Scripture: Luke 15:3-13 Series: 2021
Third sermon in the ‘Songs of the Bible’ series, set to the preacher’s own song. Walking through Luke 15’s three parables (lost sheep, lost coin, prodigal son), it argues that being lost often goes unnoticed, that everyone matters to God who refuses to settle for 99 of 100, and that salvation is grace all the way down. God seeks us first, has already come to the far country in the incarnation, and calls us to our true home as pilgrims of a heavenly nation.
Illustrations: lost-at-galleria-mall, home-alone-kevin, ninety-nine-percent-odds, lost-keys-loser-metaphor, nouwen-return-prodigal, thirty-rock-handsome-doctor
August 8
When you’re lost, God will find you
Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose someone among you had one hundred sheep and lost one of them. Wouldn’t he leave the other ninety-nine in the pasture and search for the lost one until he finds it? And when he finds it, he is thrilled and places it on his shoulders. When he arrives home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Celebrate with me because I’ve found my lost sheep.’ In the same way, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who changes both heart and life than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need to change their hearts and lives. “Or what woman, if she owns ten silver coins and loses one of them, won’t light a lamp and sweep the house, searching her home carefully until she finds it? When she finds it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Celebrate with me because I’ve found my lost coin.’ In the same way, I tell you, joy breaks out in the presence of God’s angels over one sinner who changes both heart and life.” Jesus said, “A certain man had two sons. The younger son said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the inheritance.’ Then the father divided his estate between them. Soon afterward, the younger son gathered everything together and took a trip to a land far away. There, he wasted his wealth through extravagant living. Luke 15:3-13
When I was about five or six, my family went to the Galleria mall in Houston. This was in the late eighties. It was a unique place. Sure, we had a mall in college station, post Oak mall, but it was nothing compared to the calories. Yeah. There are gallery with its multiple food courts, which is what i was excited about. We were going Christmas shopping, I believe. And my older brother and older sister were all together with my parents and we were making a day of it. I’m sure it was a Saturday or a Sunday. And I was obediently following along and I was holding my mom’s hands and looking at things and holding the hand and looking at things and holding the hand…and I looked up and i was no longer in my mother’s hand that I’m holding. And I didn’t know where she was. I was lost in the Galleria mall. My memory of this experience is very different from my parents’ memory. My memory of it is more like the movie, Home Alone, when Kevin goes to the store (although I didn’t have my dad’s credit card). “I wonder what’s over here. This is odd. This is funny.” Just walking around, making observations, thinking about things. Eventually, my parents found me and we went and had a good meal at an Italian place. It was a unique day in my life. When we’re lost, sometimes we don’t even notice we’re lost. How does God seek us when we’re lost, even when we don’t notice it? How does God help us when we lose what we care about most, even when we’re blinded by distress?
My brothers and sisters, we are continuing our series on songs of the Bible that looks through the scriptures in a way guided and retold in music. There are a lot of explicit songs in the Bible, but it all can be turned into song. For God’s love for us is so great that we cannot help but sing. Today: when you’re lost God will find you.
Luke, chapter 15 is one of my favorite parts of the Bible. It contains these three parables back to back to back. I could spend a month or a year preaching on each of them. The first is the parable of the lost sheep. It’s important to realize that we don’t have the perspective of the lost sheep. We don’t know if it was male or female. We don’t know why it got lost. We don’t know if this was a common occurence or a rare occurence. Let’s assume a male sheep. The sheep’s brother’s could have nicknamed him Losty because he got lost all the time. We don’t know. We have more of the perspective of the shepherd who loses the sheep. I imagine the sheep doesn’t think that there is anything wrong going on. The sheep is not with his brothers and sisters but just trying to get an extra berry before he has to go back to the pen and then he gets stuck, stuck in the brambles.
