Third Reading: Luke 15:1-10
1 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to [Jesus.] 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
3 So he told them this parable: 4 “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? 5 When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6 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.’ 7 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.
8 “Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9 When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ 10 Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
The Pastor concludes: This is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
__________
The ninety-nine and the one. You really can’t think about either without thinking of the other. In some ways, each creates itself; and maybe in some ways they create and sustain each other.
That reminds me of my late Uncle J____.
He was my father’s eldest brother. I don’t know very much about him, but I do know that for a great deal of his life he was like a sheep that was off in the distant wilderness, away from the rest of the flock – not geographically, mind you, but relationally.
My first experience of this (at least, the first one that I remember) took place when our family visited Uncle J____’s home in C____, the community where we had once lived, too. Most of my father’s extended family also lived there, but by this time we had moved to the North Okanagan–Shuswap, to a dairy farm near Lumby. We had returned to C____ to visit relatives. And thus we visited Uncle J____ and Aunt P____.
As we sat down at their table to eat lunch, Uncle J____ looked at my father and said, “You can pray if you want to. I believe I work for what I eat.” So my father led our family in saying grace. I don’t remember anything else about the meal, because I was so shocked by what Uncle J____ had said. I had never heard such a thing from a member of our extended family. As we drove home, Dad offered an explanation. He said, “Your Uncle J____ is the black sheep of the family.”
Except for perhaps once, I did not see Uncle J____ until almost 30 years later. By this time Lorraine and I had married, Karla and Peter had been born, I had graduated from the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, and I was called to be the Pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in Burnaby. I had become intrigued by my family and my place in it, and so I decided to reconnect with various members. I contacted relatives still living in C____ and made arrangements to visit.
I devoted one day to visiting various uncles and aunts as a group, which included my recently widowed godmother, Tante Luise. It was satisfying to reconnect as an adult with people whom I had loved and admired when I was a child. But when I said that I wanted to visit Uncle J____, they became uneasy. “We’d better go with you,” said two uncles. I had really wanted to visit him alone, but out of respect for those two uncles I agreed, so the three of us went to see Uncle J____.
Now, by this time Aunt P____ had died. In his advancing age, J____ needed some assistance. He lived with a care-giving family in their private home.
A few days before this planned visit, I had phoned Uncle J____ from our home in Burnaby, just to ask whether I could visit. Our phone conversation had started like this. “Hello, Uncle J____. This is your nephew, Clifford Reinhardt.” There was a brief silence, and then he replied, “Oh, you’re Fred’s son, aren’t you? I don’t think we have ever met.” I don’t think we have ever met. Hmm. Was he suffering the forgetfulness of old age, or was this a symptom of his role as the black sheep of the family?
When my two other uncles and I went to visit Uncle J____, after only a few moments (as much as I loved them) I found myself wishing that they had not come along. Whenever J____ started to say something that the other two thought was provocative, they would cut in and change the subject before he could complete his sentence. I’m sure they meant well. It could well be that in the past Uncle J____ had said some nasty things, and they wanted to spare me his invective. Even so, I found myself wishing that they would just let him talk.
In that conversation J____ didn’t say too much about faith in God, but he did say that he thought the church did not have much credibility, in view of the scandals of breach of trust and abuse inflicted by the clergy. It was a sobering and somewhat unsettling visit, but just the same I was glad to reconnect with this uncle, my flesh and blood.
A few years later I visited again, this time by myself. It was summer time, and it was very warm. The door was answered by the woman of the care-giving family. She led me to Uncle J____’s room, where I found him sitting in a chair, shirtless. He explained to me that he had developed a skin disorder that was irritated by the heat, and he couldn’t bear to have even the lightest shirt on his shoulders.
We talked of various things, including his life’s work and his family. For most of his career, he had served as the head of the road construction crew of a logging company, working mostly in the forested mountains around Harrison Lake. And then came a big surprise: after a bit of a silence, he told me that he now believed in Jesus Christ.
Now, I knew that he had been baptized as an infant at the font of a Lutheran Church in Borodino in the southern Ukraine. I knew that he had been raised and confirmed in the Christian faith, even though he didn’t speak of these things on this particular day. Somewhere along the way, he had lapsed. Now, in his last years in life, he had returned to the faith.
