These illustrations are based on Luke 15:1-10
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Sermon Opener - Seeking the Lost - Luke 15:1-10
The Gospel reading begins with these words: Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them." (Luke 15:1-2)
That is the framework for all that follows in chapter fifteen: the story of a shepherd and his sheep, of a widow and her coins, of a man and his two sons. It is important to remember the situation which prompted Jesus to tell these stories and to ask - "whom do I identify with in this situation?" That's what we do when we read a novel or watch a movie. We tend to identify with someone in it. So, which group or character do you identify with in today's gospel reading?
With Jesus, the good guy, who tries to straighten out the religious folks? Who calls into question all they believe? Who reaches out and loves everyone, especially the most unloved?
With the Pharisees, the ones who rightly saw the dangers of too close an association with the "wrong crowd." For what parent has not worried about a child falling in with the "wrong crowd"? But here the Pharisees go beyond looking out for people. They are convinced that they and they alone understand God and man's relationship to Him. They are right and no one else.
With the tax collectors and sinners, those traitors, the tax collectors who worked for the Romans, robbing their own people? With the sinners, the people of the land who never attended synagogue and seemed to lack even basic morality?
1. Which one are you?
2. What ought we to do?
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Joy as Our Hallmark - Luke 15:1-10
In the past the complaint by folks about Christianity was that it was too austere. No card playing, no dancing, no anything on Sunday except worship and quiet conversation. Then in the ’60s the folk mass movement began and has blossomed after fifty years into the praise and worship movement. Now the complaint is that Christianity is mindlessly happy. Songs that have no real depth of meaning are sung over and over again. Nothing but 7/11 music is the comment: songs that only have seven words and are sung eleven times over. Where is the depth? Where is the meaning? And it is not just the outsiders complaining. Many of us in the church have participated in the famous worship wars in numerous congregations.
In the gospel reading for today we have Jesus responding to the criticism of the religious folks about his hanging out with folks of poor repute. There are three stories he tells and we have two of them today: the lost sheep and the lost coin parables. In all three the emphasis is on the joy at finding the lost. There are parties but we don’t have a lot of details about the celebrations in the first two stories. We just know that the person who found the lost rejoiced with their friends over the finding.
Whether our personalities are boisterous and loud or quiet and reflective is not the issue. Whether we sit quietly in candlelight with soft organ music and the scent of incense wafting through the worship space or whether we are standing with hands waving over our heads with a band playing at full volume is not the hallmark of whether we are Christians doing Christian worship or not.
The question for us revolves around whether or not we are people of joy....
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We Have All Been Lost
A marine tells about a field exercise he was participating in at Camp Lejeune, N.C. His squad was on a night patrol making their way through some thick brush. Halfway through, they realized they’d lost their map. The patrol navigator informed the rest of the squad that their odds were 1 in 359 that they’d succeed in getting back to their base of operations.
“How did you come up with that figure?” someone asked, “one chance in 359?”
“Well,” he replied, “one of the degrees on the compass has to be right.”
Those marines were lost. One chance in 359 is not very good. Fortunately it was just a training exercise, but they were lost just the same. We’ve all been lost at one time or another. That’s part of the human condition.
King Duncan, www.Sermons.com
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Lost and Found
Everyone has lost something at one time or another. There is even a website complete with mobile app, www.lostandfound.com, that acts as a global ‘lost and found’ box. Users can report items missing and users can report items found. It is a good example of how technology can help people connect in a useful way. This is a gateway site for all of the physical things that can be retrieved and returned to their rightful owners. According to their statistics, about twice as many objects have been reported lost as have been reported found in the U.S. So, the site’s users are losing things at twice the rate they are finding them.
Haven’t we all had the experience of losing things that we know deep down we will never recover? Depending on the situation, we can feel disappointed, heartbroken, hopeless, or simply discouraged by our own inability to keep up with things. Isn’t it a wonderful relief to know that we will never fall into the ‘Lost Forever’ category? Isn’t it reassuring to know that God will never give up on us? Let us include a word of thanks in our prayers this week to acknowledge how grateful we are for that kind of gracious love.
Staff,www.Sermons.com
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Is Your Church a Museum or Mission?
An inner city church, located in an area of the downtown where there were few residents, was forced to a decision. A large corporation was offering them a great deal of money for their site, on which the corporation wanted to put a parking lot. The money would enable the church to move to another part of the inner city where they would find many more people to serve. Even though this was exciting to some of the congregation, other members were resistant to the idea. They pointed out that the church was the guardian of a building whose history and architecture reached back into the early part of the nineteenth century. Denominational history had been made in that building, and some of the grand figures of the church had passed its portals.
Eventually the congregation decided to sell the site and make the move to a new building in a teeming inner-city neighborhood. The pastor who was with this congregation through all this upheaval said, "We had to decide whether we wanted to be in a museum or in mission." They couldn't have it both ways. It meant either staying on their site, glorying in their past history and serving a few people, or giving up their past and gearing themselves to a significant ministry among the city's people. They opted for mission status over museum status.
