Sermon, 06-20-04

 


 

First Presbyterian Church
770 Chemeketa St. NE
Salem, OR 97301-3894

(503) 363-9234

Summer Office Hours:
Monday - Friday
8 a.m. - 4 p.m.

Email us at
mainoffice@salemfirstpres.org

Email our
Web Site Manager at
publications@salemfirstpres.org

Ninety-Nine Out of a Hundred Leaves One

Luke 15:1-10

copyright © 2006 Robert J. Elder, Pastor


First Presbyterian Church, Salem, Oregon


Sunday, August 6, 2006

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?
NRSV

If you ever want to have an entertaining time for very little money, I have an idea for you. Come on over to the church office at Chemeketa and Winter streets some quiet afternoon and ask to see the collection of lost and found items that gather around there. Of course, you don’t have to come to the church. You can go to just about any large business or retail outlet, and if you ask, you will discover that they will very likely have a collection of lost articles somewhere — almost every place does. But here is the entertainment idea hidden in it: Try to make up a story about each of the items that are in the collection. Be creative. Imagine how they came to be lost items.

Try to figure out just who it is that is walking around town half-blind, trying to remember where he last set down that pair of reading glasses. You could add pathos to your story by inventing creative details: this person gets the weekly church newsletter, maybe there has even been a lost and found notice in there about the glasses, but, alas, without them, he can’t read the story to discover where they are!

Here is another of my favorites: a single shoe. And a shoe in pretty good condition, at that. It is those misplaced solitary shoes that always strike me, not only when they turn up in the lost and found, but when you see one just sitting by the curb on the street. How did it get there? Did the person just step out of one shoe and go tottering off, thumping along with one leg shorter than the other, going several blocks before realizing the loss? Or perhaps she had a little brother: Maybe the shoe’s owner kicked both shoes off in the car while Mom drove her home after school, leaned her head back, and while her eyes were shut, her three year-old brother tossed one out the window.

I have a special appreciation for an abandoned umbrella. I always neglect to have an umbrella handy when I need one. And with a summer like we have had, I can see how we all might have forgotten where we last laid the old bumbershoot. So when I get ready to go out in the middle of the day and it has begun to rain, I can almost always count on a loaner from the lost and found, though it usually has some defect, like one side that won’t quite go up, or a missing handle — which itself is probably lodged in a different lost and found box somewhere.

Most of us have experienced such minor losses, and most of us have moved beyond them. Life goes on, after all. Sure, the loss of misplaced items might be aggravating at first, but ultimately, we usually decide not to worry any further. We have bought new eyeglasses, a new pair of shoes complete with both mates, or an umbrella that actually sports a handle. We have cut our losses and moved on.

As I read over Jesus two little parables about losing and finding, I was struck by one thought about those lost sheep. The question Jesus put to his grumbling listeners was, “Which 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?”

Many of us might answer too quickly, without thinking this thing through, as though the action of the shepherd in the story were the only sensible response. “Which of you does not leave the ninety-nine...?” “Not me, teacher! I’d go right out and rescue that poor, lost little lamb!” Notice, by the way, that when we think of it, it often turns from a bleating old sheep into a sweet little lamb in church stained glass windows and Sunday school art...

But wait. Let’s think about this a little more. Leaving aside for the moment all the Sunday school artwork depicting Jesus in a sparkling white robe, carrying a sweet little freshly-bathed white lamb on his shoulders, and remembering instead that adult sheep in the wilderness are not only stupid but big, heavy, and smelly, not to mention that they represent dollars on the hoof to their owners, I had to re-ask myself that question: “Which of you does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost?” I realized that if Jesus were telling me this story, I would have to raise my hand. Which of you would not leave ninety-nine valuable sheep at risk in the wilderness in order to go after one stray? Me! I wouldn’t do it!

Just think of the simple ecomonics of it. Putting ninety-nine perfectly good, healthy, unlost sheep at risk because of the mutton-headedness of one makes no sense. Wolves could come, scatter the rest of the flock, devour several, some might fall off cliffs and break their stupid necks. The disappearance of one of the ninety-nine makes the regaining of the lost one pointless. The loss of two or more of the ninety-nine makes for a net deficit. No sir, which of us would not go after the one? Most of us, that’s who. I would not go and seek that one lost sheep if I had 99 others. I would follow the economic wisdom of the world, cut my losses and knuckle down to make certain that I preserved what I had.

