We Need More Shepherds! Going After the One Takes More than One: In Response to Matthew 18:10-14 and Luke 15:3-7

GMT

In our Scriptural records, Jesus often spoke in parables about lifting sinners into salvation. In this paper, I will write with the assumption that no one’s salvation is in question, but rather, my reader is seeking to provide relevant and accessible pastoral support to a wide range of believers and Christ-seeking bodies. The parable of leaving the ninety-nine sheep has historically been read to situate Jesus as the Good Shepherd who will assume all punishment for sin and carry us all to salvation. My queer reading should not negate that interpretation for anyone who finds it helpful. But I will use a queer approach to suggest that communities of faith must step into shepherding roles, persistently following fellow community members into the self-isolated, trauma-filled and painful private places of their lives to ensure that siblings are not forgotten, pastors are not blamed for negligence, and interdependence is not abandoned in our corporal bodies of worship.

I approach the Bible with an expectation that research, education, and tact will be required to engage every single passage. Collectively, the canon has been used to justify genocide and other atrocities more than any other published work. On a few days a year, it is a surprising source of spiritual colloquy. More often than not, it is a book that I struggle to open. I am a creature that loves to flex her imagination. And too many people have closed their imaginations and eyes to the work that’s required to situate this historical literature. Also, my experience as a person with chronic illness and pain gives me the perspective that work is a privilege. I cannot do the heavy lifting of Biblical interpretation everyday, not unlike how my body ebbs and flows in its willingness to exert rather than survive. Just as I know that the opposite of work is not, in fact, the highly elusive and able-bodied concept of sabbath, the opposite of my personal hermeneutic is not spiritual discipline. It is unbalance. And a lack of healthy boundaries.

I also believe deeply that we can hear whispers of God’s transformative love in the stories of the Bible, recognizing that they are mis-remembered, insufficiently embodied on a page, and only told from the vantage point of one, limited and often greedy species.  

My body breaks the confines of binaries not only because I identify as queer and love those of my same gender and gender non-conforming individuals but also because I cannot operate within the able-bodied expectation that each day I will feel either healthy and productive or recovering to that state. My mental health can shift dramatically by the hour. My physical wellness can spiral into temporary chaos from one or two bites of food. I live in a blended space where, out of necessity, I have grown more self-aware, gentle and kind to myself than any partner could every “complement.” Complementarianism was never a sufficient framework to begin with, but rather a damaging attempt to subordinate women into positions of quiet, amicable service. But I am limited in my space or interest to address that subsect of heteronormativity. I mention it simply to highlight that queer identity is often affiliated with romantic life-partnerships, but many people exist within communities as queer all by themselves, and that needs to be celebrated.

I respond to stories of miraculous healing in the Bible with both jealousy and rage. The jealousy likely stems from remnants of personally unintegrated trauma and the perceived simplicity of a dichotomous worldview where disease was bad and overcome by the inherent good of God. While many people today believe in the same cosmology (where you can believe hard enough for Jesus to take the disease away), I recognize that my jealousy is unfounded in reality. The rage, on the other hand, helps me heal. Every time that I read an able-bodied author’s telling of a “broken person” made whole by their submission through prayer or non-specified blanket faithfulness, I feel righteous anger. That anger reminds me that it is vital for me to try, in my good moments, to add my voice to the chorus of commentary. This type of representation is not often possible for those with complicated illnesses. Even after a few years of medical treatment and social learning, I have hours or days where my body cannot support the functions of reading, “advanced cognition” (I use air quotes heavily here because this term is inherently loaded and ableist), or synthesis through writing. But other times, I can be very eloquent. That is confusing for those who interact with me or my work, and I am learning to hold my authority as a professional regardless of where I may be landing on the metaphorical “wellness spectrum.” I would also like to note that I am making up terms here in part because I do not know of any that exist to articulate the blended space I’ve described above.

While this parable is not technically a healing narrative or miracle, it does use the word “sinner” in the telling found in Luke. The scene can also be found in Matthew with a solitary reliance on one sheep being called “lost.” That language may prove to be more helpful in a subsequent close reading of the text. However, it is noteworthy that ancient readers of this story would have believed that God could punish them for impure or unrighteous actions through disease and afflictions to their bodies or the Earth. People in the Ancient Near East were taught that they deserved the misfortunes that befell them. Their cosmology was one of interconnected causality. So, often times, people with illness, disease, and disability were viewed as sinful and broken (Rainey). The Bible has a habit of using unnamed “sin-filled” bodies as a storytelling tool for able-bodied redemption. I am queering the cultural framework that this passage was written to appeal to by suggesting that if there is sin at all, it would be found in the failure of our church body to visit the homes, doctor’s offices, and tear-stained beds of people with chronic illness, disease or disability.

