This morning’s scripture is about being lost, and the one who finds us.
Some experiences of being lost are fleeting and
frustrating, but not particularly scary: missing your exit then getting turned
around in an unfamiliar city, starting a job that had insufficient guidance, or
not being able to find those miserable ding-dang keys.
Some remnants of being lost are harder and longer
lasting. I hear stories from adults who can recall becoming separated from
their parents in a store as very young children, or separated from childhood friends
exploring the woods, and they can recall the panic of being lost as if it were
yesterday.
An ill-suited, even disorienting career can leave one
feeling lost, and so can retirement from a career that suited one really well.
The fading or ending of a primary relationship, by death, by dementia, illness,
injury, or by choice, can leave one feeling lost. Having one’s personhood absorbed by addiction
or debilitating shame, can leave the person and/or their support system feeling
lost. For some, it could be an
existential feeling of lost-ness: the
dark night of the soul, when meaning itself is up for grabs, a time of deep
alienation from life and from God. And this past week has been one of
soul-searching, sorrow, fury and fear following the shooting of Charlie Kirk, whose
name gets added to a list of adults and children whose lives were ended by
hatred and violence; we pray for our neighbours to the south, and all impacted
beyond their borders, as the overall situation in this point of their history feels
very, very lost.
The 15th chapter of Luke begins with a
series of three stories by Jesus, that speak of something or someone being
lost. We heard the first two of those
stories today: the lost sheep, and the lost coin. The third story is a much longer one that we
looked at separately a few months ago (Sunday, March 30), the story of the lost
or “prodigal” son. In all three of these stories, something gets lost: a sheep
wanders off, a coin gets misplaced, a son chooses to cash in his inheritance
and then squander it. And – SPOILER
ALERT! - in all three of these stories, there is a reunion: a shepherd rescues
the sheep, a woman’s diligence finds the coin, a Father rushes out to embrace
his disgraced son. Each of the stories
tells us about being lost, and the God who so deeply wants us to be found and
restored to a place of health and love.
Emmy Kegler, Pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in
Minneapolis, authored a book six years ago entitled One Coin Found: How
God’s Love Stretches to the Margins.
She writes (pp. 2-3): “Sheep wander. That’s what they do, it’s in their
nature. Most herd animals do it. That’s why, when humans domesticated cattle
and goats and sheep, there arose a new role: the shepherd, the rancher, the
cowboy. Someone’s got to keep the herd
together, because otherwise they’ll go wandering off.
“And sheep wander for good reasons. They wander
because they’re hungry…. [or] sometimes the sheep are sick, or injured, or cold….
They drop to the back of the herd, lie down somewhere to rest… And sometimes
sheep run. A hundred sheep are a hundred
potential meals for the wolves..[and so] the sheep run, fleeing as fast as
their hooves can take them, getting them lost but keeping them alive.” So the task of the shepherd is complex and
demanding, watching out for wolves, ensuring that all the sheep can graze and
drink, and that none have wandered to the margin without notice.
Moving from the lost sheep to the lost coin, Emmy
writes (pp.4-5) “The funny thing about coins is that they can’t get lost by
themselves. [They have no will,] they
can’t roll away on their own. Coins get
lost because their owners aren’t careful…. Covered in years of grit they fall…to
the floor or a car or the sand of a sidewalk, dropped and forgotten.” Traditionally, we understand that these coins
were likely from the woman’s dowry, originally attached to a necklace or
headdress, and we surmise that the woman was perhaps now a widow without family
support; so the loss of even one of those coins could be the difference between
stability and starvation.
Emmy reminds us that in this gospel reading, the sheep
and the coin were not just left to be lost forever: God the seeker went
looking. She writes (pp.5-8), “God has
never been careless with us, [even if] those who claim to speak for God have. …
God has donned a shepherd’s cloak, …clambered over rocks and climbed down
cliffs. God has found us, [hungry] and …
hurt and terrified, and cradled us close to say: No matter why you left or
where you went, you are mine. [As]
lost and dusty coins, we have gone unnoticed, rusted from others’ indifference,
misspent and misused, and our friends and leaders did not see our neglect. But
God has picked up a woman’s broom and swept every corner of creation. God has
tucked up her skirts and flattened herself on the floor, dug through dust
bunnies and checked every dress pocket.
God has found us, dustier and rustier and without any luster, and held
us up to the light to say: No matter how you rolled away or what corner you
were dropped, you are mine.” Emmy writes from the perspective of a queer woman, so she has
far too many first hand experiences of being judged as “lost” by others
(including Church folk), but very much loved by God.
