“Found It!”
Sermon: Year C, Pentecost 14, Proper 19, Lectionary 24
Text: Luke 15:1–10
Preached: Sept. 15, 2019 at Immanuel Lutheran Church, Evanston, IL

Grace to you, and peace, from the Immortal, Invisible God, and from Christ Jesus, who came to seek out and save that which was lost. AMEN

Have you ever lost something of great value? I have. This money clip I’m holding was the first Christmas gift I ever received from Tom. It came from Tiffany, and matched the one he carries. Actually, I have to admit, this is not that money clip. I lost that money clip. I was traveling a lot for work, racing through a few different airports a week. Early one Monday morning, a little bleary-eyed, I went through security at O’Hare. I dumped my pocket contents into one of those little bowls they have, and fed it through the x-ray machine, along with my winter coat, my computer bag, my carry-on, my belt, my shoes. I gathered everything up on the other side, trying to get dressed again. I was about 100 feet away when I realized I had left the contents of the bowl. I went racing back, my heart in my throat. The bowl was there, my wallet was there, my keys…but not my money clip. I felt sick to my stomach. There wasn’t a lot of money involved—but that money clip was precious to me. I filed a report with TSA. The whole trip, I fretted about it. Had it been stolen from me? Had I maybe left it at home, and just forgot? When I passed back through O’Hare, TSA informed me that they had been unable to locate it, and the security tapes didn’t show it being stolen. I went home, hoping against hope that it would be there on my dresser. I frantically searched all the pockets of my suits and pants hanging in the closet. I got a flashlight and looked under the bed, looked in the corners of the closet, hoping I would see it glinting in the darkness. Nothing. I finally had to admit to Tom that I had lost his gift.

We’ve all had that experience of losing something valuable to us, we’ve all known that heart-in-your- throat feeling as you look for what has been lost. Maybe it’s not a thing. Maybe it’s a person. But we all know what lostness is about. Today’s words from Jesus are all about finding valuable things that are lost. The first parable, about the shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep behind and goes out looking for the one lost sheep, and returns with that sheep on his shoulders, is by far the most familiar to us. I have several images of it, like this African brass statue. I love the idea of this God who comes looking for us out in the wilderness and brings us home on his shoulders.

We tend to think of sheep as willfully wandering off—just as we can willfully wander off into sinful behavior, wander away from awareness of God. But I’ve learned something: With sheep, getting lost is not really so much about their willfulness as it is about their just being sheep, prone to wander… noses to the ground, eating a bit here, a bit there, not really paying attention to the fact they’re getting further and further away from the rest…nice little bit of grass over there, then suddenly they lift their heads and realize, “Hey, where is everybody??” And they begin to bleat a little… but it seems that, after awhile, sheep will realize their bleating can attract predators, and they get scared, or maybe they despair, so they often simply lie down under a bush and remain silent there, waiting to be found. It’s not so much that they’re willful and sinful as it is that they’re stupid and careless, or just weren’t paying attention. I can relate to that. Can you?

I relate more, somehow, to this woman frantically looking for that coin she has lost. It’s valuable to her…it represents at least a day’s wage. It’s 10 percent of her whole wealth. I’m sure she doesn’t know how she lost it, any more than I know for sure how I lost that money clip. That really doesn’t matter to her. But she is determined to find it. She grabs her broom, and she lights her lamp, and she begins to tear the house apart. Dust is flying as she sweeps the soft dirt of the floor, in case the coin is lying there. Can’t you see her down on her hands and knees peering through the dust bunnies—or cat and dog hair, in my house—under the furniture, holding her lamp down there in the darkness beside her face, hoping that maybe the coin has rolled off under there, and she’ll catch a glint of reflection off it? There is an urgency to her search. Her heart is in her throat. She won’t rest until she finds what she has lost. It matters that much.

That, dear sisters and brothers, is how God is. God is that woman looking for that lost coin. God is constantly, determinedly, searching for us, desperate to recover that which has been lost. God sweeps into our world, stirring things up around us, seeking us, convinced that somewhere in that cloud of dust there we will be. She bends down to our level, looking in the darkest places, hoping that by shining a piercing light into our darkness she will catch a gleam of that true light that enlightens everyone shining back at her. When she finds
us, she reaches in and pries us up from the dust and the debris of our lives that has covered us up, and she pulls us out into the light, crowing in victory because she has found us.

