The Lost Sheep

Ann Beaty
Fellowship Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

June 13, 2010

Text: Luke 15:1-7

This summer for 12 weeks in the Fellowship Hall service, we have chosen to preach on some of our favorite parables. Parables are stories Jesus used to teach his listeners about God and about how to live in relationship with God. A parable is a story that teaches us some truth about what God is like.

These parables, or stories, are usually easily remembered because the characters are bold and the symbolism rich in meaning. Parables were a very common form of teaching in ancient Judaism because they used examples the people could relate to – like salt and light and farming, seeds, and coins, and experiences in the village market, so they may not have seemed as strange or mysterious to the listeners in Jesus’ day as they sometimes do to us.

The question is often asked: Why would Jesus tell so many stories that let people wonder about the meaning of the parable without just telling us what to do or what the right answer is?

I think parables are intriguing to me because they often enter into that “gray” area when it comes to our search for answers. I have to ponder them using all of the skills God has given me in order to search for the meaning at any given point in my life.

We have to read the parable and then use all the resources of our faith – the story itself in scripture, our tradition and what we know and believe about God from what the church has taught us over the centuries, our ability to reason and make sense with our heart and mind knowledge, and our life experience – all those help us interpret the story and then the nugget of meaning and truth is fresh for us whether we are 5 or 25 or 85 years old.

I chose to start our series today with the story of the “lost sheep”. It actually comes in Luke’s gospel in a series of stories about 3 things that are lost and found – a sheep, a coin, and a son, but today I’m going to focus only on the first part – the lost sheep.

I chose to start with this parable because it is one of the earliest I remember learning as a young child going to church and Vacation Bible School. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know the story. And while I don’t remember the exact telling of the story, I do remember doing crafts that involved paper cut out sheep with cotton balls glued on for sheep fur!

The introduction to the story tells us who Jesus is talking to – tax collectors and sinners – those considered outcast in that society… and Pharisees and Scribes – the religious leaders who are grumbling because of Jesus’ association with the tax collectors and sinners.

It seems to me that each of them in their own way – the tax collectors and sinners, and the Pharisees and Scribes were “lost”. Each had fallen out of relationship with God in some way. And so, Jesus, knowing his audience tells this story about God caring for one sheep lost among many sheep.

We all experience times of being “lost” – whether it is being lost because we have intentionally wandered away from God because we are angry or hurt, or more often, I think, we unintentionally find ourselves feeling “lost” because we have allowed other things to get in the way of that loving relationship feeding and sustaining us.

That is actually what “sin” means. Sin is separation from God. It literally means to “miss the mark”. Somehow – either by action or inaction, we miss the mark and find ourselves away from God.

I suspect that is what happened to the sheep in the story that wandered away from the 99. She probably saw some really good looking tall green grass just on the other side of the hill and she just kept moving closer and closer to it in order to fill up the hunger she felt inside. All of a sudden – she was separated from the other sheep and was lost.

However it happens, I think it is safe to say, there are times for all of us when we find ourselves further from God than we want to be. We know that feeling of “lost”.

Another thing that seems true for me and others I know who share this with me, is that in these times when I find myself wandering away from God – being “lost”, I tend to respond to the situation by berating myself about it – shaming myself for being uncommitted, lazy, and unfocused when I “should” be praying, studying scripture, and growing closer to God as my first priority.

Personally, I don’t find this “shaming” helpful. Does it move me back into closer relationship with God? Not usually – it more often sinks me deeper into the abyss of doing nothing about it.

I read a devotional recently that helped me articulate this truth. I receive a daily devotional by email written by Father Richard Rohr – a Catholic priest who founded the Center for Contemplation & Action in Albuquerque. The entry for Friday, June 4 was entitled: Why doesn’t shaming people work?

When people are shamed and made to feel guilty their soul closes up and doesn’t expose itself and doesn’t trust after that. It just starts pretending. It starts playing the game of religion where you go through the motions, but you don’t really feel it or believe it anymore. You hardly trust it, but you keep paying your “life insurance” or fire insurance dues – just in case the whole thing is true.

Our churches are filled with these people not because they are bad people but because they have never been told what the (mystics) were told and dared to believe and dared to receive: God loves you and receives you as you really are, and not as you think you should be. Until that is actively and deeply experienced, you do not move from mere religion to actual spirituality.

God loves you and receives you as you really are, and not as you think you should be. THIS IS THE MESSAGE OF BEING FOUND!!

The message of being found is that God loves us and is always seeking to bring us home to be in loving relationship – not as we think we should be, but right from where we are.

God lovingly searched for the one sheep who was lost – the one off filling herself up on other things – and brought her home to be safely in the fold with the other 99.

As an adult I can’t read this parable of the lost sheep without being taken to the image of God as “the Good Shepherd” – particularly the images we receive in the 23rd Psalm. The one who finds us and brings us home is indeed our “Good Shepherd”.

Hear the words of the 23rd Psalm and let them wash over you. Imagine that THIS is the God who finds you and brings you home in love:

Psalm 23 (New International Version)

A psalm of David.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, [a]
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
forever.

Barbara Brown Taylor says this parable “is an open invitation to work alongside God as good shepherds in the world.” She goes on to say, “Repentance is not the issue, but rejoicing; the plot is not about mending our evil ways but about seeking, finding, rejoicing. The invitation is… to join Jesus…in receiving God’s treasure.”

Not only are we found by God who loves us, but as disciples, we participate in bringing others who are lost back into the fold of love. We seek. We find. We rejoice… not by shaming, but by loving others.

In the devotional that comes from Father Richard Rohr, there is always a “prayer mantra” attached to the end of each email. The one attached to the devotional I shared earlier was this: Fall into the love of God.

Maybe this is the key to being found – to allow ourselves to fall into the love of God who is always searching for us to bring us home to the fold.

Fall into the love of God. Fall into the love of God. Amen.