The Lost Sheep

A sermon for Sunday, September 15, 2019.

Would you pray with me?

God of the lost and God of the found, thank you for bringing us to this time and this place. Be with us here today. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

So last week, we talked about Jeremiah and the Potter and how God can not only reshape us as individuals but also as a community. Today, we’re looking at another well-known biblical image that I think speaks to us in several distinct ways: the lost sheep. In the gospel of Luke, the lost sheep comes as the first of three parables about lost things: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost sons, or as we might know the story better, the Prodigal Son. These stories come right after Jesus has had multiple conversations with religious leaders about why he choses to eat with sex workers, tax collectors, and others considered sinners. The parable of the lost sheep is the hinge in this section of Luke, the turning point where Jesus goes from addressing his particular situation to speaking truths for the ages.

The image of the lost sheep is an enduring one. We can all picture it, I think, even though many of us won’t have spent our lives around sheep. Many of us know that feeling of being lost, of being separated from those that we know and care for, that feeling of being alone, and if we’re lucky, we know what it’s like to be found. Jesus takes us on a rollercoaster of emotion in just a few sentences. (And for those of us who don’t know what it’s like to be lost and don’t feel that rollercoaster, there’s the story of the lost sons, where we can learn something from the father’s response to the older brother.)

But I think the lost sheep speaks to us on more than just a personal level. I think we often read it as a story that just relates to us personally, and that’s fine to begin with. We are all inspirited bodies and embodied spirits. Our experience in this life is uniquely and definitively ours; we will always experience things with our own senses first and that’s not a bad thing.

If we stop there, though, then we miss some of the richness of what Jesus’ metaphor has for us today. I think that most, if not all scripture, speaks to us in at least three ways: personally, theologically, and practically. And so this morning, I want to talk about the lost sheep in these three ways, personally, theologically, and practically, in order to help us gain some understanding about who we are, who God is, and what we as a community can do in light of those first two facts.

Let’s start by talking about those sheep, which might help us get some more personal resonance out of the story. Sheep are herd animals, meaning that they have an innate tendency to stick together. That’s handy, because the idea of fenced-in property that is cultivated with grass that is perfect for the grazing of sheep is a modern invention. In Jesus’ day, the shepherd would have to take the sheep out to graze, hoping that they would stick together as they grazed.

Now the sheep, as a grazing animal, has different eyes than you and I have. They’re actually just horizontal slits. These pupils help them see better side-to-side as they graze, so they know which direction to turn to after they’re done with their particular patch of grass. But this means that they don’t see what’s ahead of them so well, nor what’s above them. Because of this, the shepherd has to steer the flock away from danger they might not see.

Sheep are good at one thing and that is grazing.

But if a shepherd takes a herd of sheep into an area to graze that doesn’t have enough for all the sheep, a sheep or two will wander. They’ll look from side to side, see no grass, and they’ll mosey off in search of food. If you’re a shepherd going off to recover that wandering sheep, you’ll most likely have to break its knees in order to bring it back; otherwise, it’ll want to stay grazing where it’s found food. This could be why the shepherd who’s found the sheep puts it on his shoulder. Sometimes when we’re lost, we can’t walk back on our own.

That’s the point of the parable that we sometimes miss when we use this story to talk about ourselves personally. The sheep becomes this image in a larger salvation story: we go from “we all like sheep have gone astray” to “Jesus is the shepherd who saves us” to “now we belong to Jesus’ flock.” It’s original sin to Jesus’ death on the cross to Christian salvation. But that’s not what Jesus meant here. He was talking about one sheep that goes off because it didn’t have enough. One sheep that leaves the herd because it’s not being cared for. One sheep that’s trying to meet its needs but has gone far from the shepherd’s care. Jesus isn’t talking about those of us who were raised in church and have been in church all our lives and have been the backbone of this institution. Jesus is talking about those who left, and the effort it takes to bring them back, and the celebrating that happens because of it.