Back in the ‘70s there was a big Evangelical Christian marketing campaign to encourage people to “find Jesus.” You may remember the bumper stickers and billboards all triumphantly proclaiming, “I found it!” But you know, that’s exactly backwards, I think. That’s not what we get to say…that’s what God cries out in great joy: “I found it!” You see, we don’t find God, God always comes and finds us…though maybe sheep are just dumb enough to think they’ve found the shepherd, when it’s really the other way around! God’s sense of loss at losing us drives God to extraordinary lengths to come get us where we are.

Actually, there are three parables in this chapter of Luke’s gospel about lost things being found: there’s the Lost Sheep, and the Lost Coin, but immediately following these two Jesus tells a third story that we usually call the Prodigal Son, but that really could more aptly be called “the Lost Son.” Now, in the story of the Lost Sheep, the sheep wanders away and gets lost, just being a sheep. In the story of the Lost Coin, the coin gets lost, we have no clue how, it just happened. In the parable of the Lost Son, the son gets lost by taking actions that are wrong and foolish. But in none of the stories does it matter to the finder how the thing of value got lost. Never does the shepherd upon finding the sheep give it a kick and say, “You stupid sheep, how could you have been so dumb as to get lost!” No, he just lifts it up and slings it over his shoulders and joyfully carries it home, then calls all his friends and neighbors to come and have a party with him. The coin couldn’t have done anything to get lost… something had to have happened to it. But you know, sin is not always what we do… sometimes sin is what is done to us, too, or the things that happen to us, but the effects upon us are devastating, nonetheless, and separate us from the joy that God desires for us. But all that matters to the woman after she picks the coin up and shines it up is that she has found her valuable coin, and so she rejoices and calls all her friends and neighbors together for a party. In the story of the Lost Son, the father doesn’t even allow the son to finish reciting his confession, much less punish him for his past misdeeds. No, when he spots him off in the distance making his way back home, the father, who has been scanning the horizon all day every day since his son’s departure, looking for him, aching, when he spies his son there far off, he hikes up his robes and races out to meet him before he can even get close, shushes him before he can even get out his rehearsed apology, and hugs him and kisses him and orders that the best robe and ring be placed on him, and begins to throw a party.

You see, all that matters to God is that that which is of surpassing value—us, all of us, in fact, all of creation— be found again. God keeps seeking until God finds us, even though that means God has to go out into the desert looking for us, or has to stoop down into our dust and look in dark places to retrieve us, or has to come running out to us across rough, rocky fields. God doesn’t care what caused our lostness. All God cares about is that we be found again. God doesn’t care anything about punishing us, making us pay for our lostness, and even if our lostness is because of something we’ve done, God forgives us before we can even say we’re sorry. God lifts us up, and carries us back where we belong, and rejoices, and calls us all together for a party to celebrate the finding. It doesn’t have anything to do with our deserving. That’s just how God is. That’s how precious we are to God.

And then, as ones who have been found and reclaimed and rejoiced over, as ones for whom God has thrown a party, Christ sends us out on sheep-finding and coin-finding and wayward-child-finding missions ourselves. Christ doesn’t send us out to explain to other sheep how to act in order to find their own way out of the wilderness…no, he sends us out as shepherds to pick them up on our own shoulders and bring them back home for the party. And Christ hands you and me a broom and a flashlight so that we, too, can go looking in dark places, shining light in on those whom life also has covered up, sweeping away the dust and bringing them out into daylight to be celebrated…at a party. And Christ teaches us to scan the horizon for all those who are struggling far off, all those who feel ashamed, and tells us to go rushing out across the fields to the lost ones trying to return under their own power, not to extract an apology from them, and words of sorrow and repentance, but instead to usher them home in honor and throw them a party. Are you seeing a pattern here?

Oh, yeah, you may be wondering how it is that I have a money clip here to show you, if I lost it. Tom, who felt the loss as much as I did, tried to buy me a replacement, but Tiffany no longer made this one. Years later, we were in South Africa, and stopped in the shop of a silversmith. Unbeknownst to me, Tom slipped into the back with the silversmith, pulled his own money clip out and had the man make an impression of it. A couple of months later, I opened a package, and there I found a newly made money clip. One way or the other, Tom would not rest until what had been lost was found. That, dear sisters and brothers, is how God is. Thanks be to God.

AMEN