Living Between Being Lost and Being Found
Luke 15:4-32, Matthew 9:18-26, John 4:1-22, and John 8:1-11
There’s an enormous hunger for God in this world. Often people feel the hunger, but they don’t know what they are really hungry for. "I’m hungry, but I don’t know for what," we say as we open the refrigerator door. What does the gospel have to offer these seekers after God? Life is lived between two addresses “being lost” and “being found.” The words “lost” and “found” make regular appearance throughout the scripture. They are also kept alive by us ministers who use them in our preaching; sometimes we use them in condescending ways and at other times in more appropriate ways. Our songs even use these words, most famously in Amazing Grace, “I once was lost but now I’m found.” Thus there is no doubt these words have a rich history in the Christian vocabulary. Let us consider these words this morning and how they form the boundaries to life.
In one sense, the church declares, lostness is endemic to humanity, since Adam and Eve lost their way in the garden. Since then, the story of grace is the story of God’s relentless pursuit of the lost and wayward children. Lostness has many faces and creates many detours in our life. We are all lost. The Bible is full of stories of people lost and then found.
The children of Israel were lost in Egypt until God found them. Moses himself had killed a man and gotten lost on the backside of the Midian desert before God tracked him down. The people of Israel do get free, but only for a moment and then they are lost in the wilderness for forty years, apparently Moses needed a compass more than a staff. The only way they get into the Promised Land is for another lost soul Rahab the Harlot, to do them a favor. God’s people, ironically, can even get lost in the Promised Land. Exile after exile Israel continues to spend more time lost than found. So what does it mean to be lost and better yet what does it mean to be found.
Lostness can be a deliberate choice but more than likely it is incidental to the human condition. We don’t mean to do it but we can’t help it. It all begins because we think we know the way. “Me lost, of course not.” No one likes to admit they are lost whether it is lost driving or lost in the mall parking lot. How many of you have ever exited the mall only to forget where your car was parked? Getting lost does not seem too difficult for us to do. Maybe getting lost is natural which would make being found supernatural.
What does it mean to be lost?
Of course getting lost physically is the least of our worries. We get lost in relationships, lost in our careers, lost in our life, lost in our faith, some of the ways we get lost have not even been invented yet. Consider the man we call Jairus. Matthew tells us he was a ruler in the Synagogue, a man of means, whose daughter had died. What kind of ruler comes to a Galilean carpenter for medical help? He needs a doctor but instead he goes to a backwoods rabbi without any credentials. The only man who would turn to Jesus is a lost one. Here you have a devoted Jewish Ruler calling on a carpenter to bring his daughter back to life, he must have been lost.
Back us up in corner, take away all our human options, give us a bad doctors report, throw our life off the tracks and we naturally get lost. Lostness makes us see our need for being found. Lostness brings us to our knees. In this world lostness is only a tragedy away and then who can we turn to, who can find us when we have lost our way?
Consider the woman at the well. She shows up somewhere around noon because she didn’t want to see the dirty looks the other women would give her. She felt like Shania Twain arriving at a bikers bar, she knew all eyes would be on her, and she was tired of it, tired of the rumors, tired of the empty life, tired of looking for love in all the wrong places. She was lost, directionless. Lostness is nothing more than experiencing our own limitation, getting involved in more than we can handle. This woman was certainly in over her head. Jesus speaks not comfort, but rebuke when he says, “You have had five husbands and the man you are living with now is not your own.” This woman is a picture of directionless. Remember that in these days only a man could give a divorce, so in other words this woman had displeased five men. Now if a woman and man can’t get along they get a divorce and each is at fault. But when you have been through five men, the likely hood is that there is something about this woman that is not conducive to relationships. She is the Elizabeth Taylor of the Bible; she went through men like paper towels. Whatever she was she was most definitely lost. She was looking for something and thus far all she had found was heartache.
