A Pastoral Letter To My Little Church

On lost sheep

I keep thinking about Jesus’ parable of the lost sheep (Matthew 18:10-14). In it the burden of finding the single lost sheep falls on the shepherd. The other 99 presumably continue doing herd-like things until the shepherd returns, and then it is the shepherd (again, not the other sheep) who rejoice at the one found and returned.

The pandemic essentially played this parable out but with the numbers in reverse. For a months or years all the sheep stopped gathering as a herd. Some (even just one) gathered to produce broadcasts maintaining the flock as diaspora. Perhaps to keep the pastoral imagery we might imagine them at the top of a mountain blowing their social media alphorn for the scattered sheep down in the valley.

I realize this entire parable breaks down if it is the pastor who thinks of themself as the shepherd and the sheep as the congregation. The point of many (though not all) parables is more frequently Christological. The shepherd is Christ. The sheep are all of us, including the pastors.

But recently a friend invited me to consider forgiving myself for the beautiful lies I tell myself, and one of those beautiful lies is that the pastor, with enough attention and effort and faithfulness, can be the shepherd.

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During the pandemic, it pained me tremendously when I could not visit and see the members of our congregation. I went to great lengths to design ways for us still to see one another and visit: front porch drive-byes, phone calls and texts and postcards, liturgical packages at Advent and Lent.

But the pandemic went on and on and on. And often we went into emergency mode, responding to the next greatest need as it presented itself. We were pretty good at it. All the while of course not always knowing about the quieter needs on the ground in individual households we could not visit and who did not say.

Even now over two years later, I still see myself as a shepherd who has failed to go find some of the sheep because many of those scattered down valley have not re-gathered in the flock.

I’d like to forgive myself for this beautiful lie, so I guess the first step is to repent. So here it is: I apologize. I’m sorry. If for some reason through neglect or mis-step, impatience or ineptitude, I did something that drove you away from the church, I am sorry. I seek your forgiveness.

I’ll take it one more step: I’m sure, through a combination of the ways I have publicly expressed anger or sought justice or lamented or complained, or simply because I forgot or didn’t follow up quickly enough, for any number of reasons far too numerous to count, that I have failed.

I can’t keep track of all the sheep. I’ve honestly tried. I know far more than 100 rather well, and still, it’s not enough.

Then this, on the way toward forgiving myself: I realized somewhere along the way into the second year of the pandemic that I couldn’t always keep a name connected to a face the way I used to. Masks messed with my brain, or age did, or maybe the stress. In any event, I know people, especially new people, desire to be recognized and remembered, but I confess, and this is not an apology, that I just can’t always remember. I do not have the capacity. Sometimes I forget names. Other times I forget things for which I wanted to pray.

More importantly, the members of the church are not my sheep. If I put myself in the position of the shepherd and the congregation (in reader-response fashion) puts themselves in as the sheep, then we have a problem. Because the 99 are as capable as I am of going out to find that lost one.

We may have created a mutual dynamic of interpretation that assumes it’s the pastor’s job to go find the lost, and theirs alone. If so, we can invite ourselves to interpret the parable better.

The shepherd in Christ’s parable is, well, Christ; and according to basic Christian theology there’s one rather remarkable difference between Christ and a pastor—Christ is also God.

So the beautiful lie some of us pastors tell ourselves (and I just have to assume I’m not the only pastor who is tempted by somewhat consistently reading themselves into the parables in a place better suited for Jesus Christ) is that we could stand in for Christ, and if we did so well enough, we could hold the church together.

And perhaps if we did it really well we could even stem the tide of other forces (here come more beautiful lies) like reversing the decline of religious affiliation in North America, or numerically growing a progressive church in a deeply conservative state or just plain magical thinking like “this is the Sunday when EVERYONE shows up at the same time!”

I don’t think I actually know the beautiful lie parishioners tell themselves that is the obverse of mine. Sometimes I’ve heard it articulated and it’s the same as mine, actually, told from their perspective: that the right pastor will bring all the sheep back plus many new ones.

But I think it’s possible the more subtle lie hidden beneath that one is something like, “It’s their responsibility not mine.”

In which case we’ve all tied ourselves up in some complicated knots in order to avoid the most basic faithful move, that it’s Christ’s church and he’s the shepherd that will go find the one.

Of course intriguing (and terrifying) in that reading of the parable is Christ’s willingness to leave the 99 behind to seek out the 1, and then rejoice more over the one found than over the 99 who were never lost.

Who does that?!

No wonder I get myself all busy telling myself beautiful lies. They’re easier to embrace.

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I don’t know if I’ll ever entirely forgive myself of this lie. It’s one I’ve been telling myself for decades, that if I just throw a big enough party, if I just make sure and invite everyone personally, that they’ll all come. If you’re reading this, I bet you’ve been on the receiving end of one of those invites.

I do know I often find the stories of the ones who are found mysterious and awesome. Many of you have told them to me. I’ve sat in the presence of mysteries narrated by the ones who felt found and brought back. I could sit with those stories for hours and days of distraction. In that sense the 99 and the 1 are entirely plausible.¹ I bet we’ve all heard a story so riveting that for a time everything else melted away.

I think the posture of rest in relation to these beautiful lies sits precisely in the paradox. I cannot stop telling myself that story: I can be free of telling myself that story. Perhaps that is the way toward imagining myself into the parable in the place I do (and do not) want to be—the lost sheep.

1. Who cares about everyone else in Hawkins, Indiana. They found Will!