Something of this same struggle is indicated in this scripture passage. The Pharisees and scribes came down on the side of museum religion. They wanted attention given to those who were stable, pious and not a liability if invited to the country club. Theirs was a "let's have our synagogue programs be for us dependable, like-minded types," as some present-day church-growth advocates. Jesus disappointed them by insisting that the issue was one of mission: to reach out to those who needed great mercy, lessons in etiquette, social graces, and perhaps a bath. Paying attention to these "lost" persons would change the comfortable fellowship the scribes and Pharisees enjoyed at the synagogue, to say nothing of putting a dent into its budget.
Wallace H. Kirby, If Only..., CSS Publishing Company.
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God Loves Me
There is a wonderful story about Maya Angelou. She was an active member of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco before her death. She wrote that when she first came to San Francisco as a young woman she became sophisticated. She said that was what you were supposed to do when you go to San Francisco, you become sophisticated. And for that reason she said she became agnostic. She thought the two went together. She said that it wasn't that she stopped believing in God, just that God no longer frequented the neighborhoods that she frequented.
She was taking voice lessons at the time. Her teacher gave her an exercise where she was to read out of some religious pamphlet. The reading ended with these words: "God loves me." She finished the reading, put the pamphlet down. The teacher said, "I want you to read that last sentence again." So she picked it up, read it again, this time somewhat sarcastically, then put it down again. The teacher said, "Read it again." She read it again. Then she described what happened. "After about the seventh repetition I began to sense there might be some truth in this statement. That there was a possibility that God really loves me, Maya Angelou. I suddenly began to cry at the grandness of it all. I knew if God loved me, I could do wonderful things. I could do great things. I could learn anything. I could achieve anything. For what could stand against me with God, since one person, any person, with God form a majority now."
Mark Trotter, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com
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Which Color Would You Be?
Ralph Milton tells of the teacher who, for reasons of her own, asked the kids one day, "If all the bad children were painted red and all the good children were painted green, which color would you be?"
Think about it. What color would you be? Red or Green? It is a tough question isn't it when you pose only two options.
One very wise child answered the teacher: "Striped"
The reason I am going on about this point is simple. It seems to me that in the frame of the story - everyone but Jesus is striped. It is the same in the world today. We are a curious combination of the lost and the found. We are striped. We are, in some sense, not completely complete. It is hard language, this language of lost and found, especially for folks in the middle, as most of us are most of the time. It seems too absolute.
Rarely are we completely lost. And rarely are we completely found. There is always a part of us that needs to be dragged and cajoled into the light, and there is always a part of us that is already there in the light. For some it is more and for some it is less, but always some part.
The wonderful thing is - that God wants us to enter fully into the light. The wonderful thing is that God wants to bless us all richly to keep us safe, to make us strong, to help us be like a Shepherd who really cares for his sheep, or like a poor widow who really values all her coins.
Richard Fairchild, Seeking the Lost
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The Church Is No Place for Joy
In church the other Sunday I was intent on a small child who was turning around smiling at everyone. He wasn't gurgling, spitting, humming, kicking, tearing the hymnals, or rummaging through his mother's handbag. He was just smiling. Finally, his mother jerked him about and in a stage whisper that could be heard in a little theater off Broadway said, "Stop grinning! You're in a church!" With that, she gave him a belt on his hind side and as the tears rolled down his cheeks added, "that's better," and returned to her prayers. I wanted to grab this child with the tear-stained face close to me and tell him about my God. The happy God. The smiling God, the God who had to have a sense of humor to have created the likes of us.
Erma Bombeck
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Create Him Not
The love of God is indescribable but a old Jewish legend does a pretty good job. It describes what happened when God created man. The legend says God took into counsel the Angels that stood about his throne. The Angel of Justice said; 'Create him not … for if you do he will commit all kinds of wickedness against his fellow man; he will be hard and cruel and dishonest and unrighteous.' The Angel of Truth said, 'Create him not … for he will be false and deceitful to his brother and even to Thee.' The Angel of Holiness stood and said; 'Create him not … he will follow that which is impure in your sight, and dishonor you to your face.'
Then stepped forward the Angel of Mercy, God's most beloved, angel, and said; 'Create him, our Heavenly Father, for when he sins and turns from the path of right and truth and holiness I will take him tenderly by the hand, and speak loving words to him, and then lead him back to you.'
Brett Blair, Sermons.com
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It Is a Big Ocean
H.H. Staton in his book, "A Guide to the Parables of Jesus" tells the story of having been on an ocean liner headed to the Middle East.
