Sermon: Parabolic Nonsense
Text: Luke 15: 1-10
Date: September 12, 2004
By: Kendall Brown Kendall's Notebook Page 31
A basic lesson often presented to members of UCC confirmation classes is about the name of our church, the United Church of Christ. We teach and are taught that our name points not to an existing, present reality, but to a promised future possibility. When one looks about the church, both locally and on a world-wide scale, the name “United” becomes almost insanely, comical. Both inside and outside the church, Christians are adrift in a sea of divisions and divisiveness. The typo name of our church, occasionally found in newsletters, bulletins and stationary letterheads, seems to carry more truth: The Untied Church of Christ. Nevertheless, every time we repeat the name of our church, United Church of Christ, we say a prayer – the prayer of our Lord, himself, found in John 17:21, “That they all may be one.” Our church’s name is a prayer for that which the Lord himself prayed would come.
Our divisions have become so intense and prominent that they have become what defines us in our own minds and in others. An election year is a good year for UCC folk to pray the prayer of our name with even greater fervor. A newspaper editorialist this past week lamented that the world has become so divided that liberals can only be friends with liberals and conservatives can only be friends with conservatives. Jesus’ prayer is not that we all be alike. It is about our divisions and overcoming the things that divide us.
Our divisions govern even the way we read Scriptures. Today’s parables, which include the familiar symbolic figure of the good shepherd, do not escape being read in a multitude of ways. How one reads the parable is so often determined by how one sees one’s self. It should be the other was around. The reading of the parable should open our eyes to seeing ourselves differently.
Let us look at a couple of the most often encountered interpretations of today’s lessons.
For many, the parable is a morality play of sorts teaching an acceptable way of behavior. Often, the parable of the lost shepherd is treated as a lesson for seminary students on how to be a good minister. Of course, a good minister is one who is always out looking for the lost sheep. In actuality, if most clergy acted like the good shepherd day after day, walking away from their duties at church to seek out the lost, they would soon be replaced my another minister who is more attentive to the needs of the flock.
Another popular way to read the parable is to see one’s self as the lost sheep who has been found by the Lord, often through a loving intermediary who helps the lost out of some difficult situation in life. Interestingly, many who read the parable refer to the moment in life when they found Jesus, forgetting that in the parable, the lost sheep is incapable of finding anything and the shepherd is the one who does all the finding.
If the above readings of these parables are to be found among those who would call themselves, “conservative,” liberals also have their own morality play version of the parable.
Conservatives have a tendency to read the Gospel as individuals, while liberals are more collective in their approach to the Scriptures. For conservatives, individual salvation is the name of the game. For liberals, the community is the focus of healing, wholeness and salvation.
For conservatives, the world is broken because individuals are broken. For liberals, individuals are broken because the world is broken. Each read the parable from that standpoint. The shepherd image has obvious appeal to the conservative, whose paradigm for salvation includes a huge focus on the individual – the one lost sheep. But this does not mean that liberals are unable to find in the parable an equally compelling image. For liberals, shepherd is a metaphor for Jesus’ own ministry, which constantly sought after the lost sheep, the people who were marginalized and sidelined by racial, ethnic, economic, religious, political gender and age differences.
There is truth to be found in both of these ways of reading the parables. Neither liberals nor conservatives have a corner on the market in Biblical interpretation and truth. We would do well to remember that more often in our daily lives. Likewise, neither liberals nor conservative are black holes of ignorance and blindness, as each frequently enjoys making out the other to be in this world of self-righteous positioning, which favors saying who I am by saying mostly who I am not.
This morning, the suggestion is that we lay aside our labels, categories and boxes, into which we put ourselves and others so often and easily, and simply sit at the feet of our teacher, Jesus-the Good Shepherd, and listen for what his parable has to say to us – and listen for how hearing his parable might change us. Disciple is another word for student. We might envision ourselves as simply being disciples, who love more than anything else to be taught, not by the ways of our world and the definitions of our world, but by the heart of our teacher and the truth therein for us.
Most of us when reading or hearing the parable of the lost sheep, have a tendency to see ourselves as member so the un-lost flock. Whether we see ourselves as person who once were lost but now are found, or whether we see ourselves being led by a leader whose job it is to go out and find more lost sheep and bring them back to the flock of un-lost, or whether we see ourselves as a community with responsibility to the many communities that are not a part of us, whether liberal or conservative, we have a tendency to see ourselves as member of the symbolic ninety-nine, the un-lost.
Throughout the Gospel, no person comes into the presence of Jesus of Nazareth or Christ the Risen Lord without his or her assumptions about one’s self image and identity being challenged by the encounter with Jesus. It is no different here. So let us begin our approach to the parable with the question: What does this parable have to say to us who see ourselves as members of the flock?
The Pharisees and the scribes saw themselves as members of the flock, that is a capital T H E, and also saw Jesus as one of them, although they were quite perturbed by his presence. In particular, they were upset that he welcomed and even ate with sinners – or non-flock folk.
So Jesus starts to teach, and now it is time for us to hear the “Heads up.” Listen carefully, for there is something here that you will miss if you are asleep.
He begins with a seemingly innocent question, “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep?” Whether we are liberal or whether we are conservative, our knee jerk response to this question is, “well, or course we would go after the one!”
