Sermons
Cross Carrying
“Cross Carrying”
Text: John 15: 11-17,26-27 the Message
11 "I've told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. 12 This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. 13 This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends. 14 You are my friends when you do the things I command you. 15 I'm no longer calling you servants because servants don't understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I've named you friends because I've let you in on everything I've heard from the Father. 16 "You didn't choose me, remember; I chose you, and put you in the world to bear fruit, fruit that won't spoil. As fruit bearers, whatever you ask the Father in relation to me, he gives you. 17 "But remember the root command: Love one another. 18 "If you find the godless world is hating you, remember it got its start hating me.
26 "When the Friend I plan to send you from the Father comes - the Spirit of Truth issuing from the Father - he will confirm everything about me. 27 You, too, from your side must give your confirming evidence, since you are in this with me from the start. †
loving with great love
Memorial Day we celebrate those who demonstrate what Jesus calls the greatest kind of love—putting oneself in harm’s way for the benefit of others. It is those who lay down their lives for their friends, brothers and sisters, and countrymen who best exemplify this kind of Christlike love.
Our key verse is verse 12:
This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you.
Jesus commands—yes, commands—us to love one another as he loved us. This would be easy enough if Jesus were merely nice and basically good to his disciples, but that is not the case. The way Jesus loved us is by suffering for us and dying for us while we were yet his enemies by sin.
In short, Jesus loved those who hated him. That is the challenge to us: loving those who hate us.
As I’ve said right through this series, love only communicates as love when it is irrational. Loving those who hate us is a wonderfully irrational kind of love, and it is therefore the ultimate witness—the most Christlike of loves.
As we talk about our witness to the world, this is the ultimate witness: loving those who hate us.
And here is our action step. Here and now, today, we are going to start loving those who hate us.
starting here and now
We’re going to start today, for it is our calling to love one other as God loves us. Yes, it is the high bar, but it is also the major leagues of love. Mature love begins when we get beyond loving those who love us. Even beyond loving those for whom we feel natural indifference is seeking to love those who hate us.
If you think hate is too strong a word, then let me just appeal to your memory and imagination. Can you think of someone in your life who is a total pain in the back (or perhaps a bit lower)? Someone whose presence is intolerable. Maybe it’s someone who has hurt you in the past, or someone who seems to belittle or debase you whenever you’re in the same room. Someone, perhaps, who you disrespect or, to be honest, completely loathe.
Ask the Spirit to locate someone whom you need to work on as an enemy—someone who hates you.
You might be thinking:, “Why? Why bother? Why try? Why can’t I just enjoy the company of people I enjoy and let them be someplace else?”
First of all, they may already be someplace else, but if they occupy a place in your heart, soul and psyche, then they are not gone. They are still with you and you are still carrying them around.
Secondly, it is commanded by God. Sorry, but as with forgiveness, there is no opting out—no escape clause enabling you to despise and hate anyone.
For the moment, forget all of the other commandments and focus here: this is the major leagues—loving as Jesus loved us is all that matters. We must work on loving our enemies and loving those who hate us, for this is precisely how Jesus loved the world and how he loves you and me.
Please allow me to walk us down this unspeakably unreasonable path in meditation.
Anything less falls short of Christian love.
Talk all you like about love, sing all the love songs, all the hymns, but until you love your enemies—until you love those who hate you—you and I practice convenient loves, and we have a partial witness at best.
In my heart, I want that partial witness. I love all of you here in church—can’t we just live in this loving fellowship together sharing God’s blessings of warmth and mutual love? And yes, we’re willing to invite others inside, but do we really have to deal with evil people?
The problem is that we all prefer a Christianized comfort zone, but it is a bubble, and our calling is not to stay inside of our bubble.
Our witness begins when we get out of the bubble. When we do, our lives change.
everything changes
As we begin to love those who hate us, several things happen:
1. Our own anger, resentment, and hatreds begin to dissolve.
2. We find healing of our injuries. We no longer make our way through life like the walking wounded, or even like the overly-sensitized and easily-wounded. To the contrary, we are given a new empowerment: our enemies lose their capacity to hurt us. How great would that be? The same slings, stings and insults simply flow around and past you. When we love those who hate us, we become less vulnerable to injury, not more. The darts don’t hurt as much or in the same way. We garner a kind of unflappability through which loving becomes easier and easier. We just have to start.
