Texts: Psalm 42; Luke 15: 1-10

There are times when so-called technological improvements aren’t really improvements at all. Take the new Mapquest website, for example. Now, I want to know what on God’s green earth was wrong with the old Mapquest? It was easier to use -- didn’t have all those little symbols cluttering up the image, not to mention the fact that for the most part you really could find what you were looking for. And don’t even mention Google maps. Click onto that little underlined word map and you end up with something that could be Timbuktu. By the way, there really is a Timbuktu. It’s in Mali. Positioned near the intersection of north-south trade routes, it is over a thousand years old and was a center of Islamic learning in the Western Middle Ages.

I like old maps myself. Look at the marvelous maps of early New Jersey. The earliest one made in 1639 shows New Jersey in relation to New England as if that what really mattered, but by 1706 there is a map called the “Jerseys,” as they were known. But it’s not until the maps of 1777 and 1780 that one can see Middletown and the 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 Route 9, 537, Kings Highway, and, alas, 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 in herd. Remember that great old painting of Jesus as the shepherd carrying the lost lamb? 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.

Some people say that if we think about the images of Jesus as a shepherd leading us, we may not need a map because Jesus shows the way and keeps us together. I’d like to present an alternate image, however. Before they were ever put on paper, maps were images in our minds of not just the places we need to go but of the trip. What Jesus is talking about here is the joy in finding something lost or in finding ourselves when we are lost. God knows, we’ve all been lost, sometimes searching in circles.

I’d like to argue that finding ourselves is the most important find and that we all need to develop maps of the mind in doing that. We all search for meaning in our lives; in fact, Ishmael notwithstanding, the search for meaning, real meaning is the most important search of all. It consumes us, although in different ways. For some, we accept the stories and their meanings that have been handed down to us, and that gives meaning to many people. But for others, we struggle, do we ever struggle. How do we find the maps that will help us traverse the uncertainties we often experience in our lives?

There’s no glib answer, of course, although some wish that there were. For some of us, the journey, the struggle to find the meaning has a meaning in and of itself. For others, there’s a hoped for goal, some answer beyond the journey. It’s sort of like driving from one place to another. Unlike the mountainous villages of a third world country, we have more than one way to get somewhere. I am really grateful that on a late summer Sunday afternoon, I can take Route 35 back rather than getting stuck on the Parkway, which can become a giant parking lot. But other than those main routes, there are a myriad of other ways to return; so it is with religious reflection, which is, in the end, theological thinking although we may not categorize it that way. There are an infinite number of ways to get to where we need to go for ourselves, for the satisfaction that our souls so desperately need.

The early church community developed the concept of orthodoxy largely in response to the threats it felt from the outside. Some of those threats were clearly political, as in persecutions by various Roman Emperors. Others threatened to break apart the existing social order, such as the role of women. Still others threatened the increasing standing of the church; after all, if there were so many disagreements, how could one respect the organization? As a result, certain theological understandings were suppressed, sometimes brutally. In a sense, there was no need for a map because there was only one road. However, mapmakers have always tried to find alternate routes to get anywhere and here we are in the modern world, with lots of maps, lots of roads, but sometimes we have no clear picture of where we need to go.

Deciding our destination is, of course, critical to deciding which maps to use. And the destination is not the same for each of us because we are all different, have different life experiences, have been raised in different frames of reference that affect our thinking about the destination we should seek. Engaging in dialog that respects our differences is critical to helping each of us determine that destination. We should not be afraid of any question because questioning is what makes us fundamentally human. There’s a great old story about the young yeshiva student who comes to his rabbi and asks, “Rabbi, Rabbi, why do we always answer a question with a question?” And the rabbi responds, “So what’s wrong with a question?” Jesus, our rabbi, took much the same tack. We are, after all, not just a herd of sheep.

Let us pray: Divine Instigator of questions, you created us in your image, full of questions, feelings, conflicts. Help us to find the maps that will lead us into the many different ways of experiencing your holiness and love. Amen.