The Lost and Found Department - 17-Sep-07: Houston Methodist Church article: contact Bob Luton

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28, Psalm 14 (UMH 746), 1 Timothy 1:12-17, Luke 15:1-10

Additional Passage Dramatized: Isaiah 6:1-12 (For the 8:30 and 11:05 a.m. services)

15:4 "Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?

15:6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.'

15:7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

15:8 "Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?

15:9 When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.'

15:10 Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

Things were fairly quiet in the office, and I had just settled down to a long Fall’s study of this scripture passage, when out in the hall their arose such a clatter, that I sprang to my feet to see what was the matter… Somehow I think I’ve gotten off track! Anyway, June hollered out, “I’ve found it!” Found what. “My other earring!” “I’ve been looking for it for days!” “We were just about to go to the jewelry store and have another one made to match the lost one!” Where was it? “It was right here in the bottom of my purse.” “It must have fallen in there while I had my purse open, and I was talking on the phone or something!” “Wait!” “Let me call John and tell him!” “John!” “You won’t believe it!” “Guess what I found!”…

I don’t think I’ve ever had the office come in right on cue, when I was reading the Bible before. But there you are. Both of the parables in the passage today are about people who lost things… looked really hard for them… found them… and were ready to party! And it’s also about those who really don’t get it!

You know, it takes a special person to work up excitement for someone else’s lost and found party. First, you have to work up interest and excitement for the thing that was lost (I think June said is was an elephant earring), and then you have to imagine how hard and long a search it was, and then you have to drop what you’re doing and start jumping up and down with them… sharing their joy, you might say… and all of this in a few seconds time. It separates out the real friends! I’ve got to say, I did pretty well with that earring!

So, what was Jesus up to… telling stories like this for some grumpy old Pharisees and Scribes. When they saw some of the people that were drifting in to hear Jesus, it reminded them of something. They scratched their heads… Oh yeah, it’s people like that that Jesus eats with, tax collectors and sinners, don’t you know. He welcomes them to places like this, don’t you know. (Where I grew up, statements like that were followed with… “Don’t you know.”) Grumble, grumble, grumble.

Hearing this, and looking out at the crowd, maybe Jesus did some associations of his own. Looking around, maybe Jesus’s eyes lighted on some of the marginalized of his own day in the crowd, some very non-Pharisee and non-Scribe type folks. Who knows, maybe he saw some shepherds with crooks in hand in the back of the crowd… or maybe he saw a broom leaning against a building in the alleyway, and it made him think of the widows who had to get along on the meager temple welfare system.

Maybe Jesus is thinking… “How can I help those grumblers… and these folks… see that my Father’s Kingdom is bigger than they think?” What a “teachable moment” as the educators say!

Maybe everyone knows what it’s like to lose something, look all over for it, think where they might have left it, call the lost and found department, wait on the phone until someone says, “It’s here.” And… it’s party time! In the Church Office, we have a whole basket full of stuff like that in our “lost and found department.” I guess it’s the “lost department” until you call us!

Now before we get too down on the Pharisees and Scribes, they had reason to be offended by Jesus’ eating habits. It’s hard for us to imagine in our world of fast food in the mall food court with a cross section of humanity at the next table. On Friday, I munched down a Chick-Fil-A for lunch in the midst of a very comfortable crowd that felt like much like Houston, but was a long way from the traditional Jewish meal of the first century.

For the first century Jew, you didn’t just “grab a bite.” Here’s what I learned from a very gifted minister, teacher, and writer whose path I crossed briefly at Emory, Barbara Brown Taylor. She has said that eating for them was a religious experience in which the smallest details of everyday life were celebrated. The food had to be clean. The hands had to be clean, really clean. The dishes needed to be clean… really clean. And the heart… the heart had to be right. So when they saw Jesus eating with “sinners”, it was very offensive to them. And to make it a bit more touchy, they really thought they had good reason to be offended.

Barbara talked about a Middle Eastern proverb I had never heard about, which she said was probably known in Jesus’ day: “I saw them eating and I knew who they were.” Doesn’t make sense now, but then, what you ate and who your dining buddies were made a big difference. So, when the Parisees and Scribes saw Jesus at dinner, they saw him eating and they knew who he was: someone who had lost all sense of what was right, who appeared to “agree with” sin by eating with sinners.

So, Jesus had his work cut out for him, enlarging their view of God’s Kingdom. And he chose to do it with two teaching stories we call parables. Parables have an amazing ability to call us into question and invite us to see things differently. One way to let a parable do its work is to play with identifying with the different characters in the story and see which one God is using to speak to you right now.

