A Homily for the Third Sunday after Trinity
What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of
them, doth not leave
the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost,
until he find it?
—St. Luke 15:4
During the summer and early autumn, on what we call
the “Sundays after Trinity,” but which are sometimes called “Sundays in
Ordinary Time,” the Church appoints Scripture lessons containing the
sayings and teachings of Jesus, and, most especially, his
parables. As Jesus himself said, quoting the seventy-eighth
Psalm, “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which
have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.”
Many, or most, of Jesus’s parables are meant to tell
us what God is like or what the kingdom of God is like. In Saint
Matthew’s Gospel, nine of the parables are actually introduced with the
phrase, “the kingdom of heaven is like . . .” You will recognize
them: “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed . .
.”’; “the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hid in a field . . .”;
“the kingdom of heaven is like a net cast into the sea . . .”
This morning, we consider two parables, usually
called the parables of “the lost sheep” and “the lost coin.” It
is sometimes said that these are not parables in themselves, but only
serve to introduce the parable that follows them in Saint Luke’s
Gospel, namely, the parable of the rich man with two sons, which is
usually called the parable of “the prodigal son.” And it is true
enough that Jesus introduces the lost sheep and the lost coin in the
form of questions put to the Pharisees who criticized him, while the
man with two sons is introduced in the form of a story.
Nevertheless, Jesus’s questions, about the lost
sheep and the lost coin, do what his parables do: they teach us
something about what God is like. Jesus tells us that God, like
the man who lost a sheep and the woman who lost a coin, is a
seeker. God seeks what is missing, he goes out of his way to find
what is lost.
The Christian religion—that is, the Church, the body
of which Jesus Christ is the head and all baptized people are the limbs
and organs—is not about what we do for God, but about what God does for
us. It is not about our seeking God, but about God’s seeking us.
For several hundred years there has been an ongoing,
and almost completely artificial, debate about whether salvation is by
faith or by works: that is, are we saved because we believe in
God or because we live our lives in accordance with God’s
commandments? And the real answer is that we are saved by God’s
grace. If we believe, our faith is a gift of grace; if we obey,
our obedience is a gift of grace.
The Pharisees, too, thought that it was up to human
beings to find their way to God. The parables of the lost sheep
and the lost coin, together with the parable of the prodigal son, were
Jesus’s response to criticism of him by the Pharisees. And that
criticism was, basically, that Jesus was not living a holy life by
scrupulously obeying the commandments of Torah and avoiding everything
impure and immoral. Instead, Jesus was actively seeking the
company of sinners and law-breakers, and even of people who
collaborated with the gentile occupation.
It seemed to the Pharisees to be the duty of every
Jew, and of the Jewish people as a whole, to try to live a perfect
life. Only that way, they thought, would Israel be restored to
greatness as a nation; and only that way would the individual Jew merit
an eternal reward. They thought they knew what God was
like: he was sitting up in heaven with a clipboard, watching how
everyone was doing, and making checkmarks on a scorecard.
If God was a shepherd with a hundred sheep, and if
ninety-nine of them were safely in the flock, why that was a pretty
good day in shepherd-land. And if the one who wandered off came
to his senses and made his way back to the flock, then that was okay,
too.
But Jesus says that God, the shepherd, is concerned
about each of his sheep. And if one of them strays, he will not
just wait to see whether the lost sheep will return on its own.
He goes after the lost one, he seeks it and seeks it until he finds
it. He does not wait for the lost sheep to return on its
own. He picks it up and carries it home.
This is the next thing to notice: in the parable,
the man with the lost sheep puts the sheep on his shoulders and brings
it home. It is not the sheep’s choice whether to come home or
stay lost. The sheep is not consulted about that.
There are those today who will tell you that God
does not want to bring us home, or even that there is no “home” to
which to bring us. If it were up to such people to retell the
parable, when the man found his lost sheep, he would not have picked it
up and carried it home, but would have sat down beside it and
crooned: “I love you just the way you are.”
To say that “home” is a better place for the sheep
to be than whatever gully or briar patch the sheep had wandered off to
is to be judgmental, and there is something about our contemporary
culture that cannot accept abide anyone’s being judgmental, even God.
But in the parable, Jesus tells us that it is the
shepherd, and not the sheep who knows what is good for the sheep.
He has a purpose in searching for the lost sheep, and his purpose is to
bring the sheep home; and there is no question that the shepherd knows
where home is.
The shepherd is compassionate. He forgives the
sheep for risking its neck on dangerous rocks and cliffs; for tangling
its wool in briars and soiling its coat in mud; for exposing itself to
wolves and other predators. But there is never a question of
leaving the sheep out there, even if that is where the sheep thinks it
wants to be.
In summing up the parables, Jesus says that there is
joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who
repents. The joy commences when the lost sheep is brought
home, and not before.
In the parable, the lost sheep represents
humankind. This is a familiar image, but not a flattering
one. Sheep are incredibly stupid creatures. They are not so
willful as human beings. Like the members of our race, they do
not know what is good for them, but, unlike us, they do not pretend
that they do know. The figure of sheep representing humanity is a
familiar one in Scripture.
The psalmist reminds us, “we are the people of his
pasture and the sheep of his hand,” and, again, “we are his people and
the sheep of his pasture.” The prophet Isaiah reminds us,
ruefully, “all we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one
to his own way.” And we have a shepherd who loves us, who tells
us: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd layeth down
his life for the sheep. . . . I am the good shepherd, and know my
sheep and am known of mine.” Indeed, as the psalmist says, “The
Lord is [our] shepherd, therefore can [we] lack nothing.”
And the good shepherd himself gave this charge to
his Church, in the person of the Apostle Peter, after his Resurrection
from the dead. “Feed my sheep. Feed my sheep. Feed my
lambs.”
And we must always remember this, too. The
figure of a sheep is not used only of human beings in general, but of
one in particular. The good shepherd, for a time, lived as a lamb
among the flock. “He went like a lamb to the slaugher, and as a
sheep before her shearers is mute, so opened he not his mouth.”
And in the mystical vision that was revealed to the Apostle John on
Patmos, that lamb was seated on the very throne of God.
“Worthy is the lamb that was slain to receive power,
and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and
blessing."
And let every creature which is in heaven, and on
the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all
that are in them, say, "Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be
unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and
ever.”
Church of Our Lady of Walsingham
27 June 2004
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