September 15, 2019
Exodus 32:7-14; Luke 15:1-10
INTRODUCTION
Today we hear some texts about what it is like to be lost, and to be found once again. The first story we will hear is a part of the story you may know as “the golden calf.” Here’s the set-up: Moses, having already delivered the 10 Commandments, has been back up on Mount Sinai, talking to God. In the absence of their leader, the Israelites are starting to feel a bit lost, shall we say, and so they melt together all of their metal and create a golden calf, which, when Moses returns from the mountain, he finds them worshipping. In this idol, they find something to bring them together, to focus their efforts. But, it’s a big no-no, as they should know, since the 10 Commandments say very clearly: you shall have no idols, and worship nothing besides the one true God. Well, God is pretty miffed by this, and, well, I’ll let you listen to hear what happens next.
The Psalm is a cry of lament and repentance, the song of someone who knows he has wandered away from God and toward evil. It’s what David writes after he commits adultery with Bathsheba and then has her husband murdered. He begs God to find him and accept him once again into God’s mercy.
Then in the Gospel we will hear two beloved parables: the lost sheep and the lost coin, in which the subjects (a shepherd in the first and a woman in the second) search tirelessly for something that is lost, and then throw a celebration party when it is found. These are told in the context of the Pharisees grumbling that Jesus spends his time with notorious sinners – those who are lost, you might say – and the stories indicate that no one is lost beyond God’s care.
As you listen, think about a time when you have felt lost, physically, emotionally, or spiritually – perhaps following a job loss, or a death, or a move. If that time resulted in feeling found, how did that feel, and what was your response? Let’s listen.
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| This is the picture I ended up getting of the village. |
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
I was an idealistic, somewhat naïve recent college grad, and I was about to make my mark on the world. I had signed up to be a missionary in the country of Slovakia, a place I had wanted to go since I became friends with a Slovak exchange student in high school. I had been so certain of God’s will for me when I learned of this assignment, and couldn’t wait to spend this year in service to God in this place to which I had for so long felt called.
But shortly after I arrived there, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, and watching the footage from a computer in Bratislava, I started to wonder if maybe I was serving in the wrong place. Shouldn’t I be helping my own country in their hour of need? On top of that, the fact that I struggled so much to learn the language or connect with the other American volunteers sure didn’t help. I felt lost.
When I arrived in the village where I would spend the next 11 months, they didn’t know what to do with me. They didn’t have a job for me, except to help the English teacher in the middle school classes. Precious few people spoke my language. I didn’t know my place. It took me several weeks to feel like I was in the right place after all. But I do remember one day, as I was gazing at the perfection of a spider web along my walk home from to school, when I came to this sense of acceptance that God was in charge, and all would be well if I would just trust. After nearly two months, I finally started to feel like I was finding my way.
That was when tragedy hit. In the middle of the night, I got a call from my best friend, who had some bad news about another friend of ours: her father had brutally murdered her mom. This was a family I had known most of my life. Their wonderful home had hosted some of my own life passages. Our parents were close. This news was beyond my comprehension.
Just like that, I was lost once again, and doubted that God had any idea what He was doing, sending me to this far away land, when I should be home, holding my friend’s hand. In fact, I admit, I doubted there was a God at all, because how could there be? For several days, I rejected and lived without God. I had no interest in this God. I metaphorically wandered out on my own, in this already strange place, angry, fearful, sad, and doubting. For those days, when I denied the existence of God, I lived in fear – of windows, of telephones, of darkness, of being alone. The pain and uncertainty pressed in on all sides.
It was a bleak place, trying to live without God. So one day, I decided to do something about it. The village was nestled into some hills, and I decided I would climb to the top of a nearby hill, and try to take a picture of the village from up high. So, I had a goal. I grabbed my camera and my lunch, and off I went. There weren’t paths, not really. So I made my own way, weaving my way through the forests to get to the top. As I climbed higher up the hill, taking pictures and willfully losing myself in the beauty of that fall day, all that had been pressing in on me slowly began to lift. Close to the top of the mountain, I sat down to eat my lunch in an opening, and gazed out at how far I had come. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I began to sing – I just sang, full voice! Up there on the hill, no one could hear me, so what the heck! With each note, and each step, more of the heaviness that surrounded my heart dissipated.
