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When I was in seminary, I was given the opportunity to preach at a federal corrections facility. It was the most incredible worship experience I have ever had. Those men were a light to the world. They worshipped. They all knew they were beloved children of God in Christ. They all had felt new life given to them by the Holy Spirit; forgiven, accepted and so they lifted up their hands, jumped for joy, sang with tears in their eyes. They celebrated. I had been to charismatic services before, but their worship was beyond that. That worship service was their freedom. For those prisoners, that worship service was their freedom.
Preaching there was incredible. They were awake, leaning forward in their seats, and listening carefully wanting to learn and grow in Christ, wanting to hear a Word from or even just about their Lord who had shown them so much love and not withheld his presence them. The preaching experience was very much like it is in an African-American church. When I spoke, they responded. I literally had to pause at the end of every sentence for someone to say “Amen”, “Preach it, brother.” or “That’s right”. The sermon that I wrote to last for 12 minutes took over 30 and it never felt long.
These men were from all walks of life. In a way, they looked very much like a first century church. There were no lines of division. They were African-American, White, Hispanic, young, old, rich, poor, educated, dropouts; but no women. It was a men’s prison. These men all had two things in common: a conviction for a crime and Jesus. They were drug dealers, domestic abusers, sex offenders, thieves, murderers; you name it, they done it. They all had accepted responsibility for what they had done. They also accepted that even though God loved and had forgiven them, there was still time to do. Living in prison is hard. There are both hardened criminals and hardened guards and they don’t care that you’re a follower of Jesus. Yet, these men still walked the walk. They did unto others as they would have had done to themselves, forgave as they had been forgiven, and loved as they had been loved, prayed together, studied the Bible together, and on Sunday…they rejoiced.
There was such joy there. That worship service is my image of what Jesus meant when he said, “there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” and “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents”. Such joy! Tyin in to what we read here in Luke about lost sheep and lost coins, each one of those men knew what it was to be “lost”. And more so, they knew that Jesus—that God—is the type of God who leaves the fold behind to come and find them; who frantically searches all night by lamp light and sweeps the house clean to find them. Such joy!
What about us? What about you? Have you ever been lost? It is likely we all have memories of panicky experiences from childhood of being separated from our parents. I can remember one such experience in a Woolworth’s department store in Staunton, VA. I was probably four and I somehow got separated from my mother. Fortunately, one of the employees found this weeping little boy, picked me up, and took me to the customer service desk where they immediately paged my mother who immediately showed up. Love in action. I’m sure we’ve all had that bewildered, panicky feeling of being geographically turned around in a city or out in the country when you think your heading north only to be going further south. I’ve been twisted around on the backroads of middle of nowhere West Virginia without a map. So, also in downtown Toronto. It’s scary to be lost.
But there’s another kind of lost that I think Jesus is pointing to here: being spiritually lost, lost from God. Stuff happens – a diagnosis, an accident, a job ends, an addiction befalls you or someone you love, separation, or the death of someone you love – and your life is suddenly no longer your life. Nothing is familiar anymore. You spiral out of control into a dark place where the range of emotions is just absolutely brutal. You feel utterly alone, like you don’t know where “you” are, or which way to go. You’re lost.
We have a cultural default belief when it comes to God and how or why we got lost. It goes something like, “If I’m lost, then I took a wrong turn (sinned) and God (the Judge) is holding me accountable for it.” It’s pretty black and white if you’re in prison and convicted of a crime. You took a wrong turn and the God who punishes wrong doers is punishing you. But – and hear me on this – if you spend some time talking with prisoners and hear their stories, in time you discover they suffered emotional, physical, and sexual abuse in the course of their formative years and patterns repeat themselves over generations. Compassion, unconditional love, is needed to break those cycles, not punishment.
But then there’s being lost and where your wrong turn was is not so black and white. You desperately preoccupy yourself with the question – the very heartfelt prayer – “What have I done to deserve this?” and honestly the answer is “Well, not anything that deserves this”. Or, what if you’re lost-ness is due to the wrong turns of others or there really was no wrong turn at all? You were just dropped out in the middle of nowhere by those you thought you could trust. When that is the case, you have to then find some way to reconcile how it is that God, who is supposed to be all-loving and just, is treating you like you’ve been wicked. How can God in his great love be so unfair? This is the crisis of Job. You’ve done your best to do everything faithfully, but…here you are lost and it seems the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost took the last train for the coast and the music has indeed died. Many people stop believing in God at this point. This belief system where God is simply and only a Judge of moral character who is supposed to reward the faithful and punish the wicked falls apart when the faithful suffer what the wicked deserve.
