Luke 15:1-10, from The Second Testament (forthcoming)
15:1 All the tax agents and sinners were getting close to him to hear him, 2 yet the Observant [Pharisees] and Covenant Code scholars [scribes] were grumbling, saying, “This one attends to ‘sinners’ and eats with them.”
3 He told them this comparison, saying, 4 “Which human among you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, doesn’t abandon the ninety-nine in the wilderness and journey for the one lost until he finds it? 5 And, finding, one places [the sheep] on his shoulders, rejoicing 6 and coming to his house, he calls together the male friends and those next-door, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I found my sheep, the one lost.’ 7 I say to you that so there will be more joy in heaven about one converting sinner than about ninety-nine ‘right ones who don’t need conversion.’
8 Or which woman, having ten drachmas and if she loses one drachma, does she not touch a lamp and sweep the house and pursue intensively until she finds [it]? 9 And, finding [it], she calls together the female friends and those next-door, saying, ‘Rejoice with me because I found the drachma that I lost.’ 10 So, I say to you, there is joy before God’s envoys about one converting sinner.”
I’ve been attending (and am now in the membership process for) a liturgical church and in the service today realized this is the same passage you sent out yesterday. I’m a little slow but finally made the connection, and I love that my tiny church in the mountains is in the same passage as your church, and so many other around the world. It’s a Tov feeling.
The "Observant" and "Covenant Code scholars" gives the text an appropriate meaning free from the traditions that Christians have used to denigrate without real understanding. Evangelical "dogma-points" to mainline "nice people" certainly fall easily into those categories - human categories.