This sermon was preached at Glenwood and Canoe Ridge Lutheran Churches, Decorah, Iowa on September 15, 2019. It’s based on Luke 15:1-10. If you’d prefer to listen to it, find it at https://soundcloud.com/stacey-nalean-carlson.
Luke 15:1-10
1Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to [Jesus.] 2And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
3So he told them this parable: 4“Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? 5When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ 7Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
8“Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ 10Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
There are so many ways to end up lost.
Luke, in recounting these stories of Jesus, makes them all about repentance–leading us to see these stories as portraits of God seeking out lost sinners. And that is certainly one way to think about them.
But consider this for just a moment…is a sheep capable of being willfully disobedient? Maybe! But a coin?
I don’t think the sheep, and certainly not the coin, intended to become lost. I don’t think they were willfully disobedient. I think they just became lost.
And to be found, they didn’t need to plead for forgiveness or even to call out for help. What they needed was a shepherd who notices lost sheep, a woman who pays attention to her coins, a God who notices and pays attention and seeks out what is lost.
Of course, there is a place for repentance in the Christian story. Sometimes we are lost because of flagrant disobedience. We turn from what we know is right. We end up doing things we eventually come to regret. We are lost in sin, lost in anger, lost in selfishness, lost in living a life that is no life at all, a life just the opposite of what God intends for us. We pray that God would help us to repent–to turn around–to turn back on to the path of love that God has created for us.
But there is also a place in our story for the God who notices lost ones and who does not wait for them to return on their own but goes out searching for them and carries them home in arms of love and mercy, healing and hope.
There are so many ways to end up lost.
Sometimes we become lost in a maze of good intentions, each one calling out to us to do something until we become completely disoriented–not knowing what is actually our responsibility, what will actually make a difference, when it is okay to take the rest we need and let others step up instead.
Sometimes we become lost in stacks of never-ending bills, debts piling up around us, threatening to drown us. We don’t know how we will make it until the next paycheck arrives.
Sometimes we become lost in our piles of stuff. What actually brings us joy? What is unnecessary clutter? What is needed? What is not?
September is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. Sometimes we become lost in pain so intense, depression so unrelenting, that we come to see life as intolerable.
Here’s the thing.
We belong to a God who notices and pays attention and seeks out what is lost.
We have been entrusted to the care of our Savior–the one in whom God’s reign will come (even without our doing), the one who walked this ground before us and who knows, first hand, how it feels to be lost and how desperately we need to be found.
And this one–this Jesus–this God’s love incarnate–is resolute in finding all those who are lost, never stops seeking us out and carrying us home, steadfastly reminds us who we are (beloved) and whose we are (God’s). This Jesus–the shepherd who searches for his sheep, the woman who searches for her coin–searches for us when we are lost and have forgotten just how much we are loved.
Jan Richardson has written about her experience of becoming lost after the sudden death of her husband. She writes, Of all the experiences I’m navigating on my journey with grief, the sensation of being lost in my own life is one of the most bewildering and difficult. Yet I am finding it also to be a place of remarkable grace. This is a new blessing born of being in that lost and graced place. If you are feeling lost in your life, this is for you. 1
I won’t read the entire blessing, but I want you to hear its conclusion:
The point of this blessing is that it has no real point.
It just wants you to know you are not alone,
have never been, will never be—
that it will go with you, will wander with you
as long as you want, as long as it takes,
gladly being lost with you until your way appears. 2
Even when we are lost, we are never alone. And in time our way will appear. His name is Jesus. Amen.
1 , 2 https://paintedprayerbook.com/2016/07/13/lost-blessing/