German Lutheran reformer Phillip Melanchthon is quoted as a commentator on this text saying, “We consider this image [Jesus as shepherd] often, when we see that we are in misery, and we experience the fury of the devil and his instruments every day, and how they bring ruin to everything in the world. But even in these things God will preserve the remnants, and by this faith we cry out to him that he [she/they] might keep others safe” (Kreitzer). There are many things that I’d push against in his reading and understanding of the text, but as always, we are each a product of our time and experience. At the time of his death in 1560, it was very common to inherit fear of the devil as evidenced in Phillip’s writing. My experience with Lyme Disease has persuaded me that misery can often be a place of startling gratitude and communion with God. To me, God doesn’t just preserve remnants. God moves in the fissures and back alleys of our lives. Extreme adversity, while I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone, is a teacher of empathy, resilience and hope. Furthermore, it is not God’s sole responsibility to keep others safe. We can collaborate as active agents, using the wisdom of wandering in the wilderness as the “lost sheep” to guide and companion others. Because, quite frankly, it is not a safe world—this statement is disproportionately more true for minoritized populations—and bemoaning the presence of “ruin” is insufficiently stagnant and ineffective ministry.

Another reformer, Martin Bucer comes a step closer to the reading that I am presenting when he says, “We ourselves need to work hard to bring the straying sheep of Christ back to their Shepherd and Savior, and this is a very good reason for us also to keep company with sinners” (Kreitzer). Again, I am uncomfortable with the language of sin, but I appreciate his expectation for hard work. There is an unspoken societal norm for the amount of times that a person may “stray.” In workplaces, there is often a finite quota for days that you can be absent due to sickness. But someone with a chronic condition has no control over the amount of days that they will need to rest and recover. I myself am chronically late (pun intended) to my first engagement of the day. This is often a personality trait that can be easily teased, and I can see the humor and laugh with my peers. However, I have not always been peacefully late. Since my diagnosis and treatment, I’ve given myself the grace of mornings that are as slow as they need to be. In this practice, I am recognizing the difference between my body’s current vitality and those who are able-bodied. I minimize stress, cherish my food, and mindfully prepare to leave my apartment, fully aware that many things are physically difficult for me in comparison to the unconscious routine of others my age. So, I take my time. But if we are to learn from Bucer and his rationale for keeping company, perhaps others should start removing themselves from stressful situations for the wellbeing of their bodies and minds. If interdependence is the foundation of our communities of faith, then care-givers should receive care both privately and beyond.

As I slowly move through this passage in both Matthew and Luke, I am struck by the word “rejoice.” The Greek word is sygchairo, and it is used  with the dative moi (with me) to give it a collective sense. Put simply, this is an inherently communal joy. According to this scriptural witness, the re-integration of someone who has been isolated from community is not a quiet or stigmatized affair. Rather, it is an exuberant and contagious joy. The effects of trauma are naturally isolating because in many cases, the survivor perceived that they were without the resources or support to process an event. As such, it can become a cyclical pattern for anyone who has undergone traumatic circumstances to remove themselves from others, remembering the feeling of being alone that caused overwhelming damage in the first place. The parable says that those who find the one sheep away from the ninety-nine will feel a universal response of joy. It does not say that the joy will be immediately well-received. But it is present all the same. Someone who has self-isolated may not be ready to rejoice or express gratitude to the shepherd. So let the celebration happen on their behalf—a memory that may inevitably replace the over-accessed neural pathways of trauma.

I’ve learned to challenge the confines of clearly delineated categories from our course readings throughout the semester. As Guest presents a genderqueer character rather than a “liminal warrior woman” like Yee in her reading of Jael, I must challenge the stable preexisting category  of “normal” participation from which one sheep might diverge from a flock of ninety-nine (Guest). There is not a baseline amount of social intimacy that each of us will exhibit in the church or otherwise. It will not always be clear when someone is self-isolated versus practicing self-care, being an introvert, or simply doing something else. Therefore, it will have to become less taboo for a companion to offer and be denied the opportunity to support someone. I think that would actually be miraculous—if our networks of faith friends were so persistent and engaged that it was annoying or over-stimulating. My perspective may be limited here by the amount of time I have spent in the community of those who are differently abled. I haven’t had years of navigating the world in this new way. And I still remember some of my able-bodied experience, occasionally struggling with able-bodied bias of things I believe I “should” be able to do. I would benefit greatly from a dialogue with someone who was born with chronic illness, disability or pain.

In conclusion, we inherit many things through Scripture. One of those things is a history of viewing illness and disease as a negatively connotated source of sin. If we challenge that paradigm and read the parable of one hundred sheep and a shepherd, it can be possible to grow our collective potential for pastoral support to the vulnerable among us. We can, without boundaries, quotas or resentment, show up for those in pain. We can celebrate our unity without uniformity. And in doing so, our joy may echo a small sliver of the joy God proclaims over humanity’s place in creation.

Works Cited

Guest, Deryn. “From Gender Reversal to Genderfuck: Reading Jael Through a Lesbian Lens.” Bible Trouble: Queer Reading at the Boundaries of Biblical Scholarship, by Teresa J. Hornsby and Ken Stone, Society of Biblical Literature, 2014, pp. 9–43.

Kreitzer, Beth. “15:3-7 The Lost Sheep .” Luke, vol. 3, InterVarsity Press, 2015, pp. 307–309.

Rainey, Brian. “Justice and Social Ethics in the Old Testament and Ancient Near East.” Princeton Theological Seminary. 2019.