I think Jesus here in these two parables presents us with a more helpful way of understanding God. Instead of God being the Judge and we being the Sinners, God is the God who in love finds the lost and restores them because God is the God who in love brings order out of chaos. Afterall, that’s what God did at the Creation. God in love brought order out of Chaos and when Chaos breaks forth into our lives as it sometimes does, God is still the God who in love brings order into Chaos. Look at the parables, God doesn’t ask or accuse the sheep or the coin about what its wrong turn was or punish them once he found them. In love, God puts everything at risk to go and find the sheep and when he does, in love, he puts it on his shoulders and rejoices and celebrates. In love, God frantically searches all night and sweeps by lamplight until he finds the coin and he rejoices and celebrates.
Let’s consider the parable of the lost sheep and do it from what God’s perspective. I’ve had brief moments where in the midst of a crowd of people I’ve lost track of one of my children. That is freakin’ scary, particularly in this day and age when kids don’t just get lost in the department store but often get taken. I know how panicked and powerless I felt as I searched for my child. Could it be that in like manner, God in his love is desperately and personally and really searching for us in the midst of our lost-ness. Could it be that God isn’t a Judge who gets angry at us for getting lost? Could it be that God rather sees us as little lost sheep who are quite vulnerable in a world full of danger and wants us safe in the fold?
Consider this parable of the lost coin. Please note here, the coin did not lose itself. If anything, it was lost because of the woman’s carelessness. And also note, this lost coin valuable. It wasn’t like a penny or nickel. It was silver and worth about ten days worth of work. Even if you were just earning minimum wage in Ontario, that coin would be worth over $1,100. If I lost a coin worth that much, I would be quite anxious and I would certainly turn my house inside out and upside down looking for it.
This lost coin makes us ponder the difficult reality that sometimes we are lost not because we took the wrong turn but because God lost us. In the great scheme of God being God and doing what God does, he loses us. The only reason we can give to this painful reality is that we have to go through this time of being lost because the experience of it and the coming out the other side of lostness is what we need. It heals things deeper down than what we are immediately aware of. Though it is God who lost us, God still desperately and personally and really searches for us and what joy it is when he finds us. Sometimes, the only way some people in their lost-ness can be found is that God profoundly gives them the sense that the reason they are lost is his doings and not their own and the just compensation that he gives us is a healthy dose of his healing presence just as he did for Job. God finds those whom he has lost and when he does he celebrates. Notice the invitation there: “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” There is joy out the other side of lostness.
Jesus talks about repentance here. To repent is to have a change of mind. The word in Greek literally means “to become with-minded”. To repent is to become “with-minded” with God in his plans and purposes and in the way God regards people. It is to see the world and the people there in with the same faithful love and patience and kindness and seriousness that God does and to act accordingly with compassion.
Sometimes, in order to become “with-minded” with God requires changing what we believe about God. You know how sometimes the things we mistakenly believe about a person can keep us from seeing that person for who they really are, so it is with our understanding of God and of repentance. Unfortunately, we have a hangover from Medieval Catholicism in our tradition that defines repentance as turning away from one’s moral baseness and becoming a faithful church participant. That understanding of repentance requires an image of God as being primarily the moral Judge who punishes the wicked and rewards the faithful. Unfortunately, that image of God as Judge creates believers who look at others and say, “I’m thankful I’m not like you.” It creates believers who sit and grumble in judgment of Jesus for his keeping company with “sinners”.
We need to repent of that image of God and become with-minded with the God Jesus reveals to us. What if we truly became “with-minded” with the God who is like a shepherd who risks everything to desperately search for his lost sheep that took a wrong turn and wandered off into a world of danger? What if we truly became “with-minded” with the God who is like this woman who frantically searches for the dearly valued coin that she lost? What if we became “with-minded” with the God who rejoices and celebrates when he finds us in our lost-ness. Grace celebrates. It does not judge and grumble. I suspect that if we become “with-minded” with the God we see in Jesus, the God who welcomes sinners and eats with them, that we will rejoice like prisoners set free and that people we least expect will come out for the celebration. Amen.
