Yesterday the IBRA notes used the first ten verses of Luke 15 - lost sheep (1%) and lost coins (10%), people on the margins (shepherds and women) and people at the heart of religious society (Pharisees).  The reader was invited to ponder the parables from the perspective of the Pharisees - the people like us - and then from the perspective of sinner or tax-collector - the people like 'them'.  I was struck, as I have been before, by the thought of the 99 sheep as representing the religious people, the nice Christians who are left to get on with it whilst the shepherd goes out seeking the one that is lost.

The idea that God might leave us to 'get on with it' in order to out seeking for those who are lost (as distinct from us doing or defining that) is quite challenging.  More so, for me anyway, is that the 99 are left not in a field (as I have often noted when preaching) but in the open; and not even in a nice pasture, but (as I noticed this time of reading) in the 'wilderness' (NRSV, KJV).

How shocking for the religious people to be told that rather than safety and security they are left vulnerable!

How appropriate as a Lenten image though - the wilderness place of testing and growing, the place in which temptation away from God and gentle tending by God can occur (devils and angels, if we go with a Matthean reading of Jesus' experiences).

Perhaps rather than a troubling image it could be an encouraging one - that God reckons we are ready for the wilderness experiences?

It's dangerous, of course, to take any image in isolation and out of context, but I am challenged to reflect upon what it might mean to consider oneself part of the 99 fit to be left in the wilderness.