The Lost Sheep
Luke 15:1-7
There are two questions I want you to wrestle with this season of Lent: What’s the most important thing to you? And what’s the most important thing to God? It is that second question that Jesus seeks to answer with the teaching of three parables in Luke chapter 15 and as a result, he wants us to consider if the most important thing to Jesus is important to us? And if so, how much? When Jesus taught, he didn’t use technical terms or philosophical ideas. Instead, he drew from the world around him, using images and objects to teach people about God and His kingdom. Those images included seeds and weeds, trees and fruit, land and landowners. But one of the most frequently used images was sheep and shepherd. Sheep could be seen everywhere roaming the hills of the country with their shepherds and they could be seen in the streets of Jerusalem ready for sacrifice at the temple. Even today, you can still see sheep in the countryside with their shepherds tending them.
It is to this image that Jesus turns with the first parable he teaches in response to the Pharisees’ charge that He welcomes and eats sinners and tax collectors. The Greek word for "welcomes" literally means to "receive as a friend." This was Jesus’ attitude toward those who were lost in sin, to befriend them and love them back to God, vastly different from the Pharisees’ view of such people, as we will see. The pages of the Bible are littered with images of sheep and the shepherd. They appear at critical times in the story of God’s people, and there is hardly another motif as rich in content. In Gen. 48:24, as Jacob, on his deathbed summarized his life, he declared that God had been his “shepherd all of his life to this day.” Psalm 23 speaks of God as the Good Shepherd. Jesus said, "I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep" (John 10:14-15). Jesus describes both God and himself as one who knows his flock and whose flock knows him and his voice. Amidst all of the images of shepherds and sheep, there is one constant: you and I are always the sheep.
To whom is Jesus speaking? Two weeks ago, we learned that the Pharisees making those charges were from Jerusalem and were a part of the Sanhedrin, the “Supreme Court” of religious affairs and decision making for Jews. They were threatened by Jesus and his growing following and thus wanted to discredit him and when that didn’t work, get rid of him altogether. The Pharisees were founded 200 years before Jesus and started off with good intentions. In the face of the growing influence of Greek thought and culture, known as Helenism, on their children, they sought to to bring their children back into the faith and live pure and holy lives. Yet by Jesus’ time, they became more critical of others who didn’t live like them or interpret the Scriptures as they did. They began to create an “us vs. them” mentality, calling those who disagreed with them “outsiders,” now including Jesus. The second group present were the tax collectors and sinners. Tax collectors were some of the most hated people in Israel because they consorted with the Romans and lived lavishly off the back of the average person who struggled to survive. The Pharisees considered them to be unforgiveable because they couldn’t pay retribution for the taxes charged to the caravans of traders moving their goods through Israel. Finally, sinners are those who are living outside the boundaries of the Law of God and included the impurity, the greedy, thieves and prostitutes among others.
As Jesus responds to these Jerusalem Pharisees, He gets their attention by addressing them with “Suppose one of you has a 100 sheep.” While the OT notion of a shepherd was noble, by the 1st century when Pharisees became much more judgmental of those breaking the law and unable to make amends, shepherds became scorned, despised, and shepherding was viewed as being an “unclean” profession. To the Pharisees, shepherds were “sinners” because they roamed on people’s land without permission and the grass and water consumed by the sheep could never be repaid. Thus, they considered shepherds reprehensible people practicing a shameful profession. So the Pharisees would have been offended to be addressed as “one of them” but that is exactly what Jesus does as He starts to unfold His trilogy of “lost and found” parables.
Jesus’ second challenge to the Pharisees comes when this shepherd is saddled with the responsibility of actually losing a sheep. “Suppose one of you has a 100 sheep and loses one of them?” In Middle Eastern cultures, saving face is so important. If you were describing a sheep that had strayed, you would never say, “I lost one of them…” To save face, you’d say, “one of them wandered off or the sheep got lost.” But Jesus intentionally says, “The shepherd loses one of them.” So Jesus implies the Pharisees have responsibility for all the sheep, not just some, and accuses the Pharisees shirking or not fulfilling that responsibility.
