Today I’m thinking about the sheep that was lost. She wasn’t doing anything wrong. She was simply doing what sheep do - following her nose and blissfully eating one tender blade of grass after another. Then she saw another blade of grass – over there. She didn’t bother to look up – she was content and enjoying the grass. But eventually… she felt the cold wind as the sun dipped beneath a cloud at the horizon. Sensing it was time to huddle up with her fellow sheep, she finally looked up and discovered - she was all alone. The rest of the herd had also followed their noses… a different way. Suddenly she was a little anxious. She bleated, hoping to hear the answering baa of her mother. But she heard nothing. She was alone… and that is a very dangerous place for a little lamb to be. 1
This would have been an all too familiar occurrence in Jesus’ day… sheep were constantly wandering off, following their noses to anticipated green pasture without thinking about how much they need the community. That’s why sheep need a shepherd. The shepherd watches over the sheep – and if it one is missing – the shepherd goes and looks for it. The sheep in today’s story wasn’t a bad sheep. It belonged. It simply had gotten lost. So the shepherd hunts for her and brings her home and invites everyone to celebrate!
Jesus tells this parable as a description of what God does for us – each one of us -- all of God’s children. For there are times in our lives when each one of us may feel lost - things are not right, and we get separated from the love and support of our community. It is at times like these that God seeks us, hunts for us in the corners and crags of our world and of our lives to bring us back into community. Because… just like sheep, we need community.
I had several friends and relatives who lost loved ones during the pandemic. Maybe you did too. One of the challenges of the pandemic is that all of the traditional ways that we as a community of Christ have learned to address illness, death and despair were upended. We couldn’t gather together. We couldn’t eat together. We couldn’t sing. We couldn’t hug or even touch one another. No one wanted to risk infecting someone else. It’s no wonder that so many – maybe you would include yourself in that number – have felt lost, alone, isolated and depressed.
Others have felt lost because, too often, we are plagued by old tapes running in our heads that tell us that we are not worthwhile, that we are too slow or too fat or too skinny or that we are simply not good enough. Somehow, we have gotten the message that we don’t measure up -- and that if and when we are lost – no one would care enough to go and look for us.
Kate Braestrup, in her memoir, Here If you Need Me, shares some of her experiences as a chaplain with the Maine game wardens. One day she is waiting with a young man whose sister had gotten lost and likely had overdosed in the woods. As the wardens search, the young man tells Kate that his sister had been suffering from depression for a long time and that recently she had gone to church and been told that the one thing God never, ever forgave – was suicide. So he asks Kate, “would the church do a funeral for a suicide?”
Kate replies, “The game wardens have been walking in the rain all day, walking through the woods in the freezing rain trying to find your sister. They would have walked all day tomorrow [and] the rest of the week, searching for Betsy, so they could bring her home to you…And if there is one thing I am sure of…it is that God is not less kind, less committed, or less merciful than a Maine game warden.” She then said, despite what that pastor may have said, “there is no doubt in my mind… God is holding your sister close to His tender heart. Betsy is safe, she is forgiven, she is free at last from all her pain.” And then she gave him the number of some other pastors who would proclaim God’s mercy and love rather than shame at Betsy’s funeral.
There are old tapes – lies -- out there that paint God as a vengeful God who is more interested in vengeance and punishment than mercy and love. These old tapes claim that God expects us to look and act perfect and put on our happy face…even when we are crying on the inside.
Those old tapes belong to the Pharisees. They are the ones who said to Jesus, “Why are you hanging around with tax collectors and sinners?” Why do you eat with those people?
In response, Jesus asks the Pharisees and scribes and us …. which of you would not leave the 99 in the wilderness and go in search of the lost sheep. This sounds like a rhetorical question.
But it’s a real question for the Pharisees - would they? Would they leave 99 sheep in the dangerous wilderness in search of one little lamb that might already have been found by a hawk or a coyote or a bandit… all of whom liked to eat lamb. Would they risk the 99? Would we? Is that even good management of resources? Or would that lost sheep be considered “collateral damage” – a business loss, a tax deduction?
But God does. God goes after the one who is lost – even at great risk.
In another story, Jesus talks about the hired hands versus the Good shepherd. The hired hands wouldn’t look for a stray sheep. But the Good Shepherd is constantly on the lookout because to the Good shepherd, it’s not just another sheep. It’s his sheep – who he knows and loves.
This is how Jesus describes God. Jesus says that God is like a shepherd who seeks, and hunts and looks and doesn’t stop until He finds the one who is lost. And so know this… if you are ever plagued by questions of whether you are good enough, whether anyone would ever care, whether anyone would bother to look for you if you didn’t show up… Jesus says that God is seeking you. God is seeking you because you are worth looking for, searching for and going after. God not only wants to find you but God wants to restore you to community.
Jesus was spreading a message of God’s expansive kingdom and the tax collectors and those who were designated as “sinners” were listening. But the Pharisees were grumbling: "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them." Clearly, those designated as “sinners” were those people.
But rather than address the negative grumblings – Jesus tells a story to help the Pharisees and scribes, the tax collectors and his disciples and all those who have ever sinned (which includes all of us) to know that God is a God of love and mercy. God knows each person by name and when someone is in trouble, is disconnected from community, is involved in unhealthy behavior or is making damaging choices… God goes and looks for “them,” for those people.
Who are “those people” for you? The Pharisees called them “sinners.” Who are those people who you don’t agree with, don’t understand and don’t frankly even like? God is seeking those people too to restore them – and you and me --into community…together. For no matter who you are or what you have done or not done, where you were born or who you love or what is the color of your skin or your political party– God seeks and invites you all to live into the community of God where there is no designation of “us” and “them.”
And then God throws a party. For God wants to rejoice with you’all. Like the shepherd who finds the lost sheep and the woman who finds the lost coin, when God finds God’s lost child, God calls everyone to rejoice! For there is great joy in heaven when the lost are found and the found are restored.
Brothers and sisters, friends in Christ, we are all God’s children, so let us rejoice with God and all the angels and the whole company of heaven. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
- Pastor Pamela Stalheim Lane