Proper 19C – September 15, 2019
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; Psalm 14; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10
Lost and Found.
We have a lost and found area here at church. It’s the shelf above the coat rack just across from the office. Currently it holds a couhttps://www.squarespace.com/ple of clear Rubbermaid soup holders, a nice men’s wool cap, a few pair of glasses, and someone’s coffee travel mug (with the coffee still in it, last time I checked.) Actually, I moved the cap and the coffee mug down there from the narthex yesterday just before John Lewis’ funeral just to clear off the space, because our Narthex also seems to be a bit of a lost and found too.
The table in the Narthex gets quite a collection of reading glasses that have been lost here at church. Hopefully mostly found, too. It seems to be a rotating collection. I know the kitchen also seems to collect lost and found items… Actually, probably not really lost… just left. You know, you brought your dish to the reception with that plate that you wouldn’t mind if you forgot, because it doesn’t really go with anything and kinda clutters up your cabinet,… and lo and behold you did forget it.
Well, we’ve cleaned it, and its sitting in the kitchen, and you can take it back home now. But there have been times that I’ve found MY platters or pie plates or baskets in the kitchen, ones I actually want to keep, even weeks after an event. And I’m here everyday. I just didn’t miss it and didn’t bother looking for it until I came across it by accident. So I’m glad we aren’t hasty about getting rid of things that are left.
My favorite lost item was the week that someone left their walking cane leaning again the table in the narthex. I saw it after church and everyone had left and I thought, “Didn’t they notice? or Have they been healed?!?!”
Lost and Found. We all know how exasperating or sad it can be to lose something. Even worse are the things I’ve lost that I don’t know where they got lost at all. Those are the things that I still hold out hope for. Maybe it will show up underneath the seat of the car, or in a back corner when I move. And as I just said, there are plenty of things I lose or leave behind, and forget I left them, or don’t notice when I lose them. It could be years later and I might remember, “Didn’t I used to have a blue platter? What ever happened to that?”
Of course, the things we lose aren’t just things.
In a recent sermon, Professor Alyce McKenzie shared a list of things that can be lost:
“We can lose direction,
We can lose faith,
Lose our faculties,
Lose a friend,
Lose focus,
Lose ground,
Lose hair,
Lose hope,
Lose heart,
Lose health
You can Lose your head,
Lose your keys,
Lose your mind,
Lose mobility,
Lose perspective,
Lose respect,
Lose your spark,
Lose teeth,
Lose your temper,
Lose touch and
Lose your way.”
You can probably add many other things to this list as well.
What from that list have you lost?
Jesus tells a series of parables of Lost and Found in Luke chapter 15.
He tells the story of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son.
We only get the first two stories in today’s reading. The story of the Lost Son, the prodigal son, we heard last Lent. But you might want to go home today, pull out your bibles, and read all of chapter 15 in one sitting. It will take you about 5 minutes. It’s quite powerful to read and contemplate all three Lost and Found Parables together. The Parable of the Lost Coin and the Lost Son are unique to the Gospel of Luke.
Only the parable of the lost sheep is found elsewhere in the bible, in Matthew. Some of you know that the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are very similar, sharing much material between them. In Matthew, the parable in Chapter 18 is very similar :
“What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.” Here he means the children and he child-like in their faith.
In Matthew, Jesus is telling this story to his disciples when they ask, “Who is the greatest” and he calls a little child over and says, “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Today, in Luke, Jesus is sharing the parables in the middle of a larger crowd, full of tax collectors and sinners who eagerly want to hear Jesus’ words. The Pharisees and teachers are muttering about the company Jesus keeps, so Jesus responds with these stories. To the Pharisees and other officials, the tax collectors and sinners were like the dishes abandoned after a pot-luck. They don’t really match the rest of the set, and who would miss them anyway.
But the parables Jesus tells show us that to God they are so valuable that he is willing to leave the 99 to find the 1 sheep who has wondered away. God, like a poor peasant woman, is willing to diligently scour the house until the lost coin is pulled from the dust bunnies under the bed.
And in both cases, heaven throws a party simply because the sheep and the coin allowed themselves to be found.
I think it’s always interesting to note that there is a big difference between the lost sheep and the lost coin in terms of agency. A sheep has legs. A coin does not.
When you think of your own spiritual life right now, are you more like a sheep or a coin?
And are you lost or found?
Maybe you feel secure in the flock, grazing with your sheep friends, comfortably protected by the shepherd. Maybe you are enjoying green pastures and still waters. That’s a great place to be. You’re in a wonderful position to rejoice with the shepherd when the lost sheep is returned to the sheepfold.
But as the prophet Isaiah writes, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way.” (Is 53:6) There probably have been, or will be, times that you wander away from the shepherd, either willfully distancing yourself, or simply following your own path. Maybe you have been outright sinful… acting in ways you knew were destructive to yourself or others, going far down the wrong path.
Maybe you were looking for a shortcut to happiness or chasing the rumor of greener pastures. But suddenly you look up and you realize you are far from God and far from the rest of the flock. You may be vulnerable to predators – like fear or anxiety… You might not even be sure how to untangle yourself from the brambles you get trapped in. But you don’t have to. The Good Shepherd will come to you, work to get you off the ledge, put you on his shoulders and carry you home. Now, depending on where you have gotten yourself off to, it might take some time to pick the brambles out of your wool, but, in the meantime, he’ll throw a party rejoicing you are back!
The first letter of Peter says, “For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.(1Pet 2:25) What a gift to have our souls guarded.
Or maybe you feel more like a coin. On the positive side, perhaps you know that you are a treasure. You feel secure in your master’s purse. You know your worth and value. You are contributing your value to the master’s household – using your gifts and talents in the service of God’s Kingdom. Whether you, on your own, are a large coin or not, you know that, along with other coins, in the hand of your master, you are part of marvelous things.
On the other hand, maybe you feel more like a lost coin. Left behind under the couch cushion. You didn’t willfully jump out of the master’s pocket. Somehow you feel like you’ve been dropped, abandoned, and even forgotten.
You didn’t wander from faith, you feel like faith wandered from you. You were dropped, spiritually. Maybe you were never raised in a Christian home, or your family’s cultural adherence to Christianity, say for Christmas and Easter, never impacted your daily life and it seems irrelevant.
Maybe you suffered a great hurt from so-called “Christians” and it felt like it was God himself abandoning you.
You know, sometimes it’s the things we’ve lost in life that make us feel lost too. If you lose your job, or lose a loved one, or lose your health, it can sometimes feel like God has let you drop under the floor board. Sometimes if you’ve lost your direction, or lost perspective, you feel like a sheep whose gotten off the path and stuck in the brambles.
It can feel that way. The promise and the good news that Jesus shares with us through these parables is that God is never, ever, going to give up on you. God won’t stop searching until you are back in his pocket, or snuggled in his arms. And God does that in many ways – by giving us the people who don’t give up on us. By giving us the church as a place to feel safe. By bringing us experiences that help us find ourselves.
What’s more, all the other losses we experience in life, while challenging, can be bearable when we know we are found by God. We are not left to our own devices in the wilderness. We are not forgotten in a dark corner. We are not abandoned on the lost and found shelf. All we need to do is to let God’s love find us, and then, to allow ourselves to enjoy God’s extravagant party. Amen.