First Presbyterian Church
August 21, 2005
You Have to be Lost before You Can be Found
Luke 15:1-10
Have you ever been lost? We get a sick feeling in our stomach when we are lost, don’t we? A couple of months ago an 11 year old boy scout from Bountiful named Brennan Hawkins spent four days lost in the high Uinta Mountains when he wandered away from his troop. You remember the media coverage. Brennan spent four days in the wilderness, lost and alone and literally fearing for his life. Finally, volunteer rescuer Forrest Nunley of Salt Lake City found Brennan standing in the middle of the trail all muddy and wet. Have you ever been lost like little Brennan? It’s scary to be lost, because you wonder if indeed you will ever be found. As a child I can remember the horrible feeling of being lost in large department store thinking that my mother will never find me. I remember the feeling of terror that struck me when I was lost, and then the feeling of joy that came over me when I heard my mother’s voice calling my name, “Jimmy, Jimmy!” “I am here mom, I am here,” I said. Whew, what a relief!
More recently I was lost again last week in Trieste, Italy. I had a 6:30 am flight out of Trieste on Monday. On Sunday, I was in Rijeka, Croatia and the last bus to Trieste was at 5:00 Sunday night. I didn’t know what I was going to do once I got to Trieste or how I would get to the airport 30 miles away from the city center. My bus arrived into Trieste around 8:00 pm on Sunday night. When I arrived everything was closed. I had Kuna, which is Croatian money, but I had no Euros and there was no exchange place open. The bank machines were not working. All the convenience stores were closed along with all the restaurants. It was raining. I was tired, hungry and broke. I was lost in Trieste. After wandering the streets in the cold rain for 20 minutes I found the Hotel Roma. I went inside dripping wet and there to greet me was a man who said, “Welcome to the hotel Roma, how I can help you?” Ah, help at last and help I got. This man found me a taxi that would accept a credit card; he found me some food from their kitchen that he gave to me. He found me a towel to dry off; this man took care of me. I was lost but now I was found by this man and the man’s name, ironically, was Christian.
Reality is Better than Denial
There is nothing more terrible than being lost and nothing more joyful than being found. Are you lost? I don’t mean now in a physical way, but spiritually…are you lost? Most of us have too much pride to admit we’re lost, especially us guys. No man likes to pull over and ask for directions; we’re never lost, just finding new and creative ways to get to our destination, right guys? It’s not cool to be lost. Society reveres found people; that is, people who appear to have it all together. The pressure to have it all together is so strong that sometimes we live our life in a state of denial. We can’t come to grips with the haunting fact that indeed we just might be dreadfully lost. We don’t want others to know that we are emotionally, mentally or spiritually in need. So I ask you this morning to be honest with yourself. Are you lost? Do you feel anxious about life; scared because you don’t know who you really are nor do you know where you are actually going?
Do you feel distant from God, like He’s not even there? If you say you’re lost then I have some great news for you. If you think that you have it all together then what I am about to say might disturb you. You see Christ did not come to seek and save those who believe themselves to have it all together; no, he came to seek and save those who have accepted that fact that they are lost and are in need of God to rescue them. You will never know the joy of being found unless you admit first that you are lost.
The True In-Crowd
In Jesus’ day, much like it is today, there were the haves and the have nots. There was the in crowd and the outcasts. There was the moral right and the liberal left and there were your pious religious people and your regular old scum of the earth sinners. In the Gospel of Luke in this 15th chapter Jesus tells three stories all having to do with something or someone being lost and then that something or someone being found. The first two stories deal with a sheep and a coin. Jesus told these stories to outcasts, liberals, and sinners because they were the ones willing to listen. The religious people, the moral people, the conservative people could not listen because they were too busy judging the scummy people, as well as judging Jesus who was associating with these scumbags. You see, the conservative religious moral right thought that they were the chosen ones, destined to be righteous because of their ‘correct religion.’ Out of fear they chose not to associate with immoral, sinful, and socially unacceptable people. They rationalized in their minds that what they were doing was good, lest they become defiled by hanging with such a sinister lot. So, when Jesus sits down to a dinner with society’s rejects, the religious right judges him and condemns him. Why would they do such a thing? Why would they judge God in such a way, especially the pious, religious people? I suspect that the love of Jesus that came from God shamed them. They felt guilty because they knew the command to love their neighbor but their pious pride kept them from associating with sinners. This made Jesus very angry at the religious right, so angry that he called the religious leaders of his day blind guides, snakes, and hypocrites (see Luke 11). You see, Jesus knows that all of us are lost. Evangelicals, Muslims, Mormons, Presbyterians, Jews, Catholics, Liberals, and Buddhists, all of us are lost. Lost does not differentiate between colors and creeds. Lost is not divided by rich and poor. Lost does not distinguish between religious affiliation. Lost is not drawn along political borders. Jesus knows that all men and women fall short of the glory of God. Jesus knows that the love of the Father is available to everyone who will simply ask Him for it. He also knows that we are all so lost that none of us can find our own way back home but that we need someone to show us the way.
