Pentecost 14C (Luke 15:1-10)

​Between 1 and 99, which number is greater? When I hear Jesus’ parable of the shepherd who abandons ninety-nine sheep to search for one that is lost, I confess that I worry about those left behind. What if they wander off? Who’s watching them? Wouldn’t it be more prudent to cut our losses—to let one go in order to keep the rest safe?

This concern reveals something about how I think, how we think. It operates within a particular narrative of loss and gain, risk and return—the very logic that shapes our economic reasoning. As critic Mark Fisher observed, one of capitalism’s greatest achievements is not just its dominance, but our inability to imagine alternatives. We either accept the system as inevitable or, forgetting history’s lessons, nostalgically reach for failed experiments.

But Jesus operates from an entirely different narrative framework.

When I calculate what’s most effective with least effort—maximizing profit while minimizing investment—those hundred sheep become mere numbers. Nameless units. One represents an acceptable loss if I can preserve the ninety-nine. This utilitarian calculus mirrors the thinking of the Pharisees and scribes in our passage, though theirs is actually worse than mine.

Why worse? They don’t simply write off the lost—they actively name them as “sinners.” This act of naming carries profound power. Words don’t merely point to reality; they shape and create it. These people dining with Jesus aren’t inherently sinful by some inner essence, but the religious leaders’ narrative renders them unclean. They’re not just statistics to be discarded, but human beings labeled as failures—symptoms of systemic breakdown that the establishment would rather hide than heal.
Jesus’ response is revolutionary: he renames them as God’s own beloved.

Here lies the parable’s stunning reversal. In Jesus’ narrative of grace, the very act of pursuing the lost one ensures that the ninety-nine remain secure. Why? Because they know with certainty that if they themselves become lost, they too will be sought and found. The shepherd’s relentless love for the one guarantees the security of all.

This parable offers us two transformative insights.

First, we must learn to name gracefully. Naming is an act of creation—bringing beings into relationship with one another and with God. Our society is filled with people we’ve labeled as lost, failed, or disposable. What names do we use? How might we rename them with grace? This practice of graceful naming is fundamentally democratic work, requiring the maturity to recognize that in any healthy community, some will always be struggling, and yet we continue to support and carry one another.

Second, this parable transforms our understanding of prayer and spiritual life. We discover ourselves in both roles—as the shepherd who joins God’s persistent search for the lost, and as the beloved sheep who are perpetually sought and desired by God. In prayer, we participate in divine love that never abandons anyone, while simultaneously resting in the assurance that we ourselves are never beyond the reach of that same pursuing grace.

The economics of grace operates by entirely different mathematics than the systems of this world. In God’s kingdom, the value of one is never calculated against the value of ninety-nine, because love multiplies rather than divides, seeks rather than abandons, and names with grace rather than condemnation.