Sermon: The God who seeks the lost (Sept. 14, 2025)

Pentecost 14C
September 14, 2025
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.

[READ]

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Whenever these parables about things lost and found come up, I find myself grappling with the questions: what is it to be lost? And what is it to be found?

I mean, I know what those things mean when we’re talking about literal coins and sheep. But more metaphorically – who is lost? What causes someone to be lost? And what then changes that status from lost to found? What does it take to be found? Are these categories clear cut (“I once was lost, but now am found,” as a beloved hymn says)? Or are they more fluid, even to the point that one could be simultaneously lost and found? (If you’re wondering, by the way – yes, I have lost sleep this week thinking about all this!)

These questions came into sharp focus for me this week after learning on Wednesday of yet another awful act of violence against a political activist, followed immediately by yet another school shooting, the 100th one this year. The act of political violence especially has blown up the news and social media as everyone, right, left and in between, has tried to make sense of what happened and why and who and how we should respond. I want to say that, no matter who he was or what he believed, political violence is un-democratic and un-Christian. No child of God, who is made in God’s image, “deserves” to die a violent death, full stop. I’m grateful that I have seen many statements from people across the political spectrum condemn the violence. But, unfortunately I have also seen the same vitriol that has become all too normal in our country as of late. 

So yes, this all brought the questions of lostness and found-ness into sharp focus for me this week. Who, in this case is lost? The shooter, who would think it fine to take another human being’s life? The one who was shot – who, yes, was beloved by many, but whose rhetoric also did real world harm to many children of God, especially minorities? Are his followers lost (especially now, as they grieve), or are the people who were harmed by his words and rhetoric lost? Is it our country as a whole that is lost? Can Americans agree that we have lost our way as a country, that we are not living as the best version of ourselves right now? Even if we disagree on what the right way is, do we agree that this is not it? And finally, in what ways are we ourselves lost – in the midst of yet another shooting, yet another act of political violence and the vitriol that follows, yet another terrifying day in the news – and all this the week we remembered 9/11? 

The truth is, that the answer to all of those questions about who is lost is: yes. Yes, all of those people and groups are lost, to different places and for different reasons. And so are we. We are lost – lost in grief, in pain, in despair. Lost in rage. Lost in sinfulness, in which our hearts may recognize an evil when we see it, but our minds try to convince us that this evil is fine, just as long as it aligns with my viewpoint. As St. Paul says, we know the right thing to do, but still we do the very thing we hate. We are lost.

So, I suppose my real question here is: Where is God in this?

Here is where these simple stories, about a shepherd and a woman seeking things they have loved and lost, offer us some good news, some pure grace. Where is God? God is the one seeking the lost. God is the one climbing over ledges and crossing ditches, in rain or shine, trying to find his lost sheep. God is the one searching through the night, lighting a lamp and sweeping every corner of the house, trying to find her one missing coin – so small, yet so precious to her. God is always, always the one who is seeking the lost. Seeking you. Seeking me. Seeking us, until we are found.

So what, then, does it mean to be “found”? 

Well, when we are looking for a lost item, for those of us who rely on our sense of sight, we know that item is found when we finally see it again. And so, could the path to found-ness be empathy – being seen by another? When our pain truly matters to someone else... doesn't that feel like being found? When someone sees us, pain and all, without our masks on? 

I have been playing this week with this idea that empathy is what leads to being found – not only when someone has empathy for us, but when we do the work to have empathy for another. And it is work - empathy requires us to find a similar feeling in our own experience, and relate it to the one in pain. That can be hard! That's how empathy is different from sympathy. Sympathy is, “Oh, I feel so bad for you,” but keeps the one in pain at a distance. As researcher and storyteller Brene Brown describes, sympathy is looking down at someone who’s in a dark hole, who is saying, “I’m stuck! It’s dark! I’m overwhelmed!” and responding, “Ooo, that’s rough.” Empathy, on the other hand, is climbing down into the hole with the person, and saying, “I know what it’s like down here, and you’re not alone.” Empathy doesn’t try to fix anything, but simply communicates that their pain matters, and even that you are willing to feel some of that pain with them. “Empathy fuels connection,” Brown says. “Sympathy drives disconnection.” 

And connection – that is the way to being found. Through empathy we find one another’s humanity, we find each other’s child-of-God-ness, and our own. To be clear, having empathy does not mean we have to like that person, nor agree with them. It does not give people a pass for bad behavior, or hurtful rhetoric. Empathy can and should exist alongside accountability and justice. And, especially when you are the one who has been hurt by another, you do not have to rush to empathize with the one who causes you harm. We can trust that God’s grace is big enough for them, even if our own hearts are not, or aren’t yet. 

Still, empathy is worth the effort. God has promised to seek out the lost (those in particular need), and so when we connect our hearts to theirs through empathy, that is when and where we will find God. We find God with the poor, the sick, the abused, the oppressed. We find God with starving children in Gaza, and with bullied kids in America. We find God with immigrants living in fear of arrest or deportation, and with people who are homeless, and with people fear losing their healthcare. We find God with those who grieve. And when we find God, we discover that God also finds us. We are found. And for God, that is cause for celebration!

I don’t know the solution to whatever it is that has caused so much physical and verbal violence to dominate our news and discourse. Surely it is multi-faceted, and no one person or party or group’s fault. But I’m pretty sure striving for this empathy is a step along the path from being lost to being found. It requires us to acknowledge our own pain, and allows us to see one another in our lostness, to be in the dark hole together. And there, in that shared space, we find God – the God who is abundantly loving, patiently and stubbornly gracious, and committed to finding us wherever we are, to bring us from that dark place, into new life. 

Let us pray… Persistent God, you care about each of your children, and would do anything to find us when we are lost. Thank you. Keep our eyes open to watch for you among the lost, so that we, too, could be found. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.