Counting By Ones
Luke 15: 1-7
Have you ever gone to a
party or to work or to school, thinking you are on the inside, one of the “in”
people, only to find out that it is you who are on the outside? Someone really
important shows up, and instead of hanging with you and your “in” friends, she
is spending her time with the nobodies or the nerds, the unpopular people. Why
would someone who is on top of her game spend time with people who are on the outside?
I remember a
conversation some years ago where the discussion was about the kind of example
Christians are supposed to set. The issue was whether it’s OK for a Christian
to be seen in a bar. It wasn’t about drinking alcohol. It was about how it
would look for a known Christian to be hanging out in a bar. My friends thought
it unbecoming of a Christian to be seen in those circumstances. What do you
think?
In the fifteenth chapter of Luke’s
gospel, Jesus has gone to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees. We’ve
learned by now that the Pharisees were not Jesus’ favorite people. Apparently a
large crowd has gathered and Jesus begins to teach in parables. One of those
parables is about a lost sheep. Jesus says that the shepherd will go after that
one lost sheep, even if he has a hundred others, until he finds it. No time
limits. No weather restrictions. Just go until it is found.
It seems that it is part of the life
of a shepherd to take care of all his sheep. If one goes missing, the shepherd
will arrange for the others so that he can find that one missing sheep and
restore him to the fold. It’s serious business. Tim Laniak tells a story about
a Bedouin shepherd named Said. By the age of seven, Said was going out daily
into the Sinai with a herd of thirty goats. One day he returned with a goat
missing. He told his father he had become distracted watching a shepherd girl
with another flock. His father sent him back out with this command: “Go back
and don’t come home without it.”
Such a reaction is reminiscent of the
words of Ezekiel who, while describing the gathering of scattered sheep, is
really talking about gathering the scattered of God’s people. In chapter 34,
the prophet says this:
6 they wandered over all the mountains and on every
high hill. My sheep were
scattered over all the face
of the earth, with
none to search or seek for them.
Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will
seek them out. 12 As a shepherd seeks out his flock
when he is among his sheep that have been scattered,
so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them
from all places where they have been scattered on
a day of clouds and thick darkness.
God is telling the Israelites scattered
across the land that they are not forgotten, that he will be their shepherd,
that he personally will gather the scattered.
Laniak tells another story about a
Bedouin shepherd named Ahmed whom he met on sabbatical in Israel.[1] Ahmed said that for over twenty years as a
shepherd, he had never lost a sheep that he didn’t find again—dead or
alive—except one. But that’s only half the story. The real point for Ahmed was
though he had cared for thousands of sheep over those years, the one he never
found is the one that he can never forget. That’s the one that is still on his
mind.
In God’s kingdom, we should always “count by ones.”[2] It’s
a shepherd thing. Shepherds herd flocks from twenty to several hundred, but
they know them all. They act as midwives at birth. All the lambs know the sound
of the shepherd’s voice. They can identify it over all others. They learn to
trust that sound. In John 10, Jesus tells us that:
…he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the
sheep. 3 To
him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep
hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name
and
leads them out. 4 When
he has brought out all
his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow
him, for they know his voice.
Maybe that’s why Jesus
used so many shepherding analogies. People in that community understood the
relationship between a shepherd and his sheep. The shepherd is indeed concerned
with the flock, but his concerns do not stop there. He will go after the one
who is lost, not occasionally but every time.
Doesn’t that sound comforting? Once
you accept Jesus into your heart, he will come for you, no matter where you are
or what you have done. Jesus compared himself and his work to that of a
shepherd. Again in John 10,
Jesus says:
I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays
down his life for the sheep.
Why should this story resonate with you? You
can probably think of many reasons, but let me ask you to focus on this one.
Look around you. Look at the empty seats.
You know who used to occupy those seats. Where is he? Where is she? Where are
they? I’m not talking about those who are out of town or on a trip. I’m talking
about those who once sat next to you. Where are they today? Or those you have
been meaning to invite, but never get around to it. Where are they?
They are some of those lost sheep that Jesus is talking about. He
worries about them. In Luke 19, Jesus is in Jericho and he spends some time
with Zacchaeus, a chief tax collector. Zacchaeus is a little guy, and actually
climbs a sycamore tree to get a glimpse of Jesus over the crowd. When Jesus
sees him, he invites himself to be Zacchaeus’ houseguest. This is all backward
to the people looking on. The holy man the houseguest of a sinner! That starts
plenty of grumbling. But Jesus does it anyway and Zacchaeus returns to the fold, so to speak. He believes in
Jesus and changes his life to prove it. And what does Jesus say? “Today salvation has come to this house, …For the Son of Man came to
seek and save the lost.”
When you and I gather here week in and week
out, this is a good thing. We come to fellowship with one another. We come to
worship God in assembly. We come to engage in all those aspects of the purposes
of the Church. But we need to understand that to do those things and only those
things is, in Jesus words, to acknowledge the ninety and nine and abandon the
one who is lost.
Remember
what we have talked about before? Church is a jumping off place. It is a place
of worship and fellowship to be sure. But it is also a place where the people
of God gather momentum to do the work of God. When I come here during the week,
I spend little time on the church property. There are shut-ins to visit. There
are the sick to visit. There are those who for one reason or another are not
coming to church. Perhaps they have undergone a trauma or a tragedy. Perhaps
their conduct has not been up to some self-exacted standard, and they feel too
guilty. There are as many reasons as there are people.
Sometimes
sharing a meal or a walk with someone is the way to commune with them where
they are. Whatever the way, it is spawned in an effort to meet the lost where
they are rather than where we want them to be. That’s why Jesus spent so much
time in the houses of tax collectors and sinners. He purposefully surrounded
himself with those whom we have exiled or written off. Not so with Jesus!
Jesus
would look at these missing people as the one sheep that was lost. He would
send us out to find that one sheep, to bring it back to the sheepfold that we
call the community of God. Jesus would go to their house to get them to this
house. He would eat their food to get them to partake of his food. Then, we can gather together our neighbors and
our friends and rejoice, for the scattered can be gathered and the lost can be
found. We just have to “count by ones.”
This
message began with questions. Why would someone important bypass the “in” crowd
to be in the presence of someone no one likes or cares about? Because he or she
can see and feel what it’s like to be on the outside. Because he cares. Because
she can’t see ins and outs, only people.
Why would
an upstanding Christian go to a bar and hang out with that kind of crowd? For
the same reason that Jesus went home with Zacchaeus and Matthew and many other
sinners. That’s where some of the lost will be found. If you want to work for
God, if you want to help usher in his kingdom, then you need to go find the
lost. You need to help gather the scattered. You won’t find them in church
until you have first gone to where they are, heard what they have to say, felt
their pain and touched them with the compassion of Jesus. Then they might
listen to what you have to say. And you will find them one by one.
Wouldn’t
you love to be part of helping someone be found? You can be. Everyone has a
little bit of shepherd in him.
“Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was
lost.’7 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.”
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