Sheep, Shepherds and God the Great Appreciator

Scripture: Luke 15:1-7

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."  So he told them this parable: "Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?  When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices.  And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, "Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.'  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. 

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We are in a season of sheep and shepherds, a season of good news coming first to the very margins, as Angels illuminate a vast midnight sky. Shepherds happen to be a go-to metaphor of Jesus and likely of the folks that followed him…even today when most of us have less direct knowledge of sheep and shepherds than ever. This scripture is one of a trilogy of lost things, a lost sheep and a lost coin culminating in a lost son. But the parables are not really, I believe, about what is lost as much as they reveal the nature of the one who seeks. 



In the Gospel of Luke, the one who seeks the lost does their searching regardless of cost, there is no ROI, there is really this prodigal God who breaks all the rules searching and all this searching brings the herd or the coin collection or the family back to wholeness and always ends in feasting. There is in Luke, some conversation of turning with intention toward God, metanoia. This allegory of a lost sheep is also found in the Gospel of Matthew, where rather than the sheep being lost…perhaps wandering off at the sight of a good looking shrub, the sheep is deceived, it is tricked away…though I imagine someone still using a tasty shrub. So rather than a story told to explore repentance, or turning around or the greek word metanoia…it becomes an exploration of being deceived or trying not to deceived by bad theology and cruel people. 



In the Gospel of Thomas, which you may rightly say, Pastor Debra, that’s not in the Bible (it did not make it into our cannon but it still exits) the story has the sheep owner search after the sheep because he notices it is gone…not out of deception or even because it was lost, but the owner notices the biggest sheep is gone, finds it, and than names how it was the most important sheep because it was the biggest. Which I’m going to say 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 cannon. 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 that followed him almost immediately. 



There have been a diversity of ways that folks write about and interpret this moment 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, and we watch forgetting 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. We often love narratives about Jesus annoying religious leaders, as through he would be having a different conversation with modern Christians. I have heard adult Christians name that the Old testament was all about laws and Jesus was all about love so we are superior, like Jesus is some Great deregulator and Christians have never made a rule. This is one of those stories that can lead to a misapplication.  



According to Amy Jill-Levine, In Short Stories by Jesus, there are commentators that suggest Jesus is making the Pharisees mad just by bringing up shepherds and women…despised classes of people. Well, gender politics is still complicated today. The Mediterranean world is not always kind to shepherds, they work a risky and vulnerable job; exposed to the elements and with poor wages and not a 401K in sight. They care for animals that literally cannot survive without them and they stink, both the sheep and their caretakers. But, Jesus and the Pharisees alike, are part of a tradition where being a shepherd is practically leadership development in the Hebrew Bible. Every great leader tended flocks, Moses spent time tending flocks, Rachel tended the herds, Jacob on his way to being re-named Israel, tends animals and David, the greatest King in Israel’s history was a shepherd. So we can’t get too excited about this passage, as Jesus offending the Pharisees in every way possible or that he eats with Sinners and Tax collectors that would have been excluded from every aspect of Jewish religious life. Sinner is not thrown around in the way that we might hear it today, not 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 that are outside the law and that law is about love. 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, include and love them…or at the very least enjoying their dinner company. 



So here we are in this story, invited to be a part, 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 a flock of 100 sheep is owning a large flock. Jesus is talking about one with enough seeking out what is lost or the one that is missing, not out of desperation but out of abundance. The owner of the sheep realize one is missing, sets out to search, recovers the sheep and brings the flock back to completion; 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 and no matter the place or state in which we might be found. He said, “God continues to try and find us,” like the woman and the sheep owner, “God never gives up. God looks for what is best in us, not for what is worst.” See some people throw this parable around to talk about sin, and sinners needing to repent, which a sheep needing to repent for just being a sheep is sort of where the allegory breaks down to begin with. And maybe that was part of what Rogers’ liked about it. Rogers’ disagreed with the self-righteous religious leaders that 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 between his morning swim and the studio when a person, trying to convert his co-workers, asking 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.”



God loves you just the way you are. God, to Fred, was not judge and jury, sentencer of damnation. God was the Great Appreciator. His radical notion of love and grace lay up and against 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 by God’s love. God loves you but God would really love you if you confess your sins, God loves you but would really love you if you seek forgiveness and would really really love you if you would accept Jesus as your savor and then God would love you enough to let you out of a tortuous pit of eternal damnation. Rogers’ was weary of this theology, the fences it made, 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.”

Rogers’ believed in a radical loving God. The Great Appreciator, loving us as we are. He preached come and be loved and we will grow from there. See this growth might be like metanoia…greek word for repentance. but this is not repentance or transformation or turning around towards God that is born out of fear of God’s punishment and wrath. This is born out of God’s great love. We are so loved we can grow. We are so valuable 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? 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, we are pretty judgmental. We get having to earn our worth, we took a beautifully season like Christmas and made a Santa Claus to judge if we are nice enough for a present. We love judgment, we get it, we have felt it and we have done it. What we don’t understand is appreciation. Have you ever been to a conference where they ask you to name your three strengths or your gifts? I remember thinking this is the worst and then realizing its the worst because we never think about this, we have no practice with it. 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 and to be like the father, with his eyes to the horizon, who throws a party and gives out jewelry. Ponder your gifts this week, write them down. Ponder the gifts of others, tell them. Write a note, say thank you, notice big and small. 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.

Questions for discussion:  

 

• What does God as the great appreciator mean to you? 
• What does this scripture mean to you? How do you experience it? God searching for and finding, looking for what’s best in us; how does that make you feel? 
• What does it mean to be loved just the way you are? What does it mean to be loved and grow from there?

• What makes being loved hard? What makes that hard to extend to yourself and others?