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Luke 15:1-10

Nearly two weeks ago, millionaire aviator Steve Fossett, who was the first person to fly solo around the world in a hot air balloon, disappeared after taking off for what was expected to be a flight over Nevada in good conditions.

Like a certain old-time television show, Fossett's "three-hour tour" turned out to be something far different than what was planned. Fossett has simply vanished without a trace. No wreckage has been discovered, no radio signals have been heard and nothing has been broadcast from the plane's emergency locator radio beacon.

The mystery is only further deepened by Fossett's obvious aviation skills that enabled him to break numerous flight records. Meanwhile, the search for his planes has turned up seven previously undiscovered plane crash sites, which will eventually help solve a variety of other mysterious disappearances.

But meanwhile, the search for Fossett goes on, involving up to three dozen planes and sheriff's deputies from six different counties in Nevada and California. Those people are voluntarily risking their lives in the hope of rescuing Fossett or, perhaps more likely, recovering his body.

We saw the same sort of thing recently in Utah and in China where rescuers risked their lives and several of them died trying to save groups of miners trapped in partially collapsed tunnels below the ground. But the potential danger to those rescuers was justified by hope that they could bring some or all of the trappers miners back to safety.

In essence, the sacrifice of those rescuers offered a glimpse into the tremendous value we place on human life. The hope of saving their lives was considered well worth the potential risk to the dozens of would-be rescuers. And that is exactly the point we get from our gospel lesson today as well.

Jesus is accused by a group of scandalized Pharisees of welcoming sinners and eating with them, as if that were enough to discredit him for all time in the eyes of the truly faithful. In response, Jesus tells several parables that make the point that people matter to God and when they get lost, he relentlessly seeks them out. Not only that, but that God is exuberantly joyful when he succeeds in bringing back a lost soul. That's hardly the distant, dignified God the Pharisees expected.

When I was about six years old, my mother took me to a large department store in downtown Pittsburgh. She was looking at clothes and, as young kids do, I quickly got bored, so I decided to hide from her. I wiggled my way into the middle of a large rack of clothes and sat there snickering as I thought about how much fun it would be to have her look for me.

But what I didn't know was that she saw me go in there and she decided to teach me a lesson. So she loudly announced that she was going to the toy department, which happened to be conveniently located next to the women's clothing. And then she left. She kept an eye out for me, but again, I didn't know that at that moment.

What I did know was that I was all alone in the midst of what seemed to be a huge crowd of strangers in a big, big city and my mom was nowhere in sight. I took off running for the toy department and I was never so glad to find my mom in my life.

That story isn't unusual by any means. Children hide from their parents like that all the time. Adults sometimes hide, too, but they do so in far more subtle ways than that. We do it by getting lost in things - things like hobbies or alcohol or drugs or even work.

In his autobiography, former Chrysler chairman Lee lacocca writes, "I'm constantly amazed by the number of people who can't seem to control their own schedules. Over the years, I've had many executives come to me and say with pride: 'Boy, last year I worked so hard that I didn't take any vacation.'

"It's actually nothing to be proud of. I always feel like responding, 'You dummy. You mean to tell me that you can take responsibility for an eighty million dollar project and you can't plan two weeks out of the year to go off with your family and have some fun?'"

In our gospel lesson, Jesus is shown spending his time with people who were rejected by normal society. That didn't exactly endear Jesus to the religious leaders of his time. They looked down their noses at him and they sniffed about the bad company he kept as if it were obvious that their sins would surely rub off on him. It was a birds-of-a-feather-flock-together theology. That was the context in which Jesus told the stories of the lost sheep and the lost coin.

The woman looks for the coin so frantically not just because it's lost, but because it's part of a matched set whose value diminishes significantly if any single part is missing. In the same way, we are all diminished when one of God's beloved children is apart from the community. As for the lost sheep - it's hardly usual or efficient to abandon the 99 safe sheep to find the one which is lost. That only opens the door for additional lost sheep.

And so Robert Farrar Capon says, "...I think it best to assume that Jesus is parabolically thumping the tub for the saving paradox of lostness. He implies, it seems to me, that even if all one hundred sheep should get lost, it will not be a problem for this bizarrely Good Shepherd because he is first and foremost in the business of finding the lost, not of making a messianic buck off the unstrayed.