I think Jesus knew perfectly well how anyone acquainted with sheep business or any system of business economics would answer his question, would you leave the 99 in the open country and go after the one lost? The answer is “of course not.” Liberals and conservatives alike forget this when we read this parable.
The answer is, “of course not!” No one in their right mind would leave 99 sheep out in the open country (and Jesus specifically mentions the open country in his question), thus exposing them to wolves and other natural predators, the weather, thieves, (and in Jesus day sheep stealing was as common as shop-lifting today) and to their own tendency to wander and become lost too. Jesus, a native of Judea a land of sheep and shepherds, knew perfectly well what his listeners knew and that is that no shepherd would risk losing 50% or more of the flock in order to save 1%. You would cut your loses at an acceptable level.
After asking this question to which the answer would be, “Not one would do that?” Jesus asks another question. He asks what you would do once you found the lost sheep. His answer, when we stop to notice it is quite surprising. He doesn’t take the lost, and now found, sheep back to the flock. He doesn’t return the lost to the flock. He doesn’t even go back to the flock. He leaves the flock to their own fate in the night and takes the lost sheep home. What a shepherd! If you were flock owners, few of you would want working for you a shepherd as irresponsible as that! Again the answer to Jesus’ question, “Which of you would do this?” is obviously, “None of us of course, do think that we are stupid.”
Finally Jesus’ ends the parable with the statement that there is more joy in heaven over one lost person who repents than there is for 99 righteous persons who do not need repentance. Again, we can ask the question, “Where do we find 99 righteous persons who need no repentance?” There is no such group. Everyone needs repentance. This is a basic teaching of both Jesus and John the Baptist!
What does all this mean? First it means that we need to remember who the parable is about. In Luke, the good shepherd parable is lumped with two other familiar parables, the lost coin and the prodigal son story. In all three of those parables, the principle player – the shepherd, the widow, and the forgiving father – is God. This parable is about God and God’s love as Jesus knows his Father’s love and offers it to the world. This parable is not about being a good minister or a good flock. It is about God and God’s love.
The one lost sheep in this parable stands for the whole world. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son,” to quote that oft-chosen confirmation favorite verse. The one sheep stands for the whole world and this parable is about God’s immeasurable, unimaginable, and incomprehensible love for the entire world. If the one lost sheep represents the whole world, then who are the 99, for there can’t be anyone else left over. If the one sheep stands for everyone in the world as they really are, then the 99 sheep stand for everyone in the world as the think they are.*
We think we are in the flock because we think that God is some kind of spiritual score-keeper and so far our scores are pretty good. We believe the right things, say the right things, associate with the right people, think the right things and do the right things. Probably our scorecards will keep on being pretty good. We have evolved a little in love and are ready to make room for a scorekeeping God who is willing to go out and bring back one lost sheep, meaning, not good sheep like we are, and bring him back. Thank god, that he only brings one bad sheep back because most of us good folk have trouble being in the presence of more than two or three folk who are not good like us.
Or we view god as a great conservative judge or a wondrous liberal benefactor and we are among the 99 because our viewpoints line up with how we see god. Or we see god as a great police officer in the sky and we are in the flock because we have kept the rules. The Lost sheep is the one who breaks the rules, and in the end will only be able to return to our fold if he starts following the rules again. The shepherd knows the lack of hospitality of the 99 and knows the one is lost because of lack of acceptance in the fold, so what does the shepherd do? He takes the lost sheep to his own home and doesn’t return him to the fold where probably he will only be turned out again. The 99 sheep in the parable stand for how we see ourselves, and the one sheep stands for who we really are and we are all lost sheep.* And God loves us all. It is fairly obvious in this parable that the shepherd, god, hasn’t much use for what we think makes us righteous, because the shepherd leaves the flock to its own devises and defenses.
The point of the parable is that God loves all and that all are lost
without that love. Without God’s love we have no home, no reason, no meaning, no purpose, other than what we invent for ourselves. The shepherd takes us to a new home with him. Without God’s love we have only a fantasy about who we are, how important we are, how safe and secure we are.
There is something else in this parable that we often miss. It is God’s joy over having found us. The importance of that joy is more the point in the second parable about the woman who lost and found a coin. Once found, she calls her neighbors to rejoice - maybe even with rare abandon spends the coin to buy a cake to celebrate. What is important in the story is the joy of a God who finds.
These stories of lost and found take on more meaning for me each day that I grow older. Looking for something I have lost becomes more and more a part of my daily routine. My keys, my wallet, my cell phone, the notes that I write to myself so I won’t forget and then forget where the note was placed.
Every day brings little moments of finding. And in those small moments, I experience in my heart great feelings of relief and even joy. We all have those moments. If we live prayerfully, we will be reminded by those moments that God’s joy for finding us as we are, for just finding, is infinitely greater than that momentary and fleeting moment of joy.
Life has moments, even days and weeks, when it is hard to stay in touch with the joy. We might even start to think that being a member of the flock is pretty miserable business. Joy can be found even in the most miserable and undesirable times. The joy does not come from changing the circumstances of our lives so that we can be happier. The joy comes from reading the parables, and touching God’s joy for finding us and being touched by that joy swelling in our hearts. Rejoice and be glad in it.
*Thanks to Robert Farrar Capon for his insight into the Parables.