As most of you know, actor Paul Newman started a food company several years ago. Many products now bear the name, "Newman’s Own." With profits from this business, Newman helped build a camp for critically ill children. It’s called the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp. The name was taken from his film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Newman was sitting at a table one day with a camper who asked him who he was. The actor reached for a carton of Newman’s Own lemonade and showed the boy his likeness on the container, "This is me," Newman said. Wide-eyed, the camper looked at the picture on the food carton and asked, "Are you lost or something?" (1) Good question. It’s a frightening thing to be lost.
A few years ago, Pat Croce, president of the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team, decided to get his helicopter pilot’s license. After hours of instruction by a veteran helicopter pilot, Pat felt ready to take his first solo flight. Everything went smoothly until Pat noticed some power lines below him. The thought of making a mistake and flying into those power lines sent him into a panic. He decided to turn the chopper around and head back to the landing strip.
He radioed the control tower to tell them he was just five miles from the landing strip. But as he got closer to his goal, Pat realized that he was off-course. He had paid attention to every part of his training except this one minor detail: he hadn’t listened carefully when the instructor told him the location of the airport. He was so intent on learning how to fly that he had ignored this small, but crucial, piece of information. Instead of heading to the landing strip, he was heading straight for a Kmart parking lot. He was lost, and terrified of running out of fuel. When the control tower checked in to ask why Pat hadn’t landed, he readily admitted his mistake. With their help, Pat made a safe landing. (2) If you have ever been lost, you know what a helpless feeling it is.
H.H. Staton in his book, A Guide to the Parables of Jesus, tells the story of having been on an ocean liner headed to the Middle East. Nine hundred miles out to sea a sail was sighted on the horizon. As the liner drew closer, the passengers saw that the boat--a small sloop flying a Turkish flag--had run up a distress signal. Through a faulty chronometer or immature navigation, the small vessel had become lost. For nearly an hour the liner circled the little boat, giving its crew the correct latitude and longitude. Naturally the passengers on the liner were greatly interested in the crisis. A boy of about 12 standing on the deck remarked aloud to himself, "It’s a big ocean to be lost in."
He was speaking of a physical ocean, of course, but there are many people who are lost in a spiritual sense, in an emotional sense--and what many of them discover, too, is that it’s "a big ocean to be lost in."
In Luke 15, Jesus speaks to the experience of being lost. He describes three situations in which precious possessions were lost--a lost sheep, a lost coin and a lost son. We’re going to focus on the first of these, the lost sheep.
"Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent."
God is the God of lost sheep. That’s what Jesus is saying to us. God notices when one tiny lamb wanders from the flock. And God is willing to get His hands dirty bringing that lamb home. That’s who God is. That’s how much God cares. One little lamb goes astray, and God is willing to leave all the nice lambs who stayed at home and go through the briars and the brambles until God finds that one lost lamb. It’s a beautiful image that every Christian should cherish. Whether you’ve ever been lost or whether you have someone you love who is lost right now, it is great comfort that God cares about those who have gone astray.
The picture of God as a shepherd is an interesting one. It is at least as old as the twenty-third psalm, "The Lord is my shepherd . . ." Jesus makes use of the image several times. We’ve talked before about the image of shepherds in most societies. It is not a good one.
There is an old Spanish folktale about a doctor, a rancher, and a shepherd who get into an argument about who is the smartest. The doctor is an educated man, a little on the arrogant side. He claims to be the most knowledgeable. The rancher is wealthy and powerful. He believes that he is smarter. They look down on the shepherd because he is uneducated and, like many shepherds in his region, smells very strongly of sheep. The proprietor of the general store challenges the three men to complete a task. For months she has tried to get rid of a skunk that has camped out in her shed. Whichever man can get rid of the skunk will be judged the smartest of the three.
The doctor goes first. After just one minute in the shed, he comes running out. The rancher goes in next. He lasts seventy seconds before he, too, comes running out of the shed. Finally, the shepherd goes in. A minute later, the skunk comes running out of the shed, and the shepherd is crowned the smartest man of the three. (3)
In Palestine two thousand years ago, shepherds rarely bathed. In that dry and dusty land, water was a luxury. It was used primarily for drinking and for caring for your sheep, not bathing. The shepherd spent most of his time around sheep, not other people. To identify God with a shepherd was hardly a compliment. A comparable picture of God might be an image of God spending His hours in flop houses where drug addicts finish out their days poking their arms with unsanitary needles. It might be a picture of God who spends His hours in the garbage heaps of a South American city where children scavenge for food. It is a picture of God stretched out naked on a cross in the company of thieves. This is how much God loves us, the picture screams out. God is the God of lost sheep.
Let’s focus for a moment on the sheep. Sheep don’t have a very good image either, do they? As someone has said, "If you were starting your own sports team and needed a mascot you might consider choosing the lions, tigers, eagles, or bears, as they give us a sense of power and independence. I seriously doubt that anyone would consider their mascot to be a sheep. Sheep are not known for their agility, strength or independence." (4) That is why sheep require a shepherd. They have a tendency to do dumb things.
There was a rather bizarre story from the Associated Press two years ago about 1500 sheep that jumped off a cliff in Turkey. First, one sheep jumped to its death. Then stunned Turkish shepherds, who had left the herd to graze while they had breakfast, watched as nearly 1,500 others followed, each leaping off the same cliff. In the end, 450 dead animals lay on top of one another in a billowy white pile. Those who jumped later were saved as the pile got higher and the fall more cushioned.
