Have you ever heard the story of finding the first Dead Sea scroll? It’s quite a remarkable story, actually, not unlike our Gospel, at least the version that was told to us when we were at Qumran by the Dead Sea. It begins with a boy who is out shepherding his father’s sheep when one of them goes missing. With this being their livelihood, the boy knew that he would be in trouble if he came back missing one, so he set out to find his lost sheep. Well, the sheep had fallen down a hole and while the boy retrieved his sheep, he noticed that there was a ceramic jar. In the jar was the first found Dead Sea Scroll, but the boy saw it and didn’t know that it was special, so he took it to the shoemaker in town. The shoemaker, realizing it’s importance and value, couldn’t let it be turned into a shoe. Who knows how long it would have taken to begin finding the scrolls if that boy hadn’t gone in search of his lost sheep, and if the shoemaker had simply turned it into another shoe. Although, it would have been a fancy shoe!
I have to preface this by saying I know almost nothing of sheep herding, besides what I have seen on my trips to the Holy Land, yet if sheepherding were my livelihood, I don’t know if I would leave 99 sheep to find 1! It doesn’t seem practical to me to potentially let 99 more wander off while searching for the one; the woman with the lost coin seems more realistic because she doesn’t risk losing more while finding the one (Luke 15: 3-10). Maybe it is practical, and more sheep don’t wander off, but that seems like an expensive risk to take, in my opinion. Yet, if this is what God is like with repentant sinners, as today’s Gospel tells us, then of course God is going to leave the 99 to find the 1. Because one person is not less important than all the others and is still the recipient of God’s grace, love, and forgiveness.
We as Lutherans confess that we are saved by grace through faith alone, which means that we do not have to do anything, really we cannot do anything, to earn God’s love, that God forgives our sin even when we feel like we are not deserving of such grace. God loves us in all our humanness and all our brokenness. I think about the sheep in today’s story that wanders off; by human standards, the sheep does something wrong by wandering away from the rest of its flock because all the sheep are no longer together, but, in reality, the sheep is just being a sheep. Wandering around and looking for some grass to eat; living life. In many ways, I think that we are the same way too.
I have a professor from Seminary, where every time we got a lecture on sin, would start by saying “sin is inevitable, but not necessary.”[1] We all at looked him waiting for him to explain further, which sometimes he did and sometimes he didn’t. But it gets to the point that God doesn’t need humans to sin in order for God to be God, but because humans sin, God offers grace and forgiveness. As humans, there are a multitude of ways on a daily basis to sin against God and our neighbor, but this reminds us that God isn’t keeping score, but instead open God’s arms to us in confession and forgiveness.
Over the past few years, I have come to really appreciate corporate confession and forgiveness because while individuals sin, I think it is important for us to look at our systems and how systems in the country also hurt people too. Sin is not just individual, and it is not just actions done, but it is also the harm caused by human systems and by the things that we don’t do. One big example I can think of from this week deals with the death of Queen Elizabeth. In the midst of grief and loss experienced by her family and countless others because of who she was and what she represented, I have also seen many people from countries that England colonized and continued to negatively impact during Elizabeth’s 70 year reign as queen, posting about how it is really traumatic for them to only honor the queen in her death because of the death and destruction she and her empire have caused to their loved ones. Regardless of the intent of the Queen’s family, it still caused countless traumas to people around the world. This isn’t just about the Queen herself, but is about the actions of an Empire that have caused harm, just as our systems here have caused harm over the centuries too.
When we talk about sin in this way, it is about so much more than if you coveted your neighbor’s donkey, as Martin Luther said, but it is about the harm done to our neighbors regardless of whether we intended to harm them or not. So, when we do confession and forgiveness together in worship, it isn’t just about what we have done individually, but it is also about the pain our systems have caused. It isn’t about coming before God to receive punishment, but is opening us up to more authentic relationship through the act of confessing the ways that we have knowingly and unknowingly caused harm to God’s creation. Not so that we can be shamed, but so that we can receive forgiveness and then change our ways of interacting with our neighbors around us.
God doesn’t need us to sin in order to be God, but God does offer us forgiveness because of who God is. Going back to the Exodus reading today, the Israelites have built their golden calf and are worshiping that which isn’t only God, even though God brought them out of Egypt, not this calf. And God is angry. God is on the verge of wiping them all out to start over yet again; God says to Moses, “Now leave me to myself so that my anger may pour out on them, and destroy them!” (Exodus 32:10). Until Moses soothes God, largely doing so by means of Doxology. Reminding God who God is and the promises that God has made to the Israelites descendants, to Sarah, Abraham, Rebecca, Isaac, Leah, Rachel, and Jacob. Moses reminds God that God cannot just destroy all of the promises that God has made in a fit of anger. Moses soothes God by recalling these promises, not by making new promises about what the Israelites will or won’t do. He knows that the Israelites are human and will continue to be in need of forgiveness. It is after this episode today that Moses will come down from the mountain with the tablets of their Covenant with God, what we frequently call the 10 commandments, but before Moses can do that, he needed to remind God of who God promised to be for the Israelites. Who God promises to be in Scripture.
To go back to the story of the Dead Sea scrolls, I think God is like the shoemaker who took the item that the boy thought was not very valuable and saw it for what it was worth. God is the one who offers us grace, forgives, and mercy, even when we do not deserve it. The one who sees every person as valuable, valuable enough to leave the 99 others to go look for the one. God is the one who sees our value no matter what. God isn’t practical in the way that humans like to be. Just as God made promises to Sarah and Abraham, and all their descendants, so too are we promised that we are loved by God. An unconditional love that compels nothing from us, but frees us to love God and love the neighbor. Even when it doesn’t make sense or seem practical to us, God does it anyway, out of God’s deep and abundant love for the world. Because one is not less important than the whole of the group, and God will continue to stand with open arms welcoming the sheep back, just as God freely offers us forgiveness and grace.
[1] Winston Persaud, Wartburg Seminary.