Lost and Found

Luke 15:1-10

(Audio)

Seems like everybody’s mad this week.

Look at what I mean: if you had never known of God and happened one day to pick up the part of Jeremiah chapter 4 that Mike read today, you’d be blown over by how downright angry God seems in this passage.

Not just impatient.

Not just annoyed.

Not just discouraged.

Angry.

And who can blame God, really? Everywhere God looks on the earth there’s desolation; no hope at all for goodness and justice, just, as Jeremiah says, a people skilled at doing evil, people who don’t have the slightest clue how to do good. God expresses that deep anguish with utter lament: the earth seems like a wasteland, covered with darkness and desolation, populated by people who can’t seem to figure out . . . the way we choose on our own to live is a way that leads to death.

It was the job of the prophet to sound the warning to the people: the way you’re headed is sure to fail, and God is mad.

Interestingly enough, our Gospel passage today introduces us to some folks who are also mad.

Very mad, in fact.

In this case it’s the Pharisees, religious leaders of the temple in Jerusalem, who are steaming, furious at this interloper Jesus who is inviting the more unsavory elements of society over for dinner—a huge faux pas.

There were certain social strata in place, structures that helped keep society going, rules about who was in and who was out. And without careful adherence to the rules, well, can you imagine the consequences? Everything would come unglued. Society would start to feel unstable.

And who could blame them, really? They were angry and impatient with Jesus who was, very frankly, putting them in a highly difficult position and ushering in all kinds of trouble. All this talk about welcoming sinners and eating with them, much less holding public gatherings where all these said sinners crowded in close, taking up the prime spots . . . well, it was undermining the rules the Pharisees had been working for generations to enforce, to provide structure and stability to society.

And they were mad.

Everybody’s angry. God and the Pharisees share a position:

• they both hold certain expectations for holy behavior . . . expectations that are not being met.
• both God and the Pharisees’ anger is based on the conviction that behavior has consequences . . . thus choosing behavior that is NOT holy is going to means some serious consequences.
• And both God and the Pharisees have the power and influence, some might even say obligation, to make sure the consequences of that behavior were felt and felt hard.

But even though they were both angry, there was one important difference. And to illustrate that difference, as usual, Jesus told a story.

There was a shepherd, Jesus said, who tended 100 sheep. He fed them and cared for them, herding them out of the sheep pen up into the grassy slopes overlooking Galilee. He took them to clear, cool water in the middle of the day, and in the evenings brought them back to the sheep pen so they’d be safe from wild animals. And as he herded them back in each evening he’d count, just to make sure all 100 of his sheep were safely tucked away as darkness fell.

And one night as he prodded them in he noticed: one was missing. There were only 99.

So he counted again. And again. But the answer was always the same: 99.

And so the shepherd set out, Jesus reported, searching high and low in every ditch and valley, looking all night long until that one sheep is found and brought in to safety.

Some who were listening surely were puzzled. Why would a shepherd leave the other 99 sheep all alone and set out into danger himself to find just one sheep? It’s likely that the sheep that was lost willfully ignored the direction of the shepherd and wandered off on his own. That sheep probably sniffed a tender, tasty leaf just a little ways off the path and couldn’t resist turning off to taste it. Or maybe he got so caught up in the antics of a butterfly that he had to turn away to see what would happen next . . . he was careless and inattentive to the shepherd’s directions.

Whatever the case, you could say that that’s life. When you don’t follow the rules you’re likely to get lost and just because you made the decision not to follow the rules . . . does that really mean the shepherd has to drop everything and put the whole flock at risk just to go out and find you?

And then, just to make sure they got it, Jesus told the story of a woman who had 10 coins. They were all she had—the family’s entire savings—and as the one in charge of the household’s financial security, she was also in charge of those coins.

But one day she counted and there were only 9 and she knew—somehow in the daily activities of the family a coin had rolled off the table or slipped out of her hand in a rush and perhaps fallen into a crevice in the floor one day when she was rushing to get a meal on the table or pay the bills or put the children to bed.

And so, Jesus told the crowd, the woman looked everywhere. She moved every table and chair, every rug and tapestry in her house, she reached high onto every shelf and swept each corner but she couldn’t find that coin.

Still, there was no giving up for her. The woman looked and looked, in the most unlikely places, sweeping the house over and over again, until she finally . . . finally found that coin and tucked it safely into the bag with the others.

Now, some in the crowd that day were certainly thinking that a cluttered house is not the best place to count your money. When it’s all out on the table, you see, it’s easy for one coin to roll off the edge and find its way under a heavy piece of furniture or into a space between the floorboards.

It just happens sometimes—that’s life.

