Grace Celebrates

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Luke 15:1-10

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.

 

Grace Celebrates

Luke 15:1-10

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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. 

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 whether you’re a Christian or not.  Yet, these men still walked the walked.  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”.  Each one of those men knew what it was to be a “lost sheep” or “lost coin”.  And more so, they knew that Jesus—that God—was the type of god who left the fold behind to come and find them; who searched all night by lamp light and swept the house clean to find them.  Such joy!

What about us?  What about yourselves?  Have you ever been lost?  It is likely we have had panicky experiences as children of being separated from our parents that we can remember.  Or, that bewildered 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.  There’s also being emotionally and spiritually lost.  Stuff happens – a diagnosis, an accident, a job ends, an addiction befalls you or someone you love – and your life is no longer your life and you spiral out of control into a dark place.  People watch you.  People talk about you but rarely to you.  You feel utterly alone…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”.  What if you’re lost-ness is due to the wrong turns of others or there really was no wrong turn at all?  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?  Many people stop believing in God at this point.

I think Jesus here in these two parables presents us with a different way of understanding God.  Instead of God being the Judge and we being the Sinners, God is the one who in love finds the lost and restores them.  God is the one who brings order out of chaos.  Look at the parables, God doesn’t ask the sheep or the coin what its wrong turn was or punish them once he found them.  He puts everything at risk to go and find the sheep and when he does he puts it on his shoulders and rejoices and celebrates.  He sweeps by lamplight until he finds the coin and he rejoices and celebrates.

Consider the parable of the lost sheep.  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 scary, particularly in this day and age when kids don’t just get lost in the department store but often get taken.  I don’t want to imagine what it is like to lose a child.  Could it be that 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 doesn’t regard us as “sinners” who deserve punishment?  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?

Consider this parable of the lost coin.  The coin didn’t lose itself.  If anything, it was lost because of the woman’s carelessness.  Yet, this lost coin has value.  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 lost would turn my house inside out looking for it.  I think it is safe to say that sometimes we are lost not because we took the wrong turn but because God lost us.  In God’s great scheme of things, he loses us.  Still, God 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 reason they are lost is his fault and not their own.  But he finds them and he celebrates.  Notice the invitation there: “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.”

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 he regards people.  It is to see the world and the people there in with the same compassion and patience and kindness and seriousness as God does and to act accordingly.  

Sometimes, in order to become “with-minded” with God requires changing what we believe about God.  Sometimes the things we believe about people can keep us from seeing a person for who they really are.  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 Judge who punishes the wicked.  Unfortunately, that image of God as Judge creates believers who look at others and say, “I’m thankful I’m not like that tax-collector.”  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.  In fact, it is quite likely that the current dispute we are having in the PCC over human sexual identity could be more healthily dealt with if we repented of our belief that God is primarily a moral Judge.  What if we truly became “with-minded” with the God who is like a shepherd who risks everything to desperately search for his sheep that has wondered off into a world of danger?  What if we truly became “with-minded” with the God who is like a woman who frantically searches for the dearly valued coin 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 people we least expect will come out for the celebration.  Amen.

Lost in Unfaithful Faithfulness

Luke 15:1-10; 1 Timothy 1:12-17

These two parables from Luke are two in a series of three about the lost being found through very extravagant and wasteful means and then once found a very extravagant and wasteful celebration happens.  The third is the parable we like to call the Parable of the Prodigal Son although the younger brother’s return from his prodigal-ness, which we like to stress, should take a back seat to the Father’s extravagant love and then particularly the older brother’s jealousy. 

Jesus aimed these three parables at the religious authorities, the Pharisees and Scribes, who couldn’t accept him as the Messiah because he hung with the wrong crowd, the tax collectors and sinners.  These very devout people of Israel then also would not celebrate with Jesus that he was bringing back into the fold those in Israel who had lost their way.  The point of these parables isn’t so much that wayward sinners lost in moral decadence are repenting and getting saved, but rather that the Scribes and the Pharisees cannot see that they themselves are painfully and ironically lost in the unfaithfulness of their own faithfulness. 

The tax collectors and sinners were discovering in Jesus a very real hope.  They could see and understand that God, their God, the LORD God of Israel, the God of their fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was present and acting with salvation in their very midst.  With, in, and by the hand of Jesus the Kingdom of God had come near and these lost, morally decadent “sinners” and tax collectors were coming by the droves to be a part of it.  The religious authorities ostracized people like this and snubbed and shunned them from coming to the Temple where Israelites believed the presence of God to be.  But, these lost sheep of Israel were finding the God of Israel in fellowship around the table when they shared meals with Jesus who was really quite compassionate towards them.

The Scribes and the Pharisees on the other hand, they couldn’t get in on the celebration of the Kingdom of God being at hand.  They of all people should have been able to recognize who Jesus was and what God was doing in, through, and as Jesus.  They knew their Scriptures.  They followed the Law.   They believed God was faithful and that the Messiah was soon to come.  Times were bad in Israel under Roman oppression and only God could make things right.  Whereas the tax collectors and “sinners” had lost hope and bought into the Roman way of life, the scribes and Pharisees believed that they needed to be ready when the Messiah came which meant total Law observance.  They needed to be living as if the Messiah had come and was reigning already.  If a person wanted to be saved and enter the Kingdom when the Messiah came, he had to become like them.

