​¹ All the tax collectors and sinners were gathering around Jesus to listen to him. ² The Pharisees and legal experts were grumbling, saying, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
³ Jesus told them this parable: ⁴ “Suppose someone among you had one hundred sheep and lost one of them. Wouldn’t he leave the other ninety-nine in the pasture and search for the lost one until he finds it? ⁵ And when he finds it, he is thrilled and places it on his shoulders. ⁶ When he arrives home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Celebrate with me because I’ve found my lost sheep.’ ⁷ In the same way, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who changes both heart and life than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need to change their hearts and lives.
⁸ “Or what woman, if she owns ten silver coins and loses one of them, won’t light a lamp and sweep the house, searching her home carefully until she finds it? ⁹ When she finds it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Celebrate with me because I’ve found my lost coin.’ ¹⁰ In the same way, I tell you, joy breaks out in the presence of God’s angels over one sinner who changes both heart and life.”

Luke 15:1-10 (CEB)

There is a song by contemporary Christian singer-songwriter Cory Asbury that talks about the love of God. Consider the chorus:

Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God.
Oh, it chases me down, fights ’till I’m found, leaves the ninety-nine.
I couldn’t earn it,
I don’t deserve it,
Still You give Yourself away.
Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God.

Some have criticized that song because it refers to the love of God as “reckless”. However, Jesus’ parables in this section of Luke 15 characterize God’s love as just that. The shepherd notices one sheep out of a hundred is missing. He leaves the ninety-nine sheep and goes on a quest to find the one that was lost. Why should he care about that one? It’s only one out of a hundred. It’s not like one sheep is a huge loss. To the shepherd, however, that sheep is just as important as all the others, and when it goes missing, it is in fact more important than all the others.

When the woman loses that one coin, she tears the house apart trying to recover it. Have you ever lost something important to you and torn up the place trying to find it? I have. As a matter of fact, as I write this I have two important items that I have misplaced and have been searching everywhere I can think of to find them. So far, no luck. Does that mean I’ll just give up and stop? Absolutely not. I know they are somewhere, so I’ll keep searching for those items until I find them. That’s how important they are to me.

That shepherd and that woman were never going to stop. It didn’t matter where they had to look. They would keep looking, go wherever they needed to go, leave no stone unturned, in order to find that which was so very important to them.

That’s how God pursues us. With reckless abandon. That’s how God comes after you, because you are important to God. If you weren’t, why would God bother to become human in Jesus of Nazareth, suffer a horrible death by execution on a Roman cross of crucifixion, stay dead for three days before the Resurrection? Imagine the pain and humiliation – all in the name of finding you and bringing you back home.

Sounds pretty reckless to me, and thank God who loves us that much.

Amen.