In his Pentecost 16 sermon on the Lost Coin and the Lost Sheep, Glynn Cardy asks who is to repent, certainly not a coin or a sheep? These stories tell us more about God and who she is drawn to and it isn't the respectable people in church listening to them. "The missing sheep and coin haven’t sat down and thought how bad they are, or how they miss the other sheep and coins, or even how they could possibly have got lost. Rather these stories are of an unlikely God seeking them out, finding them, cherishing them, and reconnecting them to the whole community. The strays aren’t asked to change their ways or confess their wrongdoings." Read entire text at http://www.stmatthews.org.nz/nav.php?sid=322&id=763.