by Dave Wilkinson

Luke 15:1-7

January 13, 2002

The bright young man in a shiny new sports car braked to an impressive screeching halt alongside the old timer sitting outside the general store somewhere to the east of Pearblossom -- puffing contentedly on his pipe.

"Can you tell me how to get to Palm Springs?"

"Nope."

"You must know where Palm Springs is. Which road do I take?"

"I told you I don’t know."

"Well then, how far am I from Tehachapi?

"Don’t know."

"Which direction is Crestline?"

"Don’t rightly know."

"You don’t know much, do you?" said the young man -- completely exasperated by the old-timer.

"Don’t have to know much. I’m not lost."

Some people, like the young man, know a lot about a lot of things, but are so lost that their knowledge is of little value to them. Others, like the old-timer, don’t ever wander far enough from home to get lost but are also incapable of helping anyone else get found.

Jesus’ parable is a story of lostness and foundness. Luke gives the setting of this parable. "Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear Jesus."

There is something about Jesus that makes Him appealing to all kinds of people. Pharisees and lawyers come all the way from Jerusalem to Galilee just to meet Him. They invite Him to their houses for dinner. At the end of Luke’s gospel we discover that King Herod too is anxious to meet Jesus. When Pilate sends Jesus to Herod after He is arrested, Herod is fascinated. He has heard so much about Jesus. It should not surprise us that the tax collectors and sinners want to meet Him too. He exerted a magnetism. He still does.

These people come to Him and our Lord talks with all of them. This is part of the wonder of Jesus to the people at that time and place. All the religious groups were tied up in knots about who they could and couldn’t talk to. The Essenes, for example, wouldn’t enter the temple in Jerusalem because they felt it had been defiled by corrupt priests. That doesn’t bother Jesus at all. He teaches in the temple whenever He is in Jerusalem. He will enter any synagogue. He will eat with nationalistic Pharisees and then turn around and heal the servant of a Roman soldier.

But the Pharisees want nothing to do with anyone who woks with the Romans—and especially those who profit from the misery of their own people by collecting their taxes.

This is what gets Jesus into trouble. The tax collectors and sinners come to Him. "And the Pharisees and scribes murmur, saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them." You see the issue. It was one thing to give good advice to sinful people and attempt to reform them. But to enjoy them?-- to invite them in and to be invited to their homes? This bothers the Pharisees. And this upset is the occasion for the great parables of lostness and foundness in the fifteenth chapter of Luke.

The Pharisees divide people into groups. There are "The perfect righteous" -- the Pharisees and their friends. Then there are the masses of people called by the Pharisees "Ham eratz," the "people of the land."

There was a big barrier between the Pharisees and these "people of the land." The Pharisees had their rules. "When a man is one of the people of the land, entrust no money to him, take no testimony from him, trust him with no secret, do not appoint him the guardian of an orphan, do not make him the custodian of charitable funds, do not accompany him on a journey."

You see, we are going to understand this parable better if we remember that the strict Jews did not say that "There is joy in heaven over a sinner who repents" but, "There is joy in heaven over a sinner who is obliterated before God." They looked forward to the destruction of the sinner, not to his or her salvation.

So Jesus turns to the murmuring Pharisees and asks a question, "Which man of you, having a hundred sheep?"

The Pharisees have a hard time with that opening. They don’t want to relate to what Jesus is saying. You see, the teachers of the 1^st century had a great appreciation of the symbol of the shepherd from the Old Testament -- God as the Shepherd of Israel and all that -- but they had no use whatsoever for the shepherds they knew. Shepherding was on the rabbinical lists of trades that were proscribed -- trades that rendered the practitioner automatically unclean -- kind of like the way being on Jerry Springer taints you for life.

The shepherd was considered unclean because a shepherd would follow his sheep through the hills, come into contact with Gentiles, and be defiled by the contact. A shepherd was also considered incapable of repentance.

Repentance in Jewish thought, required a person to make atonement for all the wrong he or she had ever done -- unwitting as well as willful wrong. Now the shepherd’s sheep have jumped over a lot of people’s fences and have eaten a lot of people’s grass and grain. The shepherd cannot know everywhere his sheep have trespassed — the sheep he is responsible for -- so he can’t possibly make atonement. He can’t repent.

