Several
years ago I was locking up the building one Sunday after worship and before I
had a chance to leave I saw the car of one of our members pull up in the
circular drive out front. The woman got out of her car and came and knocked on
the front door of the church. I unlocked the door and let her in. She explained
that she had gotten home from worship and quickly realized that one of the
bracelets she had worn to church that day was no longer on her arm. It was a
very special bracelet that her husband had given to her when they were courting
over seventy years before. I could see that the bracelet like that meant a lot
to her and would warrant getting back in the car and immediately driving back
to church to find it. She didn’t know where it was, she said, but since she
hadn’t really gone many places that morning, she figured there were only a few
places it might be.
Of
course, I offered to help her look for it. Even though I didn’t know what it
looked like, I figured a bracelet can’t be that difficult to locate. It’s not
like an earring or a ring or something like that. We went in the sanctuary and
she showed me where she had sat during worship and I got down on the floor and
looked all around. She checked the racks where the hymnals are kept. We then
did the same kind of searching in the pews in front of and behind where she had
sat, and all along the wall in case it had fallen off and someone had
unknowingly kicked it. She attended the 11:00 service that day, so we figured
it couldn’t have gone far. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn up in the sanctuary, and
she was a little bummed because that was the only place she had really gone
inside the church. So we went outside and retraced her steps in the parking lot
between the front door and where she had parked.
Nothing
turned up. There was no telling where that thing could be. And then she
remembered one other place she had gone: the bathroom. So we went and looked in
the back bathroom there together. I got down on the floor while she picked up
things on the counter and looked under them. No bracelet. We looked through the
waste paper basket. No bracelet.
The
funny thing is now I can’t remember where her husband was during all of this. In
my memory she had left him back at home, but, come to think of it, she may have
left him in the passenger seat of the car with the motor running while the two
of us ransacked the church. In any case, she left that afternoon without her
bracelet, but I promised that if it turned up we’d call her immediately.
About
two hours later I was at home and the phone rang, and it was her. She was
laughing as she tried to explain to me that she had found the bracelet. She had
gone to use the restroom and found the bracelet, of all places, in her underwear.
Apparently it had fallen off her arm in the bathroom at church but her
undergarments had caught it. That whole time we’d been walking around together she
had still been wearing her bracelet, she just didn’t know it!
Lost
sheep, lost coin, lost bracelet. In one real-life episode, that woman managed
to tie together all the important aspects of the first two parables Jesus told
about God’s determination to find those who are lost. In coming all the way
back to church, leaving her husband who-knows-where by himself, she was like
the shepherd who leaves the 99 perfectly-safe-and-sound sheep to go rescue the
one who had gotten separated. In carefully retracing her steps at church and
turning over every hymnal and pew cushion and stack of paper towels she could
find in order to uncover the precious item that belonged to her, she was like
the woman in the parable who loses the coin. And, in telephoning me in great
joy in order to tell me she found it—no matter how embarrassing that discovery
may have been—she was like both the shepherd and the woman, go the extravagant
extra mile by inviting friends over and throwing a party simply to celebrate
the finding. She was like the shepherd and
the woman. And therefore she was like God, becoming a sermon for this religious
authority as I was locking up the church on the wideness of his mercy.
That’s
the point of those two over-the-top characters in the parables Jesus tells the
Pharisees. Jesus has found that he needs to make an important point about the
basic character of God. The Pharisees and the scribes, religious authorities of
Jesus’ time, are watching Jesus eat with people they think are deplorable. The
tax collectors and sinners were the folks who, by their actions and by the
company they kept, seemed to show open disregard for the laws of God. Everyone
knew they were in sore need of repentance. The Pharisees were used to shunning
these people, looking down on them, drawing a line to make sure they weren’t
included in God’s circle. But Jesus takes the opportunity to explain in very
relatable, ordinary terms, that God doesn’t look down on anyone. God simply looks for them. God looks for us. Both the
shepherd and the woman—two run-of-the-mill, everyday characters—are symbolic of
God the Father, who, as it turns out, is obsessed by what has gotten separated
from him, fanatical about who has been lost, fixated on who has gone astray. That’s
the basic character of God.