Nine hundred miles out to sea a sail was sighted on the horizon. As the liner drew closer, the passengers saw that the boat - a small sloop flying a Turkish flag - had run up a distress signal and other flags asking for its position at sea. Through a faulty chronometer or immature navigation the small vessel had become lost. For nearly an hour the liner circled the little boat, giving its crew correct latitude and longitude. Naturally there was a great deal of interest in all the proceeding among the passengers of the liner. A boy of about 12 standing on the deck and watching all that was taking place remarked aloud to himself - "It's a big ocean to be lost in."
It is a big universe to be lost in, too. And we do get lost - we get mixed up and turned around. We despair, we make mistakes, we do evil to each other. We deserve the wrath of God and that is what the Pharisees who criticized Jesus maintained. But Jesus understood God more. He knew God as a Shepherd in search of the one lost sheep. He knew God as a woman searching in the dark, in the crevasses, for that valuable coin. In the end it was Jesus' view of God which prevailed and not his critics.
Adapted by Brett Blair from a sermon by Richard J. Fairchild.
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ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS NOT IN OUR EMAIL
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The ME and the WE - Luke 15: 1-10
The gospel is not a tablet of ink, but a table of food around which everyone is invited to sit down together and eat, drink and dream -- for tomorrow we act.
A few weeks ago we marked the fiftieth anniversary (1963-2013) of Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I Have A Dream” speech. The power of that proclamation, the timely words of one man spoken at the one right moment before the enormous crowd gathered before the Lincoln Memorial, provided the “tipping point” for the civil rights movement and for decades of legal and social changes to come. The power of one man at one moment, the potency of that one speech, was a beacon of change and hope for the nation and the entire world.
But it almost didn’t happen. King was determined to keep his remarks brief that day. Toward that end he had a carefully written out speech that was to go no more than ten minutes. At the end of nine minutes King was done with his script and the crowd was still waiting for . . . something.
Then from behind him came a stage-whispering voice. It was the magnificent, soul-stirring voice of the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. Like a kid tugging on a parent’s coattails, Jackson leaned forward and urged Dr. King to “go on,” to keep talking. “Tell them about your dream, Martin,” her voice insisted. “Tell them about your dream.”
So King did. He cut away from his text, went off-script and climbed into history as he spoke from his heart and soul. King’s “dream” became the dream and desire of generations to come. Mahalia’s one voice told Martin to “change his plan.” Martin’s one voice then told the people to “change the world.” One speech changed the world. One person changed the world…
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Someone with Skin On
There's an old story, about a little boy who cried out in the night. "Daddy, I'm scared!" Half awake Daddy said, "Don't be afraid, Daddy's right across the hall." There was a brief pause and the little boy called out, "I'm still scared." So Daddy pulled out the big guns, "You don't have to be afraid God is with you. God loves you." The pause was longer but the little boy called out again, "I don't care about God, Daddy; I want someone with skin on!"
God knew we needed that assurance of someone with skin on. So God wrapped all the glory of heaven into the flesh and blood of Jesus and stepped into this world as the Good Shepherd just to show us how much we are loved. The Good Shepherd isn't satisfied until all of the sheep are safely gathered into the flock. Not even a one percent margin of loss was acceptable. Jesus came to find the lost.
Billy D. Strayhorn, Lost and Found Department
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Parts of the Whole
The lost sheep and the lost coin are more than the prized possessions of their owners; they are also parts of a whole. The sheep belongs to the flock and the coin to the purse; without them the whole is not complete. The search, then, is a quest for restoration and wholeness. In this sense, all of us who are part of God’s creation should be just as anxious as God until the lost are restored and we are made whole again by their presence. Then, with brooms in hand, we can answer God’s call, "Rejoice with me."
Jennifer E. Copeland, "Clean Sweep," article appearing in The Christian Century, September 7, 2004, p. 20.
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Unconditional Love
What is your view of God? The scowling judge waiting to convict you? The disapproving parent whose love you have to earn? Your view of God affects every decision and relationship in your life. Kathleen Chesto wrote to Catholic Digest to tell them about an incident that occurred in her family. Her five-year-old child approached her one day in the kitchen and asked, "Mom, is God a grown-up or a parent?"
Mom was a little puzzled by the question. "I'm not sure what you mean," she said. "Is there a difference between a grown-up and a parent?" "Oh yes," her five-year-old answered quickly. "Grown-ups love you when you are good and parents love you anyway." I know this sounds trite to some of you, but have you ever really come to appreciate the wonder of God's unconditional love? I dare say that there are some people in this room who don't really believe in unconditional love. You have never received it, and you have never given it. Some of you are still trying to earn your way to heaven. And you are expecting others to earn their way as well. Relax, my friend, and let God love you. Jesus is trying to tell us in this parable that God's love doesn't depend on our goodness; it depends on God's character. Here is this truth expressed in I John 4: 10, "This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."