3. We walk in obedience to Christ and know the blessings of doing so. We know we have stepped out of the bubble and are at least on open ground and in the game where our witness can begin to impact our world.
But this is crazy
Yes, it is a high bar, but when we resolve to turn from nurturing our personal sense of injury—our love of having the upper hand of victimization—we step into a great walk and a more excellent kind of love. We begin to love in the way that Christ commands—a way that looks like his love for us.
What is more, our witness needs it, because this kind of loving gets the right kind of attention and prompts others—especially our enemies—to ask the right questions, such as “How can you possibly love like this?” Our witness as the Church to the world demands that we love those who hate us and prove to be Christ’s disciples. It is simply doing what Jesus did.
You and I personally need this kind of witness, because by it we are healed of our own hatreds and learn the depths of God’s love for us.
In our deepest wishes, we should want to get out of the bubble of self-concern and the self-legitimacy of having been injured. We can begin to love only once we step out of ourselves and into a pattern loving boldly.
command & promise
The good news here is that we are not alone in trying to climb this mountain. We are empowered by the commandment to love, for the command contains an implicit promise:
You SHALL love your neighbor as yourself
God’s promise is that it will come to be by his work rather than ours. It means that as we trust his Spirit to work in us and through us, we shall be enabled to do what is impossible in our own strength. This is why we call this series WIThNESS, because our hope is never in ourselves, but our witness is God’s with-ness working in and through us. What we have to share with the world is not a strategy for salvation or a plan for which others are expected to subscribe, but Christ himself. When we share the gospel, we are to share nothing less that the Spirit himself.
The good news is that though our personal feelings resist, feelings can change. We can be changed. Our perspective can change. Our perspective may need to be changed.
Again, consider the benefits of radical love.
1. We obey Christ’s singular, all-encompassing command.
2. We find we have a powerful witness—one that awakens our enemies—even God’s enemies—to the reality of his love.
3. This love isn’t an academic exercise. When we love our enemies; it drives them crazy in a good way. Not in vengefulness, but we want them to be driven crazy in the same way we’ve been driven crazy by Christ’s crazy love for us.
A Way to Pray
I am your pastor. I love you and care for your spiritual development, but I can’t do it for you (I can barely manage it for me!); but I can give you a few useful tools. I can’t make you use them; I can only set them before you and encourage you to use them. It is entirely up to you whether you use them or not. Today I’m going to give you a prayer that is a tool in the endeavor to love those who hate you.
Close your eyes please, and imagine yourself in an empty room with two chairs that face each other. You sit in one. You feel content and relaxed. Now in that chair across from you—no more than three feet away—see your enemy seated facing you.
This may be hard, but begin by taking note of the negative feelings within you: anxiety, loathing, fear—take note. Name them to yourself.
Your mind is full of fresh reminders over how they have injured you or continue to injure you.
God desires that all those feelings be washed away and replaced by love.
He knows you can’t do it yourself, but he offers something better: He will do it with you and for you.
Jesus, who loves you infinitely comes up behind your enemy. He stands beside your enemy with a hand on their shoulder. He looks at you with love— perfect, infinite love. You know he loves you.
Now you also see that he loves your enemy as well. He looks at them with perfect, infinite love. He knows their guilt and he is willing to pay for it.
As you watch, he raises your enemy up by the hands, faces them, and embraces them. Your enemy breaks down into tears of sorrow over their sins. Tears of contrition and repentance.
See how Jesus loves them! Jesus loves them infinitely. Jesus loves you infinitely.
And you begin to feel more generous toward that person. You see the sinner that you’ve always seen, but you also see something of yourself reflected back.
As you need God’s mercy, you see they too need God’s mercy.
Jesus looks at you, and as he does, a light shoots out from his heart and hits you straight in the chest, and you feel half the burden of your feelings for your enemy lifted off of your soul.
