Once there were two gentlemen in England who owned a pasture. Most of the time they didn’t do anything with their field, so they allowed local shepherds to graze their sheep on their property. Then one day these two men, Guy and Will, decided to build an outdoor skating rink in the middle of their pasture. Shortly after they were finished, a shepherd leading his flock decided to take a shortcut across the rink. The sheep, however, were afraid of the ice and wouldn’t cross it. Desperate, the shepherd began tugging them to the other side.
“Look at that,” remarked Guy to Will. “That bloke is trying to pull the wool over our ice.”
Now, I promise not to pull the wool over your eyes with this sermon, but I will warn you that the sermon has something to do with shepherds and sheep. Listen for God’s word to you from Luke 15:1-7…
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 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.
The parable of the lost sheep was told by Jesus to a group of Pharisees, both as a rebuke and as an invitation. These Pharisees were disturbed by the fact that Jesus was receiving tax collectors and “sinners” to eat with him. In telling the parable, Jesus knew full well that a Pharisee would not go out into the wilderness in search of a lost sheep. As Bible commentator Kenneth Bailey has noted,
A Pharisee owning a hundred sheep would hire a shepherd. He would lose them all rather than wander into the wilderness after them…no educated man would wander into the wilderness for any purpose.
There was thus no slight hint of irony in Jesus saying to the Pharisees…
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?
The obvious answer to the question was: “No.” A Pharisee would not lower himself to the level of a “dirty shepherd” and go out into the wilderness in search of a lost sheep. Thus Jesus, in a subtle way, rebuked the Pharisees for their lack of active love towards those whom they considered more sinful and more undesirable than themselves. The Pharisees, as religious leaders, should have been the shepherds of Israel. Instead, they were like the shepherds whom the Lord rebuked through the prophet Ezekiel; they only took care of themselves and not the flock. They failed to strengthen the weak, heal the sick, and bind up the injured. They failed to bring back the strays or search for the lost. (Ezekiel 34)
Yet, Jesus issued more than a rebuke to the Pharisees. He also issued an invitation. It is as if Jesus said to them, “The shepherd sought the lost. I seek the lost and so should you.” I believe Jesus invites each one of us to be involved in this kind of ministry today. We each can act as a shepherd toward someone else on their spiritual journey. As Pope Francis has put it, we can “accompany” one another on our spiritual journeys.
Such shepherd-style service involves four crucial commitments. Let’s look at each of these commitments one by one…
First, the service of the shepherd is to the few or to the one. In order to change the world, Jesus devoted his time and his energy to a few people while he was on this earth. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Jesus should tell a parable in defense of his ministry that speaks of leaving the many to search for the one lost sheep.
Yet, it is a surprise. We find it difficult to wrap our minds around this concept. How can forgetting the many for the one be a sign of true leadership? Isn’t it rather exclusive or at least short-sighted to focus on ministry to the few or to the one when there is a world of hurting people out there? No. For as Kenneth Bailey points out…
It is the shepherd’s willingness to go after the one that gives the ninety-nine their real security. If the one is sacrificed in the name of the larger group, then each individual in the group is insecure. He knows that he too is of little value. If lost, he too will be left to die. When a shepherd pays a high price to find the one, he thereby offers the profoundest security to the many.
The act of leaving the many to serve the one has been the birth of many great ministries over the years. I think of my own father who, in the 1950s, was traveling around the world speaking to audiences sometimes as large as 10,000 at a shot. Then, in 1958, he was speaking in a prison in Pennsylvania. A sixteen-year-old boy came up to him after his talk. The boy was in prison for life because he had killed a police officer. He said to my father, “That was a good talk, but I wish you had reached us before we got here.”
Shortly thereafter, my father was in New York City. He read an article in Life magazine about the teenage gang problem. He decided to see if he could do something about it. He rented a storefront in Spanish Harlem and set up a club for boys.
My father left ministry to thousands to try to reach a few in a desperate situation. Out of the first nine boys my father reached through his club, all became followers of Jesus Christ. All but one lived into adulthood and became productive members of society. And the ministry my father began to a few in New York City became a lifelong work trying to help juvenile delinquents get out of a life of crime.
Personally, I think my father was following the example of Jesus. Ministry to the few or the one is the first crucial commitment we must make in order to follow Jesus’ shepherd-style ministry.
The second crucial commitment is to serve those outside the church. The church may well be the only organization in the world that exists for those who are not members of it. The one lost sheep, which the shepherd sought, was the one who had strayed outside of the fold. Jesus spent time and even ate meals with those wandering outside the fold of religion altogether. This bothered the fastidious Pharisees. Ministry to the unchurched still bothers many of us church people. Often, we prefer to think of ministry as being within our own ranks. We choose not to reach out and serve those beyond our little group. Often, in our heart of hearts, Christians do not want their churches to grow. We say that we want to stay small, supposedly for the sake of intimacy, when what we really want is not to risk change or to risk opening ourselves to others.