King Duncan, Collected Sermons,www.Sermons.com
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Hey Blockhead, I Love You
I remember reading a Peanuts cartoon strip in which Lucy comes up to Charlie Brown and does something that is very unusual for her. She says, “I love you.” But Charlie Brown keeps responding by saying, “No, you don't.” And each time Lucy answers a little louder, “Yes I do, I really love you.” But Charles Brown has been rejected so many times he keeps saying, “It can't be true.” So in the last square, Lucy has reached the limit of her patience and she screams out in a loud voice, “Hey stupid, I love you!”
I wonder if God has to do that with us sometimes. I mean, what does it take to get through? Does he have to yell out: Hey blockhead, I love you? Can't you see that God will literally turn this world upside down in his search for one human soul? Maybe you fell like God has been turning your world upside down a little bit lately. Well, that's love at work. And the supreme sign of that love is the gift of Christ Jesus.
Staff, Sermons.com.
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The Paradox of Christian Life
There's a strange paradox about the Christian life. Often, it's more about being lost than found. It's more about feeling incomplete than whole. It's more about feeling excluded than included, because many of us live in those places most of the time.
But that's why we need redemption. That's why conversion is at the heart of who we are, because we all get lost in the desert, even when we're part of the fold. And we all need someone out there, willing to go looking for us. We're always in the process of trying to turn back, to find our way home again. And it's a struggle.
But it's a joyful struggle, because repentance is a joyous activity. It's the endless way that we turn back toward the truth and wholeness. How great is that? And life becomes this process of shouldering one another, of walking each other home. And sometimes we're the carrier, and sometimes we're being carried.
But all the time, it's a movement toward wholeness, toward being included again, toward being under one roof again. A sheep. A coin. Two sons. Us.
And what joy at being found.
Edward Beck, The Joy of Being Lost and Found
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Kierkegaard's Four Steps in the Religious Quest
There was a man by the name of Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher back in the 19th century. The interesting thing is that his writings did not make a real impact on thought and religion until our century. In some of his writings he talks about several different steps that we as human beings take in the religious quest. The first level he talks about is the aesthetic level. Now you do not have to worry about the technical name. Just trust me that the first level is called the aesthetic level. What he talks about is that in this level people dabble in life, trying to enjoy its pleasures. The key word of this level is pleasure-seeking. The second level of life is the ethical level. That is when people begin to take life seriously and the issues of life seriously and give themselves to seeking the good. The first level pleasure, the second level the good. The first level casual dabbling, the second level earnest living. The third level, he says, is divided into two and he calls them Religion One and Religion Two. Religion One has to do with what we were talking about in this bumper sticker where we seek the truth, where we yearn, where we reach out to find this something extra we know is somehow a part of life. That is Religion One and the emphasis there is on truth. So you go pleasure, good, truth.
But he said there is another level that we have discovered. This level is revealed in the scriptures. This level is Religion Two where the whole thing is turned around and the grace of God seeks us. The word here is trust. What we can do at this level is to respond in trust to the God who has already moved toward us. To let go and to let God. My younger son is trying to learn how to swim and he cannot understand how you can float on water. The interesting thing about floating is that it is an act of faith. That water will hold you up if you let go and trust it to do so. If you don't, you are going to sink. In fact, sometimes the more you thrash around the quicker you will sink. It is much the same with the faith in God at this second level that Kierkegaard is talking about. Not to work so hard in seeking pleasure or the good or truth but to let go and let the God who is seeking you in the first place embrace you in his love. It makes all the difference in the world.
Carl B. Rife, Bumper Sticker Religion, CSS Publishing Company
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The Church Squirt
The sea squirt is a strange creature. It seems to be a backward oriented creature. The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. When it finds its spot and takes root, it somehow figures it doesn't need a brain anymore. So it eats it.
The analogy between the sea squirt and some tenured professors has been pointed out on numerous occasions—but the church ought not laugh too loudly. It does the same thing. It finds a home and then settles in. When this happens, it enters what is known as a PVS—persistent vegetative state. That is, it eats its brain. The church grows inward, no longer following its God-given mission.
Someone has criticized the ingrown church with these words: Today, we in the church speak and act on little but that which relates to ourselves. We refuse to learn the language of the culture. We are reluctant to trust the Spirit already at work in the world. What is born out of this retreat is a kind of indoor spirit that does for the body of Christ what an ingrown toenail can do to the human body: It becomes diseased and infected and is a danger to the whole organism. An ingrown spirit can ground a body [local church] just as much as an ingrown toenail.
Jesus ran into this self-centered attitude among the religious people of his day. It caused him to confront them with a series of parables in Luke 15.
Charles Revis, Getting In Touch
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Four Views of the Gospels
In this single chapter there are four views of the same God: A coin lost through no choice of its own; a sheep that strays because it hasn’t the sense to know better; a boy who chooses to get lost but learns the hard way what real love means; and a brother who rejects pure love and chooses hatred and self-righteousness when he could have known pure joy. Which story am I living out today?