The loss was devastating to the families who depended on the sheep as a significant source of income. The shepherds only had to relax for a few moments and the sheep plunged to their death. Dumb sheep. Do I need to say to you that people do many more dumb things than do sheep? No sheep has ever been charged with abusing its own lamb. No sheep has ever been charged with stealing from a neighbor or with murder. Sheep don’t knowingly abuse their own bodies or minds. They don’t hate other sheep who are of a different color or economic level or religion. Sheep only have one or two ways they can become lost. Humans have thousands, and we seem to be inventing new ones every day.
My guess is that all of us feel lost from time to time. Some of us have hurts that were inflicted on us early in our lives, and those hurts still cause us pain. They may even cause us to lash out at others or to act self-destructively. We may not even know why we are doing some of the dumb things we do. It is like we are driven. Sometimes we don’t seem able to help ourselves. That is why we need a shepherd. That is why we need a God of lost sheep. That is why we need a God who gets His hands dirty and comes to us where we are.
Daniel D. Meyer tells about a painting which depicts a lamb who has obviously strayed away from its flock and now struggles to find its way through a tangled thicket. "On the other side of the thicket lie greener pastures, and the rest of the flock is already there. But what is so striking about the picture is a detail one almost misses at first glance. Amidst the tangled brush to the left of the lamb, you can barely make out the figure of a man, his shepherd’s crook ready to reach out should the striving creature be unable to move any more. In his eyes are all the tension that Love always feels when a loved one is struggling. But for now he waits . . . As sometimes he waits for you and me." (5)
In one of his books, author Max Lucado tells about a chaplain years ago in the French army who used the Twenty-third Psalm to encourage soldiers before battle. He would urge them to repeat the opening clause of the psalm, ticking it off, one finger at a time. The little finger represented the word the; the ring finger represented the word Lord; the middle finger, is; the index finger, my; and the thumb, shepherd. Then he asked every soldier to write the words on the palm of his hand and to repeat the verse whenever he needed strength.
The chaplain placed special emphasis on the message of the index finger--MY. He reminded the soldiers that God is a personal shepherd with a personal mission--to get them home safely.
Did the chaplain’s words have an impact? In the life of one man they did. After a battle one of the young soldiers was found dead, his right hand clutching the index finger of the left hand. "The Lord is MY shepherd . . ." (6) Obviously, this simple reminder of the word "my" had given him courage and comfort at the very end. This is the message of the complete and unconditional love of God. Is there anyone whom you love completely and unconditionally? Then you know, don’t you?
Years ago, Caryll Houselander wrote some beautiful and disturbing words in the book, The Reed of God:
"If ever you have loved anyone very deeply, and then lost him through separation, estrangement, or even by death, you will know that there is an instinct to look for him in every crowd. The human heart is not reasonable; it will go on seeking for those whom it loves even when they are dead. It will miss a beat when someone passes by who bears them the least resemblance; a tilt of the hat, an uneven walk, a note in the voice." (7)
Some of you know what she is talking about. That’s what love does. It is forever seeking the one who is lost. That is why the Good Shepherd leaves the ninety-and-nine to find that one lost lamb that has wandered from the fold.
This, of course, is the message of the cross.
A minister once asked a shepherd what images came to mind when he thought about the Lamb of God and the Good Shepherd. The shepherd replied, "Well, I’ll tell you, but it’s a bit graphic. Lambing time comes around every spring, and it’s the hardest time of year. We lose a lot of mother ewes and baby lambs during the birthing process. You would think that a mother lamb whose baby had died would look for a baby lamb to nourish. But that’s not what happens. The orphaned lambs will die if we don’t find substitute mothers for them. The good shepherd has only one choice: [to drain the blood] of the dead lamb and pour its blood over the orphaned lamb. When the grieving mother smells her baby’s blood on another lamb, she will accept the new baby lamb as her own flesh and blood. This is the baby lamb’s only chance for survival. That’s what I think of when I hear the words, ‘the Lamb of God and the Good Shepherd.’" (8)
"The Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world . . ." (John 1:29). This is how much God loves us. His blood was shed . . . for us.
Are you feeling lost today? Life getting you down, friends letting you down, family leaving you out, co-workers shutting you out? There are a thousand ways we can feel lost when we come into this room each week. There is only one way to be found. Open yourself to the love of the Good Shepherd.
1. Quoted in Yale-New Haven Hospital Magazine, Reader’s Digest, October 1994, p. 142.
2. Pat Croce, with Bill Lyon. I Feel Great, and You Will Too! (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2000), pp. 110-113.
3. Teresa Pijoan de Van Etten, Spanish-American Folktales (Little Rock: August House Publishers, 1990), pp. 101-105.
4. Robert AuBuchon (http://www.rftpsermons.com/psalm23a.html.
5. http://ministries.cc-ob.org/sermons/1999/0599c.htm.
6. F. W Boreham, Life Verses: The Bible’s Impact on Famous Lives, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1994), p. 211. Cited in Max Lucado, Traveling Light (Nashville: W Publishing Group 2001).
7. Cited in John Andrew, Nothing Cheap (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1988), p. 41.
8. Harlan Bemis. Cited by Barry Robinson, http://www.rockies.net/~spirit/sermons/a-or10-keeping.php.