and the wilderness in the Third, signify pasture-land as distin guished from land inhabited and cultivated. The burden of the preaching of Jesus, as that of John s, may be summed up in His words: “ Repent ye, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” 1 A turning-point in the history of Israel was imminent; it behoved men to be prepared to meet the crisis. And the call to repentance was all the more urgent, as the existing generation was so ill-prepared to face the day which would test every man as it were by fire, revealing in his character the fine gold or the dross as the case might be.
80 THE PARABLES OF JESUS For Jesus 1 and for John 2:1-25 as later for St. Peter, 3 it was a faithless and perverse generation. The moral depravity that prevailed was by no means universal: at all times, so then, God was not without faithful servants, but the generation as such could justly be characterized as the brood or offspring of vipers. The Jewish contemporaries of Jesus might be divided into three classes: those who were at once sinners and conscious of their guilt; those who, like the Scribes and Phari sees, were full of vices which rendered them hateful to God, though they themselves fondly imagined that they were paragons of virtue; and, finally, a comparatively small number of faithful souls who, like Zacharias and Eliza beth and Simeon and Anna, a generation earlier, kept themselves unspotted from the corruption by which they were surrounded.
It was to the first class namely, those who were sick and were aware of their sickness that the Divine Physician especially came; it was the straying sheep who knew well enough, that they had wandered far from the 1 Matthew 17:11; Mark 9:19
2 Luke 3:7.
3 Acts 2:40. THE PARABLES OF JESUS 81 fold that the Good Shepherd so lovingly sought. It was to those poor sinners whom the Scribes and Pharisees so haughtily despised, and from whom they contemptuously turned away and stood aloof, that Jesus preached; and not content with this, He went farther, and braved the prejudices of His enemies by receiving them and sitting at table with them. 1 Publicans and sinners though they might be, they were still the
1 The publicans, or tax-gatherers, were a class held in the greatest disrepute among the Jews. This arose partly from the fact that they were the representatives of a foreign heathen power, partly from their rapacity and oppressive and vexatious practices. Those who, like Matthew, sat at the receipt of custom incurred special obloquy. Their illegal exactions and the ruthless way in which they insisted on examining every package of merchandise introduced into a town, thus necessitating the unloading and reloading of the beasts of burden, and the unpacking and repacking of the goods, caused them to be detested by all who had to submit to such an embarrassing process. Their money-chest was held in particular abhorrence: no alms might be taken out of it, nor might its contents be used for the purposes of exchange, while they themselves were regarded as excluded from the religious fellowship of Israel, and under a disability of appearing as witnesses in the national courts. No wonder, then, that we find them classed with harlots and sinners, with highwaymen and murderers.
6 82 THE PARABLES OF JESUS children of their Heavenly Father; He still retained the ownership of them and His dominion over them, and their alienation from the fold could not be a matter of in difference to Him. In the mind of the Pharisee, there was joy before God when those who provoked Him perished from the world, while Jesus taught that there was “joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety -nine just that have no need of repentance.” It is precisely the personal note in the parable that touches us and appeals most strongly to us.
TAGS: [Parables]