So, may I ask it again? “What if the shepherd doesn’t go seek and find the one that is lost?”
Has it not become obvious? The lost sheep is essentially kept from the “gathering together”, and thus becomes an amputated member of the body. Being careful of my use of Paul’s brilliant thesis, if a finger is amputated from the body and is not reconnected, it will die! The finger cannot survive without the flow of life sustaining blood. Someone has to find the finger and bring it to the skilled hands of a surgeon who is able to accomplish the reconnection of the finger to the rest of the body. There it is, that mending we spoke of earlier. The person who lost the finger, no matter how hard he tries to reapply it to his hand, simply CANNOT DO IT BY HIMSELF!
So, the sheep has wandered off, or, perhaps, willingly and with forethought, has escaped the fold. If the shepherd, as some have suggested, takes the modern commercial attitude of simply securing his ninety nine and foregoing the one as normal acceptable loss, he has destined the one to loss of the protection and nurture of the fold, or the whole. There can be no mending for that one, no edifying of the body. The loss of the one leaves the body as a whole less than it once was. The man who lost his finger can learn to adapt to the loss of the finger, but he will find even simple tasks harder to perform because of the loss. So it is with the church, the loss of even one sends ripple effect through the whole. A unique role or talent is now lost. And, in the end, the one lost, as Paul suggests in Ephesians, remains as children tossed to and fro.
Ah, and here is the rub! Jesus himself gave a strong admonition against the temptation to simply write the one off as a normal and acceptable loss. In Matthew the 18th chapter, vs 5-6 we read:
“And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”
I don’t know, maybe I am just over reacting, but to me I think Jesus is telling us that the shepherd has the responsibility of caring for the flock and seeking those who have left, and restoring them to the safety and nurture of the whole flock, or, to him falls the responsibility of the sheep’s loss.
Personal accountability? Yes, we all have that, but to the lost, there is an implied external responsibility that falls on the shepherd. Oh, and before we are tempted to point the finger at those we think are the shepherds, take another look at the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37. In it Jesus answered the question of “who is my neighbor” by explaining anyone in whom we find need is our neighbor.
In a similar way I think we can deduce that anyone we find in need is part of our own personal flock. A parent may have a child, or a child may have a parent, for whom they are the shepherds. At work we have our co-workers; students have their teachers and fellow students, and teachers have their classes. Keep looking and you will soon see sheep all around you. Perhaps the most intriguing of all is the understanding that we are shepherds to many that we don’t even know, but who follow us for examples every day!
Go and be Good Shepherds!
Ron Pettys
Church of The Nazarene
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