I imagine most of us have had the experience of being lost at one time or another of not knowing where we are in relation to where we’re trying to go. That’s one form of being lost. It can be annoying, but we can look at a map, stop for directions, even get help with our phone. It’s not a big deal. It’s just frustrating. Eventually we find our way. But REALLY being lost is another thing. Really being lost is more like being on a hike in the wilderness in winter, losing your compass and all sense of direction, and knowing your survival is at stake if you can’t get oriented and find your way back to the trailhead. What is it to be lost THEN? The one lone sheep who has wandered away from the other 99 in tonight’s Gospel is that kind of lost, and it has no instinct for finding its way back. Left on its own, it will not return. It is only the shepherd’s love-driven search that stands between its survival and its immanent death. Can you identify with that bewildered and terrified lost sheep? Have you ever felt that alone, that stranded and vulnerable?
On the other side of that experience stands the shepherd, the one who is frantically searching. Have you ever lost a wallet, a purse, a ring or something extremely valuable to you? If so, you probably know the feeling of panic that takes over your whole body when you first realize the object is gone! At that moment, NOTHING else matters! A kind of tunnel vision takes over. It narrows your focus and drives your search, as if that particular object is the ONLY thing in the world that matters. It’s this kind of experience Jesus is picturing for the Pharisees and scribes in these parables. The magnitude of God’s concern for anyone who is lost has a feverish intensity to it, and it is directed most especially toward those who have no idea where they are and may not even know they are lost. Those who, without help, will never make it back. The Pharisees and scribes are judging these folks as ‘sinners.’ They don’t see themselves in that category at all, of course. They certainly haven’t ‘lost their way,’ they think. Or have they? Are they even more lost because they are so certain they are on the right track, even ‘holy’ in the eyes of God? Contrast their self-assessment with that of Paul who admits having been “a blasphemer, a persecutor, a person filled with arrogance.” He says he didn’t know what he was doing when he was merely following the ‘law’, which is what these Pharisees and scribes hide behind in their judgments of others.
Jesus holds a mirror while talking about sheep and coins. He talks about God’s near obsession with those who have wandered off into the wilderness, as well as those stuck in some corner no one else can see. God is desperately searching for them. Who would you rather be in this story, a person without blame or someone God is fiercely pursuing out of a profound, inexplicably deep and abiding love? Maybe those of us, like Paul, who know we are worthy of blame?
No one is ever truly “lost” to God, of course. All of us live and move and have our being IN God, so we can’t actually get lost permanently. But we can become lost temporarily, and we can feel lost and separated from God for long periods of time, especially if we get caught up in ‘golden calf worship’ like the stiff-necked people Moses defends in our first reading. Those golden calves come in many guises, but they all promise us the world in some form, as the Tempter promised Jesus in the desert. In those times it can be extremely difficult to even KNOW we are lost. Like the Pharisees and scribes we can think we have it together when, in fact, we’ve unknowingly left the trail and are wandering further into the winter wilderness. Even then God doesn’t give up on us.
It is important to see that Jesus is addressing these parables to the scribes and Pharisees, specifically. The tax collectors and ‘sinners’ are crowding around him, listening to his teaching, taking it all in, while these religious authorities are murmuring and judging all of them. But who is Jesus talking to here? The critics. The finger-pointers. The ‘holier-than-thou’ folks. God isn’t giving up on them either. The Teacher is speaking directly to them. The people who think they’ve been FOUND aren’t much different from those who wander off into the wilderness without a compass or without an instinctive orientation toward “home.” Those who believe they are on the RIGHT path, invulnerable and safe, are as lost as everyone else.
In this time of deep polarization, when we are constantly being prompted to turn against each other, to judge, criticize and demean those we disagree with, even here in our church, these readings call us back to a single truth—God loves all of us. God loves us with a profound, fierce, mother-bear love, and pursues us until we turn back toward the voice of the shepherd calling us home. In our fear and our fighting we have all lost our way. Paul blames his blindness on arrogance. The Pharisees and scribes, in their murmured judgments of everyone in the crowd, including Jesus, showcase their arrogance. In our church, in our nation, we see blind arrogance on full display. God loved Paul anyway and knocked the blindness out of him on the road to Damascus. God loved the Pharisees and scribes so much Jesus tried to get through to them over and over again as he made his way to Jerusalem.
Maybe it’s time to fully see how lost we all are, how we are both the wandering sheep and the priceless coin stuck in a corner. Maybe it’s time to ‘argue with God’ on behalf of our people, in other words—time to turn our fear and anger, as well as our arrogance, into prayer. Standing in the wilderness of this time, lost in a corner of this darkened room, point no fingers. The humble know what it is to be lost. So pray more; judge less. Pray more; fear less. Wrestle with the Pharisee inside and learn humility. Only in acknowledging we are lost can we ever know what it is to be found.
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