Lost and Found

Lost and Found

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

September 11, 2016

Scripture: Luke 15:1-10

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

So Jesus told a couple of little parables about things getting lost. We just heard them. In the first of them a sheep, one sheep out of a flock of 100 sheep, wanders off into the wilderness. The shepherd leaves the other 99 sheep in an unprotected place and goes looking for the one that got lost. He finds his lost sheep, takes it home, and throws a party to celebrate because the one that had been lost has been found. In the other a woman loses one of ten silver coins that she has. She searches high and low until she finds it. Then she calls her friends and neighbors in to celebrate because she too has found what she had lost. At the end of both of these parables Jesus says that there will be great rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents, more rejoicing even than the rejoicing there is over a larger number of righteous people who have no need of repentance, as if there actually were any such people. These little parables set up the much longer parable of a lost son that we know as the parable of the Prodigal Son, but we don’t get that one in the lectionary now. We get a lost sheep and a lost coin that get found. I think there’s a lot we can learn from both of these little parables, but this morning I want to focus on the lost sheep. A sheep of course isn’t a human being, but unlike a coin it is at least an living being with a will of sorts that reacts to situations in its life. So let’s talk about that lost sheep for a minute or two—or more.

The parable of the lost sheep is very short. It’s only 4 verses. Most of Jesus’ parables are very short, and because they are so short they usually leave us with a lot of questions that they don’t even explicitly raise much less try to answer. So it is with the parable of the lost sheep. Why, for example did this wayward sheep wander off? Curiosity maybe? Looking for something she didn’t have there in the flock with the shepherd? Absentmindedness, a simple failure to pay attention to where the flock was going? We don’t know. Jesus doesn’t tell us. Then how did our sheep filled with wanderlust react when the shepherd found her? Did she run to him for safety? Did she try to run away from him because she wanted her freedom? Was she entangled in thorns crying for help? Again, we don’t know. Jesus doesn’t tell us. How did she feel when the shepherd took her to his home instead of taking her back to the flock? Did she think she was about to become a mutton stew? Or was she pleased that so many people were celebrating over her discovery by the shepherd? Again, we don’t know. Jesus doesn’t tell us.

Now, I don’t think these are idle questions about Jesus’ parable of the lost sheep. See, Jesus’ parables are never merely about what they say. This parable isn’t really about sheep and shepherds. It’s about us. It’s about human beings who wander away from God and about how God responds to those wandering humans. And I think those questions are very real questions about how we humans are when we stray from God and when God comes looking for us and finds us. To illustrate, let me tell you a little of my own story of wandering away from God and getting found again. Perhaps I want to do that because I turned 70 yesterday, and that milestone birthday is feeling to me like an occasion for reminiscence and contemplation about my life, the life I’ve lived so far and the life I have left to live, however much life that may be.

See, I really identify with that lost sheep. I was raised in the church, First Congregational Church of Eugene, Oregon. I didn’t learn very much about God or about the Christian faith there, to be honest about it; but at least I was part of church in my early years. I was, but I wandered. I left the church when I was in high school. I told myself I left because all the good folks of that church were, in my arrogant teenage opinion, hypocrites. Actually, I left because I just didn’t fit in with the other teenagers of the church. I didn’t really fit in anywhere. I couldn’t leave school, but I could leave church; so I did. I didn’t feel any loss when I did. I perceived no need for God, no need for Jesus Christ, no need for a faith community. We all tend to be that way to some degree when we’re teenagers, I think. It’s part of our growing up, of our becoming independent, self-reliant people; and that’s not a bad thing. Be that as it may, I left the church behind; and I pretty much left God behind as well.

I didn’t really start to come back until the 1975-76 academic year. As some of you know, I spent that year in Moscow. Not Moscow, Idaho. Moscow Russia. Soviet Russia. Communist Russia. Aggressively atheistic Russia. That year my late wife Francie and I became regular attenders of the Anglo-American Church in Moscow, which is attached to the American and British Embassies. We became good friends of Pastor Mike Spangler, an American Presbyterian, and his family. Something about the gloomy, depressive atmosphere of Communist Moscow made faith in God and the Christian religion seem awfully appealing. When we came home in the summer of 1976 we joined what was then Pilgrim Congregational UCC on Capitol Hill in Seattle. I’ve been a church person most of the time since then. Was God using my time in Communist Russia to call me back home? Perhaps. It’s not always easy to know the answers to questions like that.

Those years between about 1963 and 1975 aren’t the only time I got lost and found in my life. I got lost big time starting in about 1994. That’s when I started to burn out on my profession at the time, law. That’s when something inside me first started to tell me that I’m a preacher not a lawyer. It took me three years of depression, of being really lost, before I had the courage and opportunity to accept God’s call to ordained ministry and go to seminary. During those years God called, and I said no. I said I can’t. I said that’s not what I want. I said I’m too old. I said I can’t afford it. Finally I said that those things may very well be true, but they don’t mater. Finally, I said yes.

And maybe that’s why I ask some of those questions about the parable of the lost sheep. See, in that parable all that happens is that the sheep gets lost, and the shepherd finds her. With us humans it’s a lot more complicated than that, or at least that’s what my personal experience of being lost and found tells me. I got lost. God found me, but I didn’t exactly go rushing back into God’s arms as the sheep in Jesus’ parable may have done when the shepherd found her. I resisted. I said no, and I think it works that way with a lot of us human types. I know that it worked that way with many of my colleagues in professional ministry. At the first orientation session I attended at seminary it just became a joke how many of us said “God called, and I hung up.” I suppose the shepherd could make the sheep go with him even if the sheep didn’t want to. It’s not that way with us. Our relationship with God is very much two-sided. Jesus told his parables about sheep, coins, and even sons getting lost to make the point that God is always looking for those who have gotten lost and always welcomes us back with joy and celebration. True enough, but of course unlike a sheep or a coin we humans are always free to say no. Yes, God seeks us. Yes, God finds us, but God doesn’t force us. Rather, God invites us. God calls us, but God doesn’t kidnap us. Whether we come to God or not is as much up to us as it is to God.

So here’s something I’ve learned as I begin my eighth decade on earth. When God calls, don’t hang up. When God finds you and invites you home, say yes. When God asks you to do some crazy, utterly nonsensical thing (like, say, go to seminary), say yes. When God calls you to do something you’re sure you can’t do and certainly don’t want to do, say yes. Because here’s the thing. The shepherd in Jesus’ parable took the wayward sheep home. That’s what God always wants to do with us. Take us home. Take us where we belong. Take us where we should have been all the time anyway. Take us to a place a safety, even if it may well not be the world’s notion of safety. Take us to a place of joy. Take us to a place of celebration over those who have said yes to God. That’s what I eventually got myself to do when God was calling me into ministry. People ask me if I like ministry better than law. I always say yes, going into ministry simply and quite literally saved my life.

That’s what God wants for everyone. Not going into ordained ministry, not for most folks although for some. But into something. Into some new way of being. Into some more faithful way of being. Into a way of being that leads to wholeness of life, that leads to a life filled with meaning and, at least at times, filled with satisfaction and even joy. That’s what can come from getting lost and then getting found. Found by God. Of course, being lost and getting found isn’t really something that just happens once. It is a lifelong process. So I ask: Where is God going to find me next? Where is God going to find us next? What’s the new home to which God is calling us? I pray that we will continue to work together to find answers to those questions. Amen.