But
here’s the thing: for as ordinary and run-of-the-mill as these two characters
may be, they both do something very extraordinary and peculiar that surprises
us all. It’s one thing to look for something that you’ve lost—that is, to sweep
the house up one side and down the other, to leave the ninety-nine to traipse
off into the wilderness—but to throw a party when you’ve found it? That’s a bit
extravagant. In both parables, they are so overcome with joy that they invite
their friends and neighbors to take part in it. In the Greek “friends and
neighbors” essentially meant anyone around you, the people in your close peer
group as well as those who share the village with you.
This
is an over-the-top reaction to finding what you’ve lost, and Jesus wants the
religious folk to hear that. When even one person realizes how lost he or she
is…when even one person faces up to how unsafe they really are in this world when
left to their own measly powers…when even on person comes to terms with how
susceptible they are to chasing after that which is invaluable, God is filled
with joy. That’s why God doesn’t look down on the lost and the least. God, in
Jesus, looks for them. Over and over. Nonstop. Knocking on the church door and searching
the bathroom with the pastor, if he has to.
This
is the lesson about God’s character that Jesus wants the Pharisees to hear, as
they look down on that crowd, and it’s a good one for us to reflect on again
and again. I can’t presume to know what “being lost from God” looks like or
feels like for anyone else. I imagine it feels different for everyone here. But
I do know this: Repentance, however you like to define it—the changing of the
mind or and turning around to realize the treasure of God’s presence—is
something always open to us, and even more easy to undertake now that we know
we have Jesus looking for us, now that we have a shepherd who wants to put us
on his shoulders and carry us home when he’s found us.
I
think most of us are aware that today marks the fifteenth anniversary of the
terrorist attacks on 9/11. I find a lot
of conversations regarding that event still begin with questions like, “Where
were you when you found out about the Towers?” and “What was that day like for
you?” And yet I’m kind of shocked to realize that the 9th graders
who will start confirmation with me this week have absolutely no memory of that
day or its immediate aftermath. They were born after (or right before) it
happened. It’s a historical event to them and to all the children younger than
they are. There is a lot about the world now that seems to have just picked up
and moved on. The feelings of camaraderie and compassion that flowed out of the
response to 9/11 is basically gone. The spike in church attendance we
experienced even here at Epiphany in the two years following the attacks as
subsided. There have been additional terrorist attacks in other countries, there
are wars still being fought today as a result of that event, and tens of
thousands of people have died as the world starts to reshape itself in response
to these acts of terror. With so many competing understandings out there regarding
what God is like, let us be clear about our witness of God’s basic character. We
need to proclaim more than ever that the shepherd is still looking for lost
sheep, that this woman is still sweeping the floor for that coin because every
single person is a child of God in need of a relationship with their Creator.
When
I recall 9/11 I’m most moved by the stories of all those first responders who
sacrificed their lives to go into the tower to search for people who were stuck
in danger, people who were lost. Maybe that’s the best parable we can find
today, For, as it turns out, Jesus doesn’t just look and look and sweep and
sweep to find whatever belonds to God. He dies and suffers in order to have
them, to bring them back, to save them from forever being separated from the
God who loves them. He offers his own body on the cross to search out and
rescue from the darkest corridors of life all those who belong in God’s care.
And
he throws a party! Bread and wine are passed around, people share of themselves
and rejoice in the love of the shepherd. Pharisees and scribes, sinners and tax
collectors—we’re all going to be gathered in the feast of friends and
neighbors.
And
that leads me to the other way that woman here reminded me of God that day. God
sweeps us up into his search-and-rescue efforts. We’re not just the sought-after.
We’re also the seekers, his helpers, pressed into action, down on our hands and
knees, searching high and low to invite, to welcome, to offer another blessed
word of hope that God is still running into the dark to seek and to save. And
that this good news is a reason to join the Rally, the party, the phone call to
friends and neighbors. What was lost has been found.
Thanks
be to God!
The Reverend Phillip W.
Martin, Jr.
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