Herein is what many theologians call; “the Gospel within the Gospel,” and others have simply called; “the best short story ever written.” Here is a concept that rocked the theological world and bears the true heart of God; a God who searches for the lost and is wounded when we stray. Here is a dramatic clash between the judgmental religious who believed that God longed to obliterate the sinner and God’s only son who came to die for us while we yet sinners.
Which God do I offer to others? The glaring truth is that the God I introduce to others is the same one I will someday meet.
Jerry Goebel, Go After the One That Is Lost
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From Table Manners
So if I were putting together a sinners table at the Huddle House, it might include an abortion doctor, a child molester, an arms dealer, a garbage collector, a young man with AIDS, a Laotian chicken plucker, a teenage crack addict, and an unmarried woman on welfare with five children by three different fathers. Did I miss anyone? Don’t forget to put Jesus at the head of the table, asking the young man to hand him a roll, please, and offering the doctor a second cup of coffee before she goes back to work.
If that offends you even a little, then you are almost ready for what happens next. Because what happens next is that the local ministerial association comes into the restaurant and sits down at a large table across from the sinners. The religious authorities all have good teeth and there is no dirt under their fingernails. When their food comes, they hold hands to pray. They are all perfectly nice people, but they can hardly eat their hamburger steaks for staring at the strange crowd in the far booth.
The chicken plucker is still wearing her white hair net, and the garbage collector smells like spoiled meat. The addict cannot seem to find his mouth with his spoon. But none of those is the heartbreaker. The heartbreaker is Jesus, sitting there as if everything were just fine. Doesn’t he know what kind of message he is sending? Who is going to believe he speaks for God if he does not keep better company than that? I saw them eating and I knew who they were.
Barbara Brown Taylor, "Table Manners," article appearing in The Christian Century, March 11, 1998, page 257
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Nine Years Old!
While visiting in the hospital I met a little nine-year-old girl who was a patient. I thought I recognized her name, so I asked her if she was the little girl by that name who went to our Sunday church school. She replied, "No, Sir. I don't go anywhere to Sunday church school."
I told her who I was and said, "While I'm here perhaps we could have a prayer."
She replied, "That would be fine, but I don't know any prayers." Nine years old!
I said, "What I meant was that I would offer a prayer for you."
She replied, "That would be fine. No one has ever prayed for me before." Nine years old!
Of course, I followed up on that little girl. In the house on one side of her home lived a family nominally members of a major Christian denomination. In the house on the other side lived a family nominally a member of another denomination, and two of our own families lived in the same block with that little girl. That little girl also lives in your city and perhaps in your block - no matter where you live - and the Jesus who told about the sheep and the coin asks us, "Do you care?"
Carveth Mitchell, The Sign in the Subway, CSS Publishing Company, Inc.
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When I Say I Am a Christian
In 1988, the poet Carol Wimmer, became concerned about the self-righteous, judgmental spirit she was seeing in some people because she felt strongly that being judgmental is a perversion of the Christian faith.
So, she wrote a poem about this. It’s called “When I say I am a Christian” and it reads like this:
“When I say, ‘I am a Christian,’ I’m not shouting, ‘I’ve been saved!’
I’m whispering, ‘I get lost!’ That’s why I chose this way.
When I say ‘I am a Christian,’ I don’t speak with human pride.
I’m confessing that I stumble – needing God to be my guide.
When I say ‘I am a Christian,’ I’m not trying to be strong.
I’m professing that I’m weak and pray for strength to carry on.
When I say ‘I am a Christian,’ I’m not bragging of success.
I’m admitting that I’ve failed and cannot ever pay the debt.
When I say, ‘I am a Christian,’ I don’t think I know it all.
I submit to my confusion asking humbly to be taught.
When I say ‘I am a Christian,’ I’m not claiming to be perfect.
My flaws are far too visible, but God believes I’m worth it.
When I say, ‘I am a Christian,’ I still feel the sting of pain.
I have my share of heartache which is why I seek His name.
When I say, ‘I am a Christian,’ I do not wish to judge.
I have no authority – I only know I’m loved.”
James W. Moore, quoting Carol Wimmer, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com
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God Is Personal
I majored in philosophy in college. One thing I discovered was that in an attempt to be intellectually respectable, God got turned into an impersonal being or force. God became an "it" in most philosophical systems. One thing that helped me more than anything else was to understand that God is personal and is not an "it." Such a view holds its weight intellectually because the highest thing we know on the human level is human personality. If that is the highest thing we know, then God can be no less than that, God cannot be an "it." God is at least like a person. Some have gotten around the problem by saying God is suprapersonal. However you put it, God is personal, God is one who feels and moves toward us in his love.
Carl B. Rife, Bumper Sticker Religion, CSS Publishing Company
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Who Moved?