And when you lose just one coin you have to consider: how much is it really worth your time to find just one coin? You have 9 others, after all. Isn’t it true that we must be willing to give some things up for lost, to let the natural consequences of human behavior and the way of the world just go ahead and play out? That woman had just better remember to be more careful next time.

But Jesus challenged all those thoughts by insisting the shepherd and the woman wouldn’t rest . . . until they found what was lost: despite the well-known natural consequences . . . at considerable expense and inconvenience . . . they searched until what was lost got found.

And there it is. There’s the difference between God’s anger and the anger of the Pharisees: there is not enough anger in all the world to keep the God of the Universe from searching for you and for me until we’re found.

Doris and Harold Anderson were high school sweethearts who married 55 years ago. They have always enjoyed an active lifestyle, tied in large part to the appeal of the outdoors in their native Eastern Oregon.

Just a few weeks ago, on August 23 rd, in fact, Doris, age 76, and her husband Harold, 75, set out in the late afternoon and took their truck into the mountains to go elk hunting.

Not very long after they started their truck got stuck in the mud and Harold and Doris set out hiking back toward help. After about 4 miles Doris got very tired. She and Harold decided to separate . . . she’d head back to the truck for shelter and Harold would keep hiking to get help.

No one really knows what happened next, except that Harold was found a little later that evening by some hunters who helped him get to a hospital where he frantically reported Doris missing.

Then, the search began.

Each morning over 70 volunteers scoured the Wallowa mountains in Eastern Oregon looking for Doris.

Eight days later, on August 31 st, authorities officially called off the search. With temperatures in the mountains dipping every night into the low 30s and no sign of Doris, who had no food or water, the family was advised to begin planning a memorial service.

It’s sad, experts pointed out when the newspapers interviewed them, but not unexpected. There are natural consequences to being unprepared in the mountains and only the most seasoned and well-outfitted hikers survive.

After all, rescuers pointed out, it really was not a good idea for folks of that age—or any age, really—to go hunting alone, with no emergency gear, wearing only very light clothing and carrying no food and water on their persons. And, they pointed out, it’s never a good idea to set out, away from shelter, in a direction you’re unsure of. Plus it’s really not a good idea to separate from the people who are with you . . . survival in the wilderness of a rugged terrain like the Eastern Oregon mountains depends on fitness, preparation and smart decision making, none of which were present in this situation, they all noted to the press.

After the search was officially called off, however, the Sherriff reports that he and several of his men couldn’t bear to stop looking for Doris. Despite their conviction that she was probably dead, a small team of rescue workers set out every morning, unable to give up. It was five days after they were supposed to have stopped searching, a Thursday and the memorial service for Doris was planned Saturday when two members of the Sherriff’s team decided to take one more look down by Bennett Creek, where they’d heard birds making significant noise earlier in the day. And, do you know, they found her? She was conscious, dehydrated, incoherent and cold, lying in some bushes next to the creek.

Doris Anderson, age 76, was found fourteen days—two weeks—after she’d been lost in the Oregon wilderness . . . and she was found alive.

After a very short hospital stay, Doris was released and is now back at home with her family.

Rescuers are baffled as to how this grandmother could possibly have lived through this ordeal with only minor injuries . . . and the loss of her dentures. If you ask her husband Harold, he’ll tearfully tell you that the only reason Doris is alive is that there were a few who just stubbornly refused to stop looking, no matter what conventional wisdom told them.

Verse after verse after verse in Jeremiah’s prophecy tells of a God who is angry. But, you’ll notice, at the very end we read: For thus says the Lord: The whole land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end. And we hear stories, stories about God never giving up the search for us, no matter where we’ve wandered off to. And we see the life of Jesus, who lived and died to show us a God who always chooses mercy over judgement.

Always.

• See, when the world insists on duty, God answers with love.
• When we sit back to watch natural consequences unfold, God steps in with an alternative way.
• When the best option is clearly surrender, God keeps going, as long as it takes.
• Are you expecting inevitable results? God says hope provides another answer.
• When you and I are hell-bent on judgment, God will always answer with mercy.
• And what seems lost, lost forever to you and me, . . . is just, in God’s view, a soul waiting for a love tenacious enough to find it.

 

When you and I wander off into the places of human life that dry out our souls and break our hearts, places in which we turn and turn and turn and can never find our way back, well, stop for a moment to hear the good news: we are not lost forever to the anger of God.

No, God will set out to look everywhere, for as long as it takes, until God finds us, picks us up, cold and huddled in our lostness, pulls us close . . . and takes us home.

Over and over again, if need be, until we have the courage and conviction to live with a new way of seeing the world: not a world forever lost, but precious people just waiting to be found.

Amen.

 

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