Wandering Sheep II

Matthew 18:10-13

New International Version (NIV)

The Parable of the Wandering Sheep

¹⁰ “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.

¹² “What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off?

¹³ And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off.

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 Admin

Don or Jay will send me everyone’s email address. David will send the meeting notes.

David showed how he records these sessions on an iPad. He will send the transcripts to everyone and asked everyone to check the notes carefully to be sure he does not misrepresent them. He also said people were welcome to revise and extend their comments, with a view to possible publication in articles or even a book one day.

Alice mentioned her other daughter would be interested in receiving the notes.

Introductions

Ramesh was asked to give a little background about himself. He grew up a Hindu, and was very spiritual growing up, reading the Bhagavad Gita. But he lost his spirituality and belief in God when he went to university, and had occasion to see the poverty around the university area – the children of migrant construction workers living in shanty towns with no running water or electricity, lacking schooling and even clothes and dying from malaria and to talk with communists, who persuaded him that it was up to us, not to God, to look after them. So for three years before coming to the US, Ramesh started several programs including one to get children vaccinated. Ramesh contracted polio as a child. He does not think it has affected his views of society or of religion.

Begin Study

Don took us back to a question we have considered before: Why did Jesus use the parabolic method of teaching? It has been suggested that the method is “timeless”—it fits all Ages—in the sense that some meaning can be derived from it in any Age, and in any culture. The parable makes it easy to identify with the concept taught by the parable—to see ourselves in the parable. Jason and Jaz had commented that cognitive [word unheard] was a teaching method that, like the parable, challenged and tested people’s thinking and understanding of traditional points of view. Robyn had said that within the parable, the excessiveness of interpretation is in keeping with a core theme of the kingdom of heaven, which is the excessiveness of the kingdom, which as we shall see does not measure or ration forgiveness but makes it excessive. [not sure I got this right]

Don continued that in Matt 13:34-5, it says:

³⁴Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ³⁵ So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet:

“I will open my mouth in parables,
I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.”

This seems to be an important principle that we can perhaps apply to our interpretation of the Lost Sheep parable. Jesus said he had a message that had been hidden since the foundation of the world that he would divulge through parable. What is that hidden principle? Don said it is disclosed in the book of Ephesians 3:6.

This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.

Since the foundation of the earth, people were ignorant of the notion that God is the god of all mankind. The core principle is that everyone is the son or daughter of God—it is not just the Jews, or the Hindus, or anyone else. This means that every man is a brother, and every woman a sister, to everyone else.

How does this inform the parable of the Lost Sheep? In John 10:3-4, Jesus alludes to a broader fold of sheep:

The gatekeeper [of the fold] opens the gate for him [the shepherd], and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. ⁴ When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.

What does it imply for the parable of the lost sheep, that God is the god of all mankind, and that we are all brothers and sisters—we are not strangers? Does it suggest something like the childlikeness prerequisite to entry to the Kingdom of Heaven? The passage just quoted from John is a beautiful statement of the relationship between the shepherd and the flock. He knows the sheep by their name, and the sheep know his voice. It implies an intimate association.

Don reminded us that Alice, speaking in the context of Ezekiel 34, mentioned last week that the shepherd was protecting the sheep from fear, among other things. In situations of greatest distress, we hear our name being called. It confers a sense of great relief, just as the child in distress is relieved to hear its name called by the parent.

[DE addition: Ezekiel 34:30-31 states quite plainly that God is the shepherd of the sheep of Israel:

³⁰ Then they will know that I, the Lord their God, am with them and that they, the Israelites, are my people, declares the Sovereign Lord. ³¹ You are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, and I am your God, declares the Sovereign Lord.’”

True, this does not actively deny that he is the shepherd of everyone else, but the obvious inference is that he is the God of Israel only. This is one of many Biblical inconsistencies that gets religion a bad name and is a deterrent to faith, in my opinion.]

Robyn: We tend to name only those people and even animals who are important to us and with whom we have a relationship.

Ramon: People used to think – still do – that if you are not raised like us and do not believe as we do, you will not go to the Kingdom of Heaven.

Ramesh: Our ability to self-reflect makes us unique in the animal kingdom. Self-reflection gives us a sense of identity that is central to us. The lost sheep parable gives us great comfort in that I, me, am someone—an identity known to God and for which God cares; and since every human has an identity, God must care for everyone else as well, not just for me.

Don: If any of us reflect on ourselves, we definitely put ourselves in the category of the lost sheep. None of us feel we have no need for repentance. But the numbers don’t add up.

Harry: The one sheep that leaves is the only sheep that is found. The 99 are not found. The one lost evidently did not “buy in” to the shepherd. In Luke, he is not put back with the 99, but instead is taken to the shepherd’s house for a celebration. It’s the 99 who are in trouble, not the one, because the one understands the word of God.

