Until Every One is Found - Lenten Wednesday Worship Week 4
Author: Pastor Carolyn Hetrick
March 13, 2024
Recently
I was hiking with a couple folks at the end of a work day in Rothrock. As we’re
getting ready to start, one of them asked me if I’d brought a headlamp since it
would be dusk when we finished. I realized I hadn't and before I could say anything
more, she reached out and gave me a spare. I soon learned that the urgency of
helping came because on another day, even though she knows Rothrock well, she
had gotten lost in the woods. And it was then she realized as it got dark, that
she had no headlamp and her cell phone had 1% of its battery. She told about
wondering who she could reach for help or how. It was a bit harrowing to get
back to her car. And so now she leapt into shepherd mode to ensure all was well
for me because she knew what it felt like to be lost and then restored.
For
us non-herding types, we don’t
have a point of reference for Jesus’ parable about a lost sheep, but sheep by
nature flock together. Yet, if a sheep wanders off, the flock will not look for
it. It may be sick or in trouble, in harm’s way in weakness and far more at
risk all alone. Jesus tells this story which is ultimately of course is not
about sheep, it’s told because Jesus sees and hear the reactions of the flock
to the company Jesus keeps and his seeking out those who’ve gotten separated
from the rest.
There’s
a cartoon artist known for drawing pictures of sheep inside a church, and Jesus
is outside the door of that church and carrying another sheep on his shoulders,
exclaiming, “I found them!” To which the sheep inside grumble, “Oh, they’re not
lost, we kicked them out.” And that is perhaps a better image for us to ponder.
It is all too common an experience for people with struggles to come to a
church seeking Jesus only to be ignored or dismissed, or even grumbled about.
So let’s settle in with a more challenging Sheep story than a misguided hiker.
Like
the guy who says, “I got baptized 20 years ago, and then did nothing but go to
prison, treat a bunch of people wrong and make a lot of mistakes.” At 16 he was
arrested for aggravated robbery and placed in a juvenile detention center.
After getting out, it wasn’t long before he was selling drugs in a school zone
and ended up in jail at 23. There are a lot of reasons why he had spent years
in the clutches of anxiety, addiction, and cooking up drugs in the kitchen to
sell. But it didn’t take much for him to write, “I’m a lost cause, baby. Don’t
waste your time on me. I’m so damaged beyond repair.”
I
bet some of those Jesus was hanging out with were like that.
And
then one day, a prison guard came to tell the man that the woman the man was
seeing before jail had called and asked that he be told he had become a father.
That guard didn’t have to. But it was literally a life line that brought him
back. He got motivated to get his GED in prison and when he got out he
developed as a musician. If you saw him roll in to church with his face
tattoos, and smelling like cigarette smoke, how would we receive this sheep?
Would we even notice the biggest tattoo is a cross on his face? Or would we say
we bet he only talks to God when he needs a favor?
This
sheep is Jason De Ford, known as Jelly Roll, a current popular country music
artist, with songs like “Son of a Sinner” and “I Need a Favor”. He has taken
some of his profits and used them to build recording studios in his former
juvenile detention center. Others might say that’s a waste of time, while
clucking how "they sure aren’t like us.” He is giving them a voice and
hope saying, “I have experienced being invisible and dismissed.” And he’s
written honestly, “I only talk to God when I need a favor. And I only pray when
I ain’t got a prayer. So who the heck am I to expect a Savior if I only talk to
God when I need a favor… God I need a favor.
Hangin
in there, just barely. Throwing up prayers, Hail Mary. If you’re still there,
Lord spare me. I know I owe you one and beggars can’t be choosers.” I bet Jesus
heard that at the dinner table.
Enough
people reached out to Jelly Roll and believed in him. Just like Jesus with
those sinners. I bet if we knew their stories some would sound like not only
wanting to help those who are also lost, but their own stories of being lost,
and hoping to change how they got there. Heaven rejoices a former drug dealer,
who has been part of the problem now lives anew now, testifying before Congress
about the need for help with addictions and writing his latest album, Whitsitt
Chapel, named for the place where Jesus claimed him in baptism. He tries to
reach fellow sheep with “real music for real people with real problems, “the
outcast within each of us” and talk about “the growth and gratitude happening
in my life.” “I found hope and was redeemed and I want to encourage people to
believe that who you were isn’t who you are.”
That
sounds a lot like what Jesus would say over dinner to people others might see
like those detested tax collectors, who should be rejected for destroying
people’s lives. They’re not just sons of sinners, they are the sinners. Like
those drunkards and gluttons, maybe a little too unrepentant for us. But not
for Jesus.
And
that’s also good news for us. Because whether you see yourself as someone who
is awfully glad that Jesus is willing to share a meal with you, or whether you
know in your heart you don’t really want to love some of the sheep in Jesus’ flock,
we share in being sinners. Either way, we get lost and yet our sins are met
with the love of Christ.
Jesus
comes to wash away all the lines we draw that keep us from each other, and
meets us in the fears that made us draw those lines the first place, and then
calls us back. Not only does Jesus call us back, Jesus will reach out over and
over, farther and farther even when we are not reaching back, to save us.
Because whether we don’t even know we are lost yet, or we are sure we’re so
lost we can’t be found, Heaven isn’t fully happy until every last one of us is
found.
Copyright Rev. Carolyn K. Hetrick, 2024 All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.
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