However, as I have said many times, assuming the main character in a parable is God can lead to all sorts of problems. Often God can be given some undesirable traits, which then leads to twisting the parable to explain them away.
Even in today’s text God would be portrayed as a shepherd who abandons ninety-nine sheep or imagined as a woman who seeks a single coin and then squanders the money on an expensive party. So, as much as the feminist theologian in me would love to talk about the image of God as a caring woman, I think it would be wrong to do so from this particular text. Parables should disrupt, unsettle, and provoke questions.
In this story a shepherd with a hundred sheep realises one has wandered off. Ninety-nine remain. Any sensible farmer would cut their losses, protect the majority, and accept the missing one as the cost of doing business. But not this shepherd. This shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to risk everything for the sake of one. It’s foolish, reckless—even irresponsible. And yet, when the sheep is found, the shepherd calls for celebration.
And the same disruptive logic appears in the next parable. A woman with ten silver coins misplaces one. Many people would shrug, have a brief look round, maybe hope it would turn up later, then move on—nine out of ten is still not bad. But this woman lights a lamp, sweeps her house, bends and searches until the coin is found. Then she does something even stranger: she invites her neighbours to a party that may well cost more than the coin itself. Extravagant, irrational joy.
These are parables of disruption. They push against our instinct to write off what seems insignificant, to measure value only by what’s sensible or practical. They are pictures of people who refuse to accept loss, who insist that even what looks expendable is worth the effort of reclaiming.
So, as I muse on these two parables this week, I will ponder these questions:
· Who are the ones I write off as not worth the search?
· Who do I quietly count as expendable to protect the ninety-nine?
· And when the “lost” return, do I celebrate—or, like the Pharisees, grumble that the wrong people are being welcomed?
Jesus tells these stories not to describe God in human images, but to provoke us into imagining a different kind of community, where the missing are sought out, the overlooked restored, and joy erupts in places where others see only waste.
These are great parables to muse on in the church’s season of Ordinary Time—that long, green stretch of the year where nothing is dramatic or festive. Ordinary Time is about the daily work of faith: the steady growth, the slow noticing, the patient tending of what might otherwise be forgotten. These parables remind us that in the midst of the ordinary, extraordinary things can happen. A single sheep matters. A single coin matters. A single life matters. Ordinary faith means keeping watch for what’s missing, sweeping through the dust, and daring to rejoice over the smallest restoration.
So, these parables aren’t to remind us that God is like a shepherd or a woman, but that in the rhythm of everyday life there is an invitation to act with extravagant generosity, reckless inclusion, and disruptive joy.