And that’s where we begin to understand what the parable is saying to us theologically, what the parable is telling us about God. Because any human shepherd wouldn’t go off searching after one lost sheep. For one thing, the shepherd was probably a worker hired by the owner of the sheep, rather than the owner of the sheep themselves, and if the shepherd went off searching for one sheep, he’d come back to fewer than ninety-nine when he returned. Despite their tendency to stay with the herd, they would, one by one, find less grass than they wanted, and wander off on their own. So any shepherd that would want to return the herd with as many sheep as possible would certainly not go off looking for one lost sheep. He’d report the loss to the owner and go about his day.

But God is not a human shepherd. God is not limited the way a human shepherd is. God can provide for ninety-nine and search out the one lost sheep all at the same time. More than that, these parables of lost things tell us that our God is a God who seeks. Our God is a God of abundance. Most importantly, as we see in Jesus, God-made-flesh, our God is a God who cares deeply for the lost and the least. When the faithful righteous people around him, those who were a part of the ninety-nine sheep who didn’t stray, told him that he was making a mistake by seeking out the lost, he told them these three parables to show them again that human ways are not God’s ways.

This is deeply comforting to us if we’ve ever been lost, if the church has ever been a place of barrenness for us rather than a place of abundance. I know that I’ve had times like that, years of my life where, even though I went to church every Sunday, I was prone to wander in my heart because there wasn’t anything life-giving for me there. Christianity for me had become a penned-in field and the grass I found there wasn’t sustaining me, so I started to look for breaks in the fence. It is deeply comforting to me that Jesus would seek me out anyway, with that abundant love of his, to find me where I was and to see me as I am, with all my needs and all my dreams. Theologically, this parable tells us that our God is a God who does that, who seeks us out and celebrates when we’re found.

And this means something for us practically. As Christians, we are always seeking to be more like Christ, more like our God. If our God is a God who seeks out the lost and the lonely, we should do that too. If our God is a God who celebrates when those who are lost are found, then we should too.

But we have to view our search for the lost as Jesus does. We cannot be self-righteous about it, because any one of us could have been that sheep that didn’t find grass to graze on. In the parable, the shepherd doesn’t send one of the sheep who stayed with the herd out to find the lost one, because sheep don’t see the way the shepherd does. Remember, they only see side-to-side, but it is the shepherd who sees ahead. If we as the church, sheep though we are, are going to be the shepherd in this community, we have to learn to see as Jesus sees and celebrate as Jesus celebrates.

This means looking at the community around us with new eyes. We have to look around at things as they are, seeing things through our own eyes, and we have to look at things as they could be, seeing things through Jesus’ eyes. Where we see a rundown building, Jesus could imagine a community center where we share stories and food and music, feeding those who have felt alone. Where we see a trailer park, Jesus sees vibrant homes where people grow and flourish. Where we an addict, Jesus sees a person fighting addiction. Where we see poverty and lack of resources, Jesus sees a field ready for growth.

And imagine our celebration when we can gather the community of Whittier together from its disparate parts to eat and talk and make music together. Imagine our celebration when we see people whose homes had been in disrepair showing people proudly around their property. Remember our joy when someone with addiction wins the battle. Imagine our rejoicing when we start to see something new growing.

Because for Jesus, it’s not just seeking out the lost for the sake of saving some souls. Jesus seeks out the lost here and now and he has banquets with them, because he knows what has been found. He knows that our rejoicing at being found will echo through eternity. He knows that new life in this world will bring joy in the next. Every life matters to Jesus, not just the lives of the ninety-nine but also and especially the lives of the lost one.

Now, I’m new here. I am still learning where it is that the lost can be found and how we can seek them out. But what I know for a fact after a few months here is that y’all will help me learn and that y’all are ready to reach out. Whether you’ve been one of the ninety-nine throughout your life or whether God has had to go seeking you, you are to go out and find those that God has laid on your heart to seek. Maybe it’s a neighbor, a cousin, a friend, a sibling who you know needs some more love in their world. Maybe it’s someplace you drive by every day and wonder who lives there, who they are, and what they do. Whoever it is, I encourage you, this week or in the weeks ahead, to reach out and say hello. Build a relationship where before there was distance.

Because remember, we are the sheep of a shepherd whose love knows no bounds. We are the sheep of a shepherd who sees things not only as they are but as they could be. And we are the sheep of a shepherd who can guide us out into our world. So let’s start seeking.

Amen.