Sermon: Lost & Found

I’m sure most of you read the Bramhope Village Newsletter.  You may remember reading the following in the Spring 2013 edition:

“We attended the Methodist Sunday School at first, but one day the Superintendent, Mr Miller, saw my father coming out of the Fox and Hounds and promptly told him that this was not the expected behaviour of a parent of children at his Sunday School.  My6 sister and I promptly moved to St Giles’ Sunday School.”

That superintendent would certainly disapprove of your current minister as I have been seen in the Fox and Hounds on more than one occasion!

When I started to think about our passage this morning I was reminded of this story.  I immediately thought of the Superintendent as being very like a Pharisee!  The Pharisees and teachers of the law were condemning Jesus for eating with those they considered out casts and sinners: I imagine that the Superintendent in the story was condemning that father for similar reasons!

In the opening verses of chapter 15 we have a sharp contrast between two groups in 1^st century Jewish society.  On the one hand we have the Pharisees and teachers of the law who prided themselves on their religious purity and observance of the law.  On the other hand we have what the Good News Bible calls ‘outcasts’ and the NRSV calls ‘sinners’; the people in that society who were looked down upon by many because they were careless about keeping the religious laws.

There was a complete barrier between the Pharisees and those they called ‘sinners’.  They were forbidden to have sinners as their guests, to have any business dealings with them or to buy from them or sell to them. The Pharisees deliberately avoided contact with those they called sinners because the feared that they might be polluted by their sin.  They refused to teach them.  They certainly would never have shared a meal with them.

To share food with somebody at that time wasn’t just seen as associating with them; it was seen as welcoming them and treating them as equals.  No wonder that Jesus was condemned by the Pharisees and teachers of the law; in their eyes he was doing the unthinkable!

Jesus told them two parables to try to explain why he “welcomes outcasts and even eats with them”; the parables of The Lost Sheep and The Lost Coin.  This morning I want to concentrate on The Lost Sheep and on four particular words: lost, seek, until and joy.

The word lost tells us who Jesus is concerned about; it is another word for ‘outcast’ or ‘sinner’.  The sheep of the parable is lost because it has wandered away from the flock.  Sheep do this because they are concentrating so much on what they are eating, on moving on to the next good bit of grass without thinking about where they are going.

It is often the same with people.  We become so concerned with the day to day things of life;   with making money so that we can buy all the material things we desire, with pursuing our own personal happiness and goals, that we forget to consider the needs of others and forget the God who created us and loves us.  We move away from the close, intimate relationship with God that is possible for every human being not deliberately, but because we are distracted and we often don’t even realise we are lost.

I remember as a young child being lost in one of the big shops in Blackpool.  Actually I didn’t know I was lost.  I had seen some very interesting toys I wanted to look at and gone to look at them.  It was only when my mother grabbed me ten minutes later, with a frantic look on her face that I realised that as far as she was concerned I had been lost.

Just as my mother looked for me until she found me, so the shepherd in the parable seeks the sheep that is lost.  I didn’t know I was lost but my mum came looking for me.  The sheep in the parable didn’t know it was lost but the shepherd came looking for her.  We human beings don’t know that we are lost when Jesus comes seeking us.

I’m sure many of you have heard the phrase ‘man’s search for God’ but it is a falsehood.  Human beings do not search for God; instead God pursues us and seeks us out to bring us back into close and intimate relationship with God.

Many people are either unaware of the spiritual dimension of life altogether or are unaware that they have lost their way and moved out of that intimate relationship with God by being distracted by their own needs and desires.  Even before we realise we are lost God is seeking to bring us back to him.

The whole purpose of Jesus coming to earth was to seek the lost!  The irony is that the Pharisees and teachers of the law who condemned Jesus for eating with sinners were, in their own way, just as lost, as separated from that intimate relationship with God that all human beings need; because they were more interested in following rules and regulations than they were in