Lost and Found

Proper 19C; Exodus 32:7-14; Luke 15:1-10; St. Paul’s Smithfield, 9/11/2016

Jim Melnyk: “Lost and Found”

Have you ever been lost? Oh, some of us have probably found ourselves separated from friends or family members in a shopping mall or the State Fair, for example.  Some of us may have even had the unsettling experience of being lost in the woods.  Whenever we find ourselves cut off from the familiar, far from those we know, we can become anxious – even frightened.  Being physically lost can cause real, live, human fear, and justifiably so.  Being lost, in some cases, can even be a dangerous thing.

But in asking the question, “Have you ever been lost?” I’m not talking about those situations.  Have you ever been “lost” in a deeper sense of the word?  Separated?  Hidden?  Cut-off in mind, heart, or spirit from others?  Have you ever felt lost by being made to feel different from everyone else – in looks, or clothing, or intellectual accomplishments – the color of your hair or of your skin, your height or weight – whom you love – something that makes you feel different from others around you and out of place – lost?  Lost in the deeper sense of feeling as though all whom you love and respect are far off – or lost in the deepest sense of the word – that feeling of being cut-off from God – of feeling that God was far off and out of reach?

In today’s Gospel lesson those who are “lost” by society’s standards are daring to come near to Jesus.  They are identified by Luke as tax collectors and sinners.

Now these tax collectors aren’t your run-of-the-mill IRS agents – which would be scary enough, I suppose, especially if we’ve done something shady with our taxes.  Tax collectors in this story are people who cheat their own folks – their own neighbors and friends – while collecting taxes for the occupying Roman Empire.  It is their collaboration with Rome and their dishonesty with the people – with how they do business – that cuts them off from their own people.

In saying that “sinners” are coming near to Jesus, Luke expects us to know that the “sinners” represent the whole gamut of human failings.  “Sinners” in Luke’s Gospel are people who have removed themselves from the common welfare of the community, looking to their own needs rather than the needs of others – they are those whom the Pharisees and the scribes in today’s story look down upon as being different or lost.

The grumbling of those particular Pharisees and scribes – not all can be painted with such a broad brush of distain – the grumbling of those particular leaders demonstrates that Jesus caught a lot of grief for embracing the lost people of his day.  Jesus, whom we have come to know as God’s Very Own, comes under harsh criticism for being open to contact with those who are different – in essence, with those who are considered to be lost. 

The tax collectors and other sinners come to Jesus simply because they are feeling lost in heart, mind, or spirit; and they come looking for a word of consolation – a word of forgiveness and hope – something those particular Pharisees and scribes are unable or unwilling to do.

Caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place – between harsh religious leaders and hopeful, repentant sinners – Jesus resorts to telling two parables about what it means for God to lose something precious, what it must be like to be lost, and the pure joy of finding and being found.  You see, despite the allegorical sentences tacked on to each of the two parables – the sentences about God’s rejoicing over one sinner that has repented – the parables themselves are about being found by God, not about sin and repentance.  There is no actual sinning going on in the parables.  There’s no repenting going on, either.

A sheep doesn’t purposely go about getting lost – it’s the shepherd who loses it. 

Neither does a sheep sin or repent.  A coin certainly does not lose itself – it’s the owner who loses it.  Neither does a coin sin nor, for that matter, repent.  Jesus was eating with tax collectors and sinners – but the stories he ends up telling are not first and foremost for their benefit, but rather for the benefit of the grumblers – the holier than thou onlookers and critics. 

The story is not so much about the need to repent, but rather about the incredible ends to which God will go to bring back that which has been lost.  The point of the stories told by Jesus – the point which usually gets the self-righteous among us to grumbling – is that we are loved by God into relationship – we are loved by God into repentance – we are loved by God into being found.  In other words, we do not find ourselves in the midst of our being lost – we don’t repent and therefore become loved by God; rather, we are loved by God, and found by God, and therefore we amend our way of living – we repent.

New Testament scholar AJ Levine tells us that the parable about the lost sheep “presents a main figure – the owner, not the sheep – who realizes he has lost something of value to him.  He misses the single lost sheep among the ninety-nine in the wilderness.  For [the owner], the missing sheep, whether it is one of a hundred or a million, makes the flock incomplete.  [The owner engages in an exaggerated search, and when he has found the sheep, engages in an equally exaggerated sense of rejoicing, first by himself and then with his friends and neighbors” (Short Stories By Jesus, 2014, p 41).  The same can be said for the woman who has lost one of her coins.  Her searching and her rejoicing is as equally exaggerated in the parable as that of the owner of the sheep.

In part, the Good News in today’s Gospel lesson is that whenever we find ourselves lost – and we eventually all find ourselves lost at one time or another – whenever we find ourselves lost, it is God who seeks us out – and who does so rather tenaciously.  The owner of the sheep won’t stop looking until that one lost sheep is found.  The woman with the lost coin will turn her house inside-out until she finds that one lost coin.

Now granted – we are not God – thankfully so.  But we are the people of God created in God’s own image and likeness – called to be stewards of God’s creation.  What do we do when we lose something or someone dear to our heart and to God’s heart as well?  Can we, like the woman with the coins, accept responsibility when we let something get lost?  What do we do when people around us – or people anywhere for that matter – find themselves lost?  How willing are we to seek them out and rejoice at their return?  How willing are we to turn our lives inside-out to find that one lost coin?

Again, the Good News is that even when we fail to take responsibility for that which we lose, or fail to seek out diligently that which is lost, our tenacious, searching, loving God is always present – always active – God is always ready to rejoice at our return – and we can act in that same way if we choose to do so.

Perhaps in the coming week we can ask God to help us recognize the lost places in our lives.  What is it that God wants to help us find – in our own lives and in the world around us?  How does God long to rejoice with and over us?