One hundred in the Fold
The reward of the shepherd (Luke 18:29-30) is to be at home with all the sheep.
The following homily was preached to the student brothers during Compline. You can listen here or read below:
Reading: Luke 15:1-10
You may have heard of the furniture company Homebase. Their strapline was ‘Make a house a home’. It’s hard to pinpoint what makes you feel ‘at home’. Furniture is necessary but not sufficient. Being ‘at home’ is far more a question of where we eat and sleep, and of where we come from.
When it comes to sheep, we know that one sheep is clearly incomplete without others. Our Cambridge brethren discovered this a few years ago when they considered having a single sheep to keep the lawn in check. Without a flock, there is no way that sheep could have been at home.
Sin is the safest path to loneliness, since it alienates us from from others. When we’re called to repent, we’re called out of loneliness, back into the flock. The Greek word for repentance – metanoia – literally means turning around.
I think the lost sheep image we’ve just heard is a commentary on Psalm 23, which we all know in some form: the Lord is my shepherd. Christ the Good Shepherd helps us turn around and leads us back home.
Just as you can’t have a sheep without other sheep, you also cannot have a shepherd without sheep. Christ is so at home in our company that he is chooses to live and die with us; we become bound up with his identity as Saviour.
That’s why Christ uses the image of a woman: the silver coin she has lost was probably part of her dowry. She would have worn it – a bit like a wedding ring. Its emotional value far exceeded its monetary value, since it was a marker of her identity as a married woman and a guarantee of her future. It was a sign of how she relates to everyone else. Though she’s in her house, without that coin she is not truly ‘at home’: she is alienated from her home and from those she loves.
Like the shepherd and like the woman, Christ is truly at home with us. John’s Gospel literally says that he has ‘pitched his tent’ with us. We are called to be at home with him. Repentance, then, is homecoming. So don’t be afraid of dying to sin and dying to self. This is the stepping stone to joy – a joy far greater than any sorrow.
Image: © George Dominic Gillow OP, 2026
