Sheep, Coins, and the Kingdom

Sunday, September 12th, 2004
15th Sunday after Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Luke 15:1-10

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ 3So he told them this parable: 4‘Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? 5When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” 7Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. 8‘Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” 10Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’

Let’s play a game.

Pretend that you are the lost sheep. You’re the one who wandered off, too busy with the grass in front of your face to realize where the rest of the herd was going – or where YOU were going, for that matter. You see, the grass just tasted sooo good, and you didn’t even lift your head once to take your bearings, to scout the territory, to take your position and check it against the rest of the flock. Now you’re who knows where, bleating, alone and afraid.

Have you ever felt like that? You going along, feeling pretty good about what you’re doing, and who you are, and you slip into automatic … and keep going and going … and suddenly you wake up one day and wonder how you got to the place where you find yourself? You look in the mirror and hardly recognize the face staring back at you.

We’ve heard the stories so many times, and they have always been ones that paint a vivid picture of what the love of Christ will do for us – we can expect him to leave the 99 and to come looking for us -- the one that was lost. He is the one who will turn a house upside down in order to find the one lost coin. We are SUPPOSED to identify with the lost item, aren’t we? It makes a statement about the experience of salvation.

It speaks to our nature before being found by Christ (meaning ‘lost’), and it also speaks to the esteem in which Christ holds each of us – how we are each worth his taking on the risk of going to find us where we are – individually, worth his life … as it were, in exchange for our own, and of his love for us.

But, what if you were the sheep and it wasn’t so much that you got lost as much as you CHOSE to NOT go looking for the herd?

In her book, stumbling toward faith, Renee Altson writes the following:

"i heard the shepherd coming a long way off. he was whistling."hey," he said to me. "i have missed you. i am so glad i found you.he extended a hand to wipe my tear-stained, dusty cheeks."come back with me," he said. "come back to the others.""no," i said.he looked surprised, but it did not change the immense compassion on his face."no," i said again. "i can't go back. i don't want to. i don't trust the other 99. i don't want to be hurt again. please don't make me be hurt again."the shepherd lay down on the ground next to me."okay," he said quietly. "i'll just stay here with you then . . . "

Renee’s experience was one that we wouldn’t like to discuss, or even sometimes acknowledge, but it is one that is a reality nonetheless.

Renee was raised in an abusive household. I won’t go into detail about how abusive, but if you can imagine the worst possible abuse, and layer on top of it a veneer of … church-talk, a home where lip service was paid to the Christian faith, but in which the practice was as far removed from true faith and providing a safe place for her as a young girl as heaven is from hell, then you’ve got something of the picture.

Let’s back up a little and go back to the text.

Jesus tells these parables when he overhears the grumbling of the Pharisees and scribes –

2… ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’

As we’ve seen, there was no shortage of reasons Jesus didn’t fit the bill … didn’t sit well with the religious leaders - the accepted religious establishment - of the day. He gave them plenty of reasons to complain about his methods, his practice, his purpose, because he put people before programs.

He turned the existing power structure on its head. He pointed out the glaring differences between what was being preached and what was being lived. He made it clear that it wasn’t what you said so much as how your life spoke about you.

To a crowd that was focused on the ‘how’, he was trying to point to the ‘why’. To people who were obsessed with propriety, he was introducing ‘spontaneity’. To an establishment that knew only the letter of the law, he was trying to show the spirit of the law, the Spirit of the one who called them into existence, into relationship, and into covenant with himself.

When you hear the parable of the lost sheep, who do you relate to? Do you identify more with the lost-ness of the one sheep? Do you sometimes wonder if you’re one of the 99, safe, in no need of being found?

Has your perspective on this parable shifted back and forth over the years, depending on how your pilgrimage is going? Do you identify in retrospect with the lost sheep? Do you hear the story and say to yourself “that USED to be me”?

Or can you take the story and do what Renee did, and stand up and say “yeah, I’m the sheep, but I’m there because I WANT to be there, not because I wandered away by mistake. The other 99 couldn’t or wouldn’t help me, but the shepherd came anyway. THAT’S why I’m not giving up on God; God never gave up on me.”

Renee’s Altson’s experience included a lifetime involvement in church, and not only church, but in a Christian school. Her story is one not only of abuse by a member of her immediate family, but of abuse in the form of negligence on the part of her community of faith. They would not listen to her pleas for help. They would not confront the possibility that what she was saying was happening was happening. In an interview, she says,

“when we are aware of our vulnerability and our weaknesses, we become aware of the undone-ness left in us. when i am vulnerable, i allow you to see the parts that jesus is still working on. you become a witness to the unfinished places inside; you see my imperfection. what we need to remember is that our weakness is our strength. our vulnerabilities are our gifts.”

So there were 99 sheep not in need of “finding”. Can we truthfully say that anyone among us is not in need of being found? Have we forgotten what it is like to be on the outside looking in? Have we ever truly experienced that? Have we ever found ourselves one of the 99 looking out at the 100th, the sole outsider, who doesn’t quite fit in, and leave them there, because they don’t fit our bill, they don’t look, sound, speak, or think like us?

Culturally, I think we as Americans are prone to want to fix things. We are a nation of people who measure success based on accomplishments. This is reflected in our level of activity, our degree of busy-ness. It’s not a bad thing, by any stretch of the imagination, but there are times when we lose something of what it means to just be … presence …

Renee speaks to that at the conclusion of the same interview:

"i think we like to fill in the spaces. we are uncomfortable with silence. we are disquieted by other's tears. we want to help but we don't know how. we would rather say something than nothing, we want to offer a tangible way of fixing things. sitting with another's pain or need causes us to become aware of our own pain and need. when we slow down enough, at any point in our lives, those things come ushing in. we hurry, we fix, we offer meals -- we do active things to keep our own minds busy, to not have to feel.

there is a holiness in simply being with someone in their pain."

So the question for us today becomes, are we so caught up in the ‘HOW’ that we forgot the ‘WHY’?

Are we ready to BE the people of God as well as DO the will of God?

Let’s pray.