A Determined and Gracious God

Perhaps if Jesus were telling the story today, instead of mentioning a coin lost from a woman's dowry headdress, he might talk about a contact lens being lost.

Now we know what an intense time that is, when one crawls around on a carpet looking for an errant lens.

--one looks close by,

--and then wider

--might bring in more lights

--with every step, hoping that more good than harm is being done...

--until at last a glimmer, a shape, and the lens reappears.

And then there is rejoicing!

What Jesus wants to make clear to us is the persistence and graciousness of God:

that he pursues us relentlessly in whatever ways that we have wandered or fallen away from our proper place.

--God puts forth his whole being to re-unite us to himself.

--It is an effort that finally costs him his own Son, Jesus.

--He has put forth more and more effort into the search until it involves the very human flesh of Christ.

This persistence of God is seen also in the story of the sheep, the one particular sheep who was lost from the flock of 100.

The shepherd throws all of himself into the search for that one until it is found, and then her restores it to the flock:

--he carries it, not beating it or driving it, but carries it until it sees its companions and scampers home.

How is it that God treats us?

--He pursues us, no matter where.

--He does the work of restoring us to the community of faith.

This is the sense of that hymn-line:

...our sins and sorrows he did carry...

and he does this because we belong to him.

It demonstrates how much he cares.

About 20 years ago I was involved in a pastors' discussion group where the topic was the image of sheep and shepherd.

we were musing: with which character in the story each of us could identify:

with the 99?, with the lost?, with the shepherd?

We laughingly settled on a character not mentioned in the story, and decided that pastors are to be “sheepdogs for Jesus.”

Have you seen a sheepdog working demonstration in person or on TV ?

It is amazing!

The dog literally trembles with eagerness

--to gather the sheep together,

--to let not even one sheep remain alone,

--to follow the commands and directions of the shepherd, even when he could not understand why they were given,

--and to work until the shepherd closed the gate.

Yes, that does sound like one way to view the work of the pastor, but of course it is not the whole story...any analogy is limited.

For in this flock of the church, there is not just one sheepdog, but many.

In differing situations, each one of us may have a portion of the sheepdog function for a period of time.

The pastor is the permanent sheepdog, the one who says to everyone else:

“When it is your turn and you are called upon to function as a sheepdog to rescue someone who is strayed, here are some things that each of us need to know, and here are some suggestions of how to get at the job.”

Each of us wanders away at various times in our lives, and we do so in a multitude of ways.

We pray that whenever that happens, God will call sheep to become sheepdogs and come and round us up!

This is a task of diligence that will involve every one of us!

Richard Hoeffler once told the story of a little boy who was wandering out on the thin ice of a pond, as boys will do, and fell in.

His friends scrambled to the community center nearby, where a meeting was just ending.

The folks all rushed to the pond, except one who stayed to close the building, since “fourteen adults ought to be able to save one little boy.”

The men realized that they could not stand on the ice, so they lay down and made a human chain out to the hole.

But they were one person short, and the boy slipped beneath the ice and was gone.

As the men came back, they encountered the person who said he wasn't needed. They could hardly find words to tell him that it was his own son that had just drowned.

If that father had known that it was his son who had fallen through the ice, nothing or no one could have held him back from helping.

The sense of belonging does make a great difference; every one is important!

I'll say it again:

We pray that whenever we wander away , God will call sheep to become sheepdogs and come and round us up!

This is a task of diligence that will involve every one of us!

It is easy to point out the pastor's shortcomings and failings, and some folks have an incredibly long memory about certain of my limitations, and I suspect that when we want someone to blame, our memories can make the pastor's limitations and errors even worse than they actually are.

But none of us can build up ourselves by pushing someone else down, even a handy target such as the pastor.

Every one of us, pastor and people alike, begins the service each week with confession, and in the silence needs to flesh out the generalities that we speak together with the specifics of our own lives and situations.

Then the forgiveness that the pastor announces in Jesus' name does something to us:

it gives us a new lease on life,

it sends us out to gather others in this hope and promise of Christ Jesus.

One of the ways we are working at this is our Friendship Ministry.

About 50 persons were invited to take part.

Half of them accepted the invitation.

Half of those persons came back to report their efforts.

Rather than complain that not all 50 accepted the invitation, or complain that not all 25 reported,

let's rejoice that 25 were sent,

--that 14 reported,

--that conversations happened and will continue to happen,

--that joys and sorrows were shared, which can be a first step in changing a seemingly intransigent situation,

-- that the Holy Spirit had a chance to stir up things in our lives.

A determined and gracious God means to turn us into determined and gracious people who are eager to reach out with the appropriate help whenever and wherever it is needed,

to restore a person in body and spirit to the community,

and to expand this community of faith to others who need to hear this message.

Oh, do we all have sheepdog-work to do!

I'm sure that Mel is going to have fun with the sheep-dog image in the Way group this year,

and Sunday Church School teachers have an important job with their assignments.

The students confirmed today will need to discover that they are not just sheep, not just consumers,

but that they have sheep-dog responsibilities for each other also.

That is a big shift in understanding which many have trouble making!

Also, we pray that the Holy Spirit may stir up many more persons in the parish to take up the task of Christian friendship. Would you be one of them?

We pray that the Holy Spirit may stir up an additional group of persons to accept the challenge of something so simple as a telephone call to a lonely person. Would you take part?

Michele is going to need help in keeping track of and encouraging Sunday Church School students during the year. Would you help her?

The Pastor needs the gifts of the Spirit to better speak with boldness and also with comfort where there has been hurt, sorrow, and loss. Would you pray for and encourage me?

There are plenty of different tasks for each one of us,

...because ours is not only a righteous judge , but also a determined and gracious God, who will give us what we need, his very presence, as both our corrective and our comfort, to find us, to call us in, and to send us out again to his work.

Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.