The old anxiety starts falling away like scales.
You look to your enemy and begin to see that person through Jesus’ eyes. You can see how Jesus loves them.
And you love Jesus. You want to love as Jesus loves. You repent to him.
You renounce your judgment. You renounce your injury, you take it off like a dirty coat. You renounce your claim to justice, revenge or getting even.
It drops from your hand like a revolver.
Your heart longs to live in that space of Christ’s love and grace. You hunger for that love. You want it and want to be in it. You want that love to flow from you as it does from him.
You want love and grace for yourself and for your enemy and
nothing else matters.
Nothing else.
Nothing.
†
The Endurance of Hope
The Endurance of Hope
1 Peter 3: 8-17 ESV
8 Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. 9 Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. 10 For "Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit; 11 let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it. 12 For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil." 13 Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? 14 But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, 15 but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, 16 having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.
17 For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil. †
Hope within us
Look again at the key verse, verse 15 :
…always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you….
I don’t know about you, but I am sure that in at least fifty years of my life that I can remember I have never once had anyone ask me, “So Noel, tell me about this hope that is in you—what is its source and from whence do you derive it?” etc., not even close.
As Peter writes, he addresses a world where this question was in fact regularly asked. Remember, everyone thought Christians were crazy. They were followers of a “failed” Messiah from rural Galilee who was crucified by his own people. How could anyone have hope in such a figure? Add to it that to be a Christian then meant a life that was very high risk indeed. Christians were called traitors by Jews and Romans alike. They lost family and friends over their faith, and many had to leave their homes and livelihoods to live on the lam underground.
They would not renounce their faith upon threats of torture or even death. It just didn’t make sense to the people of the time—and why should it—the entire picture is completely irrational.
Those Christian might have regularly been asked: “How can you possibly put your hope in one who was rejected and crucified?”
seeing the hope
We don’t hear the question anymore. I wonder why not? I feel well-prepared to explain or proclaim my faith to any unbeliever, but they aren’t asking. This is the chief problem: they should be asking.
Part of the problem is that we live in a Christianized America. There are plenty—too many, in fact—zealous evangelists replete in supplying answers to the questions that no one is asking. So America shuts its ears and clamps its hands to the sides of its head.
Here is a key question I ask myself and I think we would all do well to ask ourselves:
How can my personal life reflect the radical hope in order that people will ask me questions?
Is there something lacking in my witness—my proclamation of Christ—that keeps people at a distance and/or makes them reluctant to ask the key questions?
Is my life so ordinary—so run-of-the-mill-normal-American—that they have no good reason to suspect that I’m any different from anyone else?
How then can I live and shape my witness so that it prompts the questions?
Together as well we might voice the question:
How can OUR CHURCH life reflect the radical hope in order that people will ask US questions?
How can our collective witness be shaped in a way that others would be naturally prompted to ask us why we are different?
What kind of life must we live to show the world that following Jesus makes a real difference to us?
To take it a bit deeper, let’s ask:
What have we left behind to follow Christ?
This is easy to answer for the first Christians: they left everything. But American Christians have a different world; we can take it all with us as we go from not following Christ to following Christ. We like this kind of Christianity because it is user friendly—it doesn’t really cost us anything.
So where is the difference? I daresay if there is no difference, there is no witness.
I heard about a young lady recently named Layla. Layla is an Egyptian Christian who grew up in a Muslim home. Beyond all expectation, she became convinced that Jesus is the Son of God, the Savior, and the one, true way to the Father. When she announced to her family, she was slapped and socked. They tried to reason with her and get her to renounce her foolish interest in Christianity, but Layla was a true believer.
Layla was kicked out of her home and disowned by her parents whom she loved. With nothing but the clothes on her back and a half dozen fresh bruises, she moved in with the Christians of the local fellowship that had introduced her to Jesus.