So Jesus tells a story about a shepherd and he invites the Pharisees to put themselves in the story. He talks to them as if they were shepherds. (I doubt if they like it very much but He does it anyway).

"Which of you," Jesus asks, "Having a hundred sheep?"

Now having a hundred sheep doesn’t mean owning a hundred sheep. To "have" a hundred sheep is to have responsibility for a hundred sheep -- to be the shepherd. Often the people in a village would place their sheep in a common flock with one or two men in the village taking the responsibility of shepherding. The sheep belong to the community and the shepherd is responsible to the community.

Being a sheep in Israel is very dangerous. Israel is a rugged country full of hills and cliffs. The trails are narrow and treacherous. Pastures are small and scattered. It is easy for one of the flock to wander off or be left behind. There were no fences to restrain the sheep. And a sheep without a shepherd is defenseless against a wolf or a lion. A sheep left alone is doomed to death.

In the parable, the shepherd is blamed. He loses one of the community’s sheep. Jesus wants the Pharisees to identify themselves with this guilty shepherd. They have lost a part of the sheep of Israel -- the sheep of God’s pasture for whom they, as religious leaders are responsible. Jesus also wants them to see that they should respond as the shepherd did. He leaves the 99 sheep with his assistant -- and goes and finds the sheep which is lost.

The shepherd finds the lost sheep and lifts it on to his shoulders "rejoicing." Now he has to walk along those dangerous trails and along the edge of the cliffs with a 70 pound sheep on his shoulders. But he accepts the burden and the danger of restoration with joy. If the shepherd is unwilling to pay the price of restoration, the sheep cannot return. He takes the sheep back to the village where the villagers join him in rejoicing -- for they also are the owners of what was lost.

Jesus has the Pharisees right where he wants them. The Old Testament taught that Israel was the flock of God -- we are His people and the sheep of His pasture." The psalmists sang. Isaiah said of God: "Like a shepherd He will tend his flock. He will gather the lambs and carry them in His bosom." The Pharisees remember those words and they also remember the judgment of God in Ezekiel 34 on the leaders of Israel. Here the shepherds of Israel are charged with not caring for the flock: "Thus says the Lord God, ‘Behold, I am against the shepherds and I will demand My sheep from them -- behold, I Myself will search for my sheep and seek them out. As a shepherd cares for his flock in the day when he is among his scattered sheep, so I will care for My sheep and deliver them.’"

Jesus compares the Pharisee’s attitude toward sinners with the purpose of God, and they fail the test -- unlike Jesus who says of Himself in John 10: "I am the Good Shepherd and I know My own, and My own know me and I lay down My life for the sheep." The Pharisee’s said: "There is joy before God when those who provoke Him perish from the world" -- kind of like the Taliban. But God said through Ezekiel: "I do not delight in the death of anyone who dies." Therefore, Jesus said, "The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost."

The Jewish Talmud has a big discussion on the question: "Who does God love more, the "perfect righteous" or the repentant sinner? As you may have guessed, the Talmud comes down hard on the side of the perfect righteous.

Now Jesus never admits that there are such a thing as the "perfect righteous." But even if there were, He says, "There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over the 99 righteous who need no repentance." He tells the Pharisees: "You need to act like the shepherd and go and risk yourselves to retrieve the lost of Israel. You criticize me for doing what you are failing to do when you ought to be joining in the music and the dancing with God because the lost sheep are coming home." The Pharisees are so busy being righteous that they totally miss what God is like and what God wants them to do. That, clearly, is the lesson of the parable for the Pharisees. There are some lessons for us as well.

First, in this parable, we find a different concept of repentance than we usually see. Repentance has little to do with the sheep. The sheep doesn’t turn around and the sheep doesn’t confess its error in getting lost. The sheep just acts like a sheep. It stands in one place bleating until the shepherd comes and puts it on his shoulders to carry it home. The total wok of salvation, as pictured in this parable, is the work of the shepherd. The sheep doesn’t do a thing but get found.

A number of years ago, an Episcopal bishop of Colorado named Irving Johnson, was approached in a train station by a man who asked: "Have you been saved?" Johnson replied, "Yes, Friend, I have been saved." The man persisted: "When and where were you saved?" Johnson replied: "On a Friday afternoon at three o’clock in the spring of the year 33 on a hill outside the city of Jerusalem."