In their minds anyone, Jews in particular, who did not observe the Law was unfaithful and would be rejected when the Messiah came…yet, here was Jesus sharing meals with tax collectors and “sinners”.  Their idea of what “faithfulness” meant unfortunately kept them from seeing who Jesus is and celebrating what was happening.  They were lost in unfaithful faithfulness.

These three parables follow a progression.  In the first, a shepherd leaves behind 99 sheep to go find the one that has gone missing.  In the second, a woman wastes a lot of time to find one coin lost out of ten.  In the third it is one son out of two.  The way Jesus sets us up with this progression we cannot help but ask who are really the lost ones in need of repentance – the “faithful” who can’t recognize Jesus and celebrate the arrival of the Kingdom or the “sinners” who can.

Well looking at 1 Timothy, I think Paul would certainly say that in these parables Jesus was certainly pointing at him.  He was one of those Pharisees, an up and coming leader.  Educated by the great teacher Gamaliel in Jerusalem.

In verse thirteen Paul describes himself as formerly being a blasphemer.  This is someone who offends the power and majesty of God by speaking against what God is doing or acting like God himself.  The religious authorities back then accused Jesus of being a blasphemer because he spoke against them and did things that only God could do.

Paul also calls himself a persecutor.  Believing himself to be faithful he persecuted the church.  The Book of Acts tells us that he was there when the temple authorities stoned to death Stephen, the first Christian martyr.  He stood by watching, holding the cloaks.  He used to arrest Christians to take them before the Temple authorities to be tried for blasphemy for which the penalty was death.  On such a trip to Damascus, Syria Jesus, resurrected and ascended, personally confronted him.

Paul also calls himself what the NRSV translates as a “man of violence”, a hybristes.  This is a loaded term.  We get our term hubris from it.  It means a powerful person who arrogantly treats others shamefully.  Jews in Jesus’ time and just before used it to describe Greek and Roman leaders who persecuted faithful Jews with great contempt.  The Books of the Maccabees describe the 200 or so years before Jesus when the Greeks occupied Isreal and oppressed the Jews.  They tell of “men of violence”, leaders of the Greeks who did things like make the Jews eat pork or be tortured to death and who put up idols and sacrificed pigs in the Temple.  Paul compares himself to one of these.

Paul says his life as a faithful, dedicated, and zealous Pharisee was a life of “unbelief”, “unfaithfulness”.  In those days even though he believed himself to be working for God and protecting God’s honour and being the most faithful person he knew how to be, he was unfaithful.  God was not working in and through him.  Paul was actually acting against God in hubris.

But Jesus showed him mercy.  On the Road to Damascus in a bright light Jesus called Paul to his service.  It is entirely inaccurate to say that Paul had a conversion experience and suddenly went from being a law abiding Jew to being a grace believing Christian.  It is also inaccurate to say that Paul realized he was a sinner and like the Prodigal Son he came to his senses and repented and became a believer in Jesus and got himself saved.  Paul is not the poster child for the Revivalist preachers of the last three centuries who liked to tell people they were going to Hell if they didn’t get themselves right with Jesus.  Paul did not close his eyes, bow his head, and raise his hand to accept Jesus as his personal Lord and Saviour as if he were at an Evangelical Crusade.

It is more like this.  Jesus personally called the most unlikely person in all Israel to come and be one of his Apostles and it turned Paul’s world completely on its head.  On the Damascus Road a bright light surrounds him and a voice asks him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”  Standing in the presence of the risen and ascended Jesus Paul calls this presence “Lord”.  Jews only call God “Lord”.  Paul asks, “Who are you, Lord?”  The presence answered, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. Get up and go into Damascus and you will be told what you are to do.”  In that moment it became obvious to Paul that the followers of Jesus were not making this stuff up.  The prophecies concerning the Messiah, Israelite hopes for the end times Kingdom of God, the resurrection of the dead – the core tenets of the Pharisees, Jesus who was somehow “Immanuel”, God-with-Us, had inaugurated them all.  Paul’s image of God being a vengeful God who punishes the wicked outright had to change.

Paul was a lost sheep.  In the midst of his trying to be the most faithful Israelite he believed he could be, he was a lost sheep.  He was lost in unfaithful faithfulness.  Blind to his own need for repentance and indeed unable to come to his senses because he was so sure of his Pharisaic interpretations of what the Bible said.  He was blinded by his own beliefs.  The word “radicalized” is popular these days.  He was radicalized.

These parables about the lost and found and the example of Paul come as a powerful challenge for us North American Evangelical types to examine ourselves as to whether we might be lost in unfaithful faithfulness.  We look around at our culture and rather arrogantly judge moral decadence.  We rant on about things like the detrimental effect of the removal of prayer and religious education from the public schools.  We lament and rant on about how unchristian our society has become, but rarely do we call into question how un-Christ-like we are.  With great hubris we arrogantly judge those who hang out on Main Street once the sun goes down.  We regard as untouchable poor people who won’t pick themselves up by their bootstraps.  We’ll have nothing to do with such as these for they are the domain of social services. – and let’s not even get into human sexuality.  How lost are we in unfaithful faithfulness?  Lord Jesus, open our eyes.  Amen.

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.