She lost everything, and her brothers announced they would pursue her in an “honor killing.” It cost Layla everything to follow Jesus. This happened to Layla this year. Is she sad, morose and self-pitying? “I can’t believe it! I’ve lost everything! My family hates me!” No. Layla is one of the most confident, self-composed and joyous young women you could possibly meet. She has her hope set on Christ alone, and it makes all the difference that she does. Many of Layla’s Muslim friends have asked her—with amazement—why she hopes in Jesus. Layla has a witness.
church in egypt
Since the overthrow of Mubarak in 2o11 and the establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood, Christians in Egypt have had a real struggle. They have lost rights, lost liberties, and been targeted by extremists. You’ve seen the stories; you know how bad it has been.
I recently met a leader in the Egyptian church who told me about Holy Week this year. He said that the Egyptian government—which opposes extremist violence—received “credible threats” that churches were being targeted for Palm Sunday and Easter services. The government warned the churches and encouraged them—for their own safety—not to meet for worship those Sundays, but perhaps to reschedule them.
Church leaders of Cairo met and discussed the threats. They chose—quite quickly and easily, in fact—to proceed with Palm Sunday and Easter services. They said to the government representatives:
We already laid down our lives a long time ago.
Boldness, calm, gentleness, and un-anxious resolve—these are what Egyptian Christians offer to their Muslim countrymen.
Earning ears
In contrast, American evangelism has been characterized by zealous brothers and sisters who believe that their witness is empowered by the fact that they have fingers and Americans have doorbells. Or you have to drive in traffic and they have broad bumpers upon which to preach answers to the questions no one is asking.
We must do better. We must earn the right to be heard. This is indispensable factor #1 of our witness. We must live in a way that prompts others to ask us what, why, how, and WHO accounts for the discernable difference Christ makes to our lives.
Again, I’ll say what we said last week:
Love only communicates AS love when it is irrational.
Outsiders to the faith see Christians with a we-can-take-it-all-with-us faith. It is too rational, too normal. Where is the love? Where is the sacrifice? Where is the cost of following Jesus?
It takes irrational love to open the ears of the hard-hearted. As sacrifice is the language of integrity, our witness is silent unless we are giving of ourselves beyond reason.
We need an irrational witness—a self-abandoning, other-exalting attitude made manifest in acts of love—if the ears of the world are to be opened. That is what shaping our witness requires.
There is a video that has gone fairly viral I’m going to play for you. The Egyptian, Muslim anchorman is listening to an interview of a woman and family whose father was dragged into the streets and shot by ISIS for no reason other than being a Christian and minister. Watch what happens to him as he hears their account:
[Egypt clip: VIMEO #212755977]
Forgiveness is crazy
That family did not forgive as a calculated strategy to wow their Muslim countrymen. They did not brainstorm the idea of what would be the best way to impress their Muslim neighbors. Their witness was simply shaped by their regular, ordinary, ongoing obedience to Jesus Christ as found in Scripture.
Radical idea: they just do what Jesus asks all of us to do: they forgave and prayed for their persecutors.
Peter tells Christians not to exchange hurt for hurt. Jesus tells us that there is a no-option clause regarding our forgiving others. Forgiveness remains among the most visible irrational acts of love that still impresses the world.
How can our church’s life reflect our radical hope in Jesus Christ? Here’s one way: we will resolve, unconditionally, to forgive unconditionally. We will agree to feel shame for any grudge or vengeful attitude. We will repent of our need for personal justice where it may subvert the potential for forgiveness; and whatever pain or damage we feel as a result of injury by others, we will be a people who immediately seek to offer forgiveness.
That’s crazy, and it’s an excellent witness. †
Irrational Love
Irrational Love
Romans 5: 6-11 ESV
6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die-- 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.
10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. †
FACES ONLY A MOTHER COULD LOVE
It has been said that there are faces only a mother could love. Why is that so? Are there faces so repulsive that only one’s mother sees the beauty in it? If so, shame on the rest of us.
Could it be equally said that there are some souls that only God could love? I might think of a few, starting with names like Hitler or Osama bin Laden, because most people would like to think that God hates their souls, which I am certain is not true. God’s love for his creatures us unconditional and unaffected by evil, though people may reject or even eternally alienate themselves from that love.
It may be beyond us to contemplate how God can love tyrants and terrorists, but we can start by considering what is it about mothers that makes them willing to love the otherwise unlovable.
