Lost, Lost, Lost
Luke 15:1-10
Did any of you get hooked on the series “Lost” that ran on Wednesday nights for several seasons? I never got into it much because we had Wednesday night service most of that time but the few times I saw it I thought, “How does anybody make any sense of this storyline? This is so complicated.” I stayed lost most of the time myself. Maybe that was the real reason for the series title! There was just a lot about some of the characters and the plotline that made it difficult to suspend logic. Our scripture reading has some similar strange twists.
Our reading contains two stories. These are the first two parts of a three part parable with the last portion being the part about the lost child or the prodigal. Both parts of our section for today – the lost sheep and the lost coin – were actually very odd to the original listeners. These stories would be great for a first century reality show. I can hear the promo now: Who will make it to the finish line first, the shepherd or the housewife? Will the shepherd find the lamb before it is eaten by predators? Will the housewife find her missing coin or will the coin find its way to a tropical resort? Will they miss the party? Find out the answers to these questions and more on the next episode of “Lost, Lost, Lost”.
The heroes of the stories are not the ones usually held up as heroes. Shepherds – who normally bring pleasant pastoral images to our minds – were almost universally mistrusted by the religious community of their day. And a common housewife would have been considered on the level of an uneducated hired hand not as someone they would hold up as an example to model. The original listeners would have been as taken aback by these stories as the religious leaders were by Jesus eating with “undesirables” like tax collectors and sinners. This was a reality show they didn’t want to watch!
Secondly, did you notice what the first response that both the shepherd and the woman had to the news that something important to them was lost? It wasn’t to ask, “Who caused this? Who is to blame?” In both of these stories they instead start looking for solutions to their dilemma.
Here is the key to understanding the plotline of this parable: even though it is usually understood as a parable about lost sheep, coin and prodigal, this is actually a parable about grace. In all three parts of the parable, the grace of God compels them to search for that which is lost so that it might be restored. The result of this restoration is extravagant rejoicing and wasteful love. That is a common after-effect of grace.
What is not obvious in these stories to us in 21st century America is that there are lots of other odd things about the way the stories are told. It would be odd for a shepherd to leave the entire herd exposed in the open field to predators and thieves while he went looking for a lost lamb. There is no mention that the shepherd had any contingency plan for the well-being of the herd. It would be odd to call together friends to celebrate the recovery of a lost lamb. Recovering lost sheep is the routine job of a shepherd. And in the second part of the parable the amount of the lost coin is so insignificant that having a party to celebrate its recovery would have sounded odd to the original hearers of this parable.
That’s the kind of extravagant joy and wasteful love that is the hallmark of what happens when we experience the grace of God. These two stories were intended to challenge the assumptions of those listening so that they would understand that grace is bigger than all of our prejudices – obvious and unexplored. The kind of rejoicing that results in both stories is in stark contrast to the religious people at the beginning of the parable who had been grumbling about everything. They grumbled when the disciples pulled grain on the Sabbath. They grumbled when Jesus healed and forgave people. They grumbled about Jesus eating with sinners. What is wrong with this picture? We have religious people grumbling and Jesus having the time of his life with the chaff of society!
At the conclusion, the restoration is interpreted as “repentance”. If we understand repentance as “turning from brokenness to wholeness” – to stop participating in old cycles – being open to new possibilities – the stories make complete sense.
So let me give it to you as straight as I know how (no pun intended!). The grace of God has never let go of you. No matter how desperate you may feel at this moment or any moment, grace is always searching to find you a way out. No matter how complicated or disintegrated your life has become, God’s grace is ready to provide wholeness. No matter how far down the road of brokenness you have already traveled – even if it has been miles or decades – it is not too late to turn around and go a new direction. Grace will lead you home. And no matter how ugly or awful or lost a reality series your life has become, you have a church family ready and waiting to love you wastefully and celebrate extravagantly your new start. I know it sounds like a very odd story, but that’s how grace changes the plot.
Some people ask us, “Why does your church put itself out there all the time – doing WJD or going over to the capitol or standing up for marriage equality or challenging religious biased discrimination? Doesn’t that just make you a target of hate? Doesn’t it hang you out there for everyone to take a pot shot at you? Why don’t you just be like so many other churches where GLBTQ folk go and blend in to the framework and not cause any trouble?”
My response to that? We’ve experienced grace. We know what it is like to have God’s presence heal our lives. We know what it is like to be strangled by suffocating lies and have grace pull us to the surface for a gasp of fresh air. We have known the qualitative difference there is in being part of a community of faith that doesn’t simply tolerate but extravagantly celebrates all parts of our lives. We’ve experienced grace.
So no matter if your life feels like the worst reality show or the sappiest soap opera, grace is available to guide you out of the mess. We live in a world that craves reality shows that pit people against one another in the most abusive or competitive or mean-spirited way all for entertainment value. Your life doesn’t have to be like that. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, can even take a mess like you and a mess like me and make us God’s stars. We are passionate about what we do here as a congregation because we have experienced grace. And as a result, we’ll never be willing to settle for second-rate again – not second-rate citizens, not second-rate Christians, not second-rate human beings. That’s how grace changes your life.
Sources:
www.homileticsonline.com Only in the Gospels, September 2007, commentary.
http://net5.sbs.nl/images/database/l/lost/wallpaper/wa_lost-cast_02.jpg “Lost” image.
