A Banquet for Lost Sheep - Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; Luke 15:1-10

So, from time to time, this thing happens to preachers - and I hope Kate and Ragan can back me up here. It’s a strange moment in the sermon writing process where we get inspired to include a statement or claim that we’re not actually confident about. That sounds good, but is it true? Do I actually believe that? Sometimes we try the thought on for size and find that it doesn’t fit after all. But sometimes the potentially controversial statement makes it all the way to the pulpit.

Now at that point, things can go one of three ways. Sometimes, the questionable claim turns out to be a dud that no one notices anyway and we never speak of it again. Sometimes, the regret is immediate, and we cut the line between services on a Sunday morning. But sometimes, the Holy Spirit makes itself known, in one form or another, and affirms that our instincts were pointing us in the right direction.

A few weeks ago, I baptized a baby at the 10:30 service, and I also preached about Sabbath. I boldly claimed that Sabbath is for the good of the whole community, not just the practitioner, because God is interested in the salvation of the whole community, not just a few obedient individuals. I debated omitting that sentiment, but I went with it. It was a real “felt cute, might delete later” moment.

Today, I find myself back in the pulpit, with not one but two baptisms at the 10:30 service, and an entire Gospel passage about not leaving anybody behind. Apparently, the Holy Spirit can use us as a vehicle to convey messages….to ourselves. In this affirmation of my theological hunch, I hear God calling me to think and pray and preach about how we move towards the Kingdom as a community of faith, not just as individual members. So I hope you guys are down for the ride!

This morning’s Gospel passage is a real classic. Definitely worthy of the greatest hits album. The parable of the lost sheep appears in two Gospels, Matthew and Luke, but today we have Luke’s version, which delights me. Here at Christ Church, we have quite a few things in common with the Gospel of Luke - namely, a passion for the vulnerable and the oppressed, and a deep, deep love of food.

In Luke’s version of the Gospel message, Jesus loves a dinner party. And distinct from his fellow evangelists, Luke tends to describe the ultimate salvation of the whole world as a giant banquet that everyone who has ever lived is invited to. In fact, Luke seems to suggest that the great heavenly banquet won’t truly begin until everyone - and he means everyone - gets there.

We love this image. Who doesn’t want to go to a giant dinner party with God? But the metaphor also has it’s challenges. We can be tempted to assume that our only role in this scenario is to show up, and maybe remind a few other people that they’re invited, too. God will surely take care of the rest, right?

To bring it back to the lost sheep, we tend to think that we are one of the 99 who are just bumbling around together waiting for the shepherd to take care of ol’ what’s his name who got himself lost. But Luke, like all the gospel writers, uses words carefully, and there’s something interesting about the language in this parable.

Typically, parables start like this: “there was a rich man,” or, “there was a wealthy landowner.” The power dynamic is often defined immediately, and we can see clearly who represents God in the story and who represents God’s children. But today’s parable is different. When asked about who he chooses to spend his time with, Jesus responds, “which one of you, having a hundred sheep, does not leave the 99 in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?” In an unexpected twist, we are the shepherds in this parable.

Luke seems to be telling us that lost souls aren’t just God’s responsibility, they’re ours, too. And most importantly, It’s not just God who is pained when people stray from the fold. Our own lives, our experience of the Kingdom of God on earth, is incomplete in the absence of those who are missing.

Now here’s where is get complicated. When we talk about the people who are missing from our story of faith, we’re not just talking about people we haven’t seen in a long time, whose presence we would welcome back into our lives. And we’re not even talking about people we consider enemies who may yet have a change of heart, and therefore become welcome in our lives.

In Luke’s narrative, we’re talking about everyone. We are called as children of God to seek out those whose voices and stories and witness are missing from the flock, even if we find them offensive, even if they have sinned against us and are unrepentant. The banquet simply cannot get going until they’ve arrived. This is one of the more difficult teachings to digest: if one person is lost, if one person is oppressed or has hardened their heart to oppression, we all suffer, whether we realize it or not.

Unpacking Luke’s parable of the lost sheep has also caused me to rethink our reading from Jeremiah, which I’m sure you were hoping I wouldn’t mention because it’s terrifying. It is a vision of an absolute wasteland, a dream in which God surveys the earth and cannot find what is good, which does not bode well for its inhabitants.

But remember, Biblical prophets don’t predict the future, they reveal the truth about the present. Jeremiah is not warning us about a potential future disaster, he’s describing something that someone somewhere are already experiencing. He is describing the world of the lost sheep and asserting that we all contribute to the systems and structures that push people out into such desolation.

Together with the Parable of the Lost Sheep, these scriptures draw our attention to the fact that if one person is living in desolation, we all are. They are calling us to consider, who in our midst is living in Jeremiah’s wasteland? Who does not know how to do good? Who has no light? Who is stuck in a fruitless desert? Who is missing from our fold? And once we begin to notice their absence, we must also consider, how did they get so far away from us? What might we have done to add to that distance? What can we do now, as fellow shepherds of God’s flock?

Well, first thing’s first, we’re going to baptize two precious babies. Infant baptism is one of quintessential ways that we practice our theology about the salvation of the whole community. Charlotte and June cannot yet navigate their own way through the world, and so their parents, their godparents, and everyone in the room will commit, out loud, to helping them on their journey. We will remind them of who they are. We will remind them that they are safe in God’s love and safe with us. And in those moments when all they can see is desolation, we will leave the other 99 sheep to go bring them back home.

Now I know it will always be easier to imagine adorable infants as lost sheep than to imagine politicians we’re angry with perpetrators of violence as the ones in need of rescuing. But as we begin to watch Christ Church transform physically into a more open and welcoming space, I invite us all to embrace our call as shepherds whose community of faith is incomplete until every lost sheep has been found. For only then can the feast we’ve been longing for truly begin. Amen.