Luke 15:1-10
Some
people are always looking for a reason to have a party. They will come up with the craziest ideas of
things that can be celebrated. You
receive a message from a friend who just met her goal weight on Jenny Craig and
she wants to celebrate over a big chocolate cake and gallons of Blue Bell
chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. A
bunch of us got together and had a Kilgore Pizza Tasting Pool Party this
summer. Everyone brought a whole pizza
pie from one of the pizza places in town to find out which one was the best
tasting.
Did
you know that today, September 15th, is National Linguini Day. If you love pasta, and who doesn’t, this is
the holiday for you. It’s time to
celebrate our favorite pastas. Tomorrow
is Wife Appreciation Day, in case you missed celebrating your anniversary last
year. “Wife Appreciation Day is a
day to honor and celebrate the ways that your wife enhances your life. This is
a day for husbands to express their appreciation for all the things that their
wife does. To show your appreciation for all the tasks that you may overlook
that she completes. Roll up those sleeves and surprise her with some gestures
to express your appreciation for her hard work.”[i]
Here
are some other reasons to celebrate and have a party. There’s National Honesty Day on April 30th. I’m not kidding. It’s the truth. May 18th is designated at National
Visit your Relatives Day. September is
National Chicken Month, November 7th is Sadie Hawkins Day when the
girls ask the guys to dance or go out on a date. There really are so many things to celebrate
in life.
I
believe one of the best reasons to celebrate and have a party is found in our
scripture reading today: God celebrates after finding someone or something that
had been lost. Jesus tells two parables
about this comparing God to an ordinary shepherd and a common woman. In both parables, we can imagine their
excitement, joy, happiness and relief when they find their lost sheep and their
lost coin. I have seen the same
expression of joy on the faces of those who have found a beloved pet who had
gone missing or a parent reunited with their child at an amusement park who had
been lost wandering around on the opposite end of the park. That’s the kind of crazy God we serve.
God
is in pursuit of wayward persons. God
doesn’t just wait for people to return.
God goes after them. He seeks
them out. He searches and searches and
searches until he finds what is lost.
In
these parables, we see two vivid images.
The first one is the compassionate concern of a searching God. Jesus describes God as a shepherd watching
over his flock. To be a shepherd was
hard and dangerous work. In Judaea, in
Jesus’ time, pasture was scarce. The
narrow central plateau was only a few miles wide, and then it plunged down to
the wild cliffs and the terrible devastation of the desert. There were no fences or walls to help keep
the sheep together. When you met a
shepherd, you’d see a sleepless, far-sighted, weather-beaten, armed, leaning on
his staff and looking out over his scattered sheep, every one of them on his
heart. That’s why the shepherd name was
given to Christ.
The
shepherd was personally responsible for the sheep. They had to bring home the fleece to show how
it died. They were experts at tracking
sheep following footprints in the soil for miles. There was not a single shepherd who did not
risk his life for his sheep every day.
Like
the shepherd, our God is willing to do the same; to risk everything he has for
the lost sheep even his own son Jesus Christ.
An even more crazy risk is the shepherd leaving the 99 untended in the
wilderness, leaving them vulnerable to attack and robbery. Either the shepherd is foolish or the
shepherd loves the lost sheep and will risk everything, including his own life,
until he finds it.
The
woman lights a lamp, gets a broom and begins her frantic search for her missing
coin in what would have been difficult circumstances. The houses were very dark, for they were lit
by one little circular window not much more than about eighteen inches in
diameter. The floor was beaten earth
covered with dried reeds and rushes; and to look for a coin on a floor like
that was very much like looking for a needle in a haystack. But she will not give up until she finds
it. She will sweep the floor in hope
that she might see the coin shine or hear it tinkle as it moved. All
the furniture will be turned upside down and pushed aside. No crack in the wall is overlooked. She’ll dig through the trash if she has to.
The
truth for us to remember is God meticulously pursues confused and rebellious
creatures like ourselves. Such pursuit
gives value to those being sought. They
become treasured and significant because they are not left lost in the universe,
but made objects of divine concern.
The
second image is heaven’s delight in the recovery of the lost. God is as glad when a lost sinner is found as
a shepherd is when a strayed sheep is brought home. The shepherd and the woman call all their
friends and neighbors to come for a party.
The joy of finding is so abundant and so lavish that it cannot be
contained; one person alone cannot adequately celebrate it; there must be a
party to which others are invited. Jesus
invites even those who yet do not understand and serve as his critics to join
him and all of heaven in celebrating the finding of the lost.
In
the 2003 movie, “Finding Nemo”, a clown fish named Marlin, who lives in the
Great Barrier Reef, loses his son, Nemo, after he ventures into the open sea,
despite his father's constant warnings about many of the ocean's dangers. Nemo
is caught by a diver and ends up in the fish tank of a dentist's office in
Sydney, Australia. Marlin decides to go
and search for Nemo; to get him back home safely. As he searches the ocean, Marlin meets a fish
named Dory, a blue tang suffering from short-term memory loss, who offers to
help. The companions travel a great distance, searching everywhere, asking if
anyone has seen Nemo, encountering various dangerous and fascinating sea
creatures such as sharks, anglerfish, jellyfish and sea turtles all in an
effort to rescue Nemo from the dentist's office, situated by Sydney Harbor.[ii]
Nemo’s
Dad, Marlin, goes to great lengths, risking everything, in search of his
beloved son, Nemo. And he won’t stop
until he finds him. This is how God
works. God is a persistent pursuer of
pandemic proportions! We don’t have to
find our way back to the fold. Jesus is teaching us that God is pursuing us.
All we need to do is stop running and let him take us back.
God
is crazy in love with us and searches endlessly for us. The Pharisees and the scribes would write off
the tax collectors and the sinners as deserving of nothing but destruction; not
so for God. People may give up hope for
a sinner; not so for God. God loves the
people who never stray away; but in his heart there is the joy of joys when a
lost one is found and comes home. God,
too, knows the joy of finding things that have gone lost. And that’s worth celebrating!
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