Certainly, one of the most perfect images of love we have in this world is the love of a mother for her child. I certainly God’s love for us is very much like a mother’s love for her child—able to see beyond the ugliness of our sin—with perfect, pure, unconditional love.
What is more, Jesus calls us to live out that same kind of love, which becomes painfully clear when we hear him tell us that we are to love even our enemies:
But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. —Matthew 5:44
Of course mothers love their own babies, but we are called to even greater love than that, and that is absolutely crazy, irrational. And here’s where love gets real and deep, because
LOve only Communicates AS love When it is Irrational
Anything less makes sense. Mothers love their children (one could argue) out of instinct, for all mammals care for and nurse their young. It’s no virtue; it’s just genetics.
Or it is just fair exchange—you love your friends and they love you—quid pro quo. There are many reasons for love that exhibit mutual benefits, so for love to be known as love, it has to be irrational, or beyond rational.
To love the unlovable is divine love. To love our enemies is to love as God loves.
Verse 8 gives us Paul’s gospel in a sentence:
8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Given that to be a sinner is to be rejecting God or in some manner hating God, it is clear that God’s love for us is beyond reason. Grace, which comes to us undeserved, is beyond rational.
Grace is Irrational
God has nothing to gain in loving sinners. God has nothing to gain in loving us because he is complete in and of himself and doesn’t need us, our love, or anything about us. That he sacrificed his only Son for our salvation is the supreme, divine, irrational act of love. God is not reasonable.
God is Irrational
This may sound disturbing, and it should, but God’s love is beyond reason. God loves you and me irrationally. Love is a greater law than reason.
Consider: After creating Adam and Eve and setting a very low bar on prohibitions (Come on—in the whole world just one fruit not to touch!) they fail even that. They’re booted from Eden and start a family. Murder follows, and then generation after generation of wickedness until God feels it best to clear the slate and sends the flood. More generations grow up and try to build their way into divinity at Babel, so God has to diversify them and spread them out from each other.
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph grow up with God’s promises and are trained in loving God, but they’re still full of wickedness. God gives Moses the Law to teach people how to love him and each other, but while the ink is still wet they’re already building golden calves.
God tells them what righteousness requires and it’s a very high bar. Moses strikes the rock twice instead of once and he is banished from ever entering the promised land.
The tabernacle of God is surrounded by death for every violation, but God did not do justice; he kept forgiving Israel for its constant turns toward idolatry. He sought them out when they wandered and he punished them when they thought they knew better than God.
And in Christ, God loves the wicked, the evil, the blasphemous. God dies for the sins of the world because God loves sinners. That is irrational.
our job is to discover how we can be a part of the divine plan
So we accept that God loves us and saves us, and this is no credit to ourselves. We accept that we have new life in Christ and the forgiveness of all our sins, wickedness, injustices, and evils.
How then shall we live? Yes, we are grateful for God’s amazing, irrational grace, but how do we live in a way that meaningfully points to God’s kind of love?
After all, the world sees our witnessing as a form of self-interest or self-service.
• “You Christians need everyone else to be Christians in order to reinforce your delusions.”
• “You make converts in order to pat yourself on the back for being righteous.”
• “You’re just trying to find a way to take people’s money and loyalty so you can control them.”
They’re fair arguments. As long as people see that we benefit from others becoming Christians, they will dismiss our witness as self-serving. Therefore,
Our witness must contain an Irrational Element
Grace is experienced through irrational love.
We must find a way for our witness to embody God’s irrational love.
We must do mercy above and beyond justice.
We must love our enemies and practice unconditional forgiveness.
Nothing is more Irrational Than Forgiveness
Forgiveness is not just. It is not fair. It does not make sense. To the outsider, forgiveness is totally irrational. It is a perfect way for us to witness.
Jesus has already made it perfectly clear:
if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Matthew 6:15
There is no option clause to our forgiving others.
It is required; it is absolutely necessary.
It is our most Christlike, godly love.
It is completely irrational and a perfect witness.
