Have You Ever Been Lost?

Text: Luke 15:1-10
          Being lost is not a good feeling.  We’ve all been there before.  I can remember a few times.  The first was when I was a child. Somehow I became separated from my mother in a department store.  I wandered around a few minutes scared and crying wondering if I’d ever see my mom or even go home again.  Then a sales clerk spotted me and took me to the Customer Service desk and solved my dilemma and my mother’s by paging mom.  

          Another time was when I was living in West Virginia.  Route 219 is the main north/south route where I was and there are roads that turn off of it and run down by a river or through a small valley and then return a few miles on down the road.  Stephen Hole Run Road was one such road.  It turns off and runs alongside the Greenbrier River a few miles and then joins back up.  One afternoon I was going home heading north on 219 and decided to take an alternate route.  So, I turned off onto Stephen Hole Run Road and headed east a bit and came to a fork in a turn in the road.  If I had turned north I would have stayed on Stephen Hole Run Road, but I went south because being on gravel road the turn north just looked like somebody’s driveway and I wasn’t yet to the Greenbrier River.  I knew  Stephen Hole Run Road followed the river and I thought I needed to get to he river before turning north.  Well, is what you get for thinking sometimes.  So, I was now unknowingly heading south when I finally came to the river all the thinking I was heading north; but the river was flowing the wrong way.  I was heading downstream when I should have been heading upstream.  That threw me.  I then realized that I had no idea where I was and things weren’t making sense, so I began to get panicky.  I didn’t occur to me to just turn around and things would work themselves out.  I just kept following that road thinking I would sooner or later come out at my destination of Buckeye.  After passing a stretch of hunting shacks I came to a little town called Swego which had a paved road with yellow lines in which I knew had to go somewhere and it did back near Hillsboro where I started in the first place. It was no big deal, but being lost on mountain roads is stressful.  You don’t know where you’ll wind up and when you do wind up somewhere it may be that you still have no idea where you’re at.

          Then there are times in life when we just get lost on the big scale; those times when we lose ourselves, don’t know who we are or what to do or where to go.  Things are going just fine and then something happens.  Whether it was we failed to pay attention, missed the signs, missed the right turn or flat out took a wrong turn, we just know we’re lost; not knowing what’s going on, how we got there, or what direction we should take.  We can even find ourselves in a dangerous and costly situation.  It is a fearful thing when we hit a moment in life when we don’t know where we’re at, how we got there, and how to get out of it.  Have you ever been lost?

          Being lost is a crisis of faith.  One of the things they teach you in scouting and military training and so forth is that when you are lost don’t panic rather believe in yourself and trust that you have been given the right knowledge and skills to find your way out.  Believe in yourself.  Sometimes that works, but not always.  The kind of lost I’m talking about leaves you unable to trust your own instincts because they contributed to getting you lost in the first place.  It calls you to question who you are because who you’ve been is a large part of why you’re lost.  The kind of lost I’m talking about is the kind that makes you look deep into yourself and say, “I've messed up terribly.  I’m a sinner.  I’ve done my best and all I’ve done is hurt others, failed others, failed myself.”  Only by faith in God, only in knowing his steadfast love and faithfulness do we find our way out of this lostness.  Have you ever been lost?

          The amazing thing about these parables is the way Jesus describes how God goes after the lost.  He doesn’t go after them to get them with divine punishment.  Rather, he goes like a shepherd searching for a lost sheep and when finding it he invites his friends for a celebration.  Shepherds really do leave the flock to go in search of the one sheep that is missing.  To us practical people that seems like a risky, if not stupid, thing to do.  Why risk all the sheep for one?  Well, sheep are very social animals and if they get separated from the flock they will get quite anxious and panicky and cause a great disturbance that will attract predators.  If the shepherd doesn’t act fast to find the lost sheep it will certainly be eaten.  I presume the rest of the flock will be safe for they will stick together and any predators that are out there will be after the lost sheep because it’s easy prey.  For the shepherd to simply write the lost sheep as a loss would be foolish.  It would be like my mother writing me off for dead when we got separated in the department store and going home to console herself by gathering together the rest of the family to grieve.  The shepherd diligently searches for the lost sheep knowing that it is not a lost cause and when he finds it he throws it upon his shoulders to give it a sense of security as well as to keep it from running off again and then he celebrates.  So it is with us and the Triune God of grace.  When we are lost the Trinity doesn’t write us off but rather seeks diligently for us and when he finds us he comforts us and there is celebration.

           The next parable that Jesus tells is that of a woman who has lost a coin.  In Jesus day it was rare for a woman to have money at all.  In this case she had ten drachma’s or ten day’s wages strung on a necklace.  One fell off and became lost.  Does she right it off as a loss?  No.  She lights a lamp so that she can see into every corner and starts to thoroughly clean the house until she finds it.  Once again, so it is with us and God when we are lost.  He turns on the light of his love, indeed his very presence with us and searches us out, cleaning our hearts as he goes until we know we have been found.  God seeks us out when we are lost and he doesn’t come bent on punishing us.  Rather, he comes diligently searching to return us home or he comes diligently cleaning removing the sin in our lives until we know we’re found and then it is cause for celebration.

          Being found leads to repentance.  Repentance has gotten a bad rap since the Middle Ages.  We think of it as having to clean up our act to get ourselves right with this individual voyeur God who seems so far off so that things will go well for us.  Yet biblically, repentance comes only after the Trinity has sought and found us and then being found by God in his steadfast love and faithfulness we spend our days seeking after him.  The New Testament Greek word for repentance actually means to become "with-minded"; to change one’s mindedness, to change one’s pursuits, one’s direction in life, to change one’s way of thinking.  It is to go from the panicky anxiety of being lost to having faith.  Repentance is faith; faith based on knowing that God is steadfastly loving, faithful, and with us.  When God in his steadfast love and faithfulness finds us, the encounter creates faith in us which brings about repentance, a seeking after this God who has found us.

          Friends, our God is a God who keeps company with sinners, with the lost.  It is okay for one’s life to be a mess, to be lost; for it is when we are lost that God is seeking us and when he seeks, he finds and it is miraculously good.  Amen.