2025-09-15
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
Don’t you love it when you read a familiar bible story and suddenly see something new? If the parables about the lost sheep and the lost coin aren’t familiar to you, you likely know the third story in the triad, the parable of the prodigal son. I have to admit that these stories always baffled me a bit.
For years, I found myself annoyed that the younger son in the prodigal story was welcomed so warmly by his father. That is probably in part because, as the oldest child in my family who was always the responsible one, I didn’t think it fair for the ne’er-do-well child to be the one with the big party!
And it seemed a little absurd for a shepherd to risk his whole flock over one errant sheep, or a woman to spend so much time looking for a little coin. And then, for both of them to make such a big deal at the end was just further proof of some misplaced reward. Processing the lost sheep and coin as representing people who wandered away from, or never had, a relationship with God, it all just seemed entirely unfair. Does one only get a celebration if one hasn’t been faithful? I hate to have to admit it, but that idea rubbed my righteous self the wrong way!
Yet one should never write off Jesus’ parables so easily because experience shows us that this is a man who can teach the most profound lessons in ways that on the surface seem baffling, unfair or even ridiculous. I mean, I don’t know about you, but when I think about an image of God, it does not include a foolishly loving shepherd crawling over ledges or slithering under bushes looking for a sheep. I don’t imagine God as a woman bent over a broom peering into corners filled with cobwebs. It doesn’t seem logical that God would take the time to look for the insignificant, hard-to-find or just plain difficult people.
So this time, as I read the text, I really listened closely for where God is in the story and where I might find myself. Perhaps it is because the state of the world today – and especially this week – but I find it easy to feel lost! Not only has the assassination of Charlie Kirk dominated the headlines, but yet another school shooting has terrorized a community, the escalation of violence between immigrants and ICE agents led to the shooting death of a man in Chicago, and Israel attacked Hamas leaders in Qatar, killing five. And those are only the headlines. Ongoing conflict in so many places like Haiti, Sudan and Pakistan doesn’t even make the news.
It was in this context that I read and reflected on these parables. And in the midst of some necessary prayer time earlier this week, it occurred to me that it wasn’t just sinful or faithless people who God went in search of. Suddenly I realized that when I stopped to think more carefully about these stories, I understood that God is not only looking for those who don’t have faith. God is also looking for the likes of me. For someone whose faith wanes, whose life gets busy and so forgets to pray as often as one might. God is searching for those of us who get worn down by the constant stream of chaos, those who don’t think of ourselves as lost until Jesus tells a parable to get our attention.
Here is what dawned on me this week: God isn’t in the fold with the 99 sheep who stay together. And God isn’t curled up on the couch polishing the nine silver pieces still in the coin jar. God is actually where the lost things are: in the wild under the scrub brush, in the darkest corners of the house; in the places where the search is most difficult. Which means that if I want to find God, I have to leave the safety of the familiar and risk getting lost too. And even before that, I have to realize that I am often indeed already lost . . . and I must be willing to be found.
This isn’t easy! So, Jesus tells these parables to those of us who won’t admit our own lostness so that we might learn about vulnerability and empathy; about humility and patience. In her book, An Altar in the World, Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor argues this evocative point: being lost makes us “stronger at the edges and softer at the center.”
There is one other piece of these stories that never made sense to me: the ridiculous extravagance of the actions of the shepherd and the woman. A one percent loss on an investment of a flock of sheep is just part of the cost of tending a herd. The woman who seeks her lost coin almost assuredly spent more money on fuel to light her cottage in her search than the coin itself is worth. Both chose to gather the neighbors to celebrate their finds. We can well imagine that they spent more on the parties than the things they had lost.
So why then the long searches? Perhaps these two people can’t stand the idea of losing something they care about. What if that is what God is like too – needing nothing, but so filled with a love that God cannot let anyone go . . . and then upon finding them, throws a lavish party to end all parties?
I think that the Rev. Paul Youngdahl, former pastor of the largest Evangelical Lutheran church, summed up these parables best when he declared, “We believe that we are a special people – not superior – but special people because this God of extravagance loves us so much.”
It has been a blessing this week to find new and deeper meaning in these familiar parables. To realize that Jesus’ message is to remind us of just how lavishly God loves us is an incredible gift. So if you’ve been feeling a bit lost, confused and overwhelmed by the world, I hope that these stories remind you that no matter how far you have wandered, God will search for you, find you, and then throw a party to end all parties to celebrate that you have been found. And that, my friends, is the kind of good news we can carry in our hearts, the kind that can help us get through a week like this. Amen.