Chapel Homily: Nov. 22, 2022
Matthew 18:10-14, The Lost Sheep
Way back in the summers of 1985-1987, newly married and a young Whitworth staff person, Janice and I spent the summers in Sandpoint, Idaho, where Janice went to high school and where her family lived. Janice's family lived about 10 miles west of the town center, a rural subset of rural. We lived in a cottage Janice's dad had converted from a milk house. What a great way to spend summers—Sandpoint City Beach, a round of golf or the driving range, working out, and 10-hour shifts at Dub's Drive-In, a burger joint you'll still pass as you drive into Sandpoint on Highway 2. During the school year, I was teaching and coaching for Whitworth. In the summers, I was standing over a grill, flipping burgers and asking patrons whether they wanted fries with that.
At least once each summer, on the way home to this cottage on Colburn-Culver Road, we would see 85-year-old Alvin Jacobsen walking on the side of the road, jeans, long-sleeved flannel shirt, boots and cowboy hat, carrying a bucket of feed and trailed by a dozen cows, lined up behind him, single file, following him home. Well, what the heck? As I learned, these cows had escaped the fenced area that restrained them and had wandered away. And how did they do that? Cows have a habit of keeping their heads down, moving from tuft of grass to tuft of grass, all the live-long day. And there are times when the next appealing tuft is just beyond the wooden rail fencing, which they push through and knock over. And they then keep eating and moving, other cows follow, and before long, they are acres and acres away from their home farm.
Cows, sheep, and goats. Livestock have a way of wandering away. Our text for today from Matthew's Gospel informs us that we have and we do, too. It might be that we have our heads down, and when we finally lift them we realize we have distanced ourselves from Jesus. But when we do, we have a God who claims you as an individual treasure, who seeks you out, and who rejoices when he finds you.
TEXT: The Parable of the Wandering Sheep
10 "See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.
12 "What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? 13 And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. 14 In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.
The text conveys a simple parable about one lost sheep to people of an historical era who would have understood it. In Judea, it was easy for sheep to go astray. The pasture land was hilly. There were no walls or fences to pen in the sheep. And if the pastureland grass was kind of sparse, well, find grass to eat, somewhere, anywhere, which might mean getting lost or even marooned on a ledge.
By the way, getting likened to sheep is not a compliment. We've got this "Mary Had a Little Lamb" image of these fluffy woolen creatures, warm and cuddly and friendly. But, Four-H veterans who raised and tried to train sheep will tell you—and I married one—the ovine type are simply not the Einsteins of the animal kingdom. Sheep lose their direction continually. They wander off. They get stuck in precarious places. And when they are found, the "Heel!" method you'd use for a dog doesn't work. A shepherd really did have to throw the sheep over its shoulder and carry it home.
Sheep need rescuing. Sheep find themselves in places they shouldn't go. And the sheep can contribute absolutely nothing to its own rescue. The shepherd has to do everything in this rescue mission. And that goes for us, too. We are utterly lost and can offer nothing in the equation of our salvation. Sheep are dependent animals, and so are we. And what a relief to have the good shepherd who has made each of us the object of his rescue mission.
And so I wonder, in response to this text, what are we feeding on that might cause us to wander and get lost? Is that grass or some other object of our attention good for the soul? And how are we moving astray from Jesus and getting ourselves on a ledge?
But that noted, this is a message of great news for all of us. Jesus is the ultimate rescuer.
And so the parable teaches us a number of things about God's love. And each of these things, I hope, encourages you, settles you, and helps you to understand how you are loved by this Savior who knows you by name, who calls you by name, who carries us home.
1. Jesus' love is an individual love.
The 99 sheep were not enough. There is not a one that doesn't matter to God.
The parable says that you are God's treasure. He left his flock to come get you. That is the way Jesus values each of you.
Just like the sheep, we can be foolish creatures. The sheep has no one to blame but itself for the danger it got itself into. I might be more apt to have little patience for the sheep's foolishness and say, "Your fault. You brought this on yourself. Not gonna waste any time on you and your stupidity." Or, "Well, bummer that one is lost. I've still got 99 sheep. I'm going to just cut my losses, count my blessings, and hang around here with these 99." It just doesn't make economic sense to go in search of one stray sheep.
