The lost coin and the lost sheep were among the favorite scriptures of Fred Rogers’ faith. These intimate expressions of a searching and seeking God; and a searching and seeking faith, were woven into his work and life. This scripture is part of several lost things...lost coin, lost sheep, and culminating in the Gospel of Luke with a lost son, but for today we will focus on the first two. This allegory of a lost sheep is also found in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Thomas. In the Gospel of Matthew, rather than the sheep being lost...perhaps wandering off at the sight of a good looking bush, the sheep is deceived; it is tricked away. So rather than a story told to explore repentance, or turning around or the Greek word metanoia or coming back to the fold...it becomes and exploration of being deceived or trying not to deceive by bad theology and cruel people. In the Gospel of Thomas...which did not make it into our canon, the story has the sheep owner searching after the sheep because he notices it is gone...not out of deception or getting lost, but because the owner notices the biggest sheep is gone, finds it, and then names how it was the most important sheep because it was the biggest. I’m going to say that interpretation is a little complicated to unpack, as there is really no moral to the story or value of community (and perhaps why Thomas didn’t make it in the canon). But I include it because you can see that this sheep illustration must have been commonly used by our wandering Rabbi Jesus and a diversity of voices share it with us yet today.

There have been a diversity of ways that folks write about and interpret this Jesus saying, which brings us to a friendly Anti-Anti-Semitism PSA for the day...Jesus is in conversation with the religious leaders of his day. The Pharisees are often in conflict with Jesus, and that conflict is between people who love their tradition and their people. We forget they are discussing their own identity politics, the meaning of their own faith tradition in community, and they are doing this under the oppression of the Roman Empire. According to Amy Jill-Levine, there are commentators who suggest Jesus is making the Pharisees mad just by bringing up shepherds and women...despised classes of people. I don’t know if there was a song, “Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be shepherds.” There are likely some writings that perhaps give some basis for this; they work with animals that are not very smart and need a bath and they are likely guilty by association. But it is certainly more nuanced than modern Christians like to give credit. 

The Pharisees, like Jesus, are rooted in a tradition where every great leader passes through the vocation of Shepard. It’s Leadership Development 101 in the Hebrew Bible. It is an honorable profession, caring for dependent animals, enduring hardship and weather, knowing their needs. Every great leader was a shepherd: Moses spent time tending flocks; Jacob, on his way to being re-named Israel, tends to animals; and David, the greatest king in Israel’s history, was a shepherd. So we can’t get too excited about this passage, at Jesus offending the Pharisees by the mere mention of shepherds, nor can we get to self-righteous about Jesus eating with sinners and tax collectors as through they are wholesale excluded from Jewish life. We like to tell it that way, but these “sinners” are welcome in the temple (Amy Jill-Levine, Short Stories by Jesus). Sinner is not used here, exactly as we might today...like someone yelling it at you from across the campus or holding up a sign at Pride Parade saying “Sinner Repent.” It’s an actual group of people who are outside the law and that law is about love. So often we read these narratives and think how Jesus is about love and not laws...like Jesus is the Great De-regulator (I’m sure that is the title of a White House Bible Study) and we Christians never created any rules. Being outside of the law meant not caring for the widow and the orphan, vulnerable people, foreigners, immigrants and people outside of the law were allowed in the temple. Contrary to some of our modern imaginings, they were included in the life of the community even if the relationship was strained and complicated. But Jesus is taking a step closer...perhaps seeking them out, longing to sway, organize with them, include and love them...or at the very least enjoy their dinner company.

We are invited to be part of this story - just like Jesus invited the Pharisees when he said, “Who among you having a hundred sheep?” We as modern people don’t often deal in sheep every day. And so it’s important to remember that Jesus is presenting a person of means, the woman with her 10 coins has a lot of resources...probably like the women who funded Jesus’ ministry. Owning 100 sheep means owning a large flock. Jesus is talking about one with enough seeking out what is lost or missing; not out of desperation but out of abundance. The owner of the sheep realizes one is missing, sets out to search, recovers the sheep, and brings the flock back to completion (or makes it whole again). The woman with the coin lights the lamp, gets a broom, and goes to work searching. And both of them at the end invite friends to rejoice. Which is code for party...and hopefully they killed the fatted calf rather than serving lamb chops. Regardless of the menu the point of “rejoice with me” is extravagant celebration in honor of finding what was lost.

Fred Rogers loved this text and imagined God as the searcher, looking for us, no matter the cost or duration of the search, no matter the place or state in which we might be found. He said,“God continues to try and find us.” And like the woman and the sheep owner, “God never gives up. God looks for what is best in us, not for what is worst” (Michael Long, Peaceful Neighbor, p. 29). Some people throw this parable around to talk about sin, and sinners needing to repent. But a sheep needing to repent for just being a sheep is sort of where the allegory breaks down. And maybe that was part of what Rogers liked about it. Rogers disagreed with the self-righteous religious leaders who built up walls between any person and God, set limits on God’s love, or suggested that people needed to anything to be worthy of God’s love. Once he was walking from his morning swim to the studio when a person, trying to convert his co-workers and get them to repent, recognized Fred. He pulled him in saying, “Tell these people there is only one way to God.” Fred Rogers’ responded, “God loves you just the way you are” (Alen Borsuke,“Everyone’s Neighbor,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, May 20, 2001.).

God loves you just the way you are. To Fred, God was not judge and jury, not a sentencer of damnation. God was the Great Appreciator. His radical notion of love and grace opposed a popular Christianity that built barriers, questioned worthiness and utilized fear. In contrast to Fred Rogers, Billy Graham was preaching a message with a lot of ifs and buts about God’s love. God loves you, but God would love you more if you confess your sins. God loves you, but would love you more if you seek forgiveness and would really, really love you if you would accept Jesus as your savior and then God would love you enough to let you out of a tortuous pit of eternal damnation. Rogers was wary of this theology, the fences it made, and the limits it placed on God’s love. “God the Great Appreciator cannot help but find us good, valuable and lovable...When we hear a word that we are not lovable, we are not hearing the word of God” (Long, 31).

Rogers believed in a radical, loving God. The Great Appreciator, loving us as we are. He preached that we should all come and be loved and we will grow from there. This growth might be like metanoia...the Greek word for repentance. But this is not repentance or transformation or a turning  towards God born out of fear of God’s punishment and wrath. This is born out of God’s great love. We are so loved that we can grow. We are so valuable that we can heal our broken spaces and honor the wounds in the world. Can you imagine the world if our faith began from a place of love, singing songs celebrating God the Great Appreciator rather than “A mighty fortress is our God”? This theology makes people nervous and it should. It might seem oh so sweet and kind on the surface but if you really think about it, it requires a lot of us. We get God as judge, and we are pretty judgmental. We get having to earn our worth, we get scary Santa Claus god that needs us to check off the right boxes...that is the currency of the world. God the Great Appreciator - we don’t get that so easily. We have a hard time with our own worth and value. We have a hard time loving ourselves, let alone loving anyone else...at least very well. God the Great Appreciator asks us to love radically. To be like that woman searching out what was lost and celebrating. To be like the shepherd setting out on an adventure to find what was missing. To love ourselves and to love others just the way they are changes everything about the way we live and work and care for one another. 

May we have the courage.

Amen.