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Luke 15:1-10

In the early the early days of television, George Burns and Gracie Allen were enjoying moderate success with their new TV show, but they weren't attracting the large audiences they had hoped for. So they tried to come up with some way to get people interested in their show.

George Burns knew that Gracie loved to tell daffy tall tales about her brother, who was also named George and was an accountant for an oil company. In fact, the quickest way to get Gracie's comedic juices flowing was to ask her about brother. In thinking about that, George Burns decided that their gimmick would be for Gracie to conduct a search for her brother George Allen as if he were missing.

It became a running gag line on their show, and even carried over into other popular shows. Gracie would pop up unexpectedly on some other star's show, telling people that she was looking for her missing brother, George.

Viewers never knew when Gracie would pop up, in the midst of other show's story lines, and announce her search. People all over the country were charmed by the joke, and "The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show" became wildly popular.

But there was one unfortunate side-effect to this publicity stunt:  George Allen, Jr., Gracie's brother, wasn't in on the joke. He was a private man, who wasn't used to publicity. But suddenly his sister's gag had yanked him out of obscurity and made him the center of national attention.

He was so uncomfortable that at one time he actually left town and disappeared for a while, causing a repentant Gracie to try to put a stop to all the publicity. Finally, George Allen came out of hiding and resumed his life as an accountant, but he remained the butt of jokes for a long time afterwards.

In our gospel lesson today, Jesus' enemies are complaining about him because he mingles with the kinds of people that they consider riff-raff. These were people who either actively rejected the religious law or who simply paid no attention to it. Like George Allen, they may have been lost, but they had no desire to be found.

And yet many of them were strangely attracted to Jesus, perhaps drawn to him by a deep-seated spiritual hunger they didn't even notice except when they were in his presence.

But rather than being impressed by Jesus' ability to speak to those outside the faith, the religious leaders refused to look beyond the things those people had done in the past. And they saw Jesus' willingness to reach out to them as being a sign of his own sinfulness and disrespect for the law.

So Jesus told them a couple of parables to explain why God had called him to do what he was doing. The first was the story of a shepherd who discovered that one of his 100 sheep is missing, so he leaves the 99 on their own in the desert - protected only by the safety of numbers - to search for the one that was missing.

The other is the story of a woman who noticed that one of the coins from her collection of ten was missing, so she turns the house inside out and upside down until she finds the lost coin.

The coin itself wasn't very valuable, but it may have represented one-tenth of the life savings of a desperately poor woman or it may have been part of a head dress worn by the women of that time. In any case, her reaction at finding the coin was to throw a party that probably cost her far more than the value of the coin.

Clearly, both the shepherd and the woman were impractical in their reactions, but they vividly demonstrated the value they placed on each individual animal or item under their care. In both stories, the one who was searching refused to allow anything to get in the way of the safe restoration of the group.

One commentator describes the meaning of both parables this way:  "The world is full of lost people. They're everywhere. People who have lost their goals in life, their enthusiasm, their joy, their hope.

"[...] They've missed the meaning of life. [...] They're everywhere. They look at you with hollow eyes on the street. They slink into alleyways so you won't notice them. They hunch over in the halls as if they are carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders. The church is one enterprise that will never go out of business for lack of prospects.

"But we are confronted with this question. If there are so many lost souls in this world, why then are we doing such a lousy job reaching them for Christ?

"One reason is that we've been looking in the wrong places. We have been focusing on making converts rather than finding lost people. We have been trying to find people who will fit in with our group and build up our church rather than asking, where are the people in need?

"Actually, we don't even like lost people. They look different from us. They talk different from us. They may even smell different from us. And, boy, can they get their life in a mess! Family problems like you cannot believe. And dangerous dependencies. They have a tendency to be ruled by their emotions rather than good sense. That is one reason they are lost. In short, they are not our kind of people. And that is why we avoid them. That's right, we avoid them.

"We would rather focus on winning people who are like us. After all, they have problems, too. Isn't it possible to be up-and-out as well as down-and-out? We can think of plenty of reasons to focus on our own kind of people. Meanwhile, the one hundredth sheep wanders farther and farther from the fold. And the lost coin lies under the cabinet, slowly corroding of self-esteem and hope."