But wait again. Why was Jesus telling these little stories? To whom was he telling them? Jesus told these stories to the grumbling religious leaders of his day who were put off by his willingness to eat with villainous traitors and pagans, forsaken people who very likely never learned nor experienced family values. Those leaders were like we are. Some people you just can’t help. Some people are just goners. Some religious people, then and now, were willing to cut their losses, make utilitarian decisions about people. There are just some folk who are destined for the old lost and found box. Lost, for sure, but chances are good they will never be found again.

Those very same lost people, as it turned out, flocked to Jesus, and it was a scandal, as it would be today. We have lots of lost souls in our own world. Recent news stories report that more and more of the mentally ill are now bouncing around various county prisons and city jails because we, the public, can no longer afford mental hospitals to treat these lost souls. We have families right in our own town who have spent years on waiting lists for affordable housing. There are lots of other folks in the old lost and found, all we have to do is start thinking about them and they come to mind: the non-recovering alcoholic; the abusive father; illegal aliens; sneak thieves who break into our houses and steal our TV’s to support a drug habit.

No wonder the Pharisees were scandalized. Imagine eating with people like that. If we had nintey-nine perfectly good model citizens tucked safely in the coral, why in heaven’s name would we leave them to go chasing after some reprobate who probably would just bleat at us all the way home anyway, and certainly wouldn’t have the good sense to say “thank you”.

There are lots of souls in the lost and found, starving in Sudan, bleeding in the Baghdad, but especially they are right here with us in Salem if we learn to look the right way. And Jesus spins for us a little story about a lost sheep and a lost coin and the kind of kingdom of heaven thinking that never fails — NEVER fails — to make a mad rush to save what is lost without remembering to stop and count costs. 99 out of a hundred may be a good percentage on an exam, but it still leaves out one, and God desires the salvation of every single one. It may not be our arithmetic, but it is God’s new math. For in God’s sight, people are not sheep, and certainly more precious than coins, and there is literally no extent to which God will not go to find what is lost.

Once the President of Southern Methodist University was stopped by one of those religious zealots on the streets of Dallas, Texas.

“Are you saved?” she demanded to know.

“I think so,” replied the president.

“That’s not good enough!” she announced, “you have to know so!”

A little undone, the president pulled himself to his full height and declared, “Madam, I am the president of Southern Methodist University, and therefore president of Perkins Methodist Theological Seminary as well.”

“That’s OK,” she allowed, “you can still be saved!”

One of my favorite authors is Annie Dillard, and in her first — and most famous — book, she wrote,

“When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. It was a curious compulsion; sadly, I've never been seized by it since. For some reason, I always ‘hid’ the penny along the same stretch of sidewalk up the street. I would cradle it at the roots of a sycamore, say, or in a hole left by a chipped-off piece of sidewalk. Then I would take a piece of chalk, and, starting at either end of the block, draw huge arrows leading up to the penny from both directions. After I learned to write I labeled the arrows: Surprise Ahead! or Money This Way! I was greatly excited, during all this arrow-drawing, at the thought of the first lucky passer-by who would receive in this way, regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe. But I never lurked about. I would go straight home and not give the matter another thought, until, some months later, I would be gripped again by the impulse to hide another penny.”1

In the end, Jesus’ parables are stories about the way God seeks out the lost, not the way we would go about doing it. And in the end, the joy which characterizes the heart of these simple stories of finding is the key to knowing the joy which fills God’s heart when any person turns to Christ in faith.

Copyright © 2006 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved.
Sermons are made available in print and on the web for readers only.
Any further publication or use of sermons must be with written permission of the author.

Unless otherwise noted, all scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

___________________________________________
NOTE

1 - Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Bantam, 1974), pp. 15-16.


Home | About Us | Staff | What We Believe | Find Us | Contact Us | P2P | Sermons | Calendar | Music | Education | Classes for Kids | Classes for Adults | Recent Articles

http://www.salemfirstpres.org/s040620.htm

Copyright © 2004 First Presbyterian Church of Salem, Oregon.