For you see, if you have a wasp in your house or your car, you don't want to touch it, lest you aggravate the situation further and make yourself more likely to be stung, so what you do is to open doors or windows, and to hope that the wasp flies out. After all, he managed to fly in there, probably through a smaller entrance even, so it should be perfectly simple for the wasp to, you know, fly right back out again. If it was a fly, you might have other options. But the problem is, as it always has been, that the wasp can't find his way to the open window. Because you'd rather not get stung, then, all you can do is gesture, wave, try to fan the wasp in the right direction, all the while saying, sometimes out loud, that the wasp should just leave already, and go through the massive door to freedom that you have opened for him.
But he doesn't. So you have a couple of choices: Kill him or leave the vehicle and come back when he's dead. That's it.
It would be so simple, of course, if the wasp were just to take the exit, to take the out that you've offered him, but he won't, he will stubbornly keep on butting his head against the windshield, because he can see the freedom just on the other side. But he can't or won't, move over to the window where freedom awaits. And if you've ever been seated in a vehicle with a wasp, who is growing more and more irate as time goes on, then you'll know what it is like to watch something fly right past freedom again and again and again.
If we've lived this dozens of times in our lives, then surely we can apply this to ourselves, as people who do much the same. Jesus, in Sunday's gospel reading, talks about shepherds who, if they lose a sheep, will go out and try to find it. Shepherds who will leave the 99 who are in the pen to find the one who has wandered away. But sheep aren't dogs. And they aren't cats. They don't know where they ought to go, and they aren't going to wander back to where they were from. I'm not sure that little Bo Peep's awesome idea to get sheep back into the pen by leaving them alone is a good tactic. Leave them alone and they'll likely stay lost, or even get further lost. This should not be a surprise, given what sheep do, which is to follow other sheep, even to their own destruction. Sheep will follow another sheep who looks like he knows what's up, even if it means their death. And yes, this has happened, in recent memory.
So yes, sheep can not be relied upon to go and make good decisions, in fact quite the opposite. And given that they'll be making bad decisions, they're likely to follow whoever looks like he knows what he's doing. And this is where Matthew chapter seven comes into it. For in Matthew chapter seven, you have a situation in which we see wolves in sheep's clothing, which I always thought meant that there was a wolf dressed up as a sheep in order to get close to a sheep to eat it. But upon closer inspection, what's the point of that? Sheep can't survive against predators, they're far too domesticated. They've had all the fight bred out of them over generations, to be docile enough for women and children to take care of them. If a wolf wanted a sheep snack, it doesn't have to trick the sheep. It can just roll on up, outrun them, and take a bite out of the one it wants. That's it.
But hold the phone, because if a wolf grabs one sheep, then it eats for that day. But imagine if you could get a situation, as a wolf, where you could get the sheep to follow you around. Now you're talking! Can you picture wolves turning into full on sheep rustlers? Can you imagine them instead of running sheep down, getting tired and hungrier, just having a group of sheep back at their den? That's what we do, so why wouldn't wolves want to do the same?
The wolf in sheep's clothing is out there to decieve, to take advantage of the sheep and to lead them astray, and because they look like they know what they're doing, then the sheep will follow them around, and will be taken advantage of. Even to their own deaths and destruction. Ultimately, they're not bright enough to stay still, nor to find their way home. If sheep are lost, then they will trend towards further destruction, on average.
This is why Christ became incarnate, you know. To find and to seek out the lost. He didn't come to earth to save those who were safely in the pen, he came to save sinners, of which you are the chief. He came to bring you back home, as lost and as desperate as you were, because you had a zero percent chance of finding your way home yourself. It was never going to happen, and leaving you alone was just making it worse. He came to earth to find and to seek and to save sinners. Arguably the most popular psalm in the scriptures is Psalm 23, where it talks about the Lord as our shepherd, who makes us to lie beside clear waters, who restores our souls, who leads us to good pastureland, and who will always be looking out for us no matter what. This is who the Lord is and what he does. And most of us found our way to Him because we were led there by another sheep. Be it our mothers or our grandmothers, be it a pastor or friend, a spouse or co-worker, most of us found our way to the Good Shepherd because we were led there by another sheep who wanted to show us where the good pastureland was to be found. Wide is the gate that leads to destruction, and many find it, but narrow is the gate that leads to life. That doesn't mean that you're not going to get through, but it does mean that you will have to be shown where the gate is.
And that's where we come in. We are people who desperately need to have a heart for the lost. If all our evangelism consists of is Bo Peep evangelism, to leave them alone and they'll come home, then we shouldn't act surprised when they don't. This should not be a massive shock to the system that if we leave the gates open and wait, that more sheep will wander out than wander in. If you're going to leave the gates open, it had better be because you are bringing sheep into the sheepfold, and rejoicing at their return.
But do we have a heart for the lost? I honestly don't know. Sometimes I get to thinking about the church, and feeling as though it is a social club for lots of people, that it is a thing to do, but not necessarily the distinction between heaven and hell that Jesus Christ seems to think it is. Jesus' heart for the lost led to him leaving Heaven itself, and going to wherever the lost sheep were. Even the people of Jesus' time seem to have missed that point, asking why he was eating and keeping company with sinners and tax collectors, and that was the whole point. He was going where the lost sheep were, leaving the 99 and going to find the one.
We who are in the good pastureland, we who are enjoying the blessings of knowing Christ, who have gone in through the narrow gate, we have that responsibility now, of knowing that sheep will follow other sheep, to be the sheep that other sheep follow. They'll follow someone, that's what sheep do. And they'll either follow you or follow someone else. As Bob Dylan said, it can be the devil, or it can be the Lord, but you're gonna serve somebody. True it is.
We are not the saviors of the world, we aren't the Good shepherds ourselves, but we are and can be the ones who point out the way to salvation to the lost who are out there, the lost who find themselves following wolves in sheep's clothing. We can have the same heart for the lost the Christ has, and we can know the eternal truth. If you try to save a friend from hell, you may not succeed, but at least you tried.
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