Luke 15:1-10

Did you hear the coyotes this week? They’re bold and brassy; they come right into town and argue with the dogs; and they can send shivers up and down your spine. Some folks here have told me they like the sound of coyotes. For them I’ll just say, stop thinking of yourself as a big, strong human inside a big, strong house, and start imagining you are a little, helpless sheep … wandering around in the big, dangerous outdoors. Do coyotes still sound good? How many sheep do you imagine use a coyote howl as their cell phone ringtone? How many congregations of lambs use a coyote chorus as their favorite hymn?

Luke chapter 15 is all about being lost. At the beginning it’s a lost sheep. In the middle it’s a lost coin. At the end it’s a lost child. And just like all other preachers, I’ve done sermon after sermon about all of them. I’ve looked at what it’s like to be the rescued sheep, carried home on God’s shoulder and made the guest of honor. I’ve looked at what it’s like to be the 99 abandoned sheep, huddled together on the hilltop, listening to the howling coyotes, wondering why God seems to value the stray more than us. I’ve even told you that we all need to turn ourselves into shepherds and go everywhere looking for lost sheep to rescue.

Today it’s time for a different angle. What do you think the coyotes are really saying? I wonder if maybe they’re replaying an old tune we’ve heard since we were little. You remember: The big kids were playing a fascinating game. I don’t know whether they were playing it outside with bats and balls or inside with Playstations and Gameboys. Maybe the attraction of the game wasn’t so much the game itself … as being included, being a part of the fun, being a part of the group. We bounced up and down on our toes, and we said, “Let me play! Let me play!”

What did the big kids say back? “Get lost!” “You’re too little for this game.” “Get lost!” “Go play on the highway!” “Get lost!” Then they played tricks on us: “I think I hear your mommy calling you.” “Cover your eyes and count to 100,” … while they disappeared for the rest of the day. Abandoned to the coyotes!

“Get lost!” It made a sore spot, deep inside where the doctor can’t find it, but it’s there. Even when we got bigger, and we really were part of the group, and we were telling the new generation of little kids, “Get lost,” … it was still there.

Oh, fellas! remember being a teenager, when you really, really, really wanted to date that incredibly gorgeous girl? … “Get lost!”

I know we’re grownups now, and that sore has scabbed over, but we still remember it, and every now and then the scab sloughs off and we feel all that pain as if it were brand new. “Get lost!” “You’re too little, you’re too stupid, you’re too slow, you’re too ordinary!” Pretty soon we stop thinking of ourselves as lost and start thinking of ourselves as losers.

I even wonder sometimes if the one sheep left the 99 others because someone said, “Get lost!” It happens in school.… It happens in families.… It happens in churches.… “Get lost!”

The fact is, every single one of us in this room, every person on this planet … has been told sometime: “Get lost!” Maybe not in those exact words. Maybe not even with words at all, but voice tone and body language and not returning phone calls. And the pain of that command, and the power of that command still resonate inside us: “Get lost.”

Getting lost is easy; it’s getting found that’s hard. One of the on-line web sites I look at posted a list of things that don’t always work as advertised. One of them was a “stud finder.” After I picked through the obvious sexual jokes, … I got to the real problem:

You remodel your house, build a wall with 2x4 studs, cover them with drywall, tape it and paint it, … and then you decide to hang a heavy picture. You can’t just pound a nail any old place. It won’t hold. You want to drive that nail into one of the studs. How are you going to do that? The 2x4 studs are lost under all that other stuff.

So you go to the hardware store and buy a little gizmo called a stud finder, and bring it home and run it over the wall, and just like magic it finds the stud. … Only most of the time it doesn’t! Getting lost is easy. Getting found is hard.

You all know who Robert Fulghum is: he’s the fellow who became a famous writer by admitting he never learned anything after kindergarten.

       Robert Fulghum tells a story about a kid in his
       neighborhood who was so good at playing hide
       and seek that the other kids … could never find
       him. Sooner or later they would give up, and
       the kid would grow tired of hiding and would
       come out angry that the others didn’t keep
       looking for him. …

       One day Fulghum … looks out his window and
       sees this kid hide under a big pile of leaves. Ten
       minutes go by and no one finds him.… 30
       minutes and still the kid is hiding. Fulghum opens
       his window, and just yells “Kid, get found!”  The kid
       jumps up and runs home.… [from a sermon by
       Fred Kane, who credits Charles Rush for finding the story.]

Well, maybe getting found was easy for that child, but for most of us it’s hard. “Get lost!” that was easy. “Get found!” is a whole lot harder. Maybe we can’t even do it for ourselves. Maybe we stop thinking of ourselves as lost and start thinking of ourselves … as losers. Maybe there are even people in churches--well, not Creston!--but some church, somewhere, where they feel like they’ve spent their whole lives in the church and prayed and tithed and preached and witnessed and worked in homeless shelters and built habitats for humanity, … and yet somehow they feel that God hasn’t yet found them. It’s not that I’m lost, it’s that I’m a loser. Too much of a loser even for God. I’ve been told “Get lost” so many times that whole chunks of me are missing, my history, my self-esteem, my soul, my humanity, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, and God, too, are scrambling around trying to pick up the pieces, and not finding much. It’s not that I’m lost, but that I’m a loser. Not even God can help.

A minister acquaintance, Paul Lutz, sees a T-shirt, and on the back it says, “Jesus Is for Losers.” At first he thinks it’s a put-down, someone who decided they were too cool to be associated with religion, and then he sees the fine print underneath, a Bible reference in parentheses, a verse from Luke: “For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” [Luke 19:10. My guess as to the citation.]

Jesus is for losers. God is in the lost-and-found business. In fact God specializes in lost-and-found. Jesus came to seek out and save the lost. So what if we feel like the sock pushed to the back of the sock drawer because it lost its mate? Jesus specializes in putting things back together. So what if we feel like the jigsaw puzzle, stuck in the attic because it lost too many pieces? God specializes in restoring that which was lost. So what if we’ve been told “Get lost” so many times we think of ourselves as losers. Jesus is for losers.

The story of the lost sheep, the lost coin, are not just about those people outside the church building, contrasted with us inside. It’s also about all the parts of ourselves that are lost, about our own feelings of desolation and desertion and abandonment. And it is a promise that we can never get too lost, we can never get too far away, we can never be so much of a loser that Jesus can’t find us. Jesus can always find us.…

Imagine the classic western movie: a dusty street; board walks on the side; wooden buildings with false fronts; tumbleweeds blowing across the desolation. And we are standing in the middle of all that. The movie camera seems to be looking down at us from a blimp, high above, and as it pulls back, it reveal that we’re all alone in the middle of that empty town in the middle of that empty prairie.

Now bring up the soundtrack with some lonely-sounding coyote music: [whistle] doodi-doodi-doo-oo-oo-oo.…

And then, all of a sudden--just as quickly as Dorothy stepping out of her gray Kansas house into the Technicolor beauty of the land of Oz--we are surrounded by crowds of well-wishers, flags waving, bands playing, confetti dropping; and we realize that we are the guests of honor of the biggest parade in the world; and Jesus is walking right along beside us, holding our hand, and saying, “Look here, everybody! This is my friend who was told to get lost and now is found! We have to celebrate!”

Hah! Coyotes! … Who cares?…

(Comments to Don at crestnch@televar.com.)
Creston Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Creston, WA, USA