Who is lost? It reminds me of a story of a husband and wife who had been married for 15 years and the wife is sitting buckled in on her side of the car and the husband is sitting buckled in on his side of the car. The wife says, "Dear, why don't we sit as close as we used to?" The husband turns and says to her, "Well,honey, who moved?" Why isn't God as close to us as he used to be? The question is, "who moved?" Who is lost?
Carl B. Rife, Bumper Sticker Religion, CSS Publishing Company
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I'm Not Lost
A few years ago on a small farm in Ohio, a young woman waited anxiously for her husband to come home. Usually he returned about 5:30 for supper, but not this day. Linda called his place of business. He had left at the regular hour. Six thirty came. Still no husband. At 7:30 she put her two small children to bed. As she peered through the window toward the setting sun, the fields were rich with budding grain, but no one came up the road toward the home. Eight thirty rolled by, nine thirty. She called the sheriff's office. At 11:30 the sheriff knocked on her door. Her husband had been found in a nearby barn, where he had taken his own life.
Shocked beyond belief, Linda reeled through the next few weeks, intoxicated with grief. Then her emotions froze. As they did she began to notice the little boy whom she had put to bed at 7:30 that night. Scott withdrew and became moody. He missed his father very much. In his tears he ran to his grandfather. Everyone, especially a five-year-old fatherless boy, needs a shepherd.
Linda decided to move back with her parents in Idaho. The day they left Ohio, Scott cried and cried. He did not want to leave his shepherd. Two weeks after they arrived in northern Idaho, Scott disappeared. His mother, frantic, called the neighbors. They called the police. Her little boy was lost, she said, and she didn't know where to find him. Finally a police helicopter spotted him walking along an abandoned railroad track.
"I'm not lost," he said, "I know where I am going. I'm going back to see my grandfather." He was going back to his shepherd.
John G. Lynn, Trouble Journey, CSS Publishing Company, Inc.
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The Ungrateful Scorpion
Henri Nouwen told a parable about an old man who used to meditate each day be the Ganges River in India.
One morning he saw a scorpion floating on the water. When the scorpion drifted near the old man he reached to rescue it but was stung by the scorpion. A bit later he tried again and was stung again, the bite swelling his hand painfully and giving him much pain. Another man passing by saw what was happening and yelled at the mediator, "Hey, stupid old man, what's wrong with you? Only a fool would risk his life for sake of an ugly, evil creature. Don't you know you could kill yourself trying to save that ungrateful scorpion?"
The old man calmly replied, "My friend, just because it is in the scorpion's nature to sting, does not change my nature to save."
It is in God's nature to save - because it is in God's nature to love. God seeks the lost, heals the wounded, forgives the offender, and gives hope to those who are in despair.
It is what God does.
Adapted by Brett Blair from a sermon by Richard Fairchild.
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Three Characteristics of Success
In a nutshell: The two parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin teach that God is interested in the lost, and God rejoices when a lost person comes to know Him. That means people matter to God. And if they matter to Him, they should matter to us as well. This core value should make us willing to risk becoming a link in the chain of events that brings someone we know to a relationship with Christ.
In 1997, a very important book was written for the corporate community. Its title was Built to Last. The authors of the book conducted some intensive research to determine what a small group of very successful companies in North America had in common.
As they studied these highly successful companies, certain adjectives started to be applied. Words like "visionary", "gold medal winners", and "elite" were used to describe every company in the study. Each one of the companies had been in business since at least 1926. And each of the companies studied had beaten their competition decade after decade, and were making a decisive impact on the world. As a group, their stock market performance, since 1926, had exceeded the general stock market by more than fifteen times.
The authors of this book concluded that the high success of these companies was not due to charismatic leadership, or that they had all found some "great idea" that no one else had come up with. Instead, the research showed that each one of these highly successful companies shared three distinct characteristics.
-First, the focus of each one had always been on a set of core values that never changed.
-Second, each company always had a purpose that was higher than just making a profit.
-Third, there was a relentless drive to change and improve everything in the company except their core values, which, for most, had been in place since the early years of the company's existence.
Well, folks, did you know that Jesus taught His church the same thing? He said in Matthew 6:33, "seek first (God's) kingdom and (God's) righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."
In other words, put what God values, first in your life, and the success that really matters, will be added to your life, after that.
Tom Rietveld, Lost People Matter to God
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We Can't Dodge the Meaning of the Text
It would be easy today to dodge the thrust of this Gospel. The first dodge might be this: we could talk about sheep and shepherds; about coins and the floor of Palestinian homes. There would be several interesting things to say.
For example: the shepherd was responsible for the sheep. If a sheep was lost, the shepherd must at least bring home the fleece to show how it had died. The shepherds were experts at tracking and could follow the footprints of a straying sheep a long way. It was often part of the day's work for a shepherd to risk his life for the sheep. A straying sheep could lose its landmarks and bleat helplessly at the edge of a precipice.
