Rev. Tom Lenhart
Sermon September 16, 2007
“Would You Go after the Lost Sheep?”
Exodus 32: 7-14 and Luke 15: 1-10

Let us pray.

Most powerful Holy Spirit, rest upon us in this moment of worship and calm us. From heaven where the ordinary is made glorious and glory seems but ordinary, bathe us with the brilliance of your light like dew. Amen

Parables are quaint and poignant literary gems especially in Luke’s hands. The parable of the lost sheep is certainly one of those memorable stories.  And on one level we should just enjoy it in its literal simplicity and beauty; the sheep, like the lost coin and the prodigal son, was lost and now is found -- let us rejoice as God did. However, as Frederick Buechner has noted “[a] parable is a small story with a big point.”[1]  One helpful way to figure out the point is to try and find ourselves in the parable. Indeed, I think if we look closely at this parable we will find that the key to the parable is found in the three main characters in the parable --- the lost sheep, the shepherd, and the 99 other sheep.

          How do you imagine the lost sheep felt? It was night and it was cold. The flock and the shepherd were nowhere in sight. It is dangerous out there in the dark. Listen -- what's that sound; is that the cry of a wolf off in the distance. The sheep is weary of wandering lost and alone. He is terrified. Don’t we see ourselves in the character of the lost sheep? Aren’t there times in which we feel alone and anxious with unknown danger lurking just over the next hill? Sometimes we are truly lost. On a boat trip several summers ago, I was in a large bay on the Maine coast north of my usual, familiar waters. This particular bay is known for its many islands and ledges. It is so difficult to navigate that those traveling up the coast are advised to pass it to seaward. I had, nonetheless, elected to head to one of its shoreline harbors. I was confident of navigating there for I had a GPS system that showed me my location to within 5 feet. After a while I checked my GPS and I thought I knew where I was and the identity of the islands to my port and my starboard but something was wrong. There was supposed to be a navigation buoy marking a ledge off to my right and it was not there. I looked and looked and no buoy. I got out my paper chart and the buoy was also marked on the chart. And still no buoy. I can’t describe the building fear and anxiety as we inched slowly forward lost and worried. We had no idea where we were or what lay beneath the surface of the water ahead.  I can well imagine how the lost sheep might have felt.

          But our "lostness" is not simply geographic. Sometimes we are lost even when we know where we are. Aren’t there moments when the pressures of career and life have caused us to do things – to shave the truth or to push the moral envelope in ways that we knew we shouldn’t; when we have lost ourselves -- no longer quite sure who we were.  Haven’t we at times become separated from friends and loved ones – having wandered away from the things that matter most? Hear again the beginning words of the old prayer,

Almighty and most merciful Father: we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done. But thou O Lord have mercy upon us …

We are those lost sheep. But the Good News is that the shepherd – the Good Shepherd -- is always looking for us and we will be found. But the lost sheep of our world are more than simply those of us who slip now and again from the straight and narrow.  No, the lost sheep include those who are profoundly lost in darkness – whether in a darkness of despair, depression and anxiety or a darkness of addiction, temptation or worse. The lost sheep of Luke’s time were the greedy tax collectors and the despised sinners. All those who either by position, cultural status or behavior, were excluded -- especially by the Pharisees and the Scribes -- from the life of the community, especially the religious community. And yet the shepherd goes after each of these sheep.   

          Think about it for a moment, isn’t it odd that the shepherd goes looking for just one lost sheep? Imagine you’re a shepherd. You could be in Palestine, New Zealand or Wyoming. You are in the business of raising sheep for your own use and for sale to others. You have a flock of 100 sheep on your small ranch in the wilderness. After a winter in the valley when spring comes you move your flock to the nearby and now grassy hillsides only to return in late fall to the warmer still verdant valleys. There are predators out there -- wolves and mountain lions --  that would love nothing better than to make a meal of a young sheep or lamb. You are fond of your sheep and vigilant in protecting them. One night you lead your sheep back to the safety of the enclosed sheep pen and realize that one of them is gone. Would you go after that sheep? Would you leave the other 99 -- unattended, on their own -- while you search for the one that is lost?  Doesn’t sound like a very prudent decision? In the business world we live in, the loss of one sheep would be written off as a cost of doing business and all efforts would, I suspect, be spent on insuring that none of the other 99 sheep got lost in the future.

But the shepherd of Luke’s parable goes off after the lost sheep, no questions asked, no calculations made. This parable is also found in the Gospel of Thomas but with a difference; there it goes

Jesus said “the kingdom is like a shepherd who had a hundred sheep. One of them, the largest went astray. He left the 99 and looked for that one until he found it. When he had gone to such trouble, he said to the sheep, ‘I care for you more that the 99….’” [2]

In Luke there is nothing special about the lost sheep -- except that she is lost. She is not the biggest or the most valuable. And yet that sheep is as important to the shepherd as any of the others. Why? The reason I believe was captured by the Rev. Joseph Tuckerman, who in the 1820’s become the first street minister in America and the father of ministry to the poor and the homeless where they live. In a sermon he preached on the Twentieth Anniversary of his Ordination, he wrote

“the highest maxim of the most philanthropic statesman is the greatest good of the great number … The characteristic rule and object of Christianity is, the greatest good of every individual.[3]

The Good Shepherd’s love for us is thankfully never the product of a utilitarian calculation. He seeks us out when we are lost no matter how or why. Not only is the shepherd with us at home, at the school, or at the office but the Shepherd is also at the shelter, seeking the homeless man or woman caught up in a losing battle with one form of addiction or another. The shepherd is in this country’s jails seeking those lost because of their failure to abide by the rules that make our world livable. This is a radical shepherd and the sheep he seeks are not simply the cute wooly ones of our imaginations.  And he rejoices when each and every one is found no exceptions. But the message of this parable is not only that we are loved beyond calculation by the good shepherd but that at times we should be shepherds of others too – no exceptions.

