The answer human beings give is no prudent shepherd would do that, it would be a foolish risk to abandon so many sheep for just one. Probably still a prudent answer, but it is not God’s answer. Jesus says God is like this: “Just so I tell you, there is more joy in Heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.” God cares more than you do about the lost sinner, is the upshot of this story.“What man of you if he’s lost one sheep, wouldn’t leave the ninety-nine and go look for that one?”
The word used is “ drachma” which is a day’s wage in the first century. I think we would all search for a lost paycheck, but would you call all your friends a throw a party? With God, it is just so: “Just so I tell you, there’s joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”“What woman, having ten silver coins, if she lost one, doesn’t light a lamp, sweep the house, and search diligently until she finds it?”
In the son’s repentance there is an awareness that God has been offended and that his behavior has been offensive to his father. There has been a metanoia, a change of mind. All of God’s creation is bringing order out of chaos. In the story of the Lost Son, the order sought is a proper moral order between father and son.But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.”
Why grammar? Grammar and language are the tools we used to understand order and meaning. If I say the word “altar” it doesn’t mean anything absent our common understanding of the altar here at the center of our parish. The word ‘lost’ can only have a meaning if we see it in realtionship to 'found'. There is a relationship between those two words and the human realities they describe. Our minds are made for relationship and the moral order, of whatever sort, describes what that relationship looks like. The moral choices we make are the lived reality of our belief about God and the purpose of our lives. The oldest moral order is that of violence and domination; might makes right. Christ takes us beyond the chaos of violence and domination when he faced it 'might makes right' on the cross and triumphed. Soren Kierkegaard, the great Lutheran theologian, said that in the end it was the choice to follow Christ that mattered. “God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.” ― Soren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard. God brings moral order into the chaos of human life. But first, we need to recognize that we are lost.“I am afraid that we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.” — Friedrich Nietzsche , Twilight of the Idols