It's Not About You

Luke 15:1-10

It’s lost and found Sunday in the gospel. 

So let’s start with a show of hands:

Have any of you here recently lost something important to you? Keys? Glasses? Phone? Child?  Something you searched for urgently and anxiously?

Did you find it?

Excellent.

This gospel story is not about you.

How about being lost?  How many people here remember a time when you were lost?

Do you also remember being found?

How did that make you feel? 

Excellent.

This story is not about you, either.

One more.  How many of you know someone who gets all the attention because she or he is always screwing up, getting lost or in trouble? Does it drive you crazy?
I’m sorry. 

And if you find yourself wondering if there’s any point in being righteous when God goes off chasing the screw up sheep all the time, you might have some sympathy for Jesus’ first hearers in this story, but it’s not about you, either.

I find it funny that Jesus tells this parable about something that’s a pretty normal part of your life and mine – the lost and found experience – when this story is really, profoundly, not about us.

It’s about God.

It’s a story about God being so joyful God can’t contain it.

So joyful that normal breaks down and we have a tremendous party to celebrate the smallest, most ordinary thing.

Jesus is telling us about God’s invitation to rejoice.

This is great news.

God’s joy is great news for any of us who have been found by God when we were lost. And it’s great news that God invites us to rejoice extravagantly with God.  But to accept that invitation, we have to know that it is not about us. That you and I are called, by this story, to step out of the center of our own lives and our faith, and open the space for God’s joy to pour through.

Does that sound easy?

Well, let’s practice.

Think about the worst screw ups you know.  The kid who is always in trouble, or the grownup equivalent. Think about God’s joy when that person opens her or his whole heart to God (which does not necessarily mean they quit screwing up).  Can you feel the joy??

Excellent.   You’re ready for the intermediate exercise:

Think about the people who absolutely drive you crazy.  The people who you can tell are clearly lost to all sense and reason – politicians, management, family members, whoever it is –  the people you least want to meet in heaven. Go ahead, and get them firmly in your mind.

I know when I do that, my shoulders hunch up, my teeth clench, and I frequently make a face.  My body is shouting out the opposite of joy.

So when you are face to face with those lost causes, can you feel God’s joy in being united with them?

At this level, to share God’s joy, I have to believe with my whole body and soul that it’s not about me. I have to get myself out of the center of the story, so the relationship between God and the other person takes center stage.  I have to really let go of whatever it is that drives me nuts, or to get over a fear and reach out to make friends, so that there’s room for God’s joy to fill that space.

I still need practice at this level. How about you? 

When you think of the people who can drive you crazy, what would it take to feel God’s joy in them?

Do you have to practice letting go of something?
Do you have to reach out and make friends?

And then there’s the advanced practice. The practice of learning to see the lost:

Think about who gets lost in your everyday life. Who is invisible to you?

People who produce the goods and the food you use?

The passenger in the stalled car ahead that’s causing the traffic jam that’s making you late?

People who work alongside you that you just don’t see?

Every work, every form of entertainment, every place has people who are lost: people who are invisible to many, if not most of us.

Look at football (since that’s what I’m planning to do in an hour or so.)  The Bears on the field are nice and visible.  The coaches and commentators and fans in the stadium, too.

But what about the guy whose job it is to patch the grass, walking the field carefully with grass seed and fertilizer and sharp attention? 

Or the people who take out all the trash after the game?  

What about the young men who’ve dreamed of being on that field, whose dreams were lost to injury or to a lack of funds to start them on the path? 

What if one of those young men went to Iraq instead, and now sleeps in the park beside Solider Field, but has to leave on game days because the noise and crowds trigger old injuries?

These are the people who are invisible, lost when we’re watching the game.  And I imagine it’s exactly those people God sees at the Bears game this afternoon.  Those people God finds, discovers, celebrates, with as much joy – maybe more joy - than Jay Cutler or Charles Tillman.

Can you imagine God’s joy when God finds those whom we can’t see?  those who are lost to us?

To be open to God’s joy in finding, and God’s joy in us, we need to learn to see the lost.  To see the world that’s not about us.

We need to practice looking for the cracks that God’s people slip into, or the cracks in our selves, and our world,  that hide others from us. Your life, mine, this world, are full of those cracks.

Cracks that people slip into because the resources they need just aren’t within reach.

Cracks in the media and our own perceptions that hide people who aren’t considered attractive or interesting.

Cracks that people are driven into by pain or loss, by legalized prejudice or by peer pressure.

Cracks that sometime hide us from ourselves.

If we learn to see into those cracks, to see the lost, we’ll certainly see need and pain, but when we see God’s joy in the person who was lost, it’s so much easier to find ways to meet the need and heal the pain.

So opening our eyes to those cracks, to the people we don’t see, opens up all kinds of space for God’s joy in our hearts, our lives, that heals our world.

So practice.  Practice sensing God’s joy in the screw-ups, practice letting go, or reaching out with the people who drive you crazy. And practice seeing the people who get lost, the invisible,

because opening up your life to the good news that it’s not about you can fill that life with God’s own overflowing joy. 

That can fill your ears and heart with God’s constant invitation to extravagant celebration: Rejoice with me. I have found what was lost, and there is joy in heaven.