[DE addition: Yes, Jesus rejoices at the return of the sinner. But the 99—the righteous, the ones who do not stray—are not forgotten. There is no need for celebration for them because they are already in the Kingdom. Remember that the father of the prodigal son tell the loyal son that the celebration for the return of the prodigal does not reflect any lack of concern of the father for his loyal son:

Luke 15:31: “‘My son,’ the father said [to the loyal son], ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. ³² But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”]

Alice: [beginning lost] The 99 as well as the one are all God’s. The Gentiles are like the lost sheep. The whole world is the fold, so if the Jews consider themselves as the loyal sheep in the fold (as God’s chosen people), then the rest of the world is represented by the lost sheep.

Robyn: John 10:11, the good shepherd gives his life for his sheep. The hired hand runs away when danger threatens the sheep.

Alice: The hired hands are the Jews. God had relied on them to spread the Word to the whole world, but they had abrogated that responsibility. So Jesus was telling them that he had come to do what they had failed to do: To bring the rest of the world into the fold.

Harry: Very little of Christian theology comes from the actual teachings of Jesus. Rather, it comes from the comments of Paul. Jesus never speaks of theology or religion. He speaks of healing, mercy, forgiveness, humility.

John 12:35:

Then Jesus told them, “You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. Whoever walks in the dark does not know where they are going.

Jesus is speaking of the light of everything he has taught. If you follow the principle he is teaching then you are one with God. It doesn’t matter what religion you belong to. If you dissect Christianity, why are there so many sects, so many denominations, when there is only one set of principles?

Jay: Matthew 18 traces the whole theme.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

 “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come! If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.

Jay continued: We start like little children, with no biases as to who we think God loves or should love, no discrimination. Who gets in the way of that? All of us. We teach children that God loves our particular denomination more than he loves people of other denominations. So woe to the person who puts that stumbling block in front of the child.

Ramesh: We all think of ourselves as the one lost sheep. We don’t think of the 99.

Don: The metaphor immediately draws everyone instinctively to gravitate to the one lost sheep and makes it meaningful to them.

David [updated after reflection]: So, through our discussion, we have arrived at yet another interpretation of the scriptures. Do we therefore constitute a new sect? There are so many possible interpretations of the parables; surely it wasn’t Jesus’ intention to cause this confusion. If you take the parables broadly—for example, read the Lost Sheep and the Prodigal Son as a whole—then you can see the principle Jesus is trying to teach more clearly than if you go the other way and try to arrive at the principle through minute examination of every phrase and every word. The latter method could lead you to believe in a pantheon of gods—after all, in the real world there are numerous shepherds and flocks, so if the parable is a metaphor (which I believe it is not—it is a simile, and there is a crucial difference) then you would have to believe that the parable recognized a pantheon of gods. This is what frightens me away from organized religion, because there are so many interpretations of what I see as very simple messages that can have only one interpretation (mine, of course J ). In the case of the Lost Sheep, it is that if you are lost, God will come looking for you. If we get too engrossed in the details of the parable, we end up forming sects and straying from the fold!

Harry: Speaking of pantheons: Jesus used other gods to get across his message. Jonah, for example, was sent to tell the people of Nineveh that they needed to repent of their wicked ways. Their god was half-fish, half-man. So Jonah was delivered to them via the mouth of a fish—a sign that would be sure to persuade them that he was sent by the god they knew and recognized. So God uses all gods to get across his message.

Ramon: God will be with us only if we believe that he will be with us. The onus is on us to decide whether we want God to be on our side or not. If we decide against having him on our side, we will continue to suffer. But then when we suffer, we may rebel against God for that very reason!

Alice: The opposite to being for or against is to be neutral, or even childlike – innocent, ignorant. This prompts God to intervene, just as God did with the sheep. Even if they don’t know him.

Harry: Southern conservative religionists have a message that if you don’t believe the way I believe then you won’t go to heaven. But these messages have nothing to do with Jesus, who hardly ever spoke of heaven. But the religions make a big deal of it. Jesus is about today – how to make this bad world a better one, how to help those who need help now. Jesus said the Kingdom is here now.

Ramesh: We humans are fallible – capable of being either a thug or a saint. The scriptures bring us toward what is saintly in us, rather than toward what is thuggish in us.

Don: David is concerned that by elaborating too much we will create our own religion, but if so, it is a religion that allows us both to have our own interpretation and doesn’t insist on the other members of our sect agreeing. This would indeed be a radical religion!

David: The beauty of this group is that we are a sect of just this kind! It is the only sect to which I could and do happily belong.

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