Texts: Genesis 32: 22-32, Luke 15: 1-10
Most people know the old story about Moses: Why did he wander in the wilderness for forty years? Because he never stopped to ask for directions. Me? I hate, I mean I hate being lost. Google maps was designed for me. The first thing I did after being called to Old First was to buy a Hagstrom street map of Monmouth County. I’ve used the map that contains central Middletown Village and Port Monmouth so much that it literally came out of the book.
I really like old maps. The earliest map of New Jersey was made in 1639 and shows New Jersey in relation to New England as if that what really mattered. By 1706 there is a map called the “Jerseys,” but it’s not until the maps of 1777 and 1780 that one can see Middletown and other early towns in Monmouth County, such as Shrewsbury and Freehold.
By 1826, there were three or four other towns significant enough to a cartographer to place them on the map, but what really shows up on that map are the rivers and their networks, which would become canals. And it took only another generation for the establishment of other small towns dotting Monmouth County. The 1849 map shows the roads, which we now know as Routes 9 and 537, Kings Highway, and what became Route 35. We all need maps to show the way.
Back in Jesus’ time it probably wasn’t much different unless you were a peasant in Palestine. Living in a small geographical area, a shepherd did not need a map to lead his flock. He had probably been raised to know every hill and valley in his small area. I say “his” because the women were at home spinning the wool and cooking. That was the division of labor then.
When I was in El Salvador I asked one of our hosts how he could find his way from village A to village B without a map. He looked at me and laughed: when there’s only one road between villages, you don’t need a map. I had never been in a place where there was only one road to get somewhere.
Sheep, however, are not like people, thinking about a destination and how to get there. They will actually wander all over the place looking for grass unless someone keeps them together. There’s a reason sheep need a shepherd. It’s of course one of the reasons that people began to reach out to the ancestors of dogs; they were seen as a way to keep their herds together and to protect them against other animals that would eat them. Sheep have that kind of face that appeal to us; they are cute but not too bright.
I joke about driving in New Jersey always being an adventure but I can only laugh about it once I’ve found my way. The first time I had to take a detour in Middletown I almost had apoplexy. And the cops sometimes aren’t very helpful; they just want to keep traffic moving, not cater to the insecurities of some lady who’s neurotic about not knowing where she is.
Losing our spiritual direction is just as, if not more disconcerting. Now, there’s a difference between struggling or wrestling with God and wandering in a wilderness and searching for God. The parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin are usually discussed in terms of repentance but in the stories themselves all the sheep and the coin do is get lost. It is Jesus who states how we are to look at the parable.
I’ve always wondered about the parable of the lost sheep. Why would a shepherd leave a whole flock to look for one missing sheep? The 99 sheep that are left without the shepherd could be easily attacked by wild beasts in the desert while the shepherd is away looking for the lost sheep. Suppose something happens to the shepherd himself? Where would those remaining sheep be? Presumably the righteous sheep just stay together and don’t wander about.
One of the questions this parable raises for me is whether it is possible to wrestle with God without getting lost. For that is what faith is: wrestling with God. No matter how much we believe or how deeply we experience God, we always wrestle with God as we attempt to live faithful lives. We may be wrestling with the direction in which we feel God is leading us as did Jacob. We may be wrestling with the demands that we feel God has placed on our lives as did Martin Luther King. We may be struggling with the dark night of the soul as did Mother Teresa. These are all facets of faithfulness.
I love the story of Jacob wrestling with the man in the middle of the night. The traditional paintings usually depict Jacob wrestling with an angel but there is nothing in the text that calls the man an angel. In fact, the man says to Jacob, “You have striven with God and with humans….” implying that it is God with whom Jacob has wrestled. That small story is about the dark night of the soul, for wrestling with God, demanding of God that we find some blessing in the struggle is part of that dark night.
In his poem entitled The Dark Night of the Soul, the sixteenth century mystic and poet St. John of the Cross describes how the soul is drawn out of itself into a night of stars about it and looks for one path of illumination but is unable to find it. We first try to find God, to experience God through our ordinary senses, just as we would experience things, such as food or the cool air of the morning.
But to truly experience God, St. John says we need to put away our usual ways of experience and empty ourselves. How do we empty ourselves into God? For centuries saints and other people of faith have attempted to empty themselves into God. It’s not so easy.
There’s a Zen Buddhist koan or dialogue story about the old Buddhist master and the young student who comes to visit him. The young student is full of questions for the old master about attaining states of perfection, of being able to experience the reality of the universe, but, in reality, the young student is full of himself.
As the old master welcomes him, he offers him some tea. The student notices that the master continues pouring tea into the cup even after it is full and finally asks the old master why he continues to do fill the cup, spilling the tea. The old master puts down the pot and says to the young student: You are the cup. You cannot be filled with spirit until you are truly empty. That is what the poetry of St. John of the Cross says to us.
We can’t “find” ourselves until we realize how lost we really are. It goes back to the story about Moses in the wilderness never stopping to ask for direction. We have many aids to help us in our many journeys: the experience of worship, fellowship in community with others, contemplative prayer, the study of Scripture, our experiences in the world. There are many paths to finding our way home. Fortunately, our journeys of faith are not like traveling in some third world countries where there is only one road from point A to point B. There are many roads we can take.
The short second parable that Jesus tells his listeners is about the woman and the lost coin. Boy, is this something I can relate to. I figure this poor woman must have been as organized as I am, always putting something in a “safe place” only to forget where that safe place is. And that’s what we do so often with our lives.
We take something valuable and tuck it away deep inside and then wonder why we can’t retrieve it. We’ve buried that treasure so deeply inside ourselves that we have to tear out our insides to find it again. And we can’t reconcile ourselves until we have found that coin and looked at it, explored it in a way that helps us through our dark nights, our nights of crisis and doubt, whether it is about where we are going or where we have been.
Getting found isn’t that easy. Sometimes the Google map is wrong; Hagstrom maps have to be updated as new streets are built. The struggle of searching has rewards in that we not only hopefully find ourselves in God at the end but that we grow in faith during the process of the struggle.
What Jesus is telling us here is to never stop struggling in the process of growing in faith and in God. I have a cartoon on my wall that is about this struggle. A heron has caught a frog and the head is already in the heron’s mouth, but the frog has put his hands around the heron’s neck squeezing it so it can’t gobble the frog down. Never, never, never give up. In the end, we will find ourselves blessed as was Jacob, even if we have to wrestle with God. Amen.