What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost. I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.

One of the best-known examples of the formerly-lost sheep is the apostle Paul of Tarsus. We first learn about him as Saul, a Pharisee who actively persecuted the early church. The story of the the light of heaven interrupting his journey to Damascus is really key to understanding Friends understanding of the Light as judge and instructor (it’s also the source of one of my favorite line in the Johnny Cash oevre “it’s hard for thee to kick against the pricks”!).

But I always wonder what the other Christians made of the post-conversion Paul. We get a little of their reaction from Ananias but I imagine there was lots of talk and anger, jealousy and confusion all swirling with whatever joy they could muster that another soul was saved. A man who had “slaughtered” them was soon to present himself as a major leader, taking sides in the great debates over how Jewish the Christian community needed to be.

How do we react when God uses an unlikely messenger to spread the good news? None of my blog readers are likely to have seen their brethren slaughtered but it’s safe to say we’ve all been wronged and mistreated from time to time. One of the great mysteries I’ve experienced is how God has seemingly used other’s disobedience to do His work. Knowing this requires a scale of love that’s hard to imagine. People do wrong can still be somehow acting of God. People who have done wrong are sometimes especially chosen of God. Heaven rejoices more for that one saved sinner than all the rest of us trying to muddle along in faith. Even secret anger is akin to murder.

We Friends are rightly inspired of 17th Century New Jersey Friend John Woolman’s exceptional compassion and ability to see outside the prejudices of his day, but even this “Quaker saint” considered himself the unlikely messenger, the lost sheep of  the Luke story. He wrote of a dream:“Then the mystery was opened, and I perceived there was joy in heaven over a sinner who had repented [Luk 15:7] and that that language John Woolman is dead meant no more than the death of my own will.”

How do we hold tight to love, even for those we don’t like? When we greet even those who have disappointed us, we need to bear in mind that they might have traveled their own road to Damascus since last we met. They might be one of those God chooses to teach.

(Thanks to Esther Greenleaf Mürer’s Quaker Bible Index for the Woolman connection.)

As if knowing today is Inauguration Day, Isaac Penington turned it into a political reference: “But oh, how the laws and governments of this world are to be lamented over! And oh, what need there is of their reformation, whose common work it is to pluck up the ears of corn, and leave the tares standing!”

Margaret Fell sees the wheat and tares as an example of jealousy and false ministry: “Oh how hath this envious man gotten in among you. Surely he hath come in the night, when men was asleep: & hath sown tares among the wheat, which when the reapers come must be bound in bundles and cast into the fire, for I know that there was good seed sown among you at the first, which when it found good ground, would have brought forth good fruit; but since there are mixed seedsmen come among you & some hath preached Christ of envy & some of good will, … & so it was easy to stir up jealousy in you, you having the ground of jealousy in yourselves which is as strong as death.”

We get poetry from the seventeen century Elizabeth Bathurst (ahem) when she writes that “the Seed (or grace) of God, is small in its first appearance (even as the morning ‑light), but as it is given heed to, and obeyed, it will increase in brightness, till it shine in the soul, like the sun in the firmament at noon-day height.”

The parable of the tares became a call for tolerance in George Fox’s understanding: “For Christ commands christian men to “love one another [John 13:34, etc], and love their enemies [Mat 5:44];” and so not to persecute them. And those enemies may be changed by repentance and conversion, from tares to wheat. But if men imprison them, and spoil and destroy them, they do not give them time to repent. So it is clear it is the angels’ work to burn the tares, and not men’s.”

A century later, Sarah Tuke Grubb read and worried about religious education and Quaker drift: “But for want of keeping an eye open to this preserving Power, a spirit of indifference hath crept in, and, whilst many have slept, tares have been sown [Mat 13:25]; which as they spring up, have a tendency to choke the good seed; those tender impressions and reproofs of instruction, which would have prepared our spirits, and have bound them to the holy law and testimonies of truth.”

I hope all this helps us remember that the Bible is our book too and an essential resource for Friends. It’s easy to forget this and kind of slip one way or another. One extreme is getting our Bible fix from mainstream Evangelical Christian sources whose viewpoints might be in pretty direct opposition from Quaker understandings of Jesus and the Gospel (see Jeanne B’s post on The New Calvinism or Tom Smith’s very reasonable concerns about the literalism at the One Year Bible Blog I read and recommend). On the other hand, it’s not uncommon in my neck of the Quaker woods to describe our religion as “Quaker,” downgrade Christianity by making it optional, unmentionable or non-contextual and turning to the Bible only for the obligatory epistle reference.

This was first made clear to me a few years ago by the margins in the modern edition of Samuel Bownas’ “A Description of the Qualifications Necessary to a Gospel Ministry,” which were peppered with the Biblical references Bownas was casually citing throughout. On my second reading (yes it’s that good!) I started looking up the references and realized that: 1) Bownas wasn’t just making this stuff up or quoting willy-nilly; and 2) reading them helped me understand Bownas and by extension the whole concept of Quaker ministry. You’re not reading my blog enough if you’re not getting the idea that this is one of the kind of practices that Robin, Wess and I are going to be talking about at the Convergent workshop next month. If you can figure out the transport then get yourself to Cali pronto and join us.