In the first one, about the shepherd with 100 sheep who goes to look for the one that’s nibbled his way into trouble, you could imagine that you’re the shepherd, or the sheep, or the 99 left to their own devices in the wilderness (unless there is a well trained sheep dog or an associate shepherd to help out), or even that you’re in the crowd hearing the story as a Pharisee, a Scribe, a Tax Collector, or a sinner. It’s a wonderful exercise I recommend.

Which one would you gravitate toward today? The parable is sneaky in setting us up to begin to identify with the shepherd, because it starts out by saying, “Which of you, having a hundred sheep…” It’s as if Jesus hopes that the grumblers will so identify with the shepherd’s joy at finding the lost sheep, they will learn to share God’s joy.

Parables are sparse in details, giving you lots of room to fill them in yourself. As the story is told, you can imagine all of the dusty and hot crevices the shepherd peered into, and the hours of fruitless searching. The listeners would have known that the shepherd in those days knew all of his sheep by name, and even learned to anticipate their individual personalities. Maybe it’s a stretch to think of them like our “pets”, but you get the idea. So by the time the shepherd finds the sheep, the listeners would have identified with the heart pumping joy of discovery. The shepherd rejoices and slips the sheep around his shoulders for the journey back to the flock. And then… the twist!

Jesus gives the grumblers the little surprise to think about at the end. He tempts the grumblers’ jealousy to say that there will be “more joy in heaven over the one sinner that repents than over the 99 who don’t need it.” (The Pharisee and Scribe grumblers will be thinking… “That’s us!”) More than for me? Wait a minute! This is a crummy story. Shepherds aren’t even “respectable people”.

In the parable of the lost coin, once again, it’s a person at the fringes of society whose story becomes a parable about who’s a part the Kingdom of God. Women had little power at all. So the loss of a coin which represented a “day’s wage” in those days would have been a mere pittance for the grumblers, but a huge loss to the woman. If that lost coin, one of the ten silver coins she had, was her money and she happened to be a widow, it would have been an immense loss, but if it had belonged to the man of the house, the consequences might have been even more scary!

Again, we are invited into the adventure of the search. The lighting of the lamp in the windowless home of that day, the scratch, scratch, scratch sounds of the broom franticly scouring the dirt floor, the eyes looking through the rising dust cloud for a glint of silver or the slight change of sound as the broom struck something solid.

Aha! There is is! The silver coin is found! Jesus has hooked our interest and our feeling in this human drama… and then the twist!

“Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." Just which sinner was Jesus talking about?

The grumblers would have heard, “… like those sinners I’ve been eating with… the one’s you’ve been grumbling about. Maybe he meant somebody else.

I want you to read Barbara Brown Taylor’s sermon about his passage, which also includes the prodigal son parable, because it’s riveting. Table Manners, by Barbara Brown Taylor.

She re-sets the scene of the grumblers watching Jesus eating with sinners in a Huddle House restaurant. Have you ever eaten at one? There is Jesus with the most revolting collection of those folks in our day… who would be seen by us as the equivalent of the “tax collectors and sinners” in Jesus’ day. He offers one a roll and asks the another to pass the coffee. And he seems perfectly relaxed and comfortable with them.

In comes the local ministerial association dressed to the teeth and clean as a whistle, looking down their collective noses at this rag tag group hanging out with Jesus. And Jesus just smiles a genuine friendly smile across the room at the staring group and says, “Why don’t you guys come on over and join us, the dessert’s on me.”

These parables call us up short, because they challenge our prideful assumptions about where we are in God’s scheme of things and our assumptions about where God is in the nooks and crannies of our culture, and our place in the lost and found department.

Where are you and I in these parables? The shepherd or the woman doing the searching? The sheep or the coin which is lost? Or the grumblers looking on who just don’t get it?

In the lost and found department, it’s sometimes hard to tell who is who? And Jesus wants us to think about it, respond to his love for us, and join him around the table where someone who may not be like us (or may be more like us than we think) is about to say, “please pass the salt.”

In the vision of the prophet Isaiah so beautifully portrayed earlier in dance and dramatic presentation, the seraph brought a coal from the altar to touch his lips. When Isaiah had sensed the presence of God, he knew the poverty of his own soul and cried out his need for God’s forgiveness. And God did. And do you remember what happened right after the hot coal brought purity, forgiveness, and reconciliation? He overheard God sharing a need with the heavenly hosts, and before he knew it, it just came out: “Here am I, send me!”

If the dramatic presentation today and our experience of these parables have been for us an experience of the Holy, and we feel the poverty of our souls in the light of them, may we feel the touch of purity, forgiveness, and reconciliation from the altar, and then… maybe… feel the urge to say, “Here am I, send me!”

"The Lost and Found Department"