Year C Proper 19 BCP

September 16, 2007

Luke 15: 1-10

All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."

So he told them this parable: "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? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And 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.' Just 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.

"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? When 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.' Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

Let the words of my mouth and the mediation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer.

Imagine that you are the shepherd in charge of the 100 sheep.  You have been up since before daylight.  It is a nice warm afternoon.  The sheep are calm, grazing nearby.  You get sleepy and take a short nap in the green grass.  You awaken to discover that you slept longer than intended and quickly count the sheep to see if any wandered off while you were in dreamland.  And to your great dismay you discover that one is missing.  You have been put in charge of sheep that are not yours and you are frantic to find the one that has strayed away.  To leave the other 99 alone while searching isn’t a problem.  The sheep have been mostly staying in the same place all day.  With your heart in your throat you scramble into a nearby ravine where the lost sheep may have gone.  Several minutes go by as you search until you finally find the sheep.  Imagine your relief and joy when the one that went missing is found!

I’m not trying to draw parallels between this parable and about God being distracted or napping while people wander away from God.  Instead, I’m trying to imagine the emotions that this parable is meant to invoke.

My own experience of something borrowed that wandered off unexpectedly was an experience that I had with a boom truck.  If you remember it was on the front page of the newspaper.  My two buddies and I borrowed the boom truck from the truss company so that we could lift a beam at my one buddies job site.  Once that was completed we drove around finding more stuff to lift because we were having fun.  Eventually we ended up at my house to lift this big blue, metal A-frame thing and move it to buddy number two’s house.  But, in the middle of the job, buddy number one had to go on a quick errand.  He left us with the truck running in my driveway, telling us to standby, “don’t touch a thing”, until he got back.  Standing there waiting got old fast, so I told buddy number two, “Let’s go for a soda.”  The gas station that we went to is close enough that I can see it from my house.  So we were just going to be gone for a quick few minutes.  It seemed stupid to leave the truck sitting there with the engine idling while we were gone, so I leaned through the open driver’s side window and switched off the key.

Maybe we were gone 5 minutes.  Maybe we were gone 10 minutes at the most.  But, when we came driving back up the street, the two of us sipping our cold big gulps, we noticed that three or four people were standing opposite my driveway looking through a hole in the fence across the street.  I thought, “I wonder what in the world they are looking at?  Why is there a bunch of fencing missing?  And why isn’t that boom truck still in my driveway?”

For some reason turning off the engine made the parking brake release.  My driveway seems level, but apparently it is sloped just enough that a 10 ton boom truck will roll across the street if unattended and left in neutral with no parking brake set.  On the other side of where the fence used to be there is a 6-foot sheer drop off into the parking lot for the Blue Pacific building.  The truck laid upside-down, half up on the retaining wall and half on the asphalt.  Hydraulic oil and diesel fuel were leaking out onto the parking lot.  It was a painful scene to see.  My mouth went dry and my heart leapt up into my throat and stayed there for a couple of hours.  The owner of the truck came.  The police came.  The newspaper reporter came with his camera.

I suppose that you can see the emotions that I felt—alarm, anxiety, panic, disbelief, etc.  In the end we called a tow truck that winched the boom truck back up onto its wheels and back up into my driveway.  The cab was crushed and the engine wouldn’t turn over because the cylinders were full of too much motor oil for the pistons to compress.  My two buddies and I spent three weeks fixing the engine and installing a new cab.  The owner forgave us.  But hasn’t let us borrow the boom truck again.

When Jesus told a parable he did it so that we could gain insight into either what heaven is like or what God is like.  The parable of the lost sheep tells us a little bit more about what God is like.  God is the shepherd that is always looking for the lost sheep.  This parable also causes me to feel a set of emotions.  Perhaps this parable is even trying to get us to feel the emotions that God feels when one of his precious creations goes astray.  And this begs the question, “What is it like for God to experience emotions?”  I think that some people quickly draw the conclusion after hearing Old Testament stories that God feels the emotion of wrath, which, ironically, is an emotion that I only reluctantly attribute to God.  But, nonetheless, we know that God feels the emotion of joy.  The end of this Gospel lesson says, “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”  If God feels joy, then why wouldn’t God feel other emotions as well?  And even if God is spirit and doesn’t experience emotion directly, didn’t God get the chance to experience every human emotion when he took the form of the incarnate Christ?  I take great comfort in knowing that God, through Christ, knows every feeling that I have known—sorrow, pain, love, guilt, temptation, envy, abandonment, and the terrible combination of emotions that I felt when that boom truck left my driveway.  Jesus was fully human.  He may not have acted on every emotion he felt, like lust for instance, but, nonetheless, he lived through pubescence and adolescence.  He experienced each and every emotion there is to feel.

Which brings me back to the lost sheep.  Does God ever feel the emotions of alarm, panic, or anxiety?  When people stray from God’s will, does God panic?  He feels joy when they return, why wouldn’t he feel panic when they leave?  Now, I suspect that God is omniscient and already knows the outcome and, thus, has nothing to worry about.  But what does that mean about free will?  If the outcome is already known, then did I really choose freely?  So here is what I think.  For every quandary I face, I think that God can see the ramifications of each of the myriad choices that I might make.  That sounds fantastic, but probably not a hard task for God who is infinite and not constrained by time.  So God knows the outcome regardless of what choice I make, yet may not know which action I will take.  And when I make the choice to be self-serving and self-absorbed, to isolate away from all people, and only care about myself, I think that God becomes alarmed and saddened.  And as I progress into a deepened state of lostness, I think that God might feel panic. 

This is an incredible thought.  But I think that it makes God more real.  And I think that it makes the importance of finding the lost sheep and returning it to the fold more urgent.  Which leads me to the question of how do we help God find and return the lost sheep?  Finding them isn’t the hard part.  I could spend the rest of the morning until well after lunch listing lost sheep that I know and telling you their stories.  So the hard part is how do we help restore those that are lost?  (Remember, we don’t do it on our own.  God restores people.  We just act as God’s helpers.)

I can think of only think of one way to help God restore the lost—through words of encouragement.  The Bible often talks of the evil that we cause with our words.  In fact James tells us, “The tongue is like a spark. It is an evil power that dirties the rest of the body and sets a person's entire life on fire with flames that come from hell itself.  All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, and sea creatures can be tamed and have been tamed.  But our tongues get out of control. They are restless and evil, and always spreading deadly poison.”  So how about the flip side?  How about the great power for good that our words can bring about?

A friend of mine was about to speak in front of a group of people two weeks ago and I could tell that he was nervous.  I made some small talk to help distract him as we waited for the short time until he was to start.  Then I said, “Hey, you know what?  I’m glad I know you.”  When he got done with his speech, he came over to me and said that he was thinking about what I said while he had been giving his talk.  He said thank you. 

Now, I’m not saying that one little sentence completely transformed his life so that now he is in God’s fold when before he wasn’t.  But the author of the Epistle of James is right that the tongue is powerful.  And it is especially powerful when used for the building up of others. 

Today, tell someone you know that you are glad that he or she is your friend.  Tell them that you are proud of them.  And see if you can’t help guide them a little bit closer into the middle of God’s fold.  And notice if doing so doesn’t bring your own self a bit closer into the middle of God’s fold as well.  Maybe we can help relieve some of God’s panic and replace it with God’s joy.                                

Amen