September 16, 2007
16 Pentecost, Luke 15:1-10
I hate losing things, so I feel like I can relate to the shepherd and the woman in today’s parables from Luke’s Gospel.
Sometimes when I lose something it’s just a minor annoyance. Recently I lost a pair of very cute brown sandals. Each morning when I go into my closet and think about what I’ll wear, it bugs me anew that those sandals are gone and they are not a wardrobe option. I must admit that I haven’t exactly turned the house upside-down looking for them. I looked in the obvious places, and then I just stopped and assumed they’d show up eventually.
Sometimes losing something is a bigger deal. One fall afternoon last year Holden and I were playing with Sophie outside and I threw an armful of leaves into the air and felt my engagement ring fly off my hand. It’s always been just a tad bit too big and feels even bigger when it’s cold outside. We spent a good hour down on our hands and knees. I’d just gotten to the point of giving up and started wondering whether the insurance company would believe our story, when Holden found the ring.
And then sometimes, losing something is not just annoying, not just time-consuming, but actually causes grief and panic. I had one of those the first time I took my kids to that huge and crazy Clemyjontri park in McLean. While I was focused on Dylan, Sophie ran on ahead and got out of sight. I could barely breathe I was so anxious and I ran around shouting her name and looking in every nook and cranny until I finally spotted her inside this little pink plastic house. I was so relieved I just held on to her and tried not to cry.
What separates what I lost and looked for a little before giving up, and what I lost and would not stop looking for until it was found, was its value to me. The sandals are nice, but I have other sandals, and if they turn up in time for next summer that’s really good enough. The engagement ring I love because it was chosen and presented by my beloved husband and because it is part of our story, but at the end of the day, it’s a thing, something that I can live without. These things mattered to me, but only so much. In my search for them, I was (at best) what my husband would call an “87%er,” giving up before I really exhausted my efforts. My mother-in-law has a saying that I just love for these instances: “Good enough for who it’s for.”
But sometimes 87% is not good enough. For Sophie, of course, I would search anywhere and everywhere, no matter how remote or inconvenient; I would search beyond the point of having any realistic hope that she could be found. Nothing short of success would be good enough.
That is the kind of searching that we see the shepherd and the woman doing in Luke’s parables for today. The shepherd goes into the wilderness after that one sheep, leaving aside the bulk of his livelihood. And the woman lights a lamp, sweeps the house, and seeks diligently until she finds that coin.
What’s interesting about these parables, though, is that even though I find myself relating to the shepherd and the woman who lost their precious possessions, it isn’t the shepherd and the woman that Jesus is comparing us to. We are the sheep and the coin. We are the lost. There’s actually a third parable that’s part of Luke’s series about things lost and found, although it doesn’t get included today in our reading. Right after these two parables comes the story of the prodigal son who leaves his father and later returns, to his father’s great joy and welcome.
These three stories illustrate three different ways of getting lost, that I think parallel three ways that we can become lost as we lose sight of God.
Sometimes we’re like that coin that gets lost out of unthinking carelessness. We forget to think about God, get too busy to love our neighbors, fail to slow down and listen to that still small voice. C.S. Lewis wrote a very funny and insightful book called The Screwtape Letters, which is a series of letters from an experienced devil to his nephew advising him on how to lead humanity astray from God. Uncle Screwtape describes in one letter how easy it is for us humans to get lost from carelessness:
“You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives, and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it – all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition.”
Sometimes our losing sight of God is more like that sheep that gets tempted by the lush green grass in that pasture over there and wanders away without really thinking through the consequences. We find something that lures us away from what is right and good and beautiful, and before we know it we are turned away from God.
And sometimes we’re like that Prodigal Son who was so willful and self-righteous that he thought he could do better on his own. We get so we think we don’t need God, that we can take care of ourselves. Yesterday in the Post there was a frontpage article about the growing voice of nonbelievers. The article begins with a previously Anglican English man who says he decided that “religion had become a negative influence in his life and the world.” He saw “Muslim extremists blowing themselves up in God’s name and Christians condemning gays, contraception and stem cell research.” And so, based on his observations of the actions of these believers, the man gave up on God.
But, just like the coin, the sheep, and the Prodigal Son in these parables, however it is that we get lost, we won’t stay lost forever. Luke’s parables this morning assure us that when it comes to searching for lost things, God is not an 87%er. In fact, God’s not a 90%er (as illustrated in the parable of the one lost coin among ten). God is not even a 99%er (as shown by the parable of the one lost sheep among 100). Every last coin, every last sheep, and certainly every last person, is worthy in God’s eyes.
The idea that God would seek out even the unrepentant sinner, the unrighteous – the lost – would have been a strange idea to the strict Jew in Jesus’ time. That’s why the Pharisees and scribes were grumbling and judging Jesus for welcoming tax collectors and sinners.
But not only does God go off into the wilderness after that one lost sheep; God stays and continues searching until it is accounted for. That promise of searching until the thing is found is explicit in both of our parables for today.
Luke only uses that word “until” a handful of times in his Gospel, and almost always it is part of a promise by God. Zacharias will remain mute until the son promised by God (John the Baptist) is born to his wife Elizabeth. Jesus tells the disciples to stay in Jerusalem after he dies until they receive the promised Holy Spirit. And Jesus says at the Last Supper that he will not drink wine or eat bread again until the promised Kingdom of God comes.
God is serious about these “until” promises. Which means we can rest assured that God will search whole-heartedly until all of the lost are found. God not only gives His all to the search, but He goes at it until He has a 100% success rate. None of us are expendable or replaceable in God’s eyes.
God’s search for us is so limitless that God became human to seek us, even going so far as to experience that lostness, that wilderness, for himself. And the search for us continues. Sometimes in tangible ways, like the bread and wine, human touch, sunsets, mountains, and music. And sometimes intangible – maybe in an experience of calm assurance amidst anxiety or an undeniable sense of Other that comes when we least expect it.
So however we lose sight of God, however we end up feeling distant, we can rest assured that God is searching for us. One of Sophia’s children’s Bibles aptly describes God’s love as Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love. God is just waiting for the day when each one of us is gathered together in God’s loving fold and the rejoicing can begin in earnest.
Amen.
ER