kinds of goodness. We read: “Sheep signify those who are in the good of
charity, therefore in an abstract sense, ‘sheep’ signify the goods of charity.”
(Apocalypse Explained 1154)
There are many different forms of goodness: for example: compassion,
forgiveness, optimism, courage, patience, joy, innocence, humility, gratitude,
good manners, honesty, trust. These are just some of the many “sheep” that
can exist in our flock. And as this parable shows us, we can sometimes lose
track of some of these forms of goodness in our own behaviors.
For example: I think we can all relate to times in our lives when we’re
feeling worn down and we’ve lost the sheep that is our sense of compassion,
or the sheep that is associated with our willingness to forgive. Sometimes we
can lose our optimism sheep, or our courage sheep. I think we’ve all lost-our-
patience sheep at times. To a certain degree we’ve all lost our innocence sheep
and hope to find it again.
We sometimes lose the sheep associated with our sense of joy. I think we
sometimes don’t even notice when we’ve lost our humility sheep. When we
feel hopeless and depressed because of hard times in our life, we can feel like
we’ve lost our faith sheep, or the sheep associated with our trust that God is in
control. And I think we’ve all lost our temper sheep at times.
What do we do when we notice that we’ve lost these sheep in our life?
There are parts of us – represented by the scribes and Pharisees in this story
– that tend to condemn ourselves for losing these sheep. I lost my patience; I
must be a bad person. I lost my faith; I must be a bad person. I lost my sense of
compassion; I must be a bad person.
Or we might notice other people who have lost sheep from their flock, and
the “scribes and Pharisees” in us may identify them as sinners: They lost their
innocence sheep; they must be bad people. They lost their forgiveness sheep;
they must be sinners.
It’s interesting that the word “sin” goes back to a word that simply means
to “miss the mark,” such as to miss a target in archery, or in the case of this
story, to recognize that something is missing or lost from our life.
Sin is simply when goodness is missing, the same way that darkness is
when light is missing. It’s not gone forever; it’s just missing or lost. And we
can find it again. But harsh spiritual judgments toward the losing of sheep
come from the “scribes and Pharisees” in us, not from the “shepherd” in us. It’s
not a bad sheep, it’s just a lost sheep. We’re not bad people; we’re just missing
goodness.
There are two versions of this parable in the Gospels, with a couple of
significant differences. One of the differences is that in the Luke version of
this parable, it says that the shepherd left the 99 in the wilderness and went
after the one which was lost. (See Luke 15:4) In the Matthew version, it says
that the shepherd left the 99 in the mountains, and went after the one which
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