Although these parables clearly put God in the role of
the searcher, part of our calling as Church is to join in this concern and,
where needed, open ourselves to being found by God when we start to drift
away. And we note that in these
parables, thankfully, those who were lost are found.
In this Season of Creation, we think of some of the
big ways that things can move from being lost to being found. After some meagre harvests, particularly last
year, we give thanks to God for a ridiculously abundant harvest in the south
Okanagan, which feels to me like a move from lost to found. We hold gratitude for this land we live on and
the people who were here before we were, we give thanks for what it means to be
Canadians who recognize the need for reconciliation with our Indigenous hosts. This
one is a work in progress, still unfolding.
And perhaps tangential to the Season of Creation, I also want to give thanks
that the people of this pastoral charge can come together in worship and praise
each Sunday, and for our commitment to keep our hearts open and our eyes
looking outward at the needs of our neighbours. [Osoyoos: Do not underestimate the difference
that the thrift shop makes to people who are feeling the financial crunch, or
the difference that all manner of community outreach that happens from this
building makes to folks who need caring connection.]{Oliver: As we flesh out
the plans for who we want to be and where we want to be, I know that your collective
heart will not only be caring about our needs as a congregation, but the needs
of our neighbours}.
But we also, in this Season of Creation, identify the
places where there is enduring lostness.
We remember the harmful, shameful things that have been done to this
planet for the sake of economic growth and human ease, and we express sorrow
that there is hunger and malnutrition in a world that produces so much good,
healthy food. We continue, as the United
Church of Canada, one of the denominations responsible for the Residential
Schools, to work with Indigenous nations to address past wrongs, and we struggle
to get out of the way as Indigenous Churches and leaders attempt to find their
healthy path forward. And we name those
places where we, as Church, aren’t as deep, bold and daring as our call and
vision statement would suggest, in our approach to local inclusion, and in our
engagement of the brutal circumstances faced by much of the world.
We bring all this to God, along with all forms of
lostness we carry on this day, with sorrow, with commitment, with yearning, and
with hope: a belief that God, ever-loving, ever-searching, ever-mending,
desires us to be restored to wholeness, absolutely and completely found. God is both the one who seeks us in our
lostness and brokenness, and the one who empowers us to go seeking for the
broken hearts around us, with gifts of compassionate kindness, rugged advocacy,
and healing grace. God, the shepherd,
leaves the ninety-nine sheep while he secures the safety of one who wandered
off. God, the woman who turns her house
upside-down looking for a coin that was both precious and lost, will not cease
her searching until the lost is found.
In these messed-up, mean-spirited days, my friends, there are days when
a belief in a God of infinite goodness and boundless love is the main thing
that coaxes me out of bed in the morning, but that is more than enough. For whatever reasons that there is lostness,
the very heart of God wants us to be found, and to be those who create safe,
loving places for those who have been cast out by life.
In his classic bestseller, All I Really need to
know I learned in Kindergarten; Robert Fulghum reflected on a game
virtually everyone has played, hide-and-seek, and I’d like to close with his
words on this topic because for me, he adds an important note of joy and even
whimsy into our discussion. He wrote (pp.54-56), “Did you have a kid in your
neighbourhood who always hid so good, nobody could find him? We did.
After a while we would give up on him and go off, leaving him to rot
wherever he was. Sooner or later he
would show up, all mad because we didn’t keep looking for him. And we would get mad back because he wasn’t
playing the game the way it was supposed to be played. There’s hiding and there’s finding, we’d
say. And he’d say it as hide-and-seek,
not hide-and-give-up.” After some further reflection on some hard life lessons
around being lost and giving up, Robert Fulghum continues, “Better than
hide-and-seek, I like the game called Sardines [where] the person who is IT
goes and hides, and when you find them, you get in with them and hide with
them. Pretty soon everybody is hiding
together, all stacked in a small space like puppies in a pile. And pretty soon somebody giggles and somebody
laughs and everybody gets found…. I think old God is a Sardine player,” he
concludes, “and will be found the same way everybody gets found in Sardines –
by the sound of laughter of those heaped together at the end.”
In the name of the God who yearns for all people who
feel lost and for the healing of situations that feel hopeless, in the name of
the God who helps us to be found and enlists us as accomplices in searching for
others who are lost on the margins, in the name of God who loves to be found by
us: Amen and Amen.
References cited:
Fulghum, Robert.
All I really need to know I learned in Kindergarten: uncommon
thoughts on common things. NYC: Ivy Books, 1986.
Kegler, Emmy. One Coin Found: How God’s Love
Stretches to the Margins.
Minneapolis: Fortress, 2019.
© 2025 Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church
Pastoral Charge.
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