September 11, 2022
Rev. Mary Erickson
Hope Lutheran Church
Luke 15:1-10
Lost and Found
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Several years ago, the owner of a winning Powerball ticket worth $100,000 went to claim his winnings. But when he got to the headquarters of the Montana Lottery, he was told that what he had in his hands was not the ticket but the claim check to it.
It seems that the store where he had purchased his ticket had inadvertently handed him the claim check instead of the actual ticket. The store in Great Falls was notified of the mix up. But the owner couldn’t find the winning ticket anywhere in his store. He had a nagging feeling that it had been tossed with the trash. And the trash had been picked up earlier that day.
He drove through the alleys of Great Falls in search of the garbage truck. Meanwhile, his wife called city officials. They contacted the driver by radio. He drove to a designated spot and emptied his load. The store owner and others sifted through the trash bag by bag. Eventually they located the soggy but still winning ticket. We can only imagine there was great rejoicing upon its retrieval.
When I was in 5th grade, my family went to the Kit Carson County Fair in Burlington, Colorado. It was a warm summer evening and the mood was festive. The artificial light and blazing neon beat back the night on the High Plains. My family and I were slowly milling our way through the Midway. I stopped to look at a game, the one where you have to fit a wooden ring around the neck of a Coke bottle and lift the bottle in the air. I watched for only a moment. But when I turned around to rejoin my family, I couldn’t see them. It had been only a few seconds, and they were gone. On the verge of panic, my eyes scanned the crowd. And there they were, only about ten feet away from me. But in that moment of lostness, the dark of the night seemed to close in on me, and I felt utterly bereft, alone in a dark, large world. Losing my family, I was overjoyed to find them again.
Our human condition is filled with lost things. We lose things, and then we go looking for them: the lost receipt from Menard’s, the term paper lost somewhere on a computer hard drive, an orphaned sock in search of its partner. Losing these things is frustrating, even maddening at times. But they’re mere inconveniences when compared to other losses in life.
In the movie Cast Away Tom Hanks plays a man who is employed by FedEx. He’s a man who has everything going for him. He has a job he loves and he’s deeply in love. He and his fiancé are planning their wedding.
Well, he gets called away on business to the Far East. He boards a plane and while they’re crossing the Pacific Ocean, they encounter a storm. The plane loses control and crashes into the ocean. Tom Hank’s character is the only one to survive.
He’s washed up on a tropical island, and there he spends the next four years. Eventually, he decides he must leave the island, come what may. He rigs together a raft and sets sail. When he’s on the brink of death, a ship at sea spots him.
He is found. But when he gets back to the U.S., he realizes how much he has lost. The beds are too soft, the food is too rich. And the love of his life, assuming he was dead, has married another man and started a family. He has been found, but he has lost so much. And it can never be reclaimed.
You might say we are losers. The human condition is filled with loss. And it’s the intangible lost things that are the most painful:
• lost hopes
• lost years
• lost purpose
• lost love
• lost ideals
• lost opportunity
Today we hear two parables of Jesus. He tells two stories about lost things, a lost sheep and a lost coin. In each case, there’s an all-out search followed by a recovery. And the parables end with great rejoicing. That which was lost is found.
The stories Jesus tells end up with the lost things being reclaimed. But there is much loss in the story of each of our lives—which can never be found. What power does Jesus have over things that are irretrievably lost?
Friends, for this we must look to the life of Jesus. We need to look beyond a mere parable about a shepherd in search of a lost sheep. We need to look to the Good Shepherd himself. And, in looking to him, we see that our shepherd is no stranger to loss. In fact, his living and his dying are defined by loss. The God of losers is a loser himself.
• Once he was in the very form of God. But he didn’t consider equality with God something to be clung to, and so he lost it.
• Once he had been held in high esteem by people. Vast crowds migrated to see him, to touch the hem of his garment. But in the end, he lost their esteem. They derided him.
• Once he had been accompanied by a band of loyal friends. But in his final hours, when he needed them most, he lost them. One of them betrayed him, another denied knowing him, and the rest deserted him.
• Once he had been regarded with honor. People called him “Rabbi.” But he lost his honor when he died a criminal’s death.
And, despite all these losses, there was one thing he thought he would always have, one thing that he could never lose. Surely, the presence of the heavenly Father—a presence that had always been as close to him as his own breath—surely, this would remain! But even this one remaining thing slipped away from him, so that his dying prayer was one of utter lostness: “My God, why have you abandoned me?” And then he breathed his last.
Behold, the man! This is our savior. He is a man who lost utterly everything. And in losing everything he drew unto himself all the lost hopes, all the lost regrets, all the lost souls, all things lost.
He lost everything because, as the Good Shepherd, he knew he had to go to where the lost sheep were. He had to seek out the lost sheep, for the sheep couldn’t find their own way home. And so the Good Shepherd left the safe harbors of heaven, the home of the found sheep. He descended to earth, to the land of the lost. He descended to seek us out.
And even this was not far enough. In clinging to life, there were some who still remained beyond his grasp. Only in letting go of his life, in losing life itself, could his grasp claim them. So the one who had descended to earth descended even further. He descended to the cold grave. And even beyond the grave, he descended to the very depths of hell.
In his story we see that the depths of this world’s loss do not have the last word. The power of death and the fires of hell do not have the last say. Good Friday does not have the last word; Easter has the last word. For on the third day, on the first day of the new week, the God of lost things rose from the dead. He defeated the powers of death. He destroyed the gates of hell.
In losing himself to everything he has bound to himself all lost things, every lost soul. And in rising to new life, he has given new life to all the lost. He has infused new meaning to all that is meaningless.
It’s not something we can readily understand. It’s a mystery. But it’s exactly from the depths of our hopelessness where we discover and see, as if for the first time, the true power of a crucified God. When we are most lost, there he is, for there is nothing out of his reach. He claims all that is lost. He redeems it all, and that has made all the difference.
