Lisa made it home safely on Saturday, for which I am very thankful. I always sleep very poorly when she’s not home. Maybe it’s because no one expects me to go to sleep, therefore I don’t. Who knows.

Today is Labor Day, and as is my custom I wanted to blog a little about the origins of the holiday. Unfortunately, the origins of Labor Day are pretty boring. A labor union in New York City started the trend in the 1880s, and it became official at the national level in the 1890s. Like many of our holidays, they used to be accompanied by parades and speeches by prominent politicians. Also like many of our holidays, the interest in parades and political speeches has waned and the holiday has become less about organized labor and more about individuals who get the day off whether they deserve it or not.

Today’s labor day is filled with mixed feelings for many of us. I have friends who currently lie in the expected path of Gustav. Unless you’ve talked to people about the effects of Katrina, you can’t understand the amount of pain and anxiety this new storm poses. Please keep them in their prayers as they make it through the coming week.

We learned yesterday that a dear friend of ours died unexpectedly yesterday morning. He and his wife, both runners, were out for a 12 mile run when less than half a mile from finishing he suffered a heart attack and died. I’d like to tell you more about what a great guy he was, but I’ll wait until I receive permission first.

Lisa tried to fly out Tuesday night to be with his wife, but the snafu in the airport communication system delayed her flight to the point that it was easier for her to just wait until this morning. This means that the Palmore boys will be alone for a few days, which could be catastrophic.

Please keep everyone in your prayers during this sad time.

We have two apple trees in our backyard that are now dropping medium sized apples all over the place. While this is a pain for the lawnmower, the wildlife love them. This video was captured in our backyard last week.

You can turn your speakers off. The only sound is whatever Olympic game was on the television.

Now the tax collectors and “sinners” were all gathering around to hear him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

Luke 15:1-7 (NIV)

We have to remember the context in which this story was written in order to understand the parable. Jesus is associating with “tax collectors and sinners” and the “pharisees and teachers of the law” are not happy about it. In this context, Jesus tells a parable about a sheep that wanders away from the flock that is taken to the shepherd’s home when it is found. Given the context, it would be easy to say that Jesus is trying to justify hanging out with the sinful crowd by telling the pharisees and the teachers of the law that they are the 99 and that he is going after the lost sheep.

But I think there’s a deeper message.

Do any of us know of 99 righteous people that do not need to repent? I asked that question in class last week and everyone giggled. Rubel added that Abraham couldn’t find 10 in all of Sodom and Gomorrah. I wouldn’t even place myself in any group of people that didn’t need to repent. If I did find such a group, I couldn’t join because I’d mess things up.

In this particular parable, I think the 99 sheep are fictitious characters. They do not exist in reality. If people are hard-hearted and arrogant enough to believe they do not need to repent, then they can mislead themselves into thinking that they belong in that fictitious group of 99 non-lost sheep. This is where the pharisees found themselves, believing they were members of a righteous group that didn’t exist because their perceived righteousness was actually full of death and decay.

Jesus, in a sense, is asking the pharisees to remember the following words from Isaiah:

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way.
-Isaiah 53:6 (NIV)

But the pharisees are not alone in their assumed righteousness. The very fact that we as modern Christians can interpret that parable as though we are the 99 implies that we have some misguided understanding about our own righteousness. This is the very attitude that has caused us to draw lines between those who are saved and who are not, between those we can fellowship with and those we cannot, between churches or denominations that are Christian and those that are not. I’ve not only witnessed this belief, I’ve lived it as well.

Given the options that remain in this parable, I am left with no choice but to acknowledge the fact that I AM THE LOST SHEEP! But I think that’s what Jesus is driving at here. Once you admit you’re the lost sheep, then you begin to understand that the only way to the shepherd’s home is riding upon his shoulders. It’s not about our righteousness, but his righteousness. It’s not about being good enough to carry our own burdens, but about being humble enough to let him carry us.

Our righteousness gets us left in the open country. I’d rather go home with the shepherd.

Now the tax collectors and “sinners” were all gathering around to hear him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

Luke 15:1-7 (NIV)

The traditional interpretation of the parable starts to break down a little when we try to identify who the different characters in the parable represent. I’m not advocating an extreme allegorical interpretation, but in order to make application of the parable there must be some connection between us and the characters. In this parable there are basically three characters: the 99 non-lost sheep, the 1 lost sheep, and the shepherd.

