Hilton Head Island, SC - November 20, 2022
The Chapel Without Walls
John 10:7-15; Luke 15:1-7
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text - "When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices." - Luke 15:5 (RSV)
He was bound to get into trouble. He said things many people did not want to hear. He implied things many people did not want to believe. He declared things about God which were at great odds with the commonly accepted notions of his day, and also of our day.
In the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus told three parables, each of which was intended to attack the conventional wisdom of religious people with respect to sinners, and all three of which were guaranteed to make enemies for Jesus. It isn't that He wanted to make enemies, but He did not shrink from the knowledge that it would happen either. Too many people had the wrong concepts of the nature of God, and Jesus very deliberately confronted those wrong notions by means of these three carefully constructed stories.
Remember that the beginning of the chapter tells us that the scribes and Pharisees were grumbling because Jesus openly associated with tax collectors and sinners. When we talk about tax collectors here, we're not talking about the equivalent of IRS agents; we're talking about people who are more akin to Mafia loan sharks or cash collectors from a drug cartel who prowl city streets to pry money loose from their sleazy cocaine pushers. And when it says that Jesus spent time with sinners, the type of people who are meant are not the kind who occasionally say naughty words or kick friendly puppies when they've had a bad day; it is practitioners of the world's oldest profession and widely acknowledged wife-beaters and released felons who are the type of people with whom Jesus readily and visibly associated himself.
With the understanding some of the scribes and Pharisees had of the nature of God, it is little wonder that they grumbled when they observed what Jesus did. And with Jesus' understanding of the nature of God, it is little wonder that he told the type of parables he so cleverly crafted. Each side intended very forcefully to confront the other.
Two Sundays ago we had the same scripture passage as we have this Sunday. It is the parable of the lost sheep. Then we focused on the nature of sheep, and today we are pondering the nature of the shepherd. But we must remember that the shepherd of whom Jesus speaks is not intended to be just any shepherd. In his parable, Jesus is the shepherd, but the shepherd is also God. In John 10, Jesus calls himself the good shepherd, but in Luke 15 Jesus is saying that he seeks the lost because God has called him to seek the lost. The Lord is our Shepherd; God is the one who watches over us; our Father in heaven is the one who has the whole world in His hands, who searches out everyone among us who is lost, who never gives up on anybody, no matter how far we might stray from Him.
It is the nature of sheep (which is to say, people) to become lost. We wander away from God, we reject His laws, we follow our own paths rather than following the paths of God's righteousness. But it is the nature of the celestial shepherd to come looking for us when we lose ourselves to sinful and self-destructive behavior. God is what Francis Thompson called the Hound of Heaven, the one who relentlessly pursues us until at last we submit to His ceaseless quest once again to take us in as His own. We can run from God, but we can't hide, not really, not permanently. He always will find us. That's what Jesus was saying by means of His story, and that's what enraged the religious leaders who thought that proper belief should be equated with moral, ethical, and religious propriety. Righteousness and $2.95 will get you a cup of coffee in the kingdom of God, Jesus seemed to be saying, but it is God who will get you into the kingdom of God. The sheep will never find their way in; only the shepherd can bring them in. Furthermore, said Jesus, goodness is not the price of admission; grace alone is, and it is God's grace and not any grace of our own which is our ticket into the kingdom.
So there are a hundred sheep, and one gets lost, and the shepherd goes out to find it. Two weeks ago we learned that sheep were considered to be unclean animals and shepherds were considered to be low-class people engaged in an unacceptable occupation, but those factors did not prevent Jesus from using sheep and a shepherd in his parable. In fact, it was precisely because most people had those feelings about sheep and shepherds that Jesus decided to use that imagery in his story. "People are different than you think," he is telling us by means of this parable, "and particularly God is different than you think. You are convinced He loves only the righteous, but I am here to tell you He loves everybody. There is no one outside the loving and saving grace of God: not any; none!” says Jesus in this revolutionary parable. “God loves Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, atheists, agnostics, criminals, perverts, ruthless dictators, heartless ideologues, and mindless assassins as much as He loves righteous and observant Jews or Christians,” says Jesus. “If the truth is told,” Jesus says, “God's heart yearns even more for those who don't know or serve Him, precisely because they don't know or serve Him," Jesus seems to be telling us by means of this and the following two marvelous parables.
Singer Harry Chapin was a Sixties kind of man who became popular in the Seventies and early Eighties, until his untimely death in a fiery car accident, which may have resulted from a fatal coronary occlusion; no one could ever be certain. All of Harry's songs told a story, and he had one called The Song of the Dying Child which can just about tear your heart from your pulsing thorax every time you hear it. It tells of a small child who is starving to death in a third-world country somewhere, and as strength wanes and hope fades, the child's mother strikes him, because she also is too malnourished to know what she is doing. She is unable to nurse her child; there is no milk left within her, and death is about to claim them both. And in Somalia and the Sudan and Ethiopia and other parts of Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere in this climate-changed world, The Song of the Dying Child is being played out a million times over. Regardless of what anyone tries to do, the dying shall continue.
