Friday – Love Never Fails

Friday – Love Never Fails



Luke 15:1-7

    As a child growing up on a farm, we had small herds of livestock of different kinds. From time to time, a fence would break, or our horse stretching over the fence would lower it just enough that other animals could step over. Occasionally, a pig would root under the fence and dig his way out, and all his associates would follow him out for a day in the neighbor’s surrounding corn and soy bean fields. I have many memories of tracking this missing goat or that missing pig on foot through the neighbors’ properties, looking for what got loose. What amazes me still now is that my dad knew his animals well enough that immediately he could tell who was missing, even if we had ten red pigs that looked alike, or a dozen white sheep.
The story for today is of a sheep that wanders from the flock. The shepherd, noticing the missing sheep, leaves the rest of his flock to go and find the one, and when he brings back the lost sheep, he celebrates what was lost but now is found.
What seems at the heart of the shepherd’s will to go find the lost one is how deeply he knows the one who has strayed. To feed an animal day in and day out, to pay attention to its health, to invest resources in it and sacrifice for it, is to know the animal deeply and care for its well-being. In the old days, they used to call farming “animal-husbandry” and I think the sense is that the farmer is committed to a relationship with each individual in his or her flock, a relentless and unfailing commitment that stretches not only through the good times, but also the hard ones.
We, of course, are the sheep in the story. When we have strayed, our God has gone out of the way to find us, bring us back, celebrate how we are found. As the people of God who live out the abundant love of God, what does it mean for us to be committed to the flock as God is committed to us? Do we know our fellow human beings as deeply as God does, and when calamity comes, do we feel the concern and care for well-being such that we move toward finding them and bringing them back?
While we are together metaphorically the flock of God, there is a sense in which we are also shepherds of one another within the church – not that we direct one another, but that we care for the needs of one another, know one another, love one another, in relentless, embodied, and unfailing ways. And that kind of care stretches beyond the boundaries of our church to those in the world around us.
Who is missing? Who needs to be lovingly sought out and found by you? How can you embody the relentless love of the shepherd for the sheep?

Prayer: Good shepherd, you who have found us and brought us back, school us to embody your love toward one another and the world around us. Not one of us is disposable; all matter to you. Let us live and move in such a way that we honor your deep love for all of creation and for every neighbor. In the name of the lamb of God who has taken away the sins of the world, Amen.

-Shannon Schaefer