But that's not the image of God we see here. God loves us and seeks us out even when we make dumb decisions that land us in bad places.
2. God's love is a seeking love.
The shepherd wasn't content to wait for the sheep to come back. He went out to search for it. And he searches until he finds it.
This is an exercise in divine rescue. This is a search and rescue mission. This is something God did with Israel and he does it with us. And God's resolve isn't just to look for his lost sheep, to undertake the search, but to complete the search, to find the lost.
When the sheep is found, there is no blaming; no grudge held; no contempt for the sheep. There is nothing but pure joy. If it were me in parenting mode, I might offer a moral lecture, let them know that, yeah, you're in trouble now, or maybe just give that look that says you just can't be trusted. But that's not the tactic here. The message is that God casts our sins from as far as the east is from the west.
3. God's love is a rejoicing love.
When we lose something, there is nothing more pleasing than finding what was lost. And then, this true joy of finding the sheep is shared with others, and there is community rejoicing.
God celebrates finding us. Joy in heaven.
I was present at a church when Ron Pyle preached. Ron shared about a time when their son, Brandon, was six years old and asked Ron to play Hide and Seek with him. Ron was preparing a sermon, pretty busy, hemmed and hawed a bit, and then said okay. To which little Brandon responded, "Great, Dad. Okay, I'm going to hide behind the couch and you try to find me."
The game has no purpose, and it doesn't work, unless we are found. Like Brandon, deep in our souls, don't we all want to be seen, to be found? Jesus tells us that he is all about seeking us out, finding us when we wander away, and when he finds us, he rejoices.
So, what might there be in this parable for us as a community of students, staff, and faculty?
Are there ways we can be shepherds for one another?
The faith community that Jesus built is made up of people who have been lost and who needed saving. God's saving grace is at the root of the Christian community, and that's not the norm for the world.
When we realize that we were once in need of being rescued, and often still in need of rescuing when we wander, that might inform us in the way we extend grace to one another. Jesus seeks every single sheep, every single person. May we then look upon every person as Jesus sees them, as so valuable that he loves and seeks them and rejoices about them.
Be shepherds for one another. Pay attention to our friends who are going through things. Be ministers of visitation whose presence is like that of the shepherd who loves and seeks and rejoices.
For you?
Did you catch how this wayward and careless sheep isn't loved any less by God for causing all this trouble? Not at all. Jesus is filled with absolute joy when the sheep is found.
We can all put ourselves in His hands and He will bring us home. He doesn't want anything from you; just you.
I'll close with this poem by Billy Collins, in which there is a gospel analogy. I read it to students a decade ago when I preached in chapel, and I read it to campus staff last spring.
It speaks to me, just as this parable does, because I have to confess I can wonder to myself, "Are you sure, Lord, that all of this saving grace applies to me, too, fallen as I am? Are you sure?" Am I the only one? It's a lie we tell ourselves. Who asks this question and can hear this voice of self-doubt?
Just after third grade in Salinas, California, I attended a week-long summer YMCA Camp. At the bus stop I learned the words to the Three Dog Night song, "Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog," and I met a kid who was born 7 minutes before me. One day, the arts and crafts project was to make a lanyard for our parents. Mine was a purple and pink braided thing like this. Which I gave to my mother.
The Lanyard
BY BILLY COLLINS
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that's what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
That gospel message: Jesus takes on human flesh, he heals the sick, gives sight to the blind, feeds the 5,000, is arrested, mocked, beaten, scourged, crucified, and killed. And we give him our gifts and our talents and our full persons, which, in comparison to what he did for us, amounts to nothing more than a lanyard. And Jesus says, "We're even."
This seeking and loving and rejoicing God tells us that all he wants is you; that you are of infinite value to Him. Amen.
Benediction
There are many places in the world where the land is too vast and the resources too thin to erect fences to contain the livestock. Ranchers rely on well water that is sweet and plentiful. Because when it is, the animals find their way home, to nourishment and safety.
The eternal water that Jesus offers us is sweet and it is plentiful.
Jesus has us in his sights in his rescue mission, whether we wander away, whether we are lost, or whether we are hiding, whether we wonder if we are enough. And what good news that is.
Receive the benediction:
Go now, secure in the knowledge that Jesus, the very best shepherd, is a loving, seeking, and rejoicing shepherd, and that He rejoices in you. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.