Walking Each Other Home

Shepherds, sheep, and what we owe each other

Matthew 18:12-14

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. 14 In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.

This much-beloved parable has been called “the gospel within the gospels.” For many, it brings to mind what Sally Lloyd Jones calls the "Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love" of God. If God is the shepherd, and we are the sheep, that means that there is no dark corner in all creation that Love will not come searching for us.

The Lost Sheep by Sir John Everett Millais

However, the shepherds and sheep metaphor has also been used to debase and cause harm. In many churches we would sing songs, like Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing:

“Prone to wander, Lord I feel it! Prone to leave the God I love!”

We would remind ourselves of our tendency to stray, and of our need for authorities to safeguard our wandering hearts. Pastors would remind us that the Bible calls us sheep, because sheep are stupid and unable to care for themselves. Behind an elevated pulpit the pastor seemed to embody the shepherd we needed.

Unfortunately, many pastors prove themselves unable to safeguard even their own worst impulses. I opened my Instagram feed this morning to be greeted with a mugshot of a megachurch pastor. At a church small group meeting that he was leading, he sneakily grabbed another man’s phone, searched through his photo library, and airdropped himself several nude photos of that man’s wife! In what must have been one of the most painfully awkward small group moments of all time, he was caught and arrested. Church hurt is so real, and it is often the result of abuse at the hands of these supposed shepherds. 

When Jesus tells this parable in Matthew 18, he's not calling us into superiority and hierarchy, but describing how a community should care for its most vulnerable members, especially children. In the verses leading up to this parable Jesus states that "little ones" are the "greatest in the kingdom of heaven" and that we must "become like little children" to enter it. In Jesus's world, children were seen as having little social worth. By contrast, Jesus seeks to create a community that centers and seeks out those who are often overlooked.

Jesus wants us to see every person as irreplaceable, precious, and infinitely valuable. We are all God’s “little ones.”

The shepherd himself is not a superior figure— it was a filthy profession. Shepherds were despised and marginalized in the ancient world, regarded with little more esteem than criminals. In many ways, the poor shepherd is in just as tight a spot as the lost sheep. 

The Parable of the Lost Sheep by Jan van 't Hoff

I like to think that the shepherd saw himself in the sheep. Perhaps as he scooped the lost sheep over his shoulders he thought of the many times when he was down and out, and someone scooped him up. It is often those who are at the bottom of the social ladder who are the best at “keeping the sheep”– at seeing the irreplaceable worth of each and every child of God.

In fact, at times we are all shepherds; whenever we reach out to a vulnerable person or a struggling friend. At other times, we will be the one despairing, stuck, confused, addicted or indebted, and in need of a helping hand, a warm embrace, and the mutual aid of a loving community. We are all the shepherd; we are all the sheep.

One of the greatest examples of this I have ever heard is in the famous Esquire profile of Fred Rogers. It describes a visit to a boy born with cerebral palsy, which affected his ability to think, walk, and speak. He had also been abused as a young child. Now a teenager, the boy “would get so mad at himself that he would hit himself, hard, with his own fists and tell his mother, on the computer he used for a mouth, that he didn’t want to live anymore, for he was sure that God didn’t like what was inside him any more than he did.”

The boy loved Mister Roger’s Neighborhood, and his mother arranged a visit through a special foundation designed to help children like her son. When her son found out that he was going to meet his hero, he became very nervous. The article describes it this way:

He was so nervous, in fact, that when Mister Rogers did visit, he got mad at himself and began hating himself and hitting himself, and his mother had to take him to another room and talk to him. Mister Rogers didn’t leave, though. He wanted something from the boy, and Mister Rogers never leaves when he wants something from somebody. He just waited patiently; and when the boy came back, Mister Rogers talked to him, and then he made his request. He said, “I would like you to do something for me. Would you do something for me?” On his computer, the boy answered yes, of course, he would do anything for Mister Rogers, so then Mister Rogers said, “I would like you to pray for me. Will you pray for me?” And now the boy didn’t know how to respond. He was thunderstruck… nobody had ever asked him for something like that, ever. The boy had always been prayed for. The boy had always been the object of prayer, and now he was being asked to pray for Mister Rogers, and although at first he didn’t know if he could do it, he said he would, he said he’d try, and ever since then he keeps Mister Rogers in his prayers and doesn’t talk about wanting to die anymore, because he figures Mister Rogers is close to God, and if Mister Rogers likes him, that must mean that God likes him, too.

When the journalist accompanying Mister Rogers commended him for his smarts– “for knowing that asking the boy for his prayers would make the boy feel better about himself,” Mister Rogers responded with surprise. “Oh, heavens no, Tom! I didn’t ask him for his prayers for him; I asked him for me. I asked him because I think that anyone who has gone through challenges like that must be very close to God.”

Princeton Seminary Professor Robert Dykstra, marveling at this story, asks: “who is shepherd? Who is sheep? We’re pretty sure we know as the story opens, but by the end it’s not altogether clear… Mr. Rogers is. The fourteen-year-old boy is. His mother is, too. You are. I am.”

Jesus is called both the lamb of God and the Good Shepherd, and so also we all are at various points in our lives. 

To me the message of this parable is that we are, each and every one of us, a source of delight to God, and that therefore God also expects us to see each other as sources of great delight. God sees us all as worth rescuing, and wants us all to see each other (including our own selves) as worth rescuing, and worth celebrating. In Luke’s version of the parable, the shepherd calls his friends together for a party over this little lost sheep. Every "little one" is worth such a party. 

For many of us, Christian spirituality has felt like coercion and control rather than mutual flourishing. But this parable is not about leaders asserting authority. It is about how God sees us, and how we can see each other. It’s about what we owe each other. It’s like that beautiful, haunting quote from Ram Dass: “we’re all just walking each other home.”

Perhaps the sheep metaphor has been used to undermine your confidence in yourself, but let’s not miss the important reminder: All of us are vulnerable. Life is precarious. Many of us are one uncontrollable life circumstance or regrettable mistake away from a crisis. 

I’m not at all a fan of the way the doctrine of original sin is typically understood, but here’s one takeaway I can still jive with: all of us are utterly frail. Even the best of us is not immune from horrible, life-ruining mistakes. For me, this is not a reason to condemn ourselves or others– this is a reason we should be gracious and gentle with one another.

We must seek each other out, lift each other up, and walk each other home.

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For this breath prayer, do you see yourself as the sheep, the shepherd, or the rejoicing friends? Who is God to you today? Who are you? Who is your neighbor?

Inhale: I am God’s “little one”  (4 seconds)

-HOLD- (4 seconds)

Exhale: Irreplaceable, precious, and infinitely valuable. (4 seconds)

Inhale: Everyone is God’s “little one” (4 seconds)

-HOLD- (4 seconds)

Exhale: Worth rescuing, and worth celebrating. (4 seconds)