Covenant
United Methodist Church
Sunday School 9:45 Worship 8:30 & 10:45 am
Pentecost 13 Lost and Found Luke 15-1-10
Some of you may not know this, but we have a lost and found here at the church. We have all sorts of good things in it. For instance how about this little back pack. Did you know that on Thursday nights on occasion Loren and Michelle use this little back pack to stay warm when Tom turns the thermostat down too low for their comfort zone. Actually I have seen Anne use it from time to time also. How about this little toy here. Don’t you bet that some child in our church really yelled loud for about a minute when they realized it was missing. And this watch…I think it may still work! Now my point in all of this is that these items are lost but they still have worth to us don’t they. the problem is that someone just finally gave up looking for them. That’s why they lay in our los tand found…
That brings us to our scripture lesson today. Our scripture tells us that the setting for the parables of the lost and found was the grumbling of the religious leaders of Jesus day. They were grumbling because Jesus ate and drank with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus ate and drank with those people that truly religious folk avoided. There were all sorts of laws written about such people. The laws all came down to the same thing. You were supposed to avoid people who were “people of the land” as Jewish tradition called them. They were the poor, the sinners, those who didn’t obey every detail of the law as the Jewish leaders tried to do. The Jewish leaders had reason for concern at what Jesus was doing. Jewish law said don’t loan money to “people of the land”, and don’t accompany “people of the land” on a journey. Jewish law forbade the orthodox Jew from being a guest, or having a as a guest, one of these “people of the land.” Therefore when they saw Jesus eating and drinking with these people they were of course offended. Jesus ate and drank with those it was forbidden by the law to eat and drink with. Jewish leaders looked forward not to the saving of a sinner, but to his destruction…
So Jesus tells three parables to set the people straight about the nature of God…
Too often times we try and make the parables just about us, but more often times when Jesus tells them he wants us to see what the nature of God is. The parables of the lost and found are meant to tell us that the lost of this world are of sacred worth to God and that he is like a shepherd who loses one of his sheep…. He leaves the 99 to find that one lost sheep. He searches and searches until he finds where the sheep was and when he finds it he rejoices…
Or God is like a woman who loses one of her coins. She searches the whole house for that one coin and when she finds it she throws a party because she had lost her coin and now had found it…
Now the next big question that comes to mind is, “Who are the lost?” or more accurately, “Am I one of those folk who is lost and found?”
You know I have this buddy in the ministry. His name is Ronnie White. Ronnie and I seem to follow each other around. I went to Weatherford and he followed and I went to Cross Plains and he followed. Ronnie and I disagreed about a lot of things theologically but we were still friends and got together fairly often. There was one thing I always admired about Ronnie… It was his story about how he came to be a Christian. It was a fascinating story. He was in the marines during the Vietnam war. He served in Vietnam for several years he killed some people while he was there and saw a lot of awful things. He also lived a pretty wild life. He drank heavily and smoked marijuana. When he came home he got married but continued to raise hell as he would say. He ended up in jail on several occasions… once for DUI and another time for getting into a fight. He continued after marriage to look for unsavory women…. Then one night his wife made him go to a Billy Graham crusade, “Then and there Mike,” He would say, God took me by the shoulder and shook me.” He turned me every which way but loose and a turned my life over to God.” I always admired Ronnie’s story, in fact there was part pf me that wished my own story of finding Christ had been that dramatic… but its not…
James Moore recounts the story entitled the doctor and the reverend. The doctor was a man well known and feared in one of the toughest neighborhoods in Philadelphia. The badlands was a rundown neighborhood in Philadelphia known for drug abuse and addiction. The doctor was the toughest of the tough people in the neighborhood. He was called the doctor because he had been doing drugs, dealing drugs and shooting up heroine for 35 years. He had been thrown into the streets when he was only 13 years old, and had done drugs and dealt them ever since. He was also know as Seville” because of his habit of stealing Cadillac Sevilles and then selling them for cash for drugs.
There was a young woman who decided to do something about the badlands. She had wanted to serve in Africa , but she got married and had 5 children. This kept her from doing the missionary work she wanted to do. She was an attractive woman, and we can only imagine the horrible things that might have happened to her. She stopped a drug addict on the street and asked him, “Who is the baddest of the bad in the badlands. The addict said, Seville, The Doctor.” She got directions on how to find him and she went to him and told him who she was and what she wanted to do and told him that all she wanted was to help people in the badlands have a better life in the spirit of Jesus Christ. The doctor was fascinated with her and admired her courage. He told everyone in the neighborhood that they were to treat her with respect or they would answer to him. So this young woman did her ministry in the badlands and over time became a beloved person in the area, known for her compassion for the people in the area. The Doctor also wanted a better life for himself, and decided after meeting and getting to know the reverend that God was the only answer for him. Only God could rescue him from the life he was living. So he went into a drug rehab program, came out clean, and started working in the badlands to help other people just like him… now that is a dramatic story too isn’t it.
The truth of it is that we like hearing those kinds of stories of God’s dramatic action in people’s lives, but I think a lot of us are like the sheep in our scripture lesson today. Sheep don’t make a dramatic exit from their master… they just eat their way away from the master with their head down until they are lost…
I think that is the way a lot of us get lost… Our head down… just eating our way into being lost… It’s not like we try to run away, we just don’t pay attention…
When I was 18 years old I became a Christian. I wasn’t this evil person, I played on the football team was liked by all my classmates at the small school I went to. I sang in the school choir and was in our schools one act play… and then one day a buddy of mine invited me to his church. I listened to him talk about God’s love… He preached on blind Bartimeus and how God loved and healed a blind man… at that moment I knew I was lost… I knew I was blind like blind Bartimeus… and it was then God found me…
I imagine your story is somewhat like that… and Emmaus meeting, a moment at Glen Lake… a special moment in church. You weren’t someone who was awful, just lost and God found you… and God rejoices each time one lost soul is found and one blind person sees… because we are of sacred worth to him…