Sheep Smell

Luke 15:1-7


Jesus took the familiar images, of shepherd and sheep, to refresh the memory of the people. King David was once the unlikely choice to be king. The shepherd in the 23rd Psalm is a noble character. But the image of shepherd had become tarnished. Anyone who could afford to hire a shepherd (if they owned a dozen sheep or so) would have done so, or least relegated the job to a lesser family member . So when Jesus says, ‘which one of you owning 100 sheep, would not go after the one lost sheep’ there was sure to be an element of surprise or shock. For a people who cherish the fact that the great one has chosen and saved them, where is the same desire to go and bring even just one who is lost? Which one of our church budgets reflects more spent on evangelism than on nurture? Which of our service records show more emphasis on others than us? Does my checkbook show more entries for others than myself?

This radical love and mercy aggravated the entire religious establishment. After all, these revolutionary pictures of the kingdom of God, are images that, if taken to their obvious conlusion, will ‘mess up’ our entire lives. Jesus, mess us up so good that we’ll always smell like sheep carriers.