Which of you, having $1000 in ready cash, and losing $10, drops
$990 on a table in a public place and goes off searching for that missing $10,
not giving up until you find it?
Or – in an example getting dearer to my heart – having ten pairs
of reading glasses and misplacing one, drops everything and spends the whole
day turning the house inside out until you find it?
This is ridiculous, right? The effort – an entire day of
searching – or the risk – of leaving the 99% unattended – seem bizarrely out of
proportion to the loss, or the gain.
At least, it’s ridiculous unless there’s something extraordinary
about the lost object – the $10 bill signed by Muhammed Ali that you were
taking to get framed, or that one pair of glasses that really sits right on
your nose.
When you find those things that are lost, you might just
call your friends to celebrate. And might just be disappointed when your friend
or spouse is more interested in other things than in your lost and found
triumph.
So it is today with Jesus, who has found the people God has been
seeking so diligently for so long, the people so cheap to the rest of the world
and so special to God,
when the scribes and the Pharisees call his celebration ridiculous.
Wrong and unfit for a decent religious leader.
And when Jesus tells them these two exaggerated lost and found
stories, about sheep and coins, they seem to miss the point of those, too.
Rejoice with me, Jesus says, using the voices of a
tenderly impulsive shepherd and a determined woman. Rejoice with me, because
I have found what was lost. Celebrate with me, share the joy!
That’s what Jesus is saying to you and me, too, as we listen in
on this conversation between Jesus and the local religious leaders. Rejoice
with me!
Not because you have been lost and found.
Not because you’ve never strayed.
Rejoice with me because someone else, anyone else, these people
you have never met, have been drawn close to the heart of God.
Now, it’s easy to rejoice when I’ve been found. It’s
overwhelmingly natural to feel giddy with relief when I have been scared and lonely,
disoriented, painfully anxious, or just plain miserable, angry and sad, and someone I trust comes along and finds
me – offers company in the
wilderness, a return to safety and confidence, relief of pain.
It’s absolutely natural to feel joy when you’ve been yanked back from a dangerous edge or destructive choice, or when you’ve slowly discovered what you were always meant to do, what feeds your soul. Paul tells that kind of story of being found by God over and over; we heard a version of it this morning, full of gratitude and exuberance.
It’s an
overwhelming, joyful relief to find the child who’s disappeared from sight, a
joy to find the love of your life; a joy to discover that an old friend also
wants to heal the years-old conflict that drove you apart.
Jesus and Paul remind us of all that lost and found experience
this morning to stir up our joy, because it’s rather less natural for many of
us to feel such delight about what happens to people we’ll probably never meet,
or people we’re uncomfortable around or just don’t like.
Jesus wants us to notice and share God’s overwhelming joy when a
long-haul trucker discovers comfort and inspiration in an audio bible after being bored in church for 40
years.
Jesus wants us to actively celebrate with God when the manager of
a McDonalds you stopped at once finds strength in prayer to heal years of
wounds in their marriage.
Jesus wants us to drop everything and party with him when the
child quietly cold-shouldered out of our church for being too noisy and
disruptive is welcomed as a leader at another church; or when a person whose gender
is denied by the church they loved finds welcome and the love of God here, even
while many of us still feel weird about un-gendered pronouns and bathrooms.
Jesus wants us to pour our whole hearts into sharing God’s joy
over reconciliations and blessings that have nothing at all to do with us; to
enthusiastically share God’s delight that God has found someone not looking for
God; that God has forgiven someone who wasn’t even sorry yet.
God wants us – you specifically, me specifically – to be just as
joyful about God’s love for messy, broken, lost and indifferent humanity as God is, and that is a lot of
joy.
Sometimes, that’s too much for me.
And most days, I don’t actually feel that joy all the time.
I doubt I’m alone in that.
Because just as it’s natural for us to rejoice when healing or
finding or salvation happens to us, personally, it’s equally normal for us to miss
what is happening in other people’s lives, in other people’s relationship with
God, and God’s relationship with us all.
And God really doesn’t want us to miss that.
So when you or I don’t deliberately pay attention to the discoveries
and learning of God’s love that are happening in our Sunday School classes, or
in the Friends with Jesus groups and adult Bible Studies; God is missing us as friends
to rejoice with.
When you or I don’t keep our eyes on the small steps of healing,
nourishment, reconciliation and wholeness that are happening at St. Paul’s in
Camden where Trinity volunteers are cooking breakfast this morning, and through
the work of St. Vincent de Paul and the many other efforts of our Outreach
volunteers and leadership,
we are cutting ourselves off from the joy God wants so very much to share
with us.
If you or I aren’t actively celebrating those moments when someone
else’s heart is moved to tears and opened to God by the music and prayers of
our worship, by the beauty of this building that none of us designed or built,
or the welcome of the 12-step groups that meet downstairs, because you or I don’t
feel like we have much to do with it;
then Jesus is wondering why you or I aren’t responding to the
call to rejoice with him.
If you and I aren’t actively seeking out these moments of finding
and being found, because you or I weren’t lost or involved in the looking, we are missing the urgency
and generosity of God’s invitation to celebrate, the party God is throwing in exuberant
delight; missing the chance to share the angels’ heavenly joy right here and
now.
And that’s a shame.
You see, God is inviting us to rejoice always, all the
time, because God’s love is always reconciling, healing and finding, even when we don’t
particularly notice.
And God is explicitly, delightedly, inviting us to notice and
celebrate God’s work, to see with joy what God has done, even when we personally
had nothing to do with it.
It’s God’s work to heal and find and save and transform.
And God deeply wants us to enjoy the results. Just like the Eagles want you to
enjoy a game-winning touchdown even if you didn’t run the ball one single step.
Now, I suspect that God appreciates it when we find the joy so
delightful to share that we start helping. When we start paying active
attention to what Jesus is up to in our friends’ lives, and helping open the
doors with our prayer, or a listening ear and company along the way; with an
hour of time, a donation, a friendship, or an invitation. With the sharing of
our own joy, from those moments when I, or you, personally, have found what we
sought or been found by love.
But before we do any of that, whether we do any of that,
God still calls to all of us, now and always: Rejoice with me! What
was lost is found! And that is the first
and final word of love.
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