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Only the Lost are Found
Luke 15:1-10
A
Sermon
by
The Rev. David R. Anderson
September 12, 2010
Saint Luke’s Parish
Darien, Connecticut
The gospel story we call one lost sheep is part of a triptych, three stories Jesus told. And we call these—we’ve named these—the lost coin (found by the woman who sweeps the whole house until she finds it); the lost sheep (found by the shepherd who leaves the 99); and the lost boy, or as it’s popularly called, The Prodigal Son (and the father who runs out to meet him). But all these stories are slightly misnamed; the titles highlight the wrong subject.
A lost coin is no big deal. What’s remarkable is the woman who turns the house upside down to find one coin. Nothing extraordinary about a lost sheep—that’s just what sheep do, all of them. What’s remarkable is that a shepherd would leave 99 sheep unguarded in the wilderness—maybe lose half of them to predators while he’s gone—and go after the one sheep dumb enough to get lost in the lair of wolves and jackals. And nothing exceptional, unfortunately, about a boy telling his father to drop dead, squealing out of the driveway and setting his GPS for Vegas. What overwhelms our hearts is the surpassing love of the father.
So today, this isn’t the story of the “one lost sheep.” For Jesus, it’s the scandalous story of God’s relentless love. You could be the only lost sheep, Jesus says, and God would come for you. And by the way, there’s no such thing as 99 found sheep—the good boys and girls who did as they were told, didn’t wander off, and stayed right with the nice Shepherd. There’s no such thing as the found sheep, the 99. We’re all lost sheep. We just think we’re the 99!
And if you think you’re one of the 99, you’re the only one who can’t be found by God. There are none so lost as they who know they’re found. Jesus tells this story, Luke says, because he’s confronted angrily by religious zealots who accuse him of fraternizing with “tax-collectors and sinners.” Imagine that—Jesus talking with sinners! Jesus wants to say, “Excuse me, what other kind of human beings are there?”
Well, we already know. The “other kind” are the 99, the people who think they need nobody’s help, God’s included, thank you very much, like the angry, self-righteous people who surround Jesus this morning. Jesus tells this story triptych to drive home one truth three times: only the lost can be found. A lot of these people who are so confident they’ve “found God,” Jesus wants to say, “Get lost.” Really. Go get lost, and then you have a ghost of chance of being found. But we spend so much time looking good, looking “found,” posing with the “good” group.
If we’re honest, we’re all like Mae West, the actress and comedienne of the 30’s and 40’s, who said, “I used to be snow white, but then I drifted.” That’s why Americans love Mae West. She made a career out of being human—not pretending to be above sin. She was real. She just said what everybody else felt, but was too “nice” to say.
I like what Will Campbell said. Someone once asked Will Campbell, the Baptist preacher, social activist and writer from Mississippi, to sum up the gospel. Campbell drawled, “We’re all bastards and God loves us anyway.” Well, you can tell he didn’t go to Yale Divinity School, and he wasn’t Episcopalian, but you sort of get the point. “God loves us anyway,”
I wish old Will Campbell could drive down from Mississippi and have a little gospel talk with our brother, Pastor Terry Jones down there in Gainesville. The man with signs out front of his church saying, “Islam is of the devil”, and threatening to burn a pick-up load of Qu’rans. I’d love for Will Campbell to remind Terry of who he is, a poor lost soul who needs to be found. But as long as you think you’ve got the Truth all locked up, and you know who’s of the devil (and it sure isn’t you), you’re in that awful pen with the 99, the deluded—no way to be found.
Frederick Buechner said, “The gospel is bad news before it’s good news.” So today we have to admit we’re lost. That’s hard, especially for people who go in big for achievement, meritocracy and appearances. Hard to admit we need help. Hard to admit that to God, and even harder to breathe those words to another person.
As we begin another program year together, I hope you’ll join me in admitting that we’re no better than Will Campbell said we were, that we’re just good and lost. Then together we can make Saint Luke’s more and more a beautiful place for lost people. Because the good, good news of the gospel is, they’re the only ones who, by the grace of God can be found.
I wonder if you’d join me in singing just one verse of that old hymn.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.