"Suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, a lone white sheep clambered down the hillside and darted in front of my car. I swerved to avoid hitting it (there were no other vehicles around). Then I watched the sheep gingerly climb down into the valley on the right side of the road.
"Just then, from my left, a figure darted across the road. It was a young Masai shepherd. In the Masai culture, the youngest boys, sometimes as early as five, tend the sheep; the older ones herd goats; and the oldest, including men, take care of the cattle. The shepherd dashed in front of my idling car. Barefoot, he smiled and waved to me as he passed. He scrambled down the side of the hill in pursuit of the sheep, raising clouds of dust, calling loudly all the while. I watched him climb down the hill for a few seconds. Then I looked up and saw the rest of the flock, about twenty or thirty sheep, up the hill on my left.
"'How stupid!' I thought. 'He's leaving behind the whole flock for that one sheep.' Then something dawned on me, and I laughed out loud. It was the Parable of the Lost Sheep in action!"
The Parable of the Lost Sheep, as told in Matthew, reads as follows:
What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains, and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost."
Jesus always tells stories using images that his listeners would know well. Notice that he says "does he not leave the ninety-nine..and go in search." He's stating the reality of a shepherd's life, one that he and his listeners know well. Of course the shepherd will search for the lost sheep! That's what they do. And if he's lucky enough to find it - and notice that Jesus realistically says "if" - the shepherd will rejoice.
So our Father in heaven always energetically searches for us when we're lost, when we've wandered away, even temporarily. Matthew uses "a planomenon," or "a wandering one," to describe we lost little ones whom God searches for, on every steep hillside of reckless desire and in every deep valley of dark despair where we lose or hide ourselves.
Often we think of the Scripture verse that tells us that if we search for God, we will find God. That teaches us a different lesson about God's love: anyone who searches for the Truth with a sincere heart will always find the Truth of Who God is. God loves us too much to disappoint the sincere searcher.
But the heavenly Father in the Parable of the Lost Sheep actively begins a loving search for the little wandering one who is lost. God always searches for us, even when we're evading or avoiding him, or when we don't even know we're in danger. This story reminds me of a terrifying day in my family's life, when one of our little ones was lost.
We'd gone to the Bicentennial Celebration in a thickly packed Town Park. Suddenly Paul and I discovered that, through a miscommunication, our fourth little child, Peter, had been left alone by a family friend. The friend stayed with our other four, and Paul and I frantically searched through the large crowds as night descended and the park grew ever darker, filled with shadows. Peter was beautiful, with tumbling blond curls, and I feared that someone unscrupulous would steal him. I prayed to the Blessed Mother, who'd been terrified when she lost her young son in a huge, crowd-filled Jerusalem.
Paul pointed. There Peter was! In the back seat of a police car, looking out into the crowds, searching for us! The police officers, in the true tradition of their patron St. Michael the Archangel, had found him alone and wandering, and protected him. Our reunion was a little heaven. So I, and any parent, can understand the grief, fear, and pity of our Heavenly Parent searching for us, fearing the deep dangers that surround us that wait to waylay the unwary.
Jesus refers to himself as the Good Shepherd who searches for lost sheep. Often we see paintings of him as a shepherd, laying a sheep across his shoulders to carry it home. Ancient statuary shows shepherds carrying sheep in the same way, a sight that Jesus and his listeners would have been familiar with. So Luke adds these lines to the Parable of the Lost Sheep: "When he (the shepherd) has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost."
How good and loving and earthy Jesus is, that he tells a story to his Galilean listeners that he knows they will understand, and a story that is simple enough for we, his twenty-first century listeners, to understand. The Parable of the Lost Sheep is a story that will powerfully evoke for them and for us the depth of God's active, personal love, his aching, ongoing desire to find every one of us. Jesus has become so lovingly one of us in the flesh that he is not afraid to hurt, to love, to tire, to cry, to search over every sort of rough country for us, to reach out and pick us up, to smell with the smell of his sheep.
And Jesus the Good Shepherd calls every one of us and all Christian Churches to be shepherds. We should be ready to search out and welcome any one of God's sheep. To smile and welcome the one who looks "different" sitting in the back row of Church. To talk about the love of God with a friend in a bar. To walk down a street populated by prostitutes and drug dealers. To visit illegal aliens in a shanty town. To listen to the girl who's just had an abortion and is in denial about what's happened. Or to reach out an understanding hand to a CFO weeping over his dead wife.
As Pope Francis says forcefully about all Christian Churches: "Shepherds should smell like their sheep." We realize that we smell like our sheep when we humbly remember that, in our lives, every one of us has been lost and needed our ever-loving Good Shepherd to find us.