"Give him a world with a hundred out of every hundred souls lost - give him, in other words, the worldful of losers that is the only real world we have - and it will do just fine: lostness is exactly his cup of tea. (Incidentally, the 'ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance' whom Jesus adduces later in the parable are strictly a rhetorical device: in fact, there are not and never have been any such people anywhere.)"

Throughout the gospels, Jesus delivers a consistent message: God has no greater value than his love for his people - no matter what the cost of that love may be in the loss of God's dignity or even in causing God pain.

In a book with the wonderful title, Many Are Called But Most Leave Their Phone Off The Hook, Doug Peterson tells a true story about a pair of youth pastors named Dave and Leanne. They had spent a great deal of time planning a trip to a youth convention in Chicago and six kids had signed up.

When the time to leave had arrived, they had the van all gassed up and they waited in the church for their charges to arrive. Only nobody came. So they made a quick round of calls.

The first one said, "Uh, sorry, Dave. I gotta help my Dad with chores on the farm. I can't go." The next one said, "I'm really sorry, but I can't go." And so it went, one after another as Dave called each young person. Finally, he got to the last one, who still wanted to go.

Ironically, the five kids who backed out at the last minute were all children of church members. The one who actually showed up wasn't part of the church. He was a friend of one of the other kids. But Dave and Leanne picked him up and they headed off to the youth event.

When they returned, Dave had an encounter with a session member, who gave Dave an earful. He was livid. "You took ONE kid to a convention!?" he fumed. "That's not a productive use of your time!"

What was even more horrifying to this session member was the fact that the kid wasn't a member of their church. He said it was bad enough wasting time on one kid. But to waste it on someone who didn't go to their church! Unbelievable! "We are not paying you to work with kids from other churches!" exclaimed one member.

Dave's response was an easy one. He told the elder that "the one kid" had decided to become a Christian on the trip. The elder dropped the subject, but Dave could tell he still wasn't convinced that church resources had been used wisely.

But that so-called "waste of time" had dramatic results later when that kid went on to become an associate pastor in that church.

Another story from that same book took place in Kansas. Home of Toto and Dorothy. Home of the Fitter Families Contests. In the 1920's, state fairs in Kansas featured more than just cows and pigs. In addition to livestock, the fairgrounds had "human stock" sections in which families were judged.

In a typical Fitter Families Contest, all members of a family had a physical exam, underwent psychiatric assessment, and took an intelligence test. The most well-bred humans were called "Grade-A Individuals" and they went home with a trophy. As one contest brochure explained, "The time has come when the science of human husbandry must be developed based on the principles now followed by scientific agriculture, if the better elements of our civilization are to dominate or even survive."

Have you ever heard of the eugenics movement? It's devoted to improving the human species through the control of hereditary factors in mating.

In 1907 a law in Indiana called for - and I quote - "mandatory sterilization of confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles, and others in state institutions when approved by a board of experts." It's actually surprising that the Indiana legislature passed this; after all, the phrase "idiots in state institutions" could easily have been interpreted to mean them. It also sounds a bit like the Pharisees that Jesus told these parables to.

How do these two stories relate? They both have to do with efficiency. In fact, the eugenics movement was a spin off of the efficiency movement, which tried to find ways to maximize our use of natural resources. With eugenics, social planners tried to apply the principles of the efficiency movement to people rather than just natural resources.

But when you are dealing with people, efficiency is a horrible goal. It shouldn't be the standard for either physical reproduction or for spiritual regeneration.

Unfortunately, the session member in the first story tried to convince Dave and Leanne that their youth program should be based on some sort of spiritual eugenics. He tried to make efficiency the driving force behind their ministry. So he told Dave that ministering to one kid wasn't an efficient use of time. It's more efficient to focus programs and energy on people who have it all together - in other words, on the 99 sheep who are still together. But that's a lot less loving than Jesus' way of seeking after the lost one.

You don't focus on being efficient when seeking the lost. Jesus will seek you regardless of how well you try to hide - in your work, in substance abuse, even in those admirable endeavors that tear you away from being with the flock.

Andrew Kimbrell says, "We don't treat anything or anybody we love on an efficiency basis. We don't determine how many hugs we are going to give our children on a minimum input/maximum output basis. I don't even treat my pet dog on an efficiency basis. It works for machines. But it doesn't work for those we love."

Although we spend a lot of time trying to get lost - or inadvertently becoming lost - God always finds us, even if that isn't an efficient use of his time. God does it anyway because he loves us too much to let us go. Amen.