          How do you imagine the other 99 felt when the shepherd went off to find the one who was lost? This is what I think the 99 were really saying: "Why is he going off after that other sheep? We need his protection too. There are wolves out there. Who is going to protect us? That other sheep wandered off on his own -- he wasn’t playing attention. It is his own fault! He’s only getting what he deserves for not following the rules. In the play, Fiddler on the Roof, there is a wonderful exchange between Tevye and Nachum, the beggar. It goes something like this --Tevye puts a kopak in the beggar’s hat. The beggar looks at it and says, "one kopek?” Then Tevye says, "I have had a bad week." The beggar replies, "Why should I suffer because you had a bad week!" Why should we -- the responsible sheep -- be put at risk because of one irresponsible idiot?   And what about later, when the shepherd returns with the lost sheep over his shoulders? He invites all the neighbors to celebrate and rejoice. Can’t you hear the other 99 murmuring, “It’s so unfair.  He wandered off and got lost and he gets honored and we who played by the rules -- we get nothing.” Sound familiar. How many older children have complained of the breaks their younger siblings got? It seemed the rules were different and not as strict. We are resentful. It doesn’t seem right that one should be rewarded or celebrated for being rescued from his or her own mistakes.

          We live in a world that is premised on fairness. It is a basic element of our justice system that the punishment fit the crime. And so it has been that for many the long sentences for petty street crime seemed wrong when measured against the lenient sentences imposed for devastating white collar crime that bankrupted companies, people’s lives and pensions. The point of our parable is that in God’s eyes there is something more important than fairness. And that is mercy and love.

          We don’t know why the lost sheep got lost – it might have been an accident or it might have been his decision to ignore the bell of the shepherd and the barks of the herding dogs to go up one more hill for a morsel of grass. It really doesn’t matter. The reason for being lost is irrelevant – what is important is being found. So it is that God rejoices at the return of the lost sheep, the discovery of the lost coin or at the return of the prodigal son. God does not in her love for us engage in calculations of wrongdoing, fairness or utility. No matter why we are lost – the good shepherd will seek us out and rejoice when we are found. As Paul suggested nothing we do can separate us from the love of God. And God’s love is not passive, it seeks us out wherever we are. Hallelujah!!

          And we should seek to apply the same principle of acceptance and forgiveness -- not judgment-- in our dealings with those we see as lost. We must at times transcend our resentments even when grounded in fairness. Our love of others should be inclusive. We should rejoice when others are found. Barbara Brown Taylor, the Episcopal priest and writer, tells a wonderful story that highlights this point. She and her husband

“went on a ten day hike in the wilderness with fifteen other people and a trip leader, none of whom [they]  knew…. [I]t became apparent that all walkers [were] not created equal. Some charged ahead while others of us lagged behind, and while we encouraged one another along, we soon learned that we could only travel as fast as our slowest member.

Her name was Pat. She was the eldest member of the group, and the heaviest and the most unpleasant.  She liked to walk alone at the rear of the group, which was just as well, since she had an irritating habit of listening in on other people’s conversations and then breaking in to correct their grammar, geography, history, botany, or any of the subjects about which she knew so much…

Around the fifth day out we got good and lost, walking for close to 10 hours over three mountains before we made camp. When we arrived – after dark, in the rain in the middle of no where – Pat was not with us. We compared notes and discovered that no one had seen her since noon, when she had thrown rocks at the person assigned to bring up the rear of the group and told him to leave her alone.

Delighted he had complied, but that meant no one had seen her for almost eight hours. We were all trembling with exhaustion and soaked to the bone; no one could even imagine heading back up the last mountain in order to find her. But it was the trip leader’s job, so he did it… [He] disappeared into the dark while the rest of us milled around, trying to stay away from the idea of what it would be like to be lost in the wilderness without a match or a map or a friend.

We paced and dozed until close to midnight, when Pat stumbled into camp hanging on to her shepherd. Those of us who had despised her at noon fell all over her in the dark … welcoming her home, pressing mugs of hot chocolate into her hands and oatmeal cookies into her pockets. No one thought to ask her if she was going to be a nicer person from now on, or whether she had learned her lesson. We were too glad to have her back. Imagining her out there in the dark, we had all felt more than a little lost ourselves, so finding her was as good as being found.

Pat acted rather nonchalant about the whole thing. 
… but next morning she was up and dressed and on the trail before any of us, and from that day on she was part of the flock. Not everybody’s favorite member, by any means, but part of the flock. Maybe it was getting lost  that changed her… but then again, maybe it was being found that did the trick. Maybe it was our welcome home that made the difference, that convinced her she was part of the flock, but at any rate it was hard to separate her repentance from ours, or the entance from the rejoicing. We all kept better track of each other from then on and took turns walking with Pat, who surprised everyone by bursting into song one night and leading us all in a medley of old camp tunes. [4]

Who are you in that story -- Pat, Barbara Taylor or the leader of the group? I think the answer is quite clearly we are all of those characters. We are at times lost, at times the shepherd seeking to find our lost brothers and sisters and at time those invited to celebrate and rejoice when one who was lost is found. As we play our various roles it is important to remember that God is more than fair and just; she is radically merciful in her love of each lost sheep and rejoices when they are found. Let us rejoice as well. Thanks be to God.