But does anyone think any of those hopeless children and mothers is truly hopeless? As long as God exists --- which will be as long as time exists, as long as the universe exists, as long as the kingdom of God exists --- there is nothing which can cause those beloved children of God ultimately to be lost! In the end, when it really counts, when push comes to shove and the chips are truly down, our shepherd will supply our need; Jehovah is His name!
How many millions of children are there in this nation or the world who are starving to death? How many children are being deprived of a childhood by parents who act like children? How many moms or dads are so embroiled in their own problems that they have lost sight of their children, and the children thus inevitably have become lost? How many well-intentioned parents are failing as parents, how many people who ought never to have been parents are throwing their children to the societal wolves, how many older adults feel themselves to be displaced persons in a misplaced society, how many apparently very successful people are feeling themselves to be utter failures and totally lost? When we become lost --- and we all become lost, each of us, all of us, sooner or later --- when we become lost, who can find us?
Jesus knew, and clearly and compellingly he told us. God will find us, he said. It may take Him a while, it may take years, it may take every moment of this earthly life. In the end, He will find us, because He is God, and we are His, and He refuses to lose a single one of us.
Here is one of the things I deduce from the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the two lost sons. It may appear as though sin causes people to become lost from God, but it is only that: an appearance. Actually, Jesus seems to be saying, no one is ever lost, no matter what the circumstances of that person's life.
No matter how anybody in this world appears to become lost, God will always see to it that they get found again. And when they are found (and there are many means by which the Shepherd finds folks), the Shepherd lays them on His shoulders, and He brings them back into the sheepfold, the peoplefold, where everyone else is. As He returns, He rejoices. That's the way He is, it's the way He has always been. One of the few things you can count on in this world is that it is the way God will always be. It is His nature, and if there is one thing which is impossible even for God, it is to go against His own nature.
Well, I am here this morning to tell you that by means of the parable of the lost sheep and the persistent shepherd, Jesus is telling us that God has brought an unlimited supply of hope into this world. Nothing can separate us from the love of God, made manifest to us through Jesus Christ --- neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation.
And yet there is something that is still troubling about this parable. I said two weeks ago and again this week that in the minds of Jesus' listeners, shepherds were considered low-class people with a very definitely low-class job. Why would Jesus, who always was so careful about what he said, use that image in this parable? Wouldn't it put people off?
That is exactly what he intended it to do. The kingdom of God is both a shot in the arm and a kick in the pants. Jesus is telling us that God is a loving Father who will stoop to the lowest depths to seek and to find the lost. He is not above the sordid muck of human behavior gone astray; He is in it. When we fall, He is there. When we wander away, He is there. When willfulness or pridefulness or pure cussedness lead us afar, He will catch up with us, and He will find us. There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine people who have always toed the line and thus who don't need much repentance.
In this magnificent four-line parable, we learn that the lost sheep was not only found, but that when the shepherd found it, he put it on his shoulders and carried it back. He restored it to its rightful place in the flock, which is to say the community of all the other sheep, which is to say (since Jesus is really talking about people and not sheep at all), in the community of the other sinners. When he slung the sheep onto his shoulders, the shepherd rejoiced.
Christian people: we have a joyful God! When He finds us -- and eventually He will find all of us; you can count on it -- He rejoices. This is a parable of lost beginnings and found endings, of straying sheep and a tenacious shepherd, of people who always seem to botch things up and a God who will always patch things up. You want to say to me, "But wait a minute; what about those who don't repent?" I want to say to you, "But wait a minute; God repents for them if they don't repent for themselves, and if God does it, that does it. And besides, Jesus said nothing about in this parable about the lost sheep repenting." And you want to say, "Do you mean that everybody gets into the kingdom?" I want to say, "You bet your sweet Bible they do!" You say, "Okay, but what about those other passages, the ones about sheep and goats and a narrow gate and locked doors and weeping and gnashing; what about that? And what about people who don't repent; it says they must repent!", and I say, "I know about all that; I have also read it, many times. I am very familiar with it. But if you want the real McCoy, if you want the heart of the Gospel, you look at Luke 15, and a story about a lost sheep, a story about a lost coin, a story about two lost sons; Oy Gewalt, just wait till we get to that last story!"
Oh, yes; oh yes indeed; stories like this can get you into trouble, Jesus. If you call it the way you see it, you won't survive it. But the Gospel will have been preached, the Good News will have been proclaimed, and the lost will have been found, despite all the good and proper and reasonable objections. And in the end, God will win, because that's what He always does.