In the Good News according to Luke, Jesus is leading up to the story of the Prodigal Son… Luke 15:1-10
Our second reading is part of the first letter Paul wrote to Timothy and his church plant… 1 Timothy 1:12-17
We’ve all been lost. Maybe we’re 4 and lost in the grocery store. Or 40 and lost in Columbus City. Or 144 and lost on the way to the bathroom.
We all get lost.
And it starts like this: first, you have a little niggling sensation that something is wrong. You look for something familiar. It’s not there. A moment passes. Maybe two — three — time speeds up as the realization hits you: none of this is familiar.
I am lost.
I’m lost!
At every age, our first response is to get away. Run faster! Drive more! I don’t have any idea why. Running when you’re lost tends to get us even more lost. Continuing to drive in the wrong direction gets your further from the familiar. Maybe it’s hope. Hope we’ll just magically stumble back onto the path.
Our bodies tense up. Our heart speeds up. Maybe we tear up. Maybe we call out for help. Maybe we just hold still in misery.
It’s awful. Fearful. Terrible.
People who say they’re going to go out and “get lost” in the woods don’t actually mean that. They mean they’re going to wander in the woods and enjoy some nature time, and then leave when they’re done.
Actually lost in a woods? I’ve been there and done that. You don’t get out until you stumble across a tree line or road. It took me four hours and was not fun.
Has anyone been lost for longer than 4 hours? How did it feel?
In our stories from Jesus today, Jesus asks us to picture ourselves as a shepherd and as a woman.
In the first story, a day-laborer has lost 1 of the 100 sheep he’s responsible for. Who wouldn’t go seeking that lost sheep?
Sheep are like us. They don’t like to be lost and alone.
And like us, they don’t survive for too long all on their own in the wilderness. We’d likely survive longer than sheep … but we’re both tasty snacks to the lions, wolves, and thieves who prowled the wilderness around ancient Israel.
Picture that shepherd… he has little hope he’s going to find that sheep alive and okay. But he’s dutiful. Committed. And keeps faith that the sheep will be found. So he leaves the 99 who are safe together in their group to go find the one who is at risk.
That’s a sheep. 1 of 100.
So let’s change the situation. Picture yourself a woman who has lost 1 days wages out of 10. Did she actually lose the coin? Was it accidentally knocked off the table by a dog? Did someone steal it? Much like the shepherd, she doesn’t have a lot of hope in finding the coin… but she’s committed. Dutiful. And keeping faith that the coin is here somewhere. Our story slows down to describe all the ways she seeks to show how much she works to find the coin.
Let’s change the situation one more time. Picture yourself as a parent. One of our children doesn’t come home for supper. Wouldn’t we leave our children inside at home together, safe, to go look for the child who didn’t show up for supper? Wouldn’t we cut no corners in our looking – and seek as thoroughly as that woman or shepherd?
“He had another 99” and “she had another 9” or “we have another 3” isn’t an excuse.
Children are not replaceable. We love our children. They are precious because of that deep love, not because there is a lack of children in the world. Because WE love THAT particular child, he or she is unique and precious to us.
Now, we are God’s children. We are precious and irreplaceable because of how much God loves us. It doesn’t matter if there’s 1 human or 1 trillion. We are each unique and loved by God.
God doesn’t hold back in seeking any single one of us.
Understanding God is our PARENT; Our Parent who LOVES us with even more love than we have for our own children– that is how we can understand the problem of God’s forgiveness and grace.
See, Jesus told these stories because the religious and moral people of his time were upset with him. He was a rabbi – a preacher – a religious leader. But he regularly was sitting down and socializing with the scandalous. And rather than sitting there and telling them how they needed to repent and change their ways or go to hell… he was telling them, “You are blessed and loved.”
Generation to generation we struggle with community and religious morals. We struggle with what is, or isn’t, a moral life. We struggle with when and how we should enforce morality.
Don’t think of the Pharisees and Scribes as the bad guys. Think of them of the you’s and me’s. People who are considered the “good” of their community.
And Jesus is that preacher who is determined to go sit with the gays, lesbians, felons, illegal immigrants, abusers, prostitutes, country-hating folk and have dinner with them. And he doesn’t say one word to them about their sins and repentance and acceptability.
Instead, he says: “God loves you. Especially you. And heaven rejoices when you approach.”
THAT is radical. Jesus is a radical. THAT is scandalous. Jesus is scandalous. THAT is confusing. And that is why the good religious folk what Jesus to explain himself.
And so he does.
With these stories.
Stories that tell us of how our God is our parent, who LOVES us, and no one is outside of that love.
You can’t sin enough for God to stop loving you.
You can’t sin enough for God to stop seeking you.
You can’t sin enough for God to stop being your loving Parent.
In each of these stories the lost thing — the lost sheep, the lost coin — they don’t apologize for getting lost. They can’t even apologize. And we don’t expect them to apologize. Nor does the woman or the shepherd expect the sheep or coin to change and stop being a sheep… who gets distracted… or a coin… who rolls away.
Just as they are: a sheep. a coin: they are WANTED. VALUED. LOVED.
Just as they are – God is sending out the Good Shepherd and his helpers to seek and find the lost – and let them know the good news:
God loves you.
Yes, you.
Paul is our second story. Is a very devout man. So devout, he stamps out heresy anywhere he finds it. He helps stone Stephen to death for the heresy of saying Jesus is God’s messiah. He chases after and stops the Jesus Way movement who violate Jewish religious, cultural, and political rules.
Paul’s certain he is righteous with God.
And then Jesus appears to him on the road to Damascus, he is struck blind, and cured by one of those of the Way.
Paul had no idea he was lost. When he realized it, Jesus was already there seeking him.
Paul converts – not in that he stops being a Jewish man, but in that his heart changes. He writes how he used to be a violent persecutor and was unknowingly blaspheming. Now, he calls himself “the foremost sinner” and God’s example that if Paul, and his sins, are forgiven… imagine you.
You’ve not killed those who walked with Jesus the Christ.
So assuredly your smaller sins are forgiven too.
Paul calls himself God’s example of patience and mercy; God’s example of God’s grace.
Grace is unearned, unmerited favor. It is goodness which is given to someone not because of anything they have done, but out of pure love.
God’s love isn’t a transaction. You can’t earn it. You can’t lose it. It is a given. It IS given to you as grace.
We get to choose how to react to that gift.
Paul chooses to repent of his old ways and accept the new peaceful, merciful, grace-filled way. He stops pressing his understanding of God on others.
He stops enforcing his morality on others.
Now, he walks through life with patience, forgiveness, and grace.
Now, he walks as an example of God’s love.
We get this choice too. How will we walk through our lives? Unlike the sheep or the coin, we are able to respond to being found. Do we respond with the same mercy and grace shown to us, or do we respond with demanding the other sheep and coins understand God in the exact way we do?
Now, after these lost were found, the shepherd throws a huge party. The woman throws a huge party. Jesus says heaven throws a gigantic party over any single lost person being turned about and restored.
Restored in their community.
Restored in their identity as a child of God.
Restored in their assurance of God’s love.
And so – that is why Jesus sits with the outcasts. They’re the people who need restored.
And if we sit with the outcasts, we are assisting God in restoring one another to who God knows us to be.
We aren’t lost any more and alone. We’re part of the community where we uplift one another.
And if we, like Paul, stand against the outcasts…. Then we, like Paul, are mistaken in our devotion and need someone to embody Jesus and lead us back to the Way.
The Way of forgiveness, mercy, and grace.
The Way of Jesus of Nazareth.
The Way of God.
Amen.
Pastor Whitney Bruno Sermons 