It is the hardest sell in Christianity, because it doesn’t particularly feel good and we can’t sell it for it’s wonderful benefits. It is selfless and self-sacrificing, which is what guarantees that it is in the realm of agapé love rather than fair exchange.
We don’t like forgiving and it may be the hardest thing we ever do, but followers of Christ have no option:
On October 2, 2006…
On October 2, 2006, Charles C. Roberts walked into an Amish schoolhouse armed with three guns. There were 26 students in the schoolhouse. He allowed the 15 boys, a pregnant female student, and three other adult females with infant children to leave safely, but held the remaining 15 girls captive and tied their feet together. His deranged rationale for his actions was that he wanted to exact revenge for something that had happened in his past. Notes that he left behind indicate anger toward himself and God for the death of his newborn daughter almost nine years earlier. Authorities were alerted, and soon arrived on the scene. Not long after police arrived, Roberts started shooting, killing three children and himself. Two more children died later from their injuries.In the face of such tragedy, one can only imagine the hurt and anger the loved ones of the victims might feel. In an extraordinary demonstration of forgiveness, members of the Amish community, including family members of the deceased victims, attended Robert’s funeral and comforted his widow. The Amish community did not stop there—they also offered financial support to Robert’s widow.
“Immaculee Ilibagiza survived the Rwandan genocide…
Immaculee Ilibagiza is a survivor of the Rwandan genocide that took place in the mid-nineties. Political tensions between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes resulted in the massacre of hundreds of thousands of members of the Tutsi tribe and of members of the Hutu tribe who opposed the genocide. On Easter Sunday 1994, when Ilibagiza and her family were gathered together, Ilibagiza’s older brother, Damascene, begged their father to take the family and flee to safety. They made the fateful decision to stay. On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying the Rwandan president, a Hutu, was shot down, and everyone on board was killed. Soon after, a killing spree began that targeted the Tutsi people. Ilibagiza and her younger brother, Vianney, managed to make their way to a local Hutu pastor’s home, who provided protection from the chaos that was surrounding them. When they arrived, they learned the heartbreaking news that Vianney could not stay. Ilibagiza and seven other women hid in a small (1 square meter) bathroom for three months. When Ilibagiza and the seven other women were finally able to leave their hiding place, Ilibagiza learned that her family had been murdered. Ilibagiza herself lost 22 kilograms (50 lbs) during her ordeal. While our human nature desires revenge, Ilibagiza chose to forgive the people who killed her family as she felt the bitter feelings of rage destroying her. Though not easy, she was determined to let forgiveness, rather than hate, rule her life. Eventually, she met one of the murderers face-to-face and told him directly that she forgave him.
if you want to be healed, you must forgive
We don’t like having to forgive. It doesn’t feel good, at least not in the short term, but if we want to be healed, we must forgive. Every grudge we hold is an open wound—a constant, nagging source of insecurity. Many people lead with their grudges, like having an open wound on display for everyone they meet. They lead with it, keep the wound open and pour salt into it from time to time. That is what happens when we refuse to forgive.
Again, our witness must contain an irrational element—a sign of love beyond all suspicion of self-interest or self-empowerment—and perhaps the best irrational sign we can give the world is simply to be unconditionally forgiving.
Like our mothers are to us. Like God is revealed to us in Jesus Christ.
May we come to love others as our mothers loved us—and may we embody the same, irrational grace/love that God so joyously pours out to us all. †
Hungry for the Lost
Hungry for the Lost
Luke 15: 1-7 ESV
1 Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them." 3 So he told them this parable: 4 "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? 5 And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.
6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, '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. †
About Shepherds
We always see pictures of Jesus with a little, tiny lamb on his shoulders. It warms our hearts. We love the image of the little lamb because it reminds us of God’s fatherly love for each one of us. As for the text, there’s a problem: little lambs are not the ones that wander away. Little lambs stay with the flock, usually close beside their mothers.
Grown lambs wander. They can run from 45-75 pounds each. Yeah, not so cute.
There is a work of art from Jesus’ day in the Rockerfeller Museum of Antiquities in Jerusalem—possibly a very early depiction of Christ as the Good Shepherd. We know this image of the good shepherd was the first used in artistic depiction of Jesus, found repeatedly in the catacombs beneath Rome.