We had a wonderful visit. My last image of Uncle J____ was him standing on the sidewalk outside the home, still shirtless. His blue eyes were bright as he waved goodbye to me as I drove off.
Not too many months later I received a phone call from his daughter. J____ had died. She asked me to officiate at the funeral service. I was honoured. Usually I do not serve as a pastor in life-event services involving family members, but this time I agreed.
After the funeral service and the reception, I gathered with some of my relatives at the home of one of my aunts. I asked Aunt I____ about her late brother’s role as black sheep of the family and his eventual restoration to faith.
My aunt suggested several things. She said that J____’s wife, P____, had never felt welcomed in the Reinhardt clan and and that this fact had driven a wedge between J____ and the family of his birth. Her ethnic and religious identity may have been a factor: she wasn’t German, and she wasn’t Lutheran. My aunt also hinted that maybe there were some Lutheran pastors back in Manitoba (where my father’s family had first settled) who had made things worse.
As for his restoration to faith – my aunt said that in the years following his wife’s death one of J____’s daughters had spoken with her father repeatedly about faith in Jesus Christ, and had prayed persistently for him and with him.
Since then, something else has occurred to me. With the deaths of some of the other uncles and aunts, maybe more space opened up among “the ninety-nine” for “the one” who didn’t fit. Families are often complex, and even without anyone intending to “crowd him out,” maybe there just wasn’t room for this ONE, the eldest one among the children.
In any case, no longer was J____ Reinhardt the black sheep of either the Reinhardt family or the family of faith.
All those people are now gone – a generation brought into this world and nurtured by the grace of God. I have often thought about them and these issues. The dynamics of the black sheep (or “the ninety-nine and the one”) are complex and kind of mysterious. That’s demonstrated by the tale that Jesus tells. Listen once again:
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 neighbours, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’
We always think of that one sheep as prone to getting lost. We’ve been taught that this one sheep was probably cantankerous and ornery, or always dissatisfied with the pasture that the shepherd chose, or highly suggestible, or in some other way easily pulled from the flock, and prone to wandering off. In short, we’re supposed to think of it as a stiff-necked sinner, either opposed to God or at the very least indifferent to God.
But Jesus doesn’t say that. What Jesus says is this: Which one of you, having one hundred sheep and losing one of them … I think we can still infer that some sheep are “more easily lost” than others because of their character. But we have to acknowledge that, in Jesus’ story, the sheep is lost because the owner (or perhaps the hired shepherd) lost it. That’s what Jesus says.
Let’s take note: He’s telling this tale to the religious leaders of his day, who had been grumbling that he had been gathering to himself “tax collectors and sinners” – that is, people whom they judged were beyond redemption, perhaps even traitors to the faith. That’s why Jesus told his tale.
And that’s why, when the owner (or hired shepherd) finds that one sheep that was lost, he is so overcome by joy that he leaves the rest of the sheep where they are and goes home. He calls together his friends and neighbours and throws a party in celebration of his recovery of the one that he had lost.
There’s a double scandal in the story. First of all, the way Jesus tells his tale, it’s the owner or hired shepherd who is responsible for the one sheep getting separated and lost. And secondly, the restoration of that one is such a joyous event that it’s okay to leave the ninety-nine out in the wilderness, vulnerable to predators, while throwing a party in celebration of the one that was restored.
Today, I’ll sum it up this way: Just as a family sometimes labels one of its members the black sheep and perhaps unintentionally sends them away, so also a congregation of the faithful – and its pastor – can sometimes be complicit in sending away one who doesn’t seem to fit, one who is judged to be beyond redemption.
I’m speaking as a pastor who, in the course of more than 40 years of ordained ministry, no doubt has been complicit in just this way. In some cases, I know this for certain. In other cases, I’m just left wondering whether I could have functioned differently – served more faithfully.
Repentance and restoration is for everyone: for those who been lost and have returned, as well for those who never went away. Repentance and forgiveness is for leaders just as much as it is for followers. It’s often a long process rather than a single event. It needs time and space. And it needs faithful proclamation and ministering.
It’s part of the mystery of God, whose capacity for the ninety-nine, and the one – and for religious leaders ancient and modern – far exceeds our abilities to comprehend.
Let us be faithful in telling and living the Good News of God in Jesus Christ. That’s what God wants us to do. And let us commend ourselves – black sheep and all! – to God’s redemptive care.
Peace be with you all.