Another example: it would be easy to lose a coin in most Palestinian homes of that day. Most of the houses were dark. The floors were beaten earth covered with dried reeds and rushes. It was easy to lose a coin. Perhaps it was necessary for the woman to find it out of economic necessity; or perhaps because it was one of ten silver coins linked together by a chain that formed the necklace of the headdress of a married woman, something like our wedding ring today. Who knows?
Jesus is not talking primarily about sheep and coins. He's talking about persons who need the Lord. We can't dodge it.
Carveth Mitchell, The Sign in the Subway, CSS Publishing Company, Inc.
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Criticism Brings Out the Best
You can never escape criticism. Anyone who stands up and does something will be criticized. You'll be criticized fairly and unfairly. And if you retreat in weariness, then you'll be criticized for doing nothing. You can't escape criticism.
But criticism has a way of bringing out the best -- or the worst -- in a person. When Jesus was criticized, he responded with the most wonderful trio of parables in the Bible -- the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the lost son. And in them we catch a remarkable insight into the seeking nature of God.
Ralph F. Wilson
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Rejoicing for the Found
In the conclusions to the parables, it is clear that all of heaven is rejoicing. Will we rejoice with the heavenly host over sinners being found and repenting?
Culpepper (Luke, New Interpreter's Bible) ends his commentary on this text with:
In both parables, rejoicing calls for celebration, and the note of celebration may be exaggerated to emphasize the point. Neither sheep nor coins can repent, but the parable aims not at calling the "sinners" to repentance but at calling the "righteous" to join the celebration. Whether one will join the celebration is all-important because it reveals whether one's relationships are based on merit or mercy. Those who find God's mercy offensive cannot celebrate with the angels when a sinner repents. Thus they exclude themselves from God's grace. [p. 298]
I think that this is a very important question for churches today. More than one congregational member has not rejoiced over the influx of new members in the congregation. The non-rejoicing criticism seems especially prevalent when the "found" are somehow different from the mainstream members.
Brian Stoffregen, Exegetical Notes, quoting Culpepper’s Commentary on Luke
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Concern about Our Image?
I'm afraid that most of us would have agreed with the Pharisees and Scribes. As parents we are concerned about who our children may associate with. We have the mottoes: "Birds of a feather flock together" and "One bad apple spoils the whole bunch" and "Guilt by association." As clergy, don't we have to be careful about who we may be seen with and where? I imagine most of us have listened to or read materials on boundary crossings and misconduct. The concern about Jesus' eating partners may have some legitimacy. It could be detrimental to his image as a "holy man".
Brian Stoffregen, Exegetical Notes
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Specializing in Misdemeanors
While working as a court-appointed attorney, Emory Potter was assigned a client who had been accused of criminal trespass. Mr. Potter probed his client with some general questions of background. He asked if he had any previous arrests or convictions. The man ashamedly said, "Yes, sir. I've got quite a few." The thorough attorney then asked, "Any felonies?" The man indignantly replied, "No sir! I specialize in misdemeanors!" That sounds like many of us. We know in our minds that we are sinners, but we specialize in misdemeanors not in felonies "in small sins not in large ones. In our minds, ours are excusable sins. We are like the Pharisee who thanked God he wasn't like the tax collector. His sins fell within a range of acceptability.
King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com
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But I Know Sheep
A new school teacher in a farming community in Texas asked her class, "If there were 12 sheep in a field and one jumped over the fence, how many would be left?"
One little fellow spoke up and said "None."
The teacher said, "You don't know arithmetic."
"No, ma'am," said the boy, "but I know sheep."
Sheep are followers. And sometimes they are not too wise about whom they choose to follow.
King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com
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Looking for Me!
There's an old, old story, that I think is still funny. The phone rings and a little boy answers in a whisper: "Hello?" The caller says: "Hi, is your Mommy there?
"Yes!"
"Can I talk to her?"
"No!"
"Why not?"
"She's busy."
"What about your Daddy, can I talk to him?"
"No! He's busy."
"Well, is there anyone else there?"
"My little sister."
"Is there anyone else there? Another adult?"
"Uh, huh. The police."
"Can I talk to one of them?" "No, they're busy."
"Is there anyone else there?" "Yes, the firemen."
"Can I talk to one of them?" "No, they're busy, too."
Caller: "Good heavens, your whole family is busy, the police and fire departments are there and they're busy! What's everybody doing?"
The little boy giggled and whispered: "They're looking for me."
Today's passage of Scripture is about searching and finding. And that's an old story that illustrates the frantic nature of people who have lost something and are in search of it.
Billy D. Strayhorn, Finders, Keepers
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Huddled Like Sheep
Pastor Mike Milton of Savannah, GA tells about two photos that appeared together on the front page of a local newspaper, the Camden, Maine Herald. One photo was of the board of aldermen and the town manager huddled together at a meeting. The other photo was a flock of sheep. Unintentionally, the captions were reversed. Under the picture of the sheep, the caption identified them as the aldermen and town manager. Under the photo of the distinguished fathers of the community, the caption read like this: "The Sheep, naive and vulnerable, huddle for security against the uncertainties of the outside world."