In a previous church that I served, I actually had a new member say to me at a church dinner, “I hope our church never grows any larger. I like it at the size it is right now.”
This woman’s statement shocked me precisely because she was new to the church. She thought it was fine for the church to reach out and include her and her family, but not anyone else!
There is no getting around the fact that Jesus served the unchurched and he wants us to do the same. As the Reverend Peter Marshall once said,
Whether we church people like it or not, we must admit that Jesus made a strong appeal for this type of person…
who never comes to church…
never thinks of it…
Let’s be honest.
We have nothing to fear.
Let us say boldly that the kind of people Jesus liked best are not the kind that the average church appeals to at all…
He is too big to be shut up in any church or cathedral.
He will burst the seams of any theological robe we tie around Him.
No creed can hold Him…
No doctrine or dogma can tell all about Him.
No… He will stride out of here…
and elbow His way through the city’s crowds…
mixing with the irreligious…because He likes them.
They are His kind of men and women.
He wants them.
The third crucial commitment of shepherd-style ministry is that of serving the “undesirable”. As we have already seen, the Pharisees were offended by Jesus’ association with tax collectors and “sinners”. But not only were these people outside of the Pharisee’s religious fold, they were the “undesirables” of society. The Pharisees wanted as much to do with them as they did with dirty, stinking sheep.
My sister Madeline, who died in 2012, was a schizophrenic. During my years at Princeton Seminary, I would often travel to New York City, where she lived, to see her. On one visit I took her and her son into Manhattan and we spent the afternoon in one of the nicest sections of town. We went into the beautiful toy store, F. A. O. Schwartz, and I bought my nephew a present for his birthday.
As we spent the afternoon in that environment, the contrast between my sister and the “beautiful people” of the upper east side really struck me. It made me realize how insulated many of us are from the struggles and pains of my sister’s world, the world of the mentally ill and the homeless, the down and out.
The question is: will we risk getting involved in the lives of people like that? Will we go out in search of the lost, put them on our shoulders (so to speak), and bring them into community? Jesus invites us to do so.
The fourth crucial commitment of shepherd-style ministry is to serve in long-term relationship.When the shepherd in the parable went out after the lost sheep, finding that sheep was just one step in a long-term relationship. That shepherd took the burden of that sheep on his shoulders and carried that sheep on the long journey back to the fold.
Are we willing to engage in such long-term accompaniment of others on their spiritual journeys? Or do we prefer one-off, random acts of kindness?
Don’t get me wrong. Every act of kindness is a wonderful thing. But I think Jesus wants us to be involved in long-term relationships as well.
Becky and I have supported three different children through an organization called Compassion International. Child sponsorship through Compassion not only involves sending money once per month, but it also involves sponsors in writing notes to their children once per month or more, sending birthday and Christmas gifts. In short, it involves sharing one’s life, albeit at a distance.
We have one child who we have been supporting for 9 years. Geisson is a year younger than our own son Josh and he is applying to university now. I’ll be honest. Over the past 9 years there have been times when I haven’t felt like responding to Geisson’s letters. It takes time, energy, and thoughtfulness. It is so much easier just to send money. But I keep at it by God’s grace because I believe that is the kind of ministry Jesus wants all of us to be involved in with other people.
This is the kind of ministry that Jesus modeled for us with his disciples. Not only did he teach them with his words, but he taught them with his life. He slept, ate, played, and worked with twelve men for three years and that’s how they got the message. Jesus fleshed it out for them. But all too often in the history of the church, the words of Karl Barth have been proven true: “The Word became flesh and then theologians made it words again.”
My father used to say, “When love is felt, the message is heard.”
If we are going to follow Jesus’ example, we must flesh out the truth for others in word and deed, in relationships of intimacy over the long haul.
Swiss psychologist Paul Tournier once wrote…
To love is to give one’s time. We never give the impression that we care when we are in a hurry. Too many social and pastoral counselors are people in a hurry. Hence, people admire their devotion and doubt their love…To exercise a spiritual ministry means to take time. If we want to save our time for more important matters than a soul, we are but tradesmen.
“But why,” you may ask, “would we want to make these four commitments to shepherd-style ministry? After all, isn’t that your job Pastor? Why are you addressing these words of Jesus to us?”
I believe these words of Jesus are addressed to all of us. I believe Jesus invites all of us to accompany at least one other person on their spiritual journey. And can you imagine what would happen if each of us did that? For starters, if each of us reached out to one person outside the church to accompany them on their spiritual journey, such action could easily double the population of our congregation. But more importantly, I believe such action may increase the population of heaven.
One reason why we should all desire to engage in shepherd-style ministry is because it involves activity in which we can find real joy… There was joy for the shepherd when he found the lost sheep and placed that sheep upon his shoulders to carry it home. So too will there be joy for us as we accompany others on their spiritual journey home to God.
Where might God be calling you to this kind of ministry even this week? I love the words of Frederick Buechner who once said, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
Comments