Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
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I’m sure I’ve said this before,
but I hate being compared to a sheep!
“For you were straying like sheep,” Peter says,
and everything in me wants to shout “No no no!”
“I admit I was straying,
but not like a sheep! Never!”
Sheep are stupid
… at least, by human standards.
And while I’m glad they give us
their nice warm wool, year after year,
still, I wouldn’t want to be one.
I mean, have you ever heard of a sheep being trained to sniff out drugs?
There are no “guide sheep” for the blind …
I’ve never read a story in the paper about
a sheep rescuing people from a burning building …
In the earliest days of the space program,
did we ever sent a sheep into space? We did not.
Sheep are inoffensive, but not very inspiring.
If someone compares you or me to a sheep,
they probably didn’t mean it as a compliment!
So let’s just start out by taking for granted
that we are more unlike sheep
than we are like sheep.
Nevertheless, if we will let the comparison stand
for just a few minutes,
we may discover that it has a useful thing or two to say to us.
For Peter, in the particular section of his letter we heard this morning,
the similarity is just this:
sheep stray, and we stray.
And so far as it goes,
that’s a comparison I can live with.
It’s certainly true enough of me.
Now, when I say “straying,”
I don’t mean times that we (or the sheep)
deliberately and with malice aforethought leave the path.
Times when we know what the right thing is to do,
but for whatever reason, we don’t do it.
Could be fear, could be stubbornness, or laziness, or habit …
but whatever it is,
we don’t “do the right thing.”
When we actively choose,
I don’t consider that straying.
Yet we all do it, don’t we?
If I know it’s wrong to steal,
yet when I’m at your house for dinner
and I can’t resist that silver teaspoon,
so into my pocket it goes …
well, I’m definitely on the wrong path,
but I didn’t stray there;
I got there quite deliberately.
If you know that lying is wrong,
but you tell your parents,
“Honest! It was just before midnight when I came in!”
when you know very well it was 2:47 a.m …
you’re off the path, too,
but you’re there on purpose.
If we know we should tithe, but don’t …
If we know we should seek treatment for an addiction, but don’t …
If we know we should feed the hungry,
but never quite get around to it …
we’ve chosen to be off the path.
We’re not simply straying.
And I emphasize the difference because
I don’t think that sheep wander off deliberately.
I don’t think they have the intelligence
or the gumption to do so.
A sheep doesn’t generally get lost
because it’s making a statement of rebellion against the shepherd,
or because it wants to seek its fortune
out in the big wide world,
or because one of the other sheep said something to offend it.
No, it wanders off …
perhaps in search of a greener clump of grass,
perhaps at the scent of water nearby,
perhaps avoiding the scent of a predator,
perhaps for reasons
only another sheep can understand!
Whatever the reason,
the sheep was minding its own business,
living its life the best it knew how to do,
yet here it is lost anyway.
It wasn’t trying to leave the appropriate path,
but it did,
and now it needs help to find its way back.
This also happens to us.
Sometimes we stray from the right path
without even realizing it at first.
Not always because of a choice we knew was wrong.
It might be that we chose a path
which looked absolutely right to begin with,
but we later realized it was the wrong one.
It’s not a particularly religious example,
but this happens to many people
in relation to their work.
We start out in a job,
thinking it’s what we’re most interested in,
and what our talents are best suited for …
but in a few months or years
we realize we’re miserable
and on the wrong path altogether.
Even though at first it seemed so right.
It happens all the time to college students,
who choose one major that seems absolutely right and perfect,
and end up changing their minds at least once
because they see a different, better path.
But I think that the straying that happens to us most often
is very similar to what happened to Peter’s people.
Sometimes, following the path becomes very difficult.
Sometimes on the path,
we suffer pain, and discouragement,
and we run up against obstacles,
and we come across hidden dangers.
And we may genuinely wonder,
how could this possibly be the right path?
Why would God want for us
to have to endure all this?