The image of shepherding is lost on many Americans today, but in Jesus’ day, shepherding was as common as farming is in our country. Shepherds and their sheep still roam the Israeli countryside today. Jesus’ crowd would have known all about sheep and shepherds but this is something foreign to us, so what can we learn about both? Sheep are notoriously dumb and stubborn creatures. They easily get bored and are prone to wander, often times into danger and sometimes to their own demise. Sheep can easily lose their footing and fall. If a sheep falls on its back, it cannot get back up because blood quickly drains from their legs causing numbness. Sheep have weak eyesight and so they heavily depend on their hearing. Sheep are social creatures and need the flock. When they are lost, they lie down and refuse to move. This makes them all the more vulnerable to attack. And on top of all of that, sheep smell bad.
What do we know about the shepherd’s life? It’s a full time commitment. Sheep are helpless to defend themselves against attack from their natural enemies: lions, bears, wolves, hyenas and foxes which can come in both the day and night so there is never a moment a shepherd can relax. Sheep must be led to green grass and cool water, groomed when they get parasites in their nose and eyes and leeches in their throats from the water. Sheep must always be on the move because if not, they will overgraze the hill. Water is critical for sheep. In Israel’s semi arid land, shepherds must dig cisterns in the soft limestone by dry riverbeds called wadis to catch the water from flash floods during the rainy season. These are usually 15 x 10 foot wide and need to be plastered to be able to hold water. A small rock dam must be built to direct some of the floodwaters into the cistern, which will hold water for several months until the summer heat evaporates it. Shepherds will use the water in ponds and lagoons first to save the water in the cisterns for later in the year. And here’s the thing about sheep: they have no idea how much work the shepherd does to keep them safe and to make sure.
To understand this parable, we need to remember what it is like to be helplessly lost. Whether you are hiding inside the racks of a departments store only to emerge and discover no one is around or you got lost in the midst of a large crowd, we all know what it’s like to have that paralyzing feeling of fear and desperation settle in you while losing all hope is lost. That fear can hijack your better judgment and a sense of shame can grip you of knowing that it was you who wandered off. That is the experience Jesus is trying to evoke for his listeners. We, like sheep, have gotten lost and gone astray.
So what is Jesus trying to teach us through this parable? First, the shepherd has compassion for the lost. Kenneth Bailey says that in Palestine the average peasant family might have 5-15 sheep. Thus, someone responsible for 100 sheep would not be the sole owner of the sheep, nor the sole shepherd looking after the sheep. Therefore, having one of the shepherds leave to find the lost sheep does not mean the other 99 are left to their own devices. But it does suggest that the shepherd has enough compassion for the sheep to leave the other shepherds, put himself in danger to leave the 99 to go find the one? Why? Because he has compassion and concern for the sheep and the danger, harm and death it might face.
Second, the shepherd is proactive in saving the lost. The shepherd didn’t wait for the lost sheep to wander home. He wasn’t passive but rather active in pursuing the lost sheep. He searches everywhere and goes to the greatest length to find the lost sheep and doesn’t return home until he is found. And just to prove the point, Jesus goes to the cross to save you and me.
Third, rejoices in restoration when the lost sheep is found. To Jesus’ listeners, this is somewhat amazing because of the burden and effort involved in rescuing a lost sheep. Any shepherd finding a lost sheep will have to carry that sheep back to the main flock, no easy task. One would think the shepherd would be angry at the sheep but instead Jesus surprises his listeners as the shepherd rejoices in the burden that comes with restoring a lost sheep to the fold. Grace is extended though not deserved. The second aspect of rejoicing comes because the sheep is not just found but is also be restored to the community of the shepherds and flock. The shepherd with the others rejoices in a community setting because it is a joy that must be shared.
We have a God who is in the business of finding the lost. In fact, that’s why he sent His son. God has a passion and joy for finding the lost and that’s Jesus’ specialty. This is what the Pharisees and scribes simply don’t get. They’re too busy worrying about whose supposed to be left out and excluded. They don’t seem to get it that when someone lost comes home, joy is the result. Wholeness and inclusion produce joy for anyone with a heart open to embrace it. When a sinner comes home, God rejoices and we should too.
So what about you? Is finding the lost the important thing in your life as it is for God? Do you have a compassion and burden so great for the lost that you are willing to go to any length and to great risk to find them and bring them? When someone who has been lost and mired in sin returns home, do you rejoice? Are you willing to pull out all of the stops and throw a party for the centuries because one of God’s lost sheep has returned home? Are you a Pharisee or a shepherd? Amen.
