Luke 15:1-10
Four decades ago, I worked as a shepherd. Actually I worked as a shepherd and a cattle wrangler on a large sheep and cattle property in Australia. I was an exchange student in Molong, New South Wales, about a 2 hour drive northwest of Sydney; and between that property and two others my Australian family owned, the amount of land was equivalent to a third of the size of Rhode Island, the state where I grew up.
The year I lived there, Australia was in the midst of a ten year drought, and property owners were desperate for ways to feed their livestock. One of the more creative and perfectly legal ways to do that was through what was called ‘walking the long paddock’ – paddock being the Australian word for field. The land between the road and the fences that marked owners’ properties was the ‘long paddock’ and you could let your sheep graze there as long as they moved at least 3 miles a day, or 2 miles if ewes were nursing their lambs. So, whenever I wasn’t in school, there I was with ‘several times a hundred’ sheep and a couple of dogs trying to keep the flock moving along and out of danger, and also trying to get them off the road every time a car or truck went by. Talk about frustrating, difficult, tiring and tedious work! Dangerous, too. While I often was left alone during the day to keep the sheep walking, at night we would corral them in portable wire pens, thankfully done by my Australian father and brother. However, frequently the sheep would try to run away and not just one would wander off but given their herd mentality, a whole bunch of them would run straight into a perilous situation. For as bucolic as they appear, sheep are not the calmest, or wisest animals.
Given the menial and dirty work shepherding truly is, it is no wonder that during Jesus’ time shepherds were disdained as marginal members of society. Even though in Jewish scriptures the shepherd is revered as a positive image of God who protects, feeds and looks after the flock; by the first century, Jews were no longer a nomadic people who needed shepherds. They had adapted to an agricultural, urban society and shepherds in ‘real life’ had become so negatively devalued as to be a forbidden profession, classed among robbers, thieves and the outcast. (As were also camel and donkey drivers, barbers, sailors and shopkeepers.) 1
And therein lies part of Jesus’ wisdom and genius in this parable. As the crowd listened to these stories, especially the Pharisees who would have known the understanding of shepherd as both divine and outcast, all would have wondered what kind of shepherd did Jesus mean here, because they knew Jesus was referring to God. And then, in the story of the lost coins, to have the divine described as a woman?! Could Jesus really mean that God not only isn’t who we expect, but One who will go to any length, actively searching, leaving no stone unturned, to find what is lost. God, whom we often think of as distant, unmoved, actually moves toward us – relentlessly pursuing us as we either move away or are so hopelessly lost we can’t save ourselves? For those of us who have experienced the horrible feeling of being lost, or in despair, or so alone and feeling God so far away, the thought that God will carry us to safety is very comforting.
Yet while God does go in search of the one who is lost, that search is done risking the 99 to fend for themselves! The story also suggests that God, in essence, abandons us in order to welcome home the one, to meet the one who is in despair, utter loneliness, emptiness and to restore that one to community. As one writer describes it, “Jesus understands those on the fringe of the community are integral to the community in all its fullness as it should be. Until those on the fringe return, the community is incomplete.” 2
“Well, yes, Jesus” we want to say to him; we ‘get’ that. But how about the way we feel as the 99 who are left vulnerable and at risk? For as much as you and I can identify with the sense of being lost, and know only too well that hopeless, helpless feeling when we are so alone and in total despair; who of us has ever not also felt at least a twinge of resentment at someone who was cared for at our expense?! Episcopal priest, Suzanne Guthrie, imagines out loud the envy and reproach of the 99 sheep who waited patiently and obediently with the rest of the flock, “How do YOU get to nuzzle against the shepherd’s shoulder, gently carried on his sweet back? You don’t deserve it! We were faithful. We stayed and look at you carried shoulder high like a triumphant athlete, laurel leaves for your lies and selfishness! We won’t come to any parties given in your honor.” 3 While we might not like to imagine ourselves as sheep, her words of disapproval and jealousy ring true.
Especially since the story never makes clear exactly what happened to the 99! For all we know, when the shepherd chose to search for the one who wandered off, the rest could have been attacked or scattered. Was he able to restore the one to the rest? Was he a fool to take the risk? Or was Jesus suggesting that we have a God who, in love, is willing to leave all to search for one lone and lost person because God also trusts the 99 to take care of each other.
Yet, because this love of God goes looking, leaving the others in possible jeopardy, the certainty of what happens in the end is left in doubt. You and I do, at times, have to live with God’s unknown.
As natural and honest as it is to be angry with God who seems to favor the 1 over 99, it was Jesus’ deepest hope that those who heard these stories would realize it wasn’t 99 or 1, but 99 and 1! The real point of both stories of the lost sheep and the lost coin is the joy that follows when what was lost is found! Both times there is an invitation to rejoice, to party, and not just a simple gala but a cosmic celebration! All of heaven and earth rejoice with God when what is lost is found.
Dear friends, Jesus wants all to know and trust and rejoice – that ours is a God who wants no one excluded. Ours is a God who doesn’t care about the sin, but about the sinner. Ours is a God who will go to any lengths to welcome and restore; who searches and seeks us out, all the while trusting the community to take care, to care for and to do the ‘right’ thing even if we never know the final outcome. Ours is a God whose love and liberty never end. Wow!
Amen.
1. Hear Then the Parable B. B. Scott p. 413
2. Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 4 Bartlett and Taylor, p. 72
3. Edge of the Enclosure, Suzanne Guthrie, Proper 19