What is lost, really?

20070916 Luke 16

Today we are looking at three well-known parables in the gospel of Luke. They are: the parable of the lost coin, the lost sheep and the lost son. These three are so familiar that when we even hear the titles, our minds go on ‘auto-pilot’ and we automatically stop really listening to the Scripture and start thinking about what the parables mean to us individually. We turn off the hearing part, breeze through the explaining or exposition and arrive quickly at applying the truth that we think we know; that we have heard a million times before.

But stop and think for a minute, these are the actual words of Jesus. Yes, they are being reported by Luke and have been shaped by him to tell the kind of story, to make the kind of point he wants to make about who Jesus really is. But these are Jesus’ actual words. And what do we know about the words of Jesus?

We need to remember that they are not ordinary words like we speak to each other. Oh yes, when we read them off the pages of our Bibles they sound like ordinary words. They sound like words telling us what to do, how to live but Jesus was not just saying words, He IS the Word. So the words he speaks, even though we can’t physically hear his voice, these words are not just syllables in English that tell a story. Jesus didn’t come to tell us fairy stories about a magical kingdom far, far away. He came to be the incarnate Word and the words he tells them and tells us are sharper than a two-edged sword:

Hebrews 4:12 12 Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

And these parables are that word. They explain who Jesus is and what God is really like. They are about not the things that are lost, but they are about the One who does the searching and the finding and the One who rejoices when the lost are found.
What do these parables tell us about God?

He actively seeks that which is lost. But what does it mean to be lost? To be separated from the place where one is useful or meaningful; to be separated from the place or from the people that help us make sense of life. For example, counselors tell us, and most of us know, that when someone we are close to dies, we feel lost because we have to learn how to make sense of the world, how to make sense of life without that person.

A coin lying in the dust is useless
A sheep separated from the herd is doomed.
A person separated from home and culture is separated from his or her identity, from the elements that make life make sense, make it meaningful.

But the sheep, the coin and the son didn’t stay lost, the first two were actively sought out by a power that could do for them what they couldn’t do for themselves. Jesus drives the point home with the parable of the prodigal son, or the two brothers or the rejoicing father. Why so many titles? Because we are continually trying to place ourselves in the story. Bout our place in the story isn’t the main thing…It’s about God!

God is the one who seeks and finds and rejoices. So who is the father who runs down the road to meet the wanderer as soon as he comes in to view? It is a God who so much longs for relationship with his children, who is so overflowing with unconditional love that the past actions and the road dirt don’t matter as he throws his arms around this boy who has been lost and is now found. This boy has been rode hard and put up wet. He has made decisions and done things that no parent really wants to hear the details of but there is enough love to cover all that, enough patience and acceptance to negate the road weary miles.

But let’s be clear about what’s going on here. We are talking about sin, plain and simple. Wrongdoing, bad choices, selfish motives that take God off the throne of our hearts, if he was ever there in the first place, and put our own wants and desires on that throne to rule our lives by the impulses of what I want right now. That’s sin and it’s ugly and it’s real.

But praise be to God that’s not the end of the story. Beyond our puny little selves is a God so big that only he can erase the consequences of our sin, only he can bridge that gap between His holiness and our unrighteousness. And he doesn’t just sit around waiting for us to come up on the porch and ask for His forgiveness, to ask him to make things right.


Brothers and Sisters, hear the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as soon as you step your foot on the road of repentance that leads to the house of God, God is already running down the road to meet you, to throw his arms around you, to rejoice in your homecoming. What a glorious knowledge of the surpassingly abundant love of God that reached down to where I am and keeps on reaching. Amazing love, how can it be that you my king would die for me? Amazing love, I know it’s true and it’s my joy to honor you in all I do, I honor you.

But church, let me tell you it’s not the last word. And this is the word I struggle with, the one I don’t want to preach and the one I don’t want to hear. We are called to be like Him, made in his image, working in his Kingdom. We know the fields are white with the harvest and God calls us to labor in those fields.

Look around, those lost and dying people are not here in this room. Where are they? Sleeping off last night’s drunk? Waking up in somebody’s bed that they can’t remember their name? Wondering why their wallets empty and where could they have spent all that money? Or maybe it’s not so dramatic. Maybe they woke up this morning with a longing to be with people who really cared about them, a longing to do something with their life that was important and had a purpose but they’d gone to a church one time and it was all full of hypocrites, or somebody hurt their feelings or they couldn’t believe that if God was so great that there could be so much hurt in the world, so they gave up on Him. But they still hear the echoes of a voice telling them that there is more to life that what they have right now.

As long as we sit here, on the porch, waiting for those people to come to the door and ask for forgiveness and ask to know God, as long as we wait here, we are not being like Him.

Remember why Jesus told these parables in the first place. Luke 15:1 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them." 3 So he told them this parable:

The tax collectors and the sinners were coming near to him. Where would we have to go, what would we have to do so folks who need Christ would come to us to hear? We have to run down the road to meet them. This is a hard thing to think about but consider the places that we don’t want to go because of the kinds of folks that are there. The Six Mile Jamboree, the Downtowner, a bar or a pool hall.

NRS Romans 15:1 We who are strong ought to put up with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. 2 Each of us must please our neighbor for the good purpose of building up the neighbor.

What does that mean, to please out neighbor? I think it means that we have patience with where they are, we literally meet them where they are. Doesn’t that mean that we should go to where the hurting people are? Not to be like them in their sin and disillusionment and not to judge them and tell them what bad people they are but to befriend them, to love them like Jesus did, to love them enough to help them see a better way. Maybe just one person at a time, this isn’t a one shot deal and it isn’t a quick fix and we are not all called to minister in this way.

My dream house that I want to build on the farm has a porch all the way across the front and across the back. I can’t think of anything better than sitting on the porch on the farm watching it rain, or watching the horses in the field or talking with good friends and family. But I can’t stay on the porch. I know what it’s like to be lost and, praise God, I know what it’s like to be found. Because God loves me, I can risk loving you and I can risk loving people outside this circle.

It’s scary to love other people, to even try to get to know other people and tell them the Good News. People may talk badly about me and misunderstand. I may be horribly rejected by the very ones I am trying to help. There are mission fields far away where Christians labor to spread the Gospel. And there are mission fields not a half a mile from here where folks get together to relax, to hang out, to connect with others where Jesus is as much unheard of as he is in the deepest Amazon jungle.

Matthew 28:19-20 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

We are all good at the teaching part and we can stay inside these safe 4 walls and teach each other for a long time. But Jesus said “Go” and that is what we have to do. What does that going look like? We can know and follow Him through the presence of the Holy Spirit. Jesus promised that he would be with us, there is no place we can go that is too far away from His love. That assurance gives us the assurance to carry His name into places where it hasn’t been heard and must be carried.

Amen