What was it like the first time you were left at home alone? Most of us probably don't remember to much of what it would have been like. I think I imagined that it would be a lot like when Kevin gets left behind at home in the movie, Home Alone. He goes wild and crazy for a while because he has the whole place to himself.
It's a strange experience to be left alone, or left behind. Generally what happens is that we have to figure out what to do because when that happens it means that we are in charge of caring for ourselves and working through whatever happens. Our success, or lack of it, is determined by how well we care for ourselves.
In the last post, we started looking at Jesus parable of the Lost Sheep in Luke 15. This is a story that is central to who we are as Christian people. One of the cores of the Christian message is a call to go search for the lost. Here's where I want to be a little careful. This isn't a term that should be used from a position of superiority, nor is it descriptive for anyone except for Christians. What we mean when we say lost are people who do not share our faith.
Many of the folks that are a part of this group are people who are searching for answers. They know that something is missing, even if they can't articulate it well, and our response is to say we have that answer. The answer we offer is a community of faith that is brought together by Jesus Christ. The purpose is to help find meaning in life, work through the joys, celebrations, concerns, and struggles together, and know that we can do this because we are made in God's image and Jesus has shown us the way to get there. Lost, in this case, is not a pejorative term, but it is descriptive of our mission and hopes as a part of the Christian faith.
When Jesus was telling this parable, he was directing it to the legal experts and Pharisees (the religious people) and telling them that they've been doing things wrong, and he was giving them the new goal to go after, to literally go to where the people (lost) were and reach out to them on their terms.
However, that is only one part of the story. Jesus' brilliance in storytelling is that he isn't limited to only one meaning to the stories that he tells (even if that is how we tell them later). There is a whole other level to the story that we don't often think of. Take a look at the following verse and see if you find what I'm talking about.
There are still the 99 in the pasture. Jesus tells a story of 100 sheep, and all we seem to focus on is the 100th sheep. What happens to the 99 left in the pasture? This is one of the questions that has always fascinated me. What good does it do to go after the lost sheep if the 99 aren't going to be okay? What good does it do if you leave them in mortal peril, about to walk off a cliff, or even without purpose or direction so that when you get back you have to go searching for those 99? This leads to the main question for this post.
When is it okay to go after the lost sheep and leave the others behind? To begin to answer this question, we look to another story of someone trying to answer this same question. Moses, in Exodus 15, is facing something of a similar situation. He has been called by God to lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and into the promised land, and he has also be called to care for them and make sure their needs are met as they go about on this journey.
This was getting to be to much for Moses and he needed help. That help came from his Father-in-Law Jethro.
Jethro told Moses that he can't do it all. Jethro knew what it was like to lead people, especially a large number of them. He could help Moses figure out how to do it. What we'll see, in the verses that come after this, is Jethro setting Moses up to be able to do everything that he needs to do. In the process of this, he'll answer our question for when it is okay to leave the 99.
When you look at these things that Jethro is telling Moses, this is doing more than just helping Moses out. Remember that one of the most important things that is happening in the Israelites wandering around in the wilderness for 40 years is that they are learning how to be a nation, to be one people, to be God's children. This wasn't something that they had experience with before and now they are figuring it out.
Jethro's advice is helping them take another step along that path, so that they can take care of themselves now that they are alone, out from under the rule of the Egyptians. This is one of the first steps that they'll take so that they can be okay when they go into the promised land.
I called this post, Commissioning the Sheep because this is the part of the story that sets the 99 up to be left in the pasture. They can be left because the Shepherd has prepared them for it. The advice that Jethro gives to Moses is just as good for us today as it was for Moses back in the day, and this is what Jesus was setting his disciples up for when he was with them.
This is part of what our mission as a church looks like. We are called to be the 99, and also the shepherds. We can trust that when God brings us together as a community of faith, as a church, then he is working on us to make this happen, and bringing together all the pieces we need to make it work.
As we start our movement into the Advent season, my hope is that we look both for the ways that God is calling us to go after the lost, and how he is calling us together to care for the 99. Most importantly, we share in all of this because Jesus goes with us, and so let us do this in Jesus' name. Amen.
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