Getting Lost
You see, we in the church often think too much like the Pharisees. We think, “Well, we are here in church, thus we must be the found people of God. We must be the chosen of God.” We think it’s nice in here. It is cozy and comfortable. Now that we have found our cozy niche we don’t have to associate with homosexuals, anti-war demonstrators, the poor, the Muslim, the Mormon, the thieves and the homeless. We don’t have to bother with hookers and whores nor should we be seen with drunkards and cheats.
Not only do we not have to associate with them from our comfortable pews but we can just sit back and judge them and condemn for being sinners or for having the wrong doctrine or ideology. Why don’t they just accept Jesus, my Jesus, then they would be OK to associate with, but we forget that we were once lost and only by God’s grace were we found. We did not discover Jesus but He found us while we were in our darkest hour of need and by His grace He saved us. And just as the Pharisees were as lost as the publicans so we too in the church can be just as lost as those in our community. How can this be? How does this happen?
Well, the text gives us two clues on how we get lost. First let’s learn from the parable of the lost sheep. How does a sheep get lost from its herd? Well, shepherds tell us the way one of his sheep gets lost is when he keeps his head down and slowly nibbles small patches of grass and just continues along that line of grass in the ground enjoying his meal so much that he never looks up to see if the others are still around. It is really quite easy for a sheep enjoying the pleasures of a good meal to get lost. He is so wrapped up in himself and the pleasures of his meal he loses his way and is lost. So it is with us in this sheep pen called the church. We put our head down. We stop looking around us to see the needs of the world, to enjoy the promises of God, or to notice the joy of fellowship. Instead we find a pleasurable path that makes us feel good and we take it. Money, power, pride, are the fields of grass we feed on. We think about ourselves and how good it feels to have tons of money, we enjoy the rush of power, and we are full of pride and our need to be right outweighs our need to love. It starts out with a nibble, but pretty soon we have wandered so far away from The Way that we are lost.
The second way we get lost is by carelessness. In the second parable the woman carelessly loses her coin. The coin is lost by the woman’s carelessness. We too in the church can discover that we are lost because of our careless lifestyle or because of some of our careless decisions. We carelessly pledge our allegiance to someone or something other than Jesus, we carelessly give our bodies, hearts and souls away to those who will hurt or harm us, we carelessly spend our money and time on frivolous things and when we look up we realize that we are lost and think we are too far gone ever to be found so we just accept our messed up lives. We have carelessly wandered so far from home we don’t know how to get back and we think that we have been so foolish that no one would even want us back, so we continue to associate with other fools and careless people, moving further and further away from our home with God.
You see, it is quite easy to get lost. We think we know where we are but over the years--- because of our nibbling on pleasures or because of our careless decisions---we become lost and we feel distant from others and God. We have been lost for so long we don’t know the way back so we just accept the anxiety, the emptiness as part of life. We live in denial, playing the game of life as though we have no handicap when in reality we do. But you and I are never a lost cause. We can never wander so far away that God can’t find us. We can never be so careless or selfish that God will not take us back and love us.
Lost No More with Love
In both stories the sheep and the coin do not find their way back. They are lost. They need to be rescued and so do we. We cannot do anything but accept the fact that we’re lost, humble ourselves before God, and pray to God that he would find us. Greg was in search of a wife. His black book was full of girls that he had dated or could date. Greg was so frustrated with his life and the dating scene that he had lost hope that he would ever find his true love. Then one day out of the blue he received a letter in the mail from a girl that he had met three years earlier at a conference. Greg had fallen in love with the girl, but three years ago she had no interest in him. Now however, things had changed. Greg did nothing to change his situation but by some miracle this girl, Dana, realized over the years that she, too, was in love with Greg. When Greg read her note in which she professed her love for him, he dropped the note and then dropped to the ground and said, “I have been trying to find love, but love has found me. I have been trying to change so that I might be loveable, but now love has found me and love has changed me.”
