Read the Lectionary Texts

The parable of the lost sheep is one of my favorites. It is the lead story in the fifteenth chapter of Luke which is a chapter devoted to lost things being found. There is this story of the lost sheep, and then one about a lost coin, and then the main event – a story about a lost boy, the parable of the prodigal son.

A whole chapter devoted to “lostness”!

And it would be tempting to take this story and preach it from the perspective that you and I – people who were lost, but now are found – need to devote our lives to going out and saving the lost. I was going to visit one of our members in the hospital  a while back and had to use the restroom. Well, I went in and found an empty spot and started in on what I needed to do when I noticed a wad of paper wedged between the piping apparatus. – just about eye-level. I could see some bold print on the paper and realized it was a pamphlet – actually a religious tract. And the words said something like, “Are You Lost?”

NO! I’m exactly where I want to be and need to be! I’d been thinking about getting to this exact place for the last ten minutes of my drive to the hospital!

Lost?

No! I’m FOUND!

But I could understand the motivation of the person who left the tract. Many of us think of the world having two types of people – lost sinners who need saving, and those of us who’ve been found. And we the saved think our job is to save the lost.

But it’s not. In fact, it is very dangerous to think of the world that way.

It’s interesting how this parable begins: “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. BUT…the Pharisees and teachers of the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’”

Religious people have a tendency to divide up the world. We see people in terms of “saved” and “not saved”, “righteous” and “not righteous”, “believers” and “unbelievers.” And whenever you start dividing people up like that, you lose sight of God’s view of people.

We are God’s children! Every last one of us!

I don’t think you can even come close to understanding Jesus, let alone following Jesus, until you put away that divisive orientation. But I will caution you that divisiveness is ingrained into the Christianity you and I were brought up with. We can hardly help ourselves from practicing divisiveness. Not only were we nurtured with images of the “saved” and the “lost”, but we were immersed in the sectarianism of denominations. This is why people look at our Community church and wonder how in the world we can bring together Methodists and Presbyterians and Baptists and Lutherans and many others without people killing each other!

We have been religiously trained to be divisive – if not by denomination, by doctrine. Have you ever driven through a town and seen that proverbial intersection with a church on every corner? There’s the First Bible Church, there’s the God’s Word Bible Church which is a splinter group of folks from the First Bible Church – there’s the True Believers Bible Church which is a bunch of people who broke off from the God’s Word Bible Church – and then there’s the True Believers That Believe The Bible Church that prides itself on being the only Bible church in town. Just the simple twist of a word in describing what someone believes about something like the Bible instigates division, schism and looking down on those who we think are lesser believers than we are.

Sectarian division, doctrinal division – we have been well-trained in these things – and along with all that – the interfaith divisiveness where we look at people of other religions as being completely “lost in shades of night” as one of our hymns puts it. And beyond all the sectarian, doctrinal, and religious division we foster, there are the lifestyle issues that tear us apart. What would happen if we let THOSE people (and you know who I’m talking about) into our church??

And that’s where the parable begins. Jesus is hanging out with THOSE kinds of people – LOST  people in the eyes of the religious institution of the day. And the religious crowd – trained as they have been in the art of divisiveness – sits outside looking in, and saying, “This man welcomes tax collectors and sinners and even eats with them!”

This is NOT intended as a compliment to Jesus.

So Jesus asks them – and us – a question in the form of a parable.

“Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?”

Now we westerners often don’t understand the parables because we interpret them through the lens of modernity and not the filter of first century Palestine. Most of us have never come closer to being a shepherd than when we put on our bathrobes and came down the aisle in the Christmas Pageant. So the details escape us! But, if we were seated among those tax collectors and sinners that day, we would probably hear them begin to snort, and giggle, and go into great big belly laughs! Jesus is saying something really funny!

Think about it: You have a hundred sheep to take care of. They are worth a lot of money. One gets lost. You leave the ninety-nine behind in the open field where lions and tigers and bears lurk among the bushes while you go to find the lost one?

I don’t think so!

Or let me put this in the terms of a church youth group. You have 100 Junior High kids on a trip to New York City and one of them gets lost. So you LEAVE 99 JUNIOR HIGH KIDS IN THE MIDDLE OF TIMES SQUARE to go and find the one? How absurd! I can remember the very moment in my career when I realized I was getting too old to run the Youth Group by myself. We had a sleep over…AND I FELL ASLEEP! And 99 Junior High kids were on the loose! That’s not a pretty sight!

So Jesus poses this question. “Does the shepherd not leave the ninety-nine in the open field and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?”

 NO!!!!!!

The logical answer to Jesus’ question is, “No!” NO, NO, NO, NO, NO! No shepherd in his right mind would do that! Any shepherd who would do such a thing would be fired from his job! Better to cut your losses and hold onto what you got. One sheep is certainly expendable for the good of the others!

And all of a sudden, we are face-to-face with our attitudes toward other people..

One person is expendable for the good of the others.

One group of people, one city of people, one nation of people, one culture of people, one religion of people…expendable for the sake of saving the others.

That’s how it is in our world. We divide people up into categories so that we can dismiss them and elevate ourselves.

But Jesus uses this parable to confront us with the folly of our ways. And Jesus shows us that what makes sense to humans doesn’t make sense to God, and what makes sense to God sometimes doesn’t make sense to us.

Who in their right mind would value the “lost” equally with the “found?”

God.

Only God.

A loving and gracious God who knows us only as his children and not according to the prejudicial labels we place on each other.

And Jesus says the angels sing a song and do the “wave” whenever one of the “lost” is found! In fact, there is more rejoicing in heaven over that person than over ninety-nine righteous people who do not think they need to be found.

And frankly, I think the end of the parable prompts a very provocative question.

Who do you think is REALLY lost in this story?

The tax collectors and sinners who are eating and fellowshipping with Jesus?

Or the religious crowd sitting outside, dividing up the world into lost and found?

Who do you think is really lost?

And then one more question.

Where do you find yourself in this story of the lost sheep?