There’s another woman mentioned by John, simply called the “woman caught in adultery.” There is good evidence that this lady became a faithful disciple of Jesus. She was set up and Jesus did not think much of the men who “staked” her out and caught her in adultery and then let her partner go. Nevertheless the only way you can sell your body is to be desperate, maybe she needed food, maybe she had children to feed, who knows. But she is lost. Not lost because she was a woman or even because she was a prostitute but because she is helpless. Jesus meets her in this vulnerable condition, we want worry about what He doodles in the dirt, that’s another sermon. Instead concentrate of Jesus’ reaction. All he says, and it is plenty, is “go and sin no more.” The lost never find Jesus condemning them but neither does Jesus just pat us on the head and say, “stay lost.” Instead Jesus says, “be found.” Jesus took for granted that nobody wanted to be lost and that if you gave people a choice people would choose to be found.
What does it mean to be found?
For the ruler of the Synagogue being found was finding Jesus ready to rescue his daughter and resurrect his faith. If lostness is facing our inadequacies, then being found is coming face to face with God’s sufficiency. What the ruler found out was that he would always remain lost as long as he depended on himself. Trusting ourselves is a prescription for being lost. God is able. You can be found you just can’t find yourself.
Which brings us back to this woman at the well. I can only imagine that this ladies, mom and dad had often spoke of her troubled life. Whenever they confronted her with her latest escapade I am sure she would say, “Mom give me some space I’ve got to find myself.” We hear that a lot these days. People use this as excuse to live any way they please. Go find yourself, but find a job first. It is hard to find ourselves, in fact it is impossible. This woman could not find herself, Jesus had to find her. Being found is not so much us stumbling into God, as it is God pursuing us.
The Pursuing God
In Luke the parable is told about a woman who loses a coin and she cannot rest until she turns the house upside down. You would have thought she was looking for her eyeglasses or her checkbook but it was just a single coin. The coin could not find her so she would find it.
Then there was a man who owned some sheep. One went AWOL so he took to the road. You couldn’t expect a sheep to find its way home so he packs his bag leaves the rest and takes to the highway. It’s just a sheep, its just one sheep, after all he already has ninety-nine. Is this man greedy? So cheap he doesn’t want to lose one sheep? Maybe he’s just the caretaker and not the owner, so he better find that sheep or it’ll be his job. From the celebration he has I’d say he’d have to be the owner. The sheep are more than possessions, when “He comes back rejoicing,” it sounds like they are family. He brings the sheep home. Sheep are not rebellious they don’t look around and say hey, “let’s run away.” They simply start eating grass, and then they eat more grass, and they keep their head down so long eating grass that they don’t look up until they are trying to eat the yellow line running down the middle of the street. So the only way for the sheep to get home depends on the goodness of the Shepherd.
Then of course Jesus tells a story about a boy who leaves home, looking for, as the Dixie Chicks would say, “wide open spaces.” But he soon discovers freedoms just another word for alone, and another word for wide-open spaces is “being lost.” He decides after sharing a meal with the pigs that it is time to go home. Here is a case where someone played a part in their being found. He had to repent, stop blaming others, stop trusting in his abilities, and in other words accept his lostness. We can’t be found until we are lost. But his trip home would have been a waste if there had not been a gracious Father at the end of the driveway. The Father is ready to find his son, when the son is ready to be found. The odd thing about being found is that God can’t find you until you are willing to be found.
What happened here? Apparently, both father and son learned about being lost and being found. Both Father and son chose Grace over pride. The son could have refused to admit his sin and the father could have demanded his pound of flesh. Yet, grace prevails.
Conclusion
What are we looking for? Do we feel lost? Are we wandering through life? If we are we are not alone. The scripture and life itself are filled with people lost and wayward. Getting lost is natural being found is supernatural. Are we ready to be found? Are we ready for some rest? Would we like to pull your boat into a safe harbor? Jesus does not condemn us in our lostness but neither does he pat us on the head and say “stay lost.” Jesus says, “Come to me” be found. The invitation is for all of us, “turn your eyes upon Jesus look full in his wonderful face” and be found today.