Let’s put ourselves in those moments when we’ve been kind of stuck and we know we should be somewhere else, but we’re not. We know we should have been listening to the shepherd’s voice. We’re not, we know we made a mistake, but we are stuck. Sometimes it may feel like the end of the story. A shepherd goes out with a hundred sheep, 99, come back. It’s pretty good odds. 99% success rates. I mean, most businesses, if you sell 99% of your product, that’s a good day. If you’re shooting a basket and you make 99 out of a hundred, you’re going to the pros. If you are hitting a baseball and you hit 99 out of a hundred in a month, you’re going to the hall of fame. The shepherd goes out with a hundred sheep, comes back with 99 and that is not good enough. Everyone matters. Every sheep matters, even the ones that get stuck in the brambles. Even the ones that don’t listen to the master. Even the ones that stray from where they are expected to be. Even they matter. Even you matter. Then we have the woman who has 10 coins and loses one of them and spends the whole night looking for the last one, and then she celebrates. A coin is less connected to a human than sheep. We can connect, though, more to what it means to lose something. The emotions of losing something are just as powerful as the emotions of being lost. When you lose something, it often feels like a moral failure. It is easy to turn losing your keys into a metaphor for life. “I lost my keys. I am a loser. I lost my coin. I am a loser.” You are not a loser. You are not a lost coin. God does not give up on you. God is not satisfied with a 90% completion rate. God will find you and bring you home. Finally, we bring it all together with the parable of the prodigal son. It’s about a father who has two sons. One of them wants his inheritance. So he tells his father this (which is like saying, “you are dead to me”) and the father kindly, miraculously agrees. And then the son was prodigious with his inheritance. He acted like his father was dead. And then he spent at all. We have these three figures and this story. As Henri Nouwen eloquently puts it, there’s a way that each of us can find ourselves in each of the figures: the father and the oldest son and the younger son. We’re usually principally focused on the prodigal son. I mean, it is in the title. We focus on what it means to give up everything, to lose everything, to dismiss everything we have been given, to not honor our father, to not honor where we come from, to throw it all away. Even then, at that moment in a pigsty, watching the pigs eat better food than you, love is not at an end.
when you’re lost, God will find you when you’re lost, God will find you when you’re lost, God will find you and bring you home.
This is probably my favorite song that I wrote in this series. Both because it tells these parables that are not often told to children, but it also emphasizes how all of it is grace. When you’re lost, God will find you and bring you home. The sheep is brought home. The coins are brought back together. They are brought home by God. We see the power of God working with the spirit of the prodigal son. There is a synergy between God’s spirit and ours. The Prodigal Son is not a puppet coming home against his will. Grace doesn’t work like that. The son doesn’t even understand what he is looking for or what to expect. We see pure contrition here. He is sorry for what he did. He wants to come home and be a servant to his father. He offers all he knows but God’s yes is greater than we can imagine. The son came humbly to serve his father so he could at least eat what the pigs eat, but when he returns, instead of a whipping or an “I told you so,” there’s a feast that takes place. They take the fatted calf, the special one, most likely set aside for a wedding, and they share a meal for everyone in honor of the lost son. And then we have the older brother, too. He didn’t leave home. He did what he was asked to do. And he is jealous of the attention that his younger brother is receiving. He thinks that it’s not fair. Like I said, many of us have been in the position of the younger brother. Many, as well, have been in the position of the older brother, thinking, ”What this other person is receiving is not fair. Aren’t I worthy? Aren’t I special? Aren’t I worthy of a celebration?” We’re all in different places in our life. We all have different experiences of being lost or being challenged. Some of us may have never felt like we were lost. We always knew what we wanted to do. We always knew what was going to happen. Life kind of unfolded as we expected it to. Some of us may have been protected from the consequences of our actions by circumstances beyond our control. There’s an episode of the old sitcom, 30 rock, where the main character, Liz Lemon, starts dating this doctor who has moved into her building and he’s incredibly handsome. And she’s like, “this is too perfect.” Over the episode, though, she realizes that he is an horrible doctor. But because he is so handsome, he was able to coast through life. He was able to coast through medical school. Everyone fell in love with him immediately so that he didn’t actually have to do anything. His handsomeness got him out of dealing with the consequences of his actions. He ends up cutting off his own hand because of his incompetence. It goes against the story he told himself of his life and he becomes lost. Coming to grips with being lost is incredibly humbling.
The first step for us, though, is not recognizing we’re lost. The first step isn’t even about us. The first step is that God comes out to seek us and find us. God is not satisfied with 99 out of a hundred. God is not satisfied with those odds. You may feel like you’re one in a hundred, that you are not special. That there’s nothing interesting going on with you. You may think that if you weren’t there, the lives of people around you would be better or they may not change at all. And yet when you’re lost, God will find you and bring you home. And maybe that is the key: where is your home? Where is your true home? It may not be the house you live in or the apartment or trailer that you live. God may be calling you somewhere else. The early church called Christians, pilgrims or wayfarers on this journey, citizens of another nation, a heavenly nation. Our nation is with God and God will call us home. God has already come down to find us. God has already gone all the way to the far country to find us. God has already been willing to become humble in the form of a human and take on human flesh, take on human weakness, take on even death. For what God has assumed, God has transformed. In God becoming human in Jesus, humans can now be friends of God. When God finds us, we need not push him away. We must admit the ways that we have been lost or are lost and realize that we don’t need to prove anything to God. We don’t need to earn our salvation. When we’re lost, God will find us. Let us admit those times that we are lost. Let us look for our ultimate hope. Let us seek our ultimate home. Let us be willing to be brought there. Even if it seems like we don’t deserve it, especially when it seems like we don’t deserve it because we do not deserve it. It is grace all the way down. when you’re lost, God will find you when you’re lost, God will find you when you’re lost, God will find you and bring you home. In the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. Amen.