Currently reading around some of Jesus' parables, including the lost sheep.
Here's why I value so much this commentary on the Gospel of Luke. François Bovon was both an erudite scholar, and a committed practitioner of faith within the church as well as the academy. After a quite superb textual, literary and social contextual analysis, there is considered and considerable theological reflection on what Luke was about, and why it still matters.
"People can see for themselves that the loss of an object renders that object more valuable, and it is often the case that a fixation takes hold of the person who goes in search of it. The only thing that can equal the anxiety connected with having lost something is the joy associated with finding it again. For Jesus the loss of the sheep was a passive event, which becomes strangely active in Luke's narration. Sinners must be converted, must repent, and must make their way back on their own to God — in a word must respond to the call of the Gospel. This response is not just an affair of the moment, however decisive that moment may be; it must last. The present participle of the verb [for repent] 'who is converted', stresses the length of the effort. Note Luke's double structure: "to be converted" is to accept the word of the shepherd on our behalf. And that work involves Jesus who is the image of the Father." François Bovon, Hermeneia Commentary on Luke, Volume 2, (Fortress Press, 2013), page 410.
The photos are from a walk up Glen Dye some years ago.
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