Welcome to Dr. Hutton’s HIST 110 Class –
Between Sunday
“Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?”
~ Luke 15:4
By the time this reaches you, last night’s address from Washington will have already come and gone. Maybe you watched it. Maybe you have only caught the pieces that made the news. Some of you may have been bracing for a storm that did not quite come, and you feel a little relief this morning. Wherever you find yourself, I want to walk through it with you, not with more noise, but with a little clarity and a lot of faith.
I started writing this yesterday, and it was one of those days when everything landed at once. The news was already churning toward that address. I was up to my elbows in prep for my fall courses at Stevenson, Women’s History, and my U.S. Modern History class. And in the middle of it all, I was working on our new worship series, “More Than Enough.” Three things on one desk on one afternoon: the noise of the news, the excitement of the fall semester, and the promise of this new worship series. And wouldn’t you know it, they turned out to be about the very same thing.
Here is what I mean. Our world tends to run on a scarcity mindset. It says there is not enough to go around, so guard what is yours and keep some people out. But the Gospel runs on the opposite mindset entirely. Jesus tells of a shepherd with a hundred sheep who loses just one. He does not shrug and decide ninety-nine is plenty. He leaves the whole flock, goes out into the wilderness after that single missing one, and keeps going until he finds it. That is the heart of God. Not a God who runs short and gives up, but a God for whom there is always more than enough. Enough love. Enough room. Enough reason to go back for the one who is missing.
Hold onto that shepherd, because he changes how I sat through the rest of my Thursday.
Every fall I open my history course in 1866, in the thick of Reconstruction, that raw stretch after the Civil War when this nation had to decide what freedom would actually mean. As many of you already know, I lean on film to help my students feel it, and one I use for this era is the 2016 movie “Free State of Jones.” (Cue the clip from above.) It shows formerly enslaved people stepping up to claim their vote and the violence that rose up to stop them. Voter suppression, barely a decade after emancipation. History tells us this plainly. Making it harder for certain people to be counted is not new. It is the oldest move there is. It is the scarcity mindset in action, looking at the one on the margins and building a fence, when the shepherd would have gone out to bring them in.
So, I keep turning over a simple question. Why would we ever want to make voting harder for people?
This month I sat down with folks working to bring secure mobile voting to communities like ours. Picture casting your ballot safely from your own phone or computer, the way we already handle our banking, our medical records, and our taxes. Online voting raises real security questions, and the people I met are working to solve exactly those questions. We already trust technology to prove who we are for nearly everything else that matters, banking, investments, mychart. Surely we can find a way to go after the one, so that every eligible person has a real chance to be counted.
Because I am picturing faces, not figments of my imagination. How about our 96-year-old member, who should never lose her voice simply because she no longer drives. Our members living with disabilities, who deserve a path to the ballot even when they cannot be there in person. I grew up a military kid, moving all over the world, watching my parents cast their absentee ballots from wherever we landed. Now I am the mom of two college students who are away from home much of the year, also utilizing absentee ballots. So, I promise you, these are real people. They are exactly the ones the shepherd goes out after.
Some of you may still be asking what any of this has to do with church. It is a fair question. In confirmation, I have our students bring in a FrontLine Faith article from the week’s news, and I ask them the same thing every time. “As a person of faith, why does this matter to me?” Usually they pull stories about athletes or celebrities, education, book banning or the environment. But the harder subjects deserve that same question, not a pass. So here it is. As people of faith, if we are making it harder for some to vote, who is most affected? Whose door is quietly closing, and why should that stir us? For people who follow a shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine, how could it not?
I do not say this as a partisan. I say it as a pastor. The mindset of the Kingdom has never been about the comfortable ninety-nine. It has always been about the one at risk of being left out, left behind, or left uncounted. That is the whole promise of More Than Enough. In God’s house, there is never a shortage of grace, never a shortage of room, never a table too small. There is always enough, and there is always a place set for one more.
So whatever was said last night, and whatever you are carrying into this morning, hold onto that. We follow a God of more than enough, who is out in the wilderness right now, this morning, still searching, and who will not come home until the lost one is found. That is good news. It is the best news there is. And it is ours, not only to believe, but to live. The shepherd is still searching. So must we.
May we be a people who never stop searching for the one.
Until Sunday, and all the days between,
Dr. Hutton