1 Timothy 1:12-17
Luke 15:1-10
“Get Found, Kid!”
Margaret Fleming, an Assistant Attorney General and Chief of the Constitutional Defense Division of the Alabama Attorney General’s Office writes this:
“We are not told why ‘all the tax collectors and sinners’ were drawn to Jesus.
We only know His gentle and encouraging response to them: Jesus affirms their worth.
They are as precious as silver, and God puts everything aside to seek them out.
What gracious words for the ears of those who feel worthless and lost…
The Creator of heaven and earth never stops seeking any of us.
God longs to establish an equally close relationship with those we find it most difficult to love—those who abuse the innocent, and even those who rape, kill, torture, or neglect.
Is it possible that God loves them with all the passion and longing that is extended to us?”
Fleming continues, “Often in my prayers, I remember the victims of injustice and oppression.
I neglect, however, to pray for the powerful oppressors—those who long for God’s peace, yet whose passion for God has been misdirected and whose souls are clouded.
We must be vigilant in our prayer for such persons…”
That is a hard thing to do—especially for those who have been victims of horrible abuse.
It’s much easier and much more natural to pray for the destruction of such folk!
To take an extreme example, can we pray for Osama bin Laden?
Can we pray for his transformation and salvation?
Can we pray that he be used to do God’s good will?
We may be able to understand Jesus’ parables a bit better if we remember that the strict Religionists of Jesus’ day said, not, “There will be joy in heaven over one sinner who repents,” but, “There will be joy in heaven over one sinner who is obliterated before God.”
No wonder their blood pressure was boiling as they muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
So Jesus told them the parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin.
There can be no doubt that we live in a world of ungrace!
If someone cuts us off in traffic, we call them names.
If we feel someone has wronged us, we take them to court.
Yes, God’s grace is often hard for us to fathom, so Jesus talked to us about it a lot!
Phillip Yancey puts it well in his book: What’s So Amazing About Grace?
“I have meditated enough on Jesus’ stories of grace to let their meaning filter through,” Yancey writes.
“Still each time I confront their astonishing message I realize how thickly the veil of ungrace obscures my view of God.
A housewife jumping up and down in glee over the discovery of a lost coin is not what naturally comes to mind when I think of God.
Yet that is the image Jesus insisted upon.”
A great Jewish scholar has noted that an absolutely new thing Jesus taught about God is that God actually searches for us!
People may have agreed that those who came crawling home to God in self-abasement and prayed for pity might find it; but persons would never have conceived of a God Who went out to search for sinners.
But this is exactly what God does.
God’s love is so radical—so persistent!
Imagine, for a moment, that you are one of the folks gathering around to hear Jesus speak in Luke Chapter 15.
This is basically—paraphrased of course—what you would have heard:
“You are tending sheep in a very dangerous place.
Ninety-nine of your sheep have the good sense not to wander.
One, however, wanders off where it could lose its life to any number of predators.
It could even fall off a cliff.
As a loving shepherd, would you not leave the 99 to find that wandering sheep?
Certainly, you would never give up on it!”
And what might go through the minds of the people in Jesus’ audience?
“Well, no, Jesus. I don’t think I would do that. It just doesn’t make good sense.”
Yet Jesus insists that God will do that and does do that!
God’s love takes risks.
And by worldly standards, God’s love could even be seen as foolish because God is so concerned about these tax collectors and sinners that God will never give up on them.
But that’s one of the differences between God and many of us.
In God’s eyes, each person is so valuable that God is willing to risk 99 for the sake of one.
And God will keep searching until that one is found!
And what about the woman who tears the house apart looking for the lost coin?
She eventually finds it and is so excited that she throws a party for all her friends, family and neighbors.
Jesus says that—that woman’s joy over finding the coin is like God’s joy when one of us repents!
Every single person is of ultimate importance!!!
God’s grace is radical, and it can really surprise us.
Think back on our Scripture passage from 1 Timothy.
God took the wildest, most violent of blaspheming persecutors, and transformed him into not only a believer but also a trusted apostle and evangelist!
If God can do that, there is nobody out there, no heart too hard, no anger too bitter, that they are outside the reach of God’s mercy, God’s grace and God’s love!!!
Paul writes, “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.
But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life.”
Do you feel that anyone is out of reach of God’s forgiveness and grace?
Perhaps you feel that way about yourself right now.
Robert Fulghum writes in his best- selling book, All I Really Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten:
“In the early, dry, dark of an October’s Saturday evening, the neighborhood children are playing hide and seek.
Did you ever have a kid in your neighborhood who always hid so good, nobody could find him?
We did.
After a while we would give up on him and go off, leaving him to rot wherever he was.
Sooner or later he would show up, all mad because we didn’t keep looking for him.
And we would get mad back because he wasn’t playing the game the way it was supposed to be played.
There’s a hiding and there’s a finding, we’d say.
And he’d say it was hide and seek, not hide and give UP!
As I write this, the neighborhood game goes on, and there is a kid under a pile of leaves in the yard just under my window.
He has been there a long time now, and everybody else is found and they are about to give up on him over at the base.
I considered going out to the base and telling them where he was hiding.
And I thought about setting the leaves on fire to drive him out.
Finally, I yelled, “GET FOUND, KID!” out the window.”
“Get found kid!” is what Jesus is saying to each of us this morning as we read these parables.
We all need to repent and be forgiven.
We all must be found!
And God will never give up on us.
That is how much we are loved!
What made the Scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day just as lost as the “sinners and tax collectors” is that they had so easily written off those who were hiding!
But, no one is a “write-off.”
There are no acceptable losses in the Kingdom of God!
If we are to be Christ to this community and this world—we will never give up—no matter what!
A Midwestern newspaper under the “Lost and Found” section read:
“Lost: dog.
Brown fur, some of it missing due to mange.
Blind in one eye, partially deaf.
Limps because of recent automobile accident.
Slightly arthritic.
Answers to the name of ‘Lucky.’”
“Lucky”?
We may not believe in luck, but surely that dog was blessed!
He was blessed because someone wanted him, someone was willing to pay a reward to get him back, someone loved him!
I am blessed as well and so are you!!!
Someone loves us.
Someone died for us.
Someone will never give up searching for us!
If you have not done so already, isn’t it time to get out from under those leaves?
Stop hiding from God.
“Get found, kid!”
This is what life is all about.
Amen.