That is when Johnson was saved and that is when we were saved. Salvation is not our initiative. It is not "I found it" but "He found me." God finds me, picks me up and carries me home to the celebration.

If you are apart from God, this is the important application of this parable to you. Today you are valuable to God even in your lostness. You may be valueless in your own sight because you can only see what you have made of yourself. But you should learn that you are of tremendous value to God. He is able to see what He created you to be and what He can yet make of you. This is our hope -- not that we are at work but that God is at work, in Jesus Christ. Jesus said: "The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost."

You don’t need to go looking for God. He is right here, right now, reaching out to you --waiting for your permission to place you on His strong shoulders. Yes, God loves people who never stray away; but in His heart there is a joy of joys when one is found and comes home. And, as we saw when we looked at the Parable of the Prodigal Son that comes at the end of this chapter, it is a thousand times easier to come back to the welcoming arms of God than it is to come home to the criticisms of some people.

The Pharisees believe they don’t need repentance. So Jesus reminds them that if they want rejoicing in heaven, if they want angel choirs to sing, they must somehow put away their self-righteous pride, count themselves among the lost and repent -- which basically means letting God touch them where they live. And for that repentance there will be a tremendous glee-club experience in heaven. No glee club without repentance!

Jesus came to seek and save the lost.

And we are the church of our seeking Lord. We are the Body of Christ as such, as Paul writes, we have been made participants in Jesus’ ministry of seeking and saving.

The most obvious aspect of this truth is as it applies to those who are outside the family of God -- those who have never been a part of the family. We are to go to them with the gospel of new life wherever we find them, be it in our homes, our schools, in our clubs or on the job. It’s not enough to wait for them to walk into the church on their own.

But this morning I want us to think for a moment about another group. This is those who have been a part of the family of God but have, for one reason or another, absented themselves from being with the church. These are our "inactives." Every church has them. We have far less than most but that’s not the point. What is our responsibility to them?

We can imagine that the owner of a lot of sheep might write off the loss of one sheep lightly. After all, what is one sheep among so many? A businessman has to expect a certain percentage of loss if he wants to run a business. In the same way we might ask, "Why get too concerned with the inactives" (They know where we are if they want to come back.) and besides, our church is still growing and you have to expect some loss."

But that is not the Lord’s way so it must not be our way. The value of any of you in this congregation is only as great as the effort we are willing to put out to bring you back if you get lost. We can’t ignore free will. People do make their choices. It’s also true that this one expression of the Church of Jesus Christ -- the way we do things -- is not right for everyone. But we must conduct ourselves in such a way that the one who is becoming inactive can’t say with any truth that it "doesn’t matter to the people at church if I am there or not."

Compared to most churches our rate of inactivity is very low. But that is like saying that the cost of an operation like Bosnia or Afghanistan was low because a few American soldiers were killed. The cost of that battle is not low to those who are killed and their families. The loss of one is the loss of one too many.

How does a sheep get lost? Usually it’s not a deliberate choice. They nibble their way into lostness. They move from one tuft of green grass to another. They keep moving along from tuft to tuft, sometimes right through a hole in the fence. When they’re done nibbling, they can’t find the hole and they’re lost. They’ve moved from the inside to the outside and they aren’t even aware of when it happened.

I doubt if many who become inactive do so as deliberate choice. They start moving from thing to thing in their lives without being aware of it. They get a new job and it’s hard to get up on Sundays. There’s only so much time and good weather to use the boat and so they go to worship God in the out of doors on the lake – only after a couple of times they forget to worship. Then there’s sports and weekend trips and soon they don’t know a lot of the people at the church and start feeling like they’re looking no longer on the "inside" of what’s happening and when they do come people comment on their absence and make them mad or fail to comment on their absence and make them mad – and it becomes easier to stay away than to come.

Let me leave you this morning with a question. If you are finding yourself at worship and at other parts of congregational life less often – if other things are crowding God out -- ask yourself: "Is this what I really want to have happen or am I nibbling my way out of the fence?"

Or if you count yourself as a core part of the life of the church, ask yourself. "What am I doing for the lost sheep – the sheep who have never been a part of the church or the sheep who have been part of the church but who are now, for all intents and purposes, outside?" If you start feeling that there is something God would have you do, please talk to me. Perhaps we can work together to help bring some sheep back home, and invite the angels of God to a big party.