Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
Psalm 14
1 Timothy 1:12-17
Luke 15:1-10

Sermon by the Rev. Seth Olson

September 11, 2022

Holy God, let my words be your words and when my words are not your words, let your people be wise enough to know the same. Amen.

I love hide-and-seek! At least a few times a week, my five-year-old (Teddy) and I find ourselves sneaking around our home trying to evade one another. I am no longer the champion hider that I was during the days of deep pandemic time. Partially that is because our home only has so many hiding places, but also my child has grown up—he’s a much better seeker than he once was.

When the shoe is on the other foot, and Teddy is hiding, I admit that sometimes I intentionally do not find him at first. Even if I hear him giggling under the bed, I might walk down the hall for a while, so that he can reveal in the freedom of being “lost.” Of course, eventually he wants to be found—we all do. Perhaps more than anything else in the world, we yearn to be found.

If you have ever been truly lost it can be a bit terrifying. My first day of College Track practice at Sewanee was such an occasion. I ran with the rest of the team for 3 miles, but they dropped me as I was undertrained. Deep in the woods of the 13,000-acre campus, not knowing how to get out, I felt panicked. At first, I tried to keep running to find my way home; however, that only got me more lost. In those days we did not carry our cell phones everywhere either (man, I sound so old). So, I stopped, and I listened, and I prayed. Then, not too long after that, my friends came running down the trail where I was.

From time-to-time, all of us get a bit lost, and I do not mean like I did at track practice. Lost like we were 21 years ago today when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Lost like we might have been the past couple years. Lost like we forget who we are and whose we are.

When we are this kind of lost we might take inventory of our lived values with questions like: do I enjoy my job, am I fulfilled with my relationships, or how do I feel about my drinking? We might even feel lost as to what we are feeling inside saying: the world is moving on, but I feel stuck—I feel more uneasy or anxious and don’t know why. When we get this kind of lost our society claims there are many solutions to help us find our way and ourselves!

You probably know these promises that we willingly take on ourselves: When I get enough money then you will have made it. There’s that perfect job out there and once I get it, I’ll be set! My life will be complete when I find the right person. A baby will make my family whole! When my team, candidate, or company wins, then it’ll all finally be great! Maybe these “solutions” help us for a time, but what about when we are the type of lost that cannot be solved by earning more, doing more, or being more?

If we are not careful, we might mishear the words from Jesus today. We might mistakenly think Jesus is telling me to go do more – I am a shepherd who will be alright when I find the sheep, or I am like the woman who must get that money back! Here though Jesus is not telling us to just keep seeking until we find, instead he is describing something we cannot find or fix on our own.

When we are lost—when we feel as though our faith, our spirit, our soul is lost—we would be wise to hear three aspects of these stories Jesus told us today. First, when we are lost, it is not on us to become found. Second, while being found is not on us our role is not entirely passive either. Third, this is not a “being found” competition—in other words, we are invited into a celebration where we rejoice alongside others when God finds them too.

First, finding ourselves is not all up to us. There are a lot of books on Amazon with the title “Finding Myself,” and I am sure these volumes with thousands of five-star positive reviews do indeed help individuals to do the important work of discovering their truest selves. That work cannot be understated in how valuable it is. And yet, at the same time there is something fundamentally humorous in the idea of me being able to find myself if I am truly lost.

Jesus’ parables today enlighten us to the truth that sometimes we are the lost sheep or the lost coin. Anytime we get overwhelmed by the too-much-ness of this world, God is already searching for us. God is the foolish shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine other “found” (saved?) sheep to go find the one who has gone missing. Make no mistake this is poor animal husbandry; however, it is the audacious way that the Reign of Christ works! God comes looking for us.

In the same seemingly foolish way, the poor woman having just found her coin, then throwing a party for her neighbors would NOT have been the best financial decision. However, when she found a coin worth—funny enough, the amount of money needed to purchase a sheep—she could not help but celebrate with others. Jesus was not attempting to provide worldly wealth management advice, nor was he your typical shepherd. The way he depicts the Kingdom of Heaven points us toward seeing that God’s love is lavish, superfluous, extravagant, over-the-top, and even a bit dangerous (in the best possible way)!

So, if the point of these stories is that we aren’t the seekers, but the lost, then it’s not up to us at all—we’re merely passive passengers with Jesus taking the wheel, right? Well, this is the second point to notice—there’s this happy middle ground here, like when I was lost in the woods running. I could have keep searching by running and gotten myself more lost. Something deep within me though told me to stop and listen and be open to being found! Sure enough, I was. So was the lost sheep and so was the lost coin.

The point of the story then is that we are miserable sinners, and we should sin boldly, and get lost after some riotous living (like the Prodigal Son in another parable)! Right? That sounds fun! Except, that’s not it either. In the parable that follows right after today’s Gospel, the Prodigal Son gets lost too, and it’s not fun—he’s so desperate that he daydreams about eating pig slop and being a hired servant. Being lost takes its toll, living riotously is not all fun. Sometimes though it takes us reaching that sort of emptiness, that kind of breaking point to realize we’re lost and cannot get “un-lost” on our own.

The beauty is that we need only to be still, to pay attention, and be open to God. In this middle ground, God does something almost incomprehensible. God comes running for us, and when a lost sheep is found, a lost coin is retrieved, a lost child is home, there is a raucous party! Every time we find ourselves lost (haha), God will seek us out to bring us back home where a giant celebration will commence.

Still, there’s a third and final point here to the story. Yes, we are “lost” sinners and tax collectors, but we are also “found” religious ones like the scribes and Pharisees. Our part in these stories is multiple. We play more than one role. As we experience the relief of being found and coming home, our task is not then to ostracize those who have not yet realized that God is pursuing them. Our aim as cojourners on this spiritual path is to rejoice whenever one is found by God, and maybe something more.

It is quite easy to be cynical, to think like the older brother in the Prodigal Son story, that we have earned our way into the Household of God because God found us at a different time, but that’s not the point of these powerful parables. Instead, we are called to rejoice around the Table together recognizing just how magnificent it is that God seeks us still.

At times we might feel like we are playing hide-and-seek with God, but as we hear these parables of the found sheep and the found coin anew, may we recognize all the ways we fit into the story. At times we will be the lost ones, at times we will be the found ones, and at times we will be the ones invited to rejoice alongside lost ones coming home. Alongside God may we be like the Good Shepherd, the Searching Woman, and the Adoring Father who rejoice and celebrate the beauty of us all coming home.