The Parable of the Lost Sheep and a Fentanyl Smoker (Part 1)

There he was again, the same young man smoking fentanyl in public. This time—a dugout of a ball field in the park. A woman sat next to him and they passed a foil strip and lighter back and forth. Songbirds sang and sprinklers sprinkled. Two geese waddled in a field. I observed this scene with Elmer at 5:20 in the morning.

Is this man too far lost to try and help? Is his one addicted and homeless life worth the prodigious effort and expense when minimal effort and expense spent elsewhere could help other homeless people who want off the streets and aren't smoking fentanyl in public and wearing boxes on their heads?

For those unfamiliar with the New Testament's Parable of the Lost Sheep, it goes like this: Jesus, responding to criticism that he received sinners and ate with them, said, “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost, until he finds it?”

Once the shepherd finds the lost sheep, he rejoices and asks his neighbors to rejoice with him. Jesus concluded the parable, “I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”

I have a special connection to the Parable of the Lost Sheep. For almost two decades of teaching creative writing and English, I used it as a writing prompt, often for a semester in-class final. Students typically had 30 minutes to write a 150-word response in longhand explaining their decision in the shepherd scenario: should he leave the safe 99 and look for the lost one?

I always wrote on it, too. Toward the end of the period, we would each read aloud a representative passage from our response. The classes were usually split 50/50 on having the shepherd search for the lost sheep, with an occasional clever politician wanting it both ways, such as having the shepherd build a fence around the flock before leaving or taking them with him. In my mind, there is no having it both ways in the Parable of the Lost Sheep: the shepherd assumes risk and goes searching—or he does not. There is no guarantee of success.

In all those years, I never had a single student who didn’t complete the assignment or share a passage. The prompt invariably produced the most interesting writing of any given class, and I saved many of the best pieces for reasons I can’t explain. I also saved many of my responses.

One time, back in 2009 or 2010, I opened with: “Who in this world has not gone astray and found themselves lost? Lost in addiction? Lost in depression? Lost in delusion? Lost in poverty? Lost in love?”

“Wouldn’t everyone in this class want someone to come looking for them if they became lost in body or spirit? It’s what most of you write about every day in your journal.” I wrote that ending paragraph for another response, in 2004 or 2005.

I conjured the Parable of the Lost Sheep the other morning after seeing the man smoking fentanyl yet again in a public place. Indeed, I have never NOT seen him smoking fentanyl in public. I would have loved to have presented the scenario of this homeless man to my students in the context of the parable. The prompt would have been: do we (forget the shepherd and flock paternalism metaphor) as a society (or me as individual) search for this lost man, who really isn't that hard to find, and try to render aid, or do we let him wander, lost in addiction, insanity, astray from everything decent in the world, whatever the circumstances of his fall, and let him die in front of us, because he will surely be dead at this rate very soon? Is that a self inflicted mercy killing?

Yes, a bit long winded a moral dilemma than Jesus framed it for the sinners in his presence. And there's also that irritating problem of policy regarding searching and helping a man who is in no position to decide if he needs help or not. If anything, the Parable of the Lost Sheep is not about policies to help find the sheep gone astray!

Or is it? Polices matter. The people who administer them matter even more. Effective policies addressing the crisis of homelessness administered with alacrity can save lives. I've seen this up close and observed how one of these policies implemented on the ground by an outstanding city employee helped save my homeless friend Mark's life, one man whose life had certainly gone astray.