See—that sheep is almost equal to the shepherd’s body weight. No little lamb here. And zooming in, we get a closer look at the face to see something rare in ancient art: he’s smiling. This is the joy of the shepherd at having found a lost sheep.
Jesus says, "...there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents..." The sheep represents the sinner, which raises the question, What does the sheep do that resembles repentance? How does a sheep repent?
When a sheep realizes that it's lost, it freezes, according to scholar Ken Bailey, who specializes in the peasant, middle-eastern context. Because it's terrified, all it can do is bleat, cry out. Even when the sheep hears the voice of its shepherd, it still can't move. It won’t follow the shepherd home as a dog would. It doesn’t seek the flock. The shepherd must pick it up and carry it back to the fold. In the Middle East, with its rugged terrain, carrying 45-70 pound sheep is a difficult and dangerous task. It could take two to three days to find and restore a wandered, lost sheep. And what is the response of the good shepherd to such a difficult task? Joy.
The Good Shepherd
Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd in John 10:11-18, who not only searches for lost sheep (sinners) but who lays down his life for them. The parable also brings to mind Ezekiel 34:11-16:
"For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will search and find my sheep. I will be like a shepherd looking for his scattered flock. I will find my sheep and rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on that dark and cloudy day. I will bring them back home to their own land of Israel from among the peoples and nations. I will feed them on the mountains of Israel and by the rivers and in all the places where people live. Yes, I will give them good pastureland on the high hills of Israel. There they will lie down in pleasant places and feed in the lush pastures of the hills. I myself will tend my sheep and give them a place to lie down in peace, says the Sovereign Lord. I will search for my lost ones who strayed away, and I will bring them safely home again. I will bandage the injured and strengthen the weak..."
The point of connection here is clear: Christ is the Good Shepherd. God is the one who saves the lost sheep. God alone.
Different Sheep
We should consider that there are many kinds of sheep as well. Among them, those from the flock who wander off and need to be restored to the herd, but also those who have never known the flock—complete outsiders—who are in dire need of rescue.
What all have in common is what is common to every human being: each is a lost sheep. All are lost.
None seek after him; all have gone astray.
The parable speaks with one voice on this: God alone is the one who seeks and saves.
When I picked this text, I was looking for verses to support our WIThNESS series—something to encourage our best evangelistic tendencies, but it can’t come from this text. We cannot squeeze this into a lesson for how we should seek the lost.
To do so is to abuse and twist the written word. I know; I was tempted.
God alone seeks.
God alone rescues.
God alone saves.
God alone wins souls.
God alone truly evangelizes.
Christ alone is the Good Shepherd.
Now, having said this, we must consider the implications of God’s seeking/saving love.
How is our witness shaped by this parable? It may not be our role to play “little Good Shepherds” pursuing the lost, lest we fall into our own kind of messianic complex, but we can share in God’s heart for the lost. Indeed, it is right and good that we should grow into sharing God’s heart for every stray sheep.
To be clear, we are not the Shepherd, but we work for the Shepherd. We seek as he calls us to seek and we evangelize only with his empowerment. Whatever sheep-seeking we do, we do only in conformity to the Shepherd’s call.
As I’m fond of saying: We are not the Shepherd; we are more like sheepdogs.
Sheep that wander
The first kind of lost sheep are those who started out in the flock, but for some reason wandered off.
I think of college students.
While I have no kids of my own, I have helped hundreds of parents spiritually nurture their children. As a pastor to youth in Oklahoma, I helped launch dozens of kids every year off to college and careers. It’s true—I don’t know what it feels like to send my own kids off, but as a pastor—part brother, part mentor, part uncle, and part parent—I have stood at that threshold with hope and anxiety as my protégés departed for the wider world of Oklahoma State University and elsewhere.
Like parents, I’m anxious for their growth, and anxious that they should be strong in the faith in spite of the inevitable onslaught of academic sophistry. I kept them in prayer and hoped to hear back from them from time to time.
