Gus (the Shepherd):      One, two, three, four… ninety-eight…Ninety-nine.  Darn! I lost count.
One, two, three, four …ninety-eight…ninety-nine! Darn! I knew it! One of my sheep is gone. O my!  I will travel through high mountains, rugged wilderness, and lonely places. I will go down into valleys and across raging rivers. I will look in Emerson and Dominion City and the Green Ridge area and in every town and in every credit union for my lost sheep.  

Lloyd:                              This place is going mad. Did you hear what happened this week? Gus, the one everyone’s talking about who lives on the corner —you know the guy with the herd of sheep, well he left his herd of animals at the corner of Highway 75 and 201 and went off looking for one little one that got away. Sheep were everywhere, going off in all directions on the highway.

Lynanne:                          Yeah Gus is a little off his rocker, and careless too. He used to farm, and over at the BigWay Store/(Craft Centre) it was nothing to see him tossing seed in the middle of paved parking lots and driveways without much thought as to whether anything would actually grow there. He’s got a reputation around here for being careless and a bit off the wall—a fanatic actually.

Sheep #1:                        Baa, Baa. That stray never was part of us in the first place. Acted more like a goat than a sheep. What are we doing bothering ourselves with strays anyways? If the stray want to go off on their own  and act like a goat, then I say, “Let it be a goat!” Who cares?

Sheep #2:                        Baa Baa. But what if a wolf gets it? You know there’s wolves around here.

Sheep #1:                        If a wolf gets that stray, it deserves it for straying.  It’ll serve it right for leaving this nice, comfortable place. Why would anyone want to leave us here in the first place? We sing nice traditional songs and some upbeat contemporary ones. We’re a nice quiet congregation. The cookies are wonderful. Who would ever want to leave this?

Sheep #2                      Maybe we could send a message to the stray telling it that if it would stop being so much like a goat and more like us sheep then we would welcome it back into the flock.

Sheep #1:                     We could but you know we’re not doing that badly. There have been a sharp drop in strays in the past twenty years. There used to be 78 in one year and now its down to one—that’s pretty impressive I’d say! One stray. Big deal. I’ve got a PowerPoint Presentation that has all the stats. I could bring it all to the Board Meeting on the 30^th.

Sheep #2                      I think we should also make a motion at the meeting that the church buy one of those cool digital cameras so the pictures on the presentation are really nice & sharp.

Sheep #3                      Baa Baa. Has anybody seen the shepherd?

Where did the shepherd go? That’s the question before us today. Our faith tells us that God is always with us. Don’t we keep saying that in church? We are not alone. We live in God’s world. God will never leave us—ever! Except today we find out that if there’s a stray out there that’s where God will be. God seems in today’s text to have an obsession with strays. Put a stray out there and God’s at it, searching, leaving 99 righteous non-straying people in the wilderness and God will stay out there until God finds the stray. Notice the stray does nothing but stray. It was very striking to me that God does everything in the parable. God leaves the 99. God finds the stray. God lays the stray on God’s shoulders. God rejoices. God comes home. God calls together friends and neighbors to have a grand hullabaloo because God’s sheep has been found. This parable is often called the parable of the lost sheep but it could even more correctly be called the parable of the finding God.

God goes after the lost, finds the lost, lays the lost on God’s shoulders, rejoices and throws a party to celebrate. In all of those verbs that describe God’s actions none of them come remotely close to the verb repent. Jesus comments on the parable and says, “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.” God does not say, “When that stray repents I’ll go out and find them.” God just goes out and finds strays. Its what God does.

We can rationalize it all we want and we can say when that drunk stops drinking then she can come back in church and we will give her the royal treatment. God goes out and finds the drunk, lays the drunk on God shoulders, rejoices because God is the one who has found the drunk. The drunk has not found God. And that is what is so terribly scandalous about this parable. God goes out to the sinner while the sinner is still sinning—and rejoices.

Here’s another story. It is related closely with today’s Minute for Mission. There’s an area of Vancouver that you may have heard about in the news. Its called the Downtown Eastside on Hastings Avenue. It’s a district that is so filled with crystal meth addicts that the police have a hard time controlling it all. Open trafficking occurs not too far from where the children get off the schoolbus. Prostitution everywhere, pimps. One of our class assignments in our second term at seminary was to spend a day on those streets. Many of us had our eyes opened. We learned that at night it is too dangerous for anyone on the street to stop and rest and so they have to keep moving by walking. In the morning they’re tired so First United Church like we heard in our Minute for Mission this morning opens its church for these homeless people to sleep in the pews. The morning that we were there, our class of about 20 people participated in a rather quiet worship service while the homeless slept in the pews. And let’s not idealize it. It’s a smelly place. There are no showers on the streets. First United also has other ministries that reach out to its community. At 5 pm every day the building is emptied of people except for a few volunteers. A door in the back is opened and prostitutes are welcomed in. Volunteers help these prostitutes with getting themselves looking beautiful with their make-up and whatever else they need. The prostitutes, after they have been beautified go back out to work the streets. The volunteers do not judge or say anything. Their one task is to do as God has done in the parable, to find the lost, embrace the lost, and together they rejoice in the grace they are gifted to share with others.

Can we hear the amazing of ‘amazing grace’? When we find ourselves repulsed and offended by others do we gather and rationalize their pitiful lives or do we get out the make-up and rejoice that we too have found the lost even if the lost seems to want to capitalize on staying lost?

And what are we going to do about the shepherd leaving? Remember what I said earlier, If there’s even one stray in sight God has left. Is God gone to find the lost. The question for us now is, “Is God gone from here to find the lost?” God is not searching for and finding the righteous, even if there are 99 of them. If we are the righteous God’s not here.