God is the greatest lover in the universe. He is a jealous lover. He wants all of you. All you need to do is to say to God, “God, help me I am lost,” and He will come to you. He will rescue you, and He will save you. You and I don’t find God but God finds us. God is looking for you and simply wants you to say to Him, “God I need you.” You say that and God will be there. I promise you because that is God’s promise.
Know, however, for God to find you it was a difficult task for Him. Notice in the story the sacrifice the shepherd must make to leave the 99 and move out into the treacherous and dangerous wilderness to find the one lamb. Notice how in the story of the coin the woman is extremely thorough in her search for the lost coin. God takes this finding business very serious. By His Spirit He is thorough in His search for you. He will leave no stone unturned in order to find you. Also remember that God’s search for you caused him great sacrifice and suffering. It is not easy to travel in the wilderness. Nor was it easy for Jesus to go to the cross. I am sure as Jesus was telling this parable of the lost sheep, Jesus, the good shepherd, was thinking how in a few more weeks he would make the ultimate sacrifice and take upon great suffering by taking the very sin which caused you to become lost. What kind of love is this? We are the ones who left God and got ourselves lost and this God through his son Jesus forgives us, and searches for us so that we might be once again be apart of God’s loving family.
Time to Party
And what does God do when he finds one of his lost children? Well he scolds them, of course, for getting lost. He tells them, “Don’t you ever ever wander off like that again. Do you know the suffering and sacrifice I went through to find you?” No, this is not what God says. He says, “Kill my best calf and let us feast. Crank up the music and let’s party. It is time for a celebration because this son/this daughter of mine was once lost but now he/she is found. He/she was once dead but is alive again. When one lost sinner repents, humbles himself to be found by God, all of heaven rejoices. The angels of heaven sing songs of love over your head! Can you hear them?
Or are we too much like the ninety-nine righteous who think we don’t need to repent? Are we too busy worrying about the right way to worship and sing and missing out on the joyous reason why we sing? God does not get excited when we the church do worship ‘right.’ God gets excited when one of his children is found. God doesn’t through a party when we get our doctrine and theology correct but he sure does go ecstatic when a sinner says, “God I need you.” If you want to make God ecstatically happy and joyous today, then humble yourself before him, surrender your lives to him by saying, “God, I need you and God, I only want to do your will.” If we the First Presbyterian Church can do this each and every day of our lives, look out! We will be the healthiest and fastest growing church in the valley and perhaps the world.
A Healthy Church
Next week, Dr. Paul Borden from the Healthy Church Initiative will be here to consult with us on how to become a Healthy Church. He will preach next Sunday and he will tell us that if we are to be healthy church and if we are to grow in spiritual maturity then we must focus not on ourselves but on those who are not yet here. He will tell us that in order for us to be a vibrant, dynamic, growing church that we will have to put the sinner out in the community first, consider their needs before our own and go and serve them. I happen to agree with him, but before we can run out and love on our community we first must learn what these parables are teaching us.
We must recognize that we are in a constant state of being lost and that’s ok, because when we know we are lost then we surrender our lives to God, and when we do that then we will know the immense joy of being found. You and I will not be able to love and serve our community unless we first allow the love of God to rescue us from our own despair. You and I will not be able to befriend people of different religions, ethnic groups, or economic status unless we first are able to embrace the people right next to us in the pews. We are able to embrace one another only when we realize that we are all precious to God and when we love each other, then we are doing God’s will because God loves each and everyone of us. First Presbyterian, are you ready for the Healthy Church Initiative? We are if we know the pain of being lost and the subsequent joy of being found by our loving God. When the love of God fills then we will be healthy and we will be able in confidence to go beyond these walls to share through our words and actions the amazing love of God found in the one who found us, Jesus Christ. So let us together lay down our pride, humble ourselves before God accept His love so we can be equipped to go out in the community with the love of Christ. When we do this the only result can be a healthy growing dynamic loving church.