My house was fairly famous for Christmastime gatherings of returning college students, swollen with new wisdom and enlightenment after a semester of psychology or sociology—anxious to try out their newfound knowledge against their old youth pastor. I loved those meetings and believe they continued to provide support and nurture to former youth, but I also know well that sinking feeling in my heart when a college sophomore returns with a new look in his eye—a sharpened, hardened look—and announces that he’s not a believer anymore. Yes, he’s taken a philosophy class (or humanities class, or geology class) and has experienced the light of truth among the towering intellects of Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Sheep that wander. Raised and nurtured within the flock, they now seek a truth other than the one given them by the people who love them most. It feels like rejection—even like arrogance—“I’m better than that old flock”-kind of thing. It’s a good thing that we can place our hope in a God who specializes in seeking lost sheep, isn’t it?
The Flight
One student I was close to—I’ll call him Paul (because his name was Paul)—one who was a leader in the large youth group during high school and who had always shown maturity and wisdom beyond his age—wanted to have a talk with me. He confessed that he wasn’t sure whether he believed anymore. He no longer felt convinced that the Christian narrative was true. He looked at it all from a different perspective—a very critical perspective—and his disillusionment left him in total doubt.
I didn’t tell him that his mother had met with me in the previous two years. She saw it coming, grieved it, and asked me to pray with her about it. She was so anxious for him not to lose his faith that I suspected she was part of his motivation all along. Though I felt some of that same disappointment—some of that same sinking of the heart—I did not feel the same anxiety.
“When you were baptized,” I told him, “it is like you were put on an intercontinental flight. You have grown up on the plane and now you have awakened to the reality that you are on this plane, and you are not sure that you really belong on this flight. You are aware that there are other planes, other international flights going elsewhere, and you wonder whether you chose this flying flock or it chose you. You’re not sure whether you would, today, given the choice, have chosen this flight over the others. Yet here we are, at 30,000 feet traveling 600mph. You’re still on the plane. You’re still part of the community of faith even though you doubt. And changing flights is not so easy as parachuting out the back door.”
It’s okay. Doubt is half of faith. Doubt is not an evil to be eradicated; it is necessary hurdle on the race toward authentic faith. No one develops real faith without searching through one’s doubts. It doesn’t matter if you were baptized as a baby, as a teenager, or as a believing adult—baptism is simply your ticket for the flight. It says you belong here.
Paul did come around in time. God restored him.
More than Lost
The second kind of sheep are those who have never been part of the flock. They may not even know they are lost so they don’t cry out. Never having been part of the flock we call the Church, they may not even know that a loving Shepherd seeks them.
We do know. Our witness comes from knowing—from having been found.
Knowing the Shepherd makes a difference in us and that difference is the substance of our witness. Although we are not the Shepherd (more like the collie in the picture), there are ways that we work with the Shepherd.
1, we have empathy for the lost:
•We understand what it’s like to be lost.
•We are the same—no different in nature.
•We know the pain and share the
experience of lostness
2. We know the joy of being found
•We know the difference it makes.
•We know the peace of new life in Christ
(we probably take it for granted).
•We are no longer lost; we follow the
Shepherd gladly
3. We know the Good Shepherd
•We know he seeks the lost.
•We know he saves the lost.
•We share that hope with every lost sheep.
Plenty of Christians (usually Reformed, like us) have so emphasized God’s role in seeking and saving the lost that they have made a kind of sacred safe-space of their complacency. They have left the business of evangelizing to the Arminian Christians, who excel in sharing God’s heart for the lost.
It can be difficult pursuing the anti-Christian—the never-believer—because Christians are…well, not cool in the wider world. We are the oddballs, the weirdos, the presently marginalized. The good news is that this is nothing new. Christians have been oddballs and countercultural from the year 33 on. But we must persist and the best reason I can give you is not to speak of the terrors of Hell, but the hidden hunger for the Good Shepherd that roils within every sheep’s heart.
It is put best by one of America’s own, favorite atheists: the magician Penn Jillette:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6md638smQd8&t=201s
Quote: “How much do you have to hate someone not to proselytize to them if you believe eternal life is real?” †