Let's face it, friends, you and I are oftentimes like sheep. We nibble ourselves into situations that are too big for us to handle. We follow the other sheep, sometimes unwisely. There we are-- "The Sheep, naive and vulnerable, huddled for security against the uncertainties of the outside world." Does our Shepherd care? Yes, says Luke's gospel. He leaves the ninety and nine. Where? Out in the wilderness, to search for that one who has gone astray. What great good news.
King Duncan, Collected Sermons,www.Sermons.com
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Found!
Norman Vincent Peale once told about addressing a Methodist conference in Atlanta, Georgia along with a fine preacher, Bishop Noah Moore, and Pierce Harris, a much-loved local pastor. In his message Peale said that he believed that Jesus Christ could come into a life and change it, no matter how hopeless it seemed.
After the service, when he and the other guest preachers were gathered in the minister's office, they were told that a man wanted to see them. A somewhat disreputable-looking man, they were warned "unshaven, unwashed, poorly dressed. When the man did come in, he was reeking of alcohol, but his mind was full of the message he had just heard. "Do you really believe that Jesus can help me?" he asked.
"Without a doubt," Peale replied. Then the man asked if they would pray with him.
So the four ordained ministers prayed with the man. When he went out, Bishop Moore said, a bit wistfully, "If that man changes, we'll all be surprised, won't we?" There it was, a flicker of doubt from a good man that change is possible for some people.
Six months later, Peale said he was sitting in the lobby of a hotel in Clearwater, Florida, when he saw a man coming toward him, leading two little girls by the hand. The man was immaculately dressed, and his daughters were exquisite children, attractive and well-behaved. At first Peale didn’t know who he was, but as he came closer, he recognized the former derelict from Atlanta. There was a smile on his face, and he was humming "Amazing Grace" as he held out his hand in greeting. Peale said it was one of the most emotional and unforgettable encounters of his life.
King Duncan, Collected Sermons,www.Sermons.com
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He’s Your Brother
There is a wonderful story about a young man named Billy who was attending his first day in Junior High school. At an opening assembly there was an introduction of all the homeroom teachers. Miss Smith was introduced first. She was an “easy” teacher, so the kids cheered as she was introduced. Mr. Brown was next and he also met with thundering approval. But Mr. Johnson was known to be a very strict disciplinarian. The kids jeered most unkindly when his name was called. The pain was evident on his face.
This scene was devastating to young Billy. He was a sensitive kid and he could not believe how the other students were treating Mr. Johnson. Suddenly he stood up in the middle of the bleachers and shouted: “Shut up! That’s my father!” Instantly, the jeering and the booing stopped.
After school, Billy went home. When he saw his real father, he began to cry. “Dad, I told a lie at school today,” Billy said. He told his dad about the incident and how he had said that Mr. Johnson was his father and how he had yelled at all the other kids to “shut up” and be nice to the man.
His dad said: “It’s all right, son. You just got the family members mixed up. Mr. Johnson’s not your father--he’s your brother.”
Daily Grace: Devotional Reflections to Nourish Your Soul (Colorado Springs, Co: Cook Communications Ministries, 2005), p. 153.
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What the World Expects of the Church
On a cold, dreary December evening, several hundred people gathered at a large downtown church in Winston-Salem to celebrate the Christmas season. I had gone down a long hallway to help a small boy who was pushing against massive oak doors trying to get outside. The boy appeared to be about 2 years old. He was crying as if his heart would break.
I picked him up, thinking he belonged to someone at one of the Christmas parties. Investigation, however, revealed nothing.
I rushed outside and spotted an old-model car speeding away in the darkness. Gradually, it began to dawn on me that the child had been abandoned.
I made a few calls, and soon the church was filled with people wanting to help in any way they could. Within moments, the local TV stations interrupted their usual programs to ask if anyone knew the identity of the little boy. The next morning, one of the city's newspapers had the child's picture on the front page. Under the picture there was an article describing the events of the evening before. The reporter began his story with this striking line: "Someone trusted the church last night, and the church came through!"
It will be a long, long time before I can forget that newspaper headline. So much of the world's future depends on the faithfulness of the "People of God" to the "Great Commission." There is a deep hunger across our land as countless people grope for answers to the deepest questions of the human spirit. The message of Christ speaks to these questions, bringing hope and light to people who now stumble in the dark and live in despair. Our world will be changed as the hearts of people are changed. Evangelism is no longer an option for the church. It is essential to the survival of our world.
The line in that Winston-Salem newspaper is a haunting reminder of what the world expects of the church. "Someone trusted the church last night, and the church came through!" May that always be true!
Bishop Ernest Fitzgerald, "Someone Trusted the Church," Michigan Christian Advocate, May 5, 1997, p. 8.