The point is much like that made in a novel about the homeless in Chicago called Ghost Country by Sara Paretsky. That book talks about how even people from wealthy families can suddenly become homeless and how the average person looks down on and even fears those who are homeless.

The novel features a young psychology resident at the hospital who tries to help the mentally ill among the homeless only to meet resistance from his superiors to the point that he becomes fearful for his career.

A nearby ritzy hotel hoses down the homeless who sleep near the entrance to its underground parking garage because the hotel patrons don't want to be exposed to "those" kinds of people, but once the media discovers what they're doing, it becomes more difficult for the hotel to treat the homeless as non-humans.

We often want to hear Jesus' parables as comforting little stories, saying that God will never give up on us until we are safe once again his arms. And that is clearly a legitimate way to understand these stories, but there is more to them than just that, because their focus is on how all people are needed to complete the community.

These stories show us that God will never rest until all are restored to a relationship with him and, yet in our own state of being lost, we sometimes protect ourselves from having our hearts pierced with the world's needs. As a result, we misunderstand the depth of God's passion for the lost - including ourselves.

An anonymous cynic once wrote, "I was hungry and you formed a humanities club and discussed my hunger. Thank you. I was imprisoned and you crept off quietly to your chapel in the cellar and prayed for my release. I was naked and in your mind you debated the morality of my appearance. I was sick and you knelt and thanked God for your health. I was homeless and you preached to me of a spiritual shelter of the love of God. I was lonely and you left me alone to pray for me. You seemed so holy, so close to God, but I'm still very hungry and lonely and cold."

Fortunately, that's not particularly true of this congregation as a whole. After all, we have many ways in which we reach out to those in need. For example, our letter-writing program for Amnesty International or our support for causes like Habitat for Humanity and the Galena Food Pantry and our recent Heifer Project campaign, even our up-coming fitness program on behalf of the hungry through the Church World Service CROP program and the Fall Tour of Homes with its charitable fund-raising muscle. Clearly there are many avenues in which we can serve and yet sometimes it seems as if we have come to think of these opportunities as a distraction rather than being the real work of the church.

Turning to the global level, yesterday's third anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks reminds us that we live in a dangerous world. We're constantly told that the world changed forever on that horrible day three years ago, but I'd suggest that the only thing that may have changed is a deeper determination by the terrorists to use indiscriminant methods of murder rather than targeted ones.

How do you stop that? There was an old saying from the Vietnam War that represented the military thinking of our country at that time. I believe the saying was originated by General Curtis LeMay, but I don't remember that for sure. Now there's no good way to clean this saying up for use from a pulpit and that in itself should tell you something about it. But I'll tweak it just a bit to make it a little less offensive.

The slightly modified saying was, "If you grab 'em by the [testicles], their hearts and minds will follow." Clearly that was not true then nor will it ever be true, because brute strength directed in such a personal way against anyone can only create deep resistance and hatred. And yet, in this campaign year, both the Republicans and Democrats are offering variations on that same theme for their version of the so-called War on Terror.

Yet, through these parables, doesn't Jesus offer us a third way to deal with terror? Clearly there are some who are willing to perform criminal activities and they must be held accountable for their actions. But the real question is, "Why are there so many others who are willing to follow them?"

And the answer is that they are the lost ones - those who have no role in the economic booms and busts of a global economy, those who have no voice in the affairs of the world, those who have no hope for the future, but see only endless cycles of despair and rage.

But if we were to honestly seek those people out to offer them assistance for their basic human needs - food and water, clothing and shelter, and training in marketable skills - wouldn't we in that way take away the hopelessness that currently allows them to be used as human bombs by the terrorist leaders? Couldn't we, in fact, win the War on Terror far more easily through targeted gifts of hope than through targeted attacks with smart bombs?

And isn't this the perfect time - when both political parties in our country are scrambling for votes - to contact our representatives and ask them to try Jesus' third way - the way of seeking and saving the lost?

Jesus' parables imply that when we reach out to help those who are lost and in need, there is real joy to be found - both through the sheer joy of making a difference by helping others and through our own awareness that when we seek the lost, we are truly following in our Master's footsteps. According to these parables, that is, in itself, reason enough to rejoice. Amen.