I got my picture, and headed back down the mountain. I recognized that I had left up there some of the weight I had been carrying from my rejection of the God who had loved me so well all my life. I was still pretty angry with God, but I realized that having a God I was mad at was better than no God at all. Though I still felt a bit lost in this faraway land, at least I could be certain that, lost as I was, God was looking for me.
That was the hardest year of my life. I never really felt at home there, and was thrilled the day I came back to the States. Two weeks later, I started seminary, where I immediately found my place. It was a relief to feel grounded, found, once again.
I’m not keen to repeat my Slovakia experience… but at the same time, it was probably the most important year of my life. It was there, in the absence of everything familiar, that I discerned a call to ministry. It was there that I came to an essential realization about who I am and who God called and calls me to be. It was there that I heard God’s voice more profoundly than I ever had before, and perhaps ever have since.
With this central story of my own faith journey in mind, I have begun to wonder, as I think about these lost parables, if maybe we focus too much on the getting found part. Maybe being lost gets a bit of a bad rap. Don’t get me wrong – getting or feeling lost, whether physically or spiritually, can be no picnic. It can feel frantic, unsettling, fearful. That’s why we generally try to avoid it! Even our hymns indicate that lostness is a bad thing. “I once was lost, but now,” we gratefully add, “now, I’m found!” But sometimes getting lost, while not always pleasant, is exactly what we need in order to figure out something about ourselves, and more importantly, something about God.
That’s very biblical. The Israelites, so quick to create a false idol, a golden calf, and stray from God’s covenant, ended up lost in the wilderness for 40 years, because that was how long it took for them to figure out who they were. Elijah ran off to the wilderness when Queen Jezebel was after him – he got lost out there, and that’s where he famously heard that still small voice of God in the sound of sheer silence. Even Jesus willfully spent 40 days in the desert, where he was tempted by the devil, and this prepared him for his ministry.
You see, being lost, being knocked out of your comfort zone and away from everything familiar, being where you cannot feel confident, is exactly the place we need to be if we want to learn to put our trust in God. As long as we are walking familiar paths, we go on autopilot. We don’t need to think about what we’re doing, and so we check out, go about our usual business… and perhaps fail to notice what God is trying to say to us.
I don’t say this lightly. I know that it is very scary out there in the lostness, out of our comfortable place. What if we don’t find our way back? What if we are forgotten out there in the wilderness? What if we are alone? What if we begin to doubt, and our very foundations are shaken? I know… There are plenty of reasons to stay the familiar course, and not stray too far from the path.
Yes, well, even if we do try to stay on the path, that’s not always in our control, is it? We don’t often choose to be lost! It just happens, whether we want it to or not! As our hymn of the day will say, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.” But there is actually some good news in that, because getting lost does happen to everyone. The beloved sheep that was a part of the fold. The valuable coin the woman had been saving. The future pastor, serving as a missionary. The council president. That woman who volunteers for everything and has her life totally together. The man who quietly fixes the church’s property issues before anyone even notices them. Every single person who has been baptized, and who comes forward each week to receive the Body and Blood of Christ – we all get lost! We are all prone to wander.
But here is the promise we hear in these parables: First, that God goes to where the lost things are. God isn’t hanging out with his 99 obedient sheep, nor is God sitting on the couch polishing her nine coins that she knows are a sure thing. God goes where the lost things are – searching the wilderness, crawling behind the couch, eating with sinners and tax collectors. God goes there, because God knows how difficult it is to be lost. That’s why we so frequently see encounters with God in the Bible happen in the times when people are lost. God goes where the lost things are. So if we want to see God, hear God, sometimes we need to get lost, too.
Second, we know that ultimately, what makes us “found” is not having our life together. Being “found” is the promise that wherever we are, we belong to Christ. Claimed in baptism. Fed at his table. Held in his tireless, relentless love. And if ever we wander too far – or perhaps better, when we do! – we can be sure that God will search high and low, through thorny brambles and under the couch, until we are, once again, found.
Let us pray… Tireless God, we are prone to wander. We feel it. We are prone to leave the God we love. So take our hearts. Take them and seal them, so that we would always be certain that you will find us wherever we go. In the name of the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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