Maybe we’re really on the wrong path.
And so we start wandering because
the right path seems wrong:
too overgrown, too unclear,
too many roadblocks in our way.
Peter’s letter emphasizes again and again
the theme of suffering.
Peter’s audience was in some way suffering
because of their faith in Christ –
because of the path they had chosen,
or that had chosen them (!)
We don’t know for certain whether
they were already being actively persecuted,
or whether it was more a matter of being ostracized,
or even made fun of,
for following this “new religion.”
But whatever form it took,
they were discovering that
straying from the path decreases your suffering,
and returning to the path increases your suffering.
Which might indeed make one question
whether it was the right path …
And even if you were sure about that,
how easy it would be to stray,
or even to wander off deliberately!
If they could leave the path,
even just a little bit,
they could avoid a whole boatload of pain and suffering.
The same temptation Christ experienced.
And, that we experience.
I don’t suppose that we, here,
are in much danger of being actively persecuted any time soon.
But we are living in times when
it is more difficult to be a Christian
than it was when many of us were children.
I don’t mean it’s particularly hard
to become a member of a church …
that hasn’t much changed;
if anything, it’s probably become easier.
I do mean that it’s more and more difficult
to live our faith seriously
in an increasingly secular society,
and one where we are given so many different choices,
and often it’s not clear what’s best.
Is it better to work 70-hour weeks
to earn additional money to give our family more and better stuff,
and then sleep till noon on Sundays to try to catch up?
Or, is it better to do with less “stuff” than some of our neighbors,
and have a less stressed life,
and be part of a faith community on Sunday mornings?
What if your job is at risk,
and you have no choice but to work those 70-hour weeks?
Of course, it wasn’t so long ago that
everybody on the family farm worked long hours every day,
and still got themselves to church.
So what else has changed?
We don’t particularly live in a church-friendly culture any more, do we?
Really, not even a faith-friendly culture,
in a lot of respects.
When is the last time you saw a movie
in which people went to church?
Not for a wedding, or a funeral,
but simply because that’s something lots of people do?
I admit I don’t see many movies or watch much television,
but it does seem to me that our entertainment media
offer a very strange look at what normal people’s lives are really like.
In fact, here’s a concept for you,
for a next edition of “Survivor”:
Get ten or twelve strangers,
drop them off as new members in a congregation
that’s about two hundred years old,
very traditional,
governed by the matriarchs and patriarchs
and a pastor who’s been there 25 years.
Make them get involved on committees and stuff,
or at least try to get involved and have their ideas heard.
See which one of them lasts the longest
before leaving of their own accord in discouragement and disgust.
Now that would be worth a $1 million prize.
Ah, but I’m straying from my main point.
See how easy it is?
And you went right along with me, didn’t you?
It does seem that we live in a world
where it is more difficult to walk the right path
and to stay on it.
Sometimes we deliberately leave the path
because there’s something much more interesting or tempting
off to the side, or on a different path altogether.
But sometimes we simply stray, sheep-like,
wandering off not because we chose to do so,
but because we either weren’t paying enough attention,
or because the path became too difficult.
I think it was G. K. Chesterton who said that
“it is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting,
but rather, that it has been found difficult, and not tried.”
Yet Peter assures his readers, and us,
that “if [we] endure when we do right,
and suffer for it,
[we] have God’s approval.”
For reasons we don’t entirely know,
God doesn’t always smooth the path for us,
or straighten the bends in the road,
or leave clear road signs pointing the way.
But our attempts and struggles to stay on the right path,
in spite of everything that seeks to draw us off,
earns us God’s approval and blessing.
God loves us even when we stray.
God approves of us
when we return to and continue the journey
on the path to which we are called.
Christ has already made that journey and prepared our way.
And he is waiting to be our shepherd and guardian as we travel.
Let us return to him,
and stay by his side on the path.
Amen.
© 2002 Julie
Adkins (e-mail: Drjadkins@aol.com)