(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Eternity’s U-turn”, originally shared on September 10, 2025. It was the 376th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Some people are searching for God, and some are not. Some don’t know
that they are, but they are. And others think that they are, but they aren’t. And
all of them are going in the wrong direction. Today, we’re going to find out why.
I heard about someone who was once asked if
they believe in the hereafter. “Yes, I do,” they replied. “Why?”, they were
asked.
“Because every day I walk into a room and then ask myself, ‘What am I
here after?’” 😊
Have you ever lost
something valuable like your cell phone, or your car keys, or your wallet, and
gone looking for it? Or have you lost something important to you like a family
picture, a personal letter, or something significant, like a relationship with
a loved one? What would you have done to get it back?
The Gospel reading
from the Bible that will be shared in the vast majority of churches this coming
Sunday reminds us that we are so valuable to God that it is God who is seeking
us, and that it is God who paid to have what was lost restored to Him by giving
his life on the cross.
Before Sunday, we’ll
be remembering our losses on the 24th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
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 much more.
All of those will
one day be restored, but the world hasn’t changed. It’s still lost. It will
take something else for it to be found.
We get a glimpse of
that in next Sunday’s Gospel 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, tortured, and
will give his life to restore the relationship with God for which humanity was
created, and then He will take it back again.
Crowds numbering in
the thousands are coming out to hear him. They don’t know what’s coming and
He’s giving away free food and medical care, 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’
and scribes’ criticism was based not just on concern for Jesus’ reputation or
even for his character, but over the huge sections of what we would call the
“Old Testament”, are called the “purity laws”. They are laws designed to keep
the people of Israel a particular people. Uncompromised. God’s people.
That, and how they
understood and applied those laws, is where the Pharisees and the scribes 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?
But Jesus saw
sinners differently. Jesus saw them with lives totally different from the
self-righteous Pharisees. Sinners were stuck in lives described by the singer
Janis Joplin with the words, “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to
lose”.
With no righteousness
of their own to claim, they couldn’t do anything but depend on the grace and
mercy of God. Jesus sought them out, and they welcomed that message of Jesus!
The Pharisees
thought that they could earn their way into heaven by keeping the religious
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 on the cross.
God sees people as sons and daughters to be redeemed, so he seeks them!
That’s the way it
works in the already here but not yet perfected Reign of God.
Isaiah 55:6
says,
"Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him
while he is near;".
Jeremiah 29:13-14a, says
"13When you search
for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you
find me, says the LORD,".
Why does God call
upon us, through Isaiah, to seek the Lord? Because he is near. He is searching
for us.
Why does God call
upon us, through Jeremiah, to search for Him with all our heart? Because faith
restores the relationship with God for which we were created and we can be open
to receiving him with all our heart, not some of it.
But those verses may
make it seem to some as if righteousness before God comes by our own
effort and strength. It doesn’t.
Instead, Jesus gives
us a wake-up call.
I saw a story online
awhile ago about an alarm clock where, when the alarm goes off, it fires three
puzzle pieces into the air. You must return all three pieces into their
matching spaces in the clock before it will shut-off! 😊
But, when the cosmic
alarm goes off with a trumpet blast, and when the dead are raised and, with the
living, all people stand before God, no one will be expected to have it all
together to escape the Judgement. Instead, Jesus will come to save the lost who
have accepted his gift of life through faith alone, by God’s unearned grace
alone. We see how that works as this week’s Gospel reading continues.
Jesus shows us
through the experience of a shepherd, a part of most people’s everyday life in
those days. Notice how often some form of the words “joy” and “rejoice” appear, continuing 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.
Look at those words
closely. Notice that the shepherd picks up the sheep and carries it
home. There is no action on the part of the sheep.
The “sheep” in this
parable is us! To “repent” means to “turn around”. We cannot do that
when we are still separated from God by our sin. Only God makes it possible. We
are lost. We are sinners. When we repent, we turn away from lives that are
killing us, and we turn toward God and are found for eternity.
We receive new life
forever, we are born again, and all of it comes as a gift from God! All of
it!
Shortly before my
mother died, she sent all her children a copy of a poem called “Footprints”. It
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, which raised an issue with her, 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 need a
Savior, and we have one in Jesus Christ. That’s the good news. The gospel.
God takes the
initiative. We just open our hearts and receive his grace.
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. They
raise their arms, they do the wave.
I read a story once
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 in China. 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 on it.
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 were 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, the Creator of the universe and all
that lies beyond, 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. And God did this even when we were still in our Sin. 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
We have received it!
Now, how now do we
share it!? How do we invite the sinners, the overlooked, and the despised of
our time to know their Savior Jesus Christ and 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 from that experience was how many people were just
lonely. They had few or no meaningful relationships.
One of the first
things that we can offer when we share our faith is the sense of community that
we repentant sinners receive with one another in Jesus Christ. We are all the
same before God. When someone says to me, “I don’t go to church because they’re
just a bunch of hypocrites there”, I reply, “Then come on in. There’s always
room for one more.”
We are no better
than anyone else. We are not holier than thou. We are forgiven by God and we
live the way we live in response to that gift.
People do 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. That is
our message to the word, particularly to everyone we know among our friends and
family members who needs to know Jesus.
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, redeemed, restored, and made new as
His people.
The playwright Oscar
Wilde once wrote, “The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that
every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.”
That’s the outcome
of the Good News.
God makes of us a
new creation. We can’t do it ourselves. We are born again. We are loved. No
matter what we have done or left undone, we have been given a Savior. This is
who God is.
It’s a message that
we are privileged to share today
One of my favorite
examples of this comes at the end of an 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 and had an influential ministry, some of it during the
Prohibition era. 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.
Eventually, 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 do you know
who is in need of forgiveness? Real hope? Eternal life?
We can all tell the
story of how we became Christians, or of why we remain Christians.
We don’t decide for
God. That’s looking in the wrong direction. We are estranged from God. We are
sinners who have been given a Savior, who have turned around and toward God.
Hang out today with
Jesus and invite someone to take him into their heart.
There’s always
room for one more.
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