Luke 15:1-10        “Lost and Found”

     It’s never fun to lose something important or precious to us.  Perhaps you know the fear and panic that sets in when you misplace a prized piece of jewelry.  It’s every parent’s nightmare to lose a child in a crowd or in a store. 

     I was in Wal-Mart one day last week when I heard an announcement over the PA system for the parents of a lost little girl to come to the Customer Service area.  I then saw an incredibly relieved mom and dad reunited with their daughter, the joy in their faces.  It’s that kind of joy that Jesus is emphasizing in the two parables recorded in this morning’s Gospel reading – a rejoicing not only on earth but also in heaven. 

     Throughout the New Testament we encounter a Jesus who has tremendous compassion for those who were considered “outsiders,” those relegated to the fringes of respectable community life.  Jesus reached out to “the least, the last and the lost,” those regarded as “losers,” even by today’s standards.  These were the special focus of Jesus’ ministry.  And nothing gave Jesus greater joy than seeing losers, as seen by society anyway, have their dignity restored as children of God.

     When we look at these stories of the lost sheep and lost coin in today’s Gospel, we may very wonder what’s the big deal?  So what if one sheep is missing out a flock of a hundred?  So what if one little coin is lost?  One doesn’t seem all that significant and certainly not worth throwing a large party over.

     We might even think it’s somewhat unfair that there seems to be more concern over the recovery of the one than there is over the 9 that didn’t get lost or 99 that didn’t wander away.  That might a pretty compelling argument if it weren’t for the fact that Jesus doesn’t deal with percentages, but with persons, and for the fact that every single one of us is numbered among the lost.

     We’re often like the scribes and Pharisees.  We think of ourselves as religious people, and by and large we are.  After all, we attend church, we participate in church activities, we read the Bible, we provide financial support to the church and its ministries, we try to live decent lives.  So, it’s foreign to us to think of ourselves as being lost. 

     You remember that lost little girl at the Wal-Mart store I was telling you about in the beginning of my message?  One thing I noticed about that little girl, who was probably about 4 years old, was when her parents finally got her back, she didn’t appear scared or frightened.  In fact, she thought the whole thing was quite funny, even though her folks didn’t think so.  This little girl failed to understand the seriousness of her situation.  Even though the parents tried to explain it to her, the little girl didn’t quite get how much danger she could have been in. 

     The same is true of us.  The predicament that all of us find ourselves in is that we’ve become lost in a world where God intended us to be at home.  We’ve all fallen short of what God wants and intends for us.  And yet, oftentimes, we fail to appreciate and understand the seriousness of our situation.

     In this broken and sinful world, we so often lose our sense of direction.  We go about totally absorbed in our present life, with our jobs, our homes, our families, our busy schedules, our thousand and one events that fill our calendar.  We get confused by the many choices and options we are faced with.  We make wrong turns or, even worse, we want to go our own way.  We nibble our way into trouble and become distant to God.  And, sadly, we often don’t even realize it, just like I’m sure the sheep and the coin didn’t know they were lost.  But our God is like a shepherd who searches diligently for the one lost precious sheep or the woman who looks everywhere for one lost coin.

     From the beginning, God’s Spirit has been sweeping through the world seeking people to bring back to God.  Most wonderfully, most amazingly, the God of the universe who came among us as a human baby named Jesus, who lived and died as one of us, stretched out his arms to us from the cross to welcome the lost, the least, the losers.

     God still desires to gather us all up, so that not even one person ever feels lost, as if they have to do it on their own, as if they’re not worth a cent, because even just one is precious to God.

     Even just one person means everything to God.  Jesus would say anyone who is lost and found is reason for celebration and is evidence of God’s extravagant grace.  

     In our worship this morning we practice God’s economics.  We come together, acknowledging that all that we are and all that we have comes from God, belongs to God, is loved by God, can be given and offered and spent for God.  We offer our time, our talents, and our money in God’s service here in this place, out in the community, and in the world.  Our ministries are varied, but each one of us is valuable, each one of us is important to God, because even just one enables the church to continue God’s work of seeking and finding and celebrating. 

     Even just one.  Even just you and me, lost and found, are precious to God.  And precious here, in God’s house, in God’s family.