If we take the parable to be one encouraging outreach and the seeking of the lost, the 1 lost sheep would represent those that are spiritually lost. That actually makes a lot of sense. But who do the other characters represent? We would typically say the 99 represent the church. If that’s the case, who is the shepherd that seeks the sheep? If we’re going to apply this parable directly to evangelism, the shepherd would have to be non-lost people seeking the lost sheep, but that would mean that people in the church would play two roles, the 99 non-lost and the shepherd, which gets really confusing, or it would say that there are two groups within the church, those who seek and those who don’t, which doesn’t work with overarching Christian teaching. Plus, what should happen to the lost that are brought back in? Should they become part of the 99 or should they become shepherds seeking other lost sheep.

The other traditional teaching of valuing the lost over the non-lost has similar issues. It does work more directly to say the 1 lost sheep represents the spiritually lost, the 99 non-lost represent the non-lost, and the shepherd represents Jesus seeking the lost and bringing them into the non-lost. If valuing the lost over the non-lost were the main point of the parable, why do all the parables in this chapter focus so intently on the search itself and the celebration to follow? And why aren’t the newly-found lost reunited with the non-lost? None of the three parables in this chapter have the lost brought “into the fold”. In this parable, the lost sheep is taken home, riding on the back of the shepherd.

More questions than answers in today’s blog, I’m afraid. But this is a great opportunity for you to share who you think the different characters represent. I’ll reveal my thoughts on that tomorrow.

Now the tax collectors and “sinners” were all gathering around to hear him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

Luke 15:1-7 (NIV)

I’m co-teaching a class with Rubel Shelley on Sunday mornings on the parables of Jesus. I say that because it makes a good introduction to what I’m going to write on this morning and also because it’s really, really awesome to be teaching with Rubel Shelley.

We’ve spent the last few weeks on Luke 15 looking at the “Lost Parables of Jesus”, not that they themselves were lost but that they address things that were lost. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the context of this parable and thinking about how we should apply it to our spiritual lives, and I’ve come to some different conclusions than I originally had.

We tend to teach these parables as though we are the non-lost character in the story. We’re either the 99 non-lost sheep, the 9 non-lost coins, or the 1 non-lost brother. That forces us to teach these parables as though they are parables of humility and evangelism. Whatever is lost has great value, apparently greater value than that which is non-lost, at least in the short term. That means those of us that are non-lost should defer to those who are and give them honor. Additionally, as the non-lost we should be deeply concerned about those that are lost and we should “leave the 99″ and go out and find the one that is lost.

I think that these principles are well and good and are definitely true to a large extent. These values are taught in other places in scripture and are clearly consistent with the message of Christ. My issue is that I don’t think that’s the deeper message of the parable. There are couple big ideas that stand out to me that I want to address, but to avoid long posts I’ll break them up into several entries.

Before I reveal my interpretation, why don’t you share some of yours. Again, I apologize for the registration process you have to go through to post.

We’ve had a few assaults on community in recent weeks at bradpalmore.com and TheoBloggers in general. As a response, I’ve had to enact some new security measures. From now on you have to be logged in to comment. I know that’s a lot of extra effort, but I’ve had to delete some negative comments recently that have been made by people pretending to be someone they are not or are using completely fictitious identifications. What’s funny is that the people who leave those comments don’t seem to realize that their IP address is captured when they leave the comment, thus identifying them as easily as a name would.

Additionally, Wordpress in general is a target for a lot of spam. One of our accounts was shut down this weekend after taking on 397,000+ spam in a very short period of time. These security measures will prevent this from happening on this blog.

If you’re not registered, you will have to agree to a user agreement that says you’re participation in this blog will be in good spirit and will support Christian community. It also says that you’re allowed to disagree with people on the blog, and even me, if it is done in the spirit of dialog and conversation and not done in a hateful fashion.

I hate to start the week on a negative foot, but as a wise friend of mine once said, every rule is the direct result of the violation of a privilege.

So, since there’s this extra hitch for some of you folks, why don’t you comment here about how much you love Michael Phelps and we can get the ugly registration process out of the way.