(Note: This blog entry is based on
the text “How To Be Found”, originally shared on September 7, 2022. It was the 233rd
video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced
with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Did you ever lose something valuable like
your cell phone, or something important to you like a family picture, or
something significant like a relationship with a loved one? What would you have
done to get it back? Today we are going to see how we are all those things to
God.
We’ll be remembering some things that we
lost this coming Sunday on the 21st anniversary of the attack on the
Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. We
lost thousands of people, our sense of our internal national security, the
personal cost of three wars in the Middle East, the way we raised our children,
and many more. All those things are being restored but it will take something
else for us to be found.
We get a glimpse of that in today’s main
reading in Luke 15:1-10.
Jesus is walking through the villages and
open country north of Jerusalem. He will soon make his triumphal entry into
Jerusalem before he will be arrested, tried, and give his life for the sake of
the world, and then take it back again.
Crowds numbering in the thousands are coming
out to hear him, and the religious authorities are upset with what he is saying and doing. They are even upset over
his choice of dinner companions. And it’s not hard to see that they have a
point.
Haven’t you heard it
said, by someone who deeply cared about you, that “You are known by the company
you keep.” Even Paul wrote to the Corinthians, in 1 Corinthians 15:33,
Do not be deceived:
“Bad company ruins good morals.”
But the
Pharisees’ criticism was based not just on concern for Jesus’ reputation or
even for his character, but over what huge sections of what are called the
“purity laws” in what we would call the “Old Testament”. They are laws designed
to keep the people of Israel a particular people. God’s people.
That, and
how they understood and applied those laws, is where they got it wrong.
The story
begins with Luke 15:1-2,
15 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.”
The
opposite of “pure” would be “sinners”. Why would any respectable person eat a
meal with them, the Pharisees wondered?
Jesus saw
sinners differently. Jesus saw them in a situation like the singer Janis Joplin
described with the words, “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to
lose”.
With no
righteous of their own to claim, they couldn’t do anything but depend on the
grace and mercy of God. They welcomed that message of Jesus!
The
Pharisees thought that they could earn their way into heaven by keeping the
Law. The Gospel of Jesus is that that we all sin and fall short, but that God
has come to save us by paying the cost of our ticket to heaven. God sees people
as sons and daughters to be redeemed, so he seeks them!
Jesus
shows an example from the experience of a shepherd, a part of the people’s
everyday experience. Notice how often some form of the words “joy”
and “rejoice” appear, starting with Luke 15:3,
3 So he told them this parable: 4 “Which one of
you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the
ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds
it? 5 When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6 And
when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to
them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ 7 Just so, I
tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than
over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
Notice
that the shepherd picks up the sheep and carries it home. There is no action on
the part of the sheep.
Shortly
before my mother died, she sent all her children a copy of a poem that was new
at that time but soon would be found on the walls of thousands of Christian
homes. It was about a woman who had died and was walking along the shoreline
with Jesus. She saw her whole life played-out on the horizon as they walked.
The farther they walked, the more of her life she saw, until it ended.
Then she
turned back and looked at the distance they had traveled.
She
noticed that there was only one set of footprints across from the parts of her
life that were the most difficult and she asked Jesus why it was that in those
times he had abandoned her.
Jesus
replied, “Daughter, those were the times when I carried you.”
Many
years later I saw an updated version in a cartoon that had one panel with Jesus
speaking to a tearful figure saying, “My child, I never left you. Those places
with one set of footprints? It was then that I carried you,” followed by
another panel, with Jesus saying, “That long grove over there is when I dragged
you for a while.” 😊
We who
are estranged and lost from God cannot find our way back. We are sinners and
sin separates us from God. We need a Savior.
God takes
the initiative. God comes to seek and to save us.
To
“repent” means to turn around, to turn away from the direction that is killing
us and toward life in Jesus Christ. We cannot do that when we are still
separated from God by our sin. Only God makes it possible.
But God
is not indifferent to our condition. Jesus seeks the lost and all the
hosts of heaven are filled with joy when we repent.
Then
Jesus tells another parable, with the same structure, with a woman at its
center. Notice again how often some form of the words “joy”
and “rejoice” appear, starting with Luke 15:8,
8 “Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she
loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully
until she finds it? 9 When she has found it, she calls together her friends and
neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’
10 Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over
one sinner who repents.”
The whole heavenly host rejoices when one
sinner repents. They jump up and cheer. The raise their arms, they do the wave.
I read a story recently about a Chinese boy
named Guo who was taken from his parents’ front yard by human traffickers in
1997. He was two years old.
His parents
were distraught. His father, Guo Gangtang, began to search for him and traveled
on foot and by motorbike (10 of which were damaged along the way) for 24-years,
covering 310,000 miles through 20 provinces. He spread flyers with his son’s
picture and story on them. He flew a banner from the back of the motorbikes
with his son’s picture and information.
He had accidents,
suffered broken bones, and was attacked by robbers. He spent his and his wife’s
lifesavings. He slept under bridges and he begged for money. He helped 100
other families find their own kidnapped children but could not find his own
child.
His story
inspired a movie, “Lost and Love” in 2015 that stared Andy Lau, a major star in
Hong Kong.
Then, in July
2021, the police, using DNA testing, found his son! Guo was working as a
teacher in another province, 400 miles from his home, where he had been sold as
a boy. Suspects in the kidnapping where later arrested.
TV crews were
there when Guo and his family were reunited.
Can you imagine the joy of those parents who
had been looking for their son for 24 years, who had sacrificed everything, and
had not given up? They did that for their beloved son.
The Christian message is even more
unimaginable. God loves us so much that he sent his only begotten son and
sacrificed everything that we might be reunited with Him forever. That we might
have the relationship with God for which we were created at the beginning of
time restored. God loved us even when we were in rebellion against him!
This is the good news of Jesus Christ, the
Gospel, the glory of the cross!
We have heard it and received it. How now do
we share it? How do we invite the sinners, the overlooked, and the despised of
our time to receive the good news?
I answered an ad in a comic book when I was
in 6th grade that told me that I could sell greeting cards
door-to-door. Of course, that was in another world. 😊
One of the many things that I learned was
how many people were just lonely. One of the first things that we offer is the
sense of community that we repentant sinners receive with one another in Jesus
Christ. When someone says to me, “I don’t go to church because they’re just a
bunch of hypocrites”, I reply, “Then come on in. There’s always room for one
more.”
We are no better than anyone else. We are
forgiven by God and we live the way we live in response to that gift.
People need to be accepted, but more
importantly they need to know that they are forgiven, that they have been put
right with God. That is the message of the cross.
God accepts everyone as they are, especially
people who know that they are sinners, people who need a Savior. But God never
leaves us as we are. We are, each of us, no matter who we are or what we’ve
done, valued by God. God makes of us a new creation. We are born again. We are
loved. This is God’s nature.
This is a message that we are privileged to
share with those who most need it today.
One of my favorite examples of this comes at
the end of a 2007 article about the early 20th century
evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson in the “The New Yorker Magazine” by John
Updike. Sister Aimee, as she was known, was a pioneering and popular figure in
the United States, her life was filled with success and scandals. She founded
Angeles Temple in the Echo Park district of Los Angeles and the international
Foursquare Church denomination. She at one time fled the country.
Charges
against her had been dropped in LA and she traveled to New York. She went to
Texas Guinan’s popular speakeasy (fun fact Whoopi Goldberg played a character
named Guinan who ran the bar on the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek: Next
Generation).
Sister Aimee entered the club in a yellow
suit and furs. A reporter called for her to speak. The proprietress agreed
and Sister Aimee calmly walked to the center of the dance floor, smiled,
paused, and said, “Behind all these beautiful clothes, behind these good times,
in the midst of your lovely buildings and shops and pleasures, there is another
life. There is something on the other side. “What shall it profit a man if he
gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” With all your getting and playing
and good times, do not forget you have a Lord. Take Him into your hearts.”
Texas Guinan walked over to Sister Aimee to
the applause of the crowd, put her arm around her, and stood there to the
ongoing ovation of the club-goers.
Who do you hang out with? Who do you know
who needs life transformation? What sinner in need of forgiveness? Real hope?
Eternal life? Hang out today with Jesus and invite someone to do the same.
There’s always room for one more.
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