Throw Away
Psalm 23: John 10:11-18

May 3, 2009


It’s Sheep Sunday and that’s a lot of ‘baa’ for any pew sitter to handle, but I will try to go gently and avoid using the shepherd’s crook. There’s no escaping sheep in Christianity; some time or another you have to think like a sheep. And may all God’s children say ‘baa.’

Christianity is so sheepish that in south China there are churches with drawings of sheep over top their front doors, similar to how the early church used the simple outline of a fish to indicate its clandestine location. But in that part of China there are no sheep whatsoever. Christians only knew a sheep from a book, not from a pasture, just like our knowledge of many animals not native to the prairies. We will know Christians by their sheep.

In the Gospel according to John, Jesus hardly tells a parable, but he does embark on a streak of “I am...” declarations. To anyone listening familiar with the Old Testament, I Am meant just one thing: when Moses asked God in the burning bush who shall he say sent him, God responds, “Tell them I AM sends you.” I am the Good Shepherd is almost equivalent to saying, “The Lord is my shepherd.” God is the one looking out for us, gathering in the lost and wandering sheep. It’s not quite kosher, but I am going to wander today into the territory of Jesus’ parable of the Lost Sheep found not in John, but in Matthew 18 and Luke 15. This is a divine drama of the shepherd and the sheep, and we play both roles.

Bishop Desmond Tutu preached on this passage and began a familiar refrain, talking about the true nature of sheep. They are not the gentle white or black fluffy things that bounce gleefully through your dreams, but difficult animals which are not that clean, are mean and stubborn, and usually big enough to hurt you if you don’t watch where you are going.

He talked about that wonderful image of the shepherd carrying the lamb over his shoulders. Let’s face reality, Tutu went on, what’s it really like carrying a heavy lamb, its wool dirty and smelly beyond our imagination - and the shepherd knew what kind of smells they were - and most likely not particularly liking being carried like that? The Good Shepherd is not carrying out his calling for a bunch of nice guys, but a dirty, smelly lot who frankly aren’t that virtuous to run after and save. That one sheep out of one hundred the shepherd had to search out was almost certainly rebellious, stubborn, arrogant and know it all, or just plain stupid. The Good Shepherd’s business is saving a bunch of sheep not worth or deserving of saving. Problem is, this is a metaphor for the church. We are those dirty, smelly, arrogant and stubborn sheep, too stupid to know what’s best for us, and resistant of any shepherd helping us out. The shepherd’s crook was designed for such a sheep as these. And to set the record straight, the shepherd smells just like the sheep pretty quickly.

Does anybody here still want to be the Good Shepherd, to lay down your life on your own accord for those odiferous ovines, those lost sheep who do not care about what you care about and certainly do not share the commitments you stand by?

Everyone loves the lost sheep, the right kind of lost sheep, that is, a poor defenseless person who becomes disoriented and innocently loses his/her way, only to be gratefully rescued and brought back home into the fold. We don’t mean the lost sheep at Christmas and Easter or to get their child baptized, those who know better, but don’t give a darn about what we assume is important. There are a few lost sheep sitting here in our pewfolds, but really not many. Statistics dictate that almost all of us are members of the ninety-nine and when we are counted in that number this colours the glasses through which we look at the world.

We ninety-nine are the people who keep the church going, who fill most of the pews, who contribute most of the money, and carry out many of the ministries and committee work. We are the elder brothers and sisters to the prodigal son who returns home and is feted by our father with a great feast. We murmur as loudly as we can mumble that we have been here all these years and no one has thrown a party for us. We have done all the work, is there any justice to this? We never say a word to the young prodigal, though our glares welcome no one.

Sometimes as the ninety-nine, we forget who we are and why we are here. A sad sense of ownership and entitlement to the church can fester, a sense of impatience, even anger at those who will not do their fare share to continue to do the things we have decided are necessary to do. Lost sheep who take up everybody’s energy and contribute little to the community’s life are examined severely as obstacles and stumbling blocks to growing the church. But, we do not own the church; we are its trustees for the time being. There is no one here alive who is a founding member of our predecessor congregations, and even if there were - wouldn’t they be really old! - that is no reason for ownership. We have been given this church as a gift of grace from others, and will hand it over to others that we cannot personally choose. In the most real of ways, God chose you to sit here, worship with others, and serve the lost sheep in the first place; and God will choose people you and I probably will not know to take it from here. Just like the older brother, all that God has is yours, rejoice and be full of grace and graciousness.

You’ve all seen those church signs on which it declares that the ministers are all of us, and then there’s that other guy who stands up here. The Good Shepherd is necessarily plural when it comes to the Gospel. You and I are not called to reap all the benefits of the spiritual and ethical good life; we are called to be Good Shepherds, willing to get sweaty and dirty and smelly serving lost sheep and the ungrateful, those who do not carry their own weight. When the shepherd in the parable went off in search of that one lost sheep, he very unwisely left behind the ninety-nine in a vulnerable position. Certainly, in today’s economic environment, no company or corporation would ever do that. Cut our losses with that one poor sheep. It is our ethical responsibility to take care of the most people possible (how else do we maintain our profit?). That’s OK, these companies are not the Church, Gospel is merely a genre of music, for the Gospel does not make any sense.

And that is right, the Gospel, the Good News, does not make any sense to the mathematicians and business managers, it is simply the real truth about life, in which you throw away your expectations of reward and entitlements, wealth, fame and glory, and go off hunting foolishly for that even more foolish lost sheep. When you throw away your needs and need to be served, then there is no end to what you are given. When you throw away your self, your ego, there is nothing ever to be ashamed of or hurt by. When you throw away your need to be loved and simply love another person for the sake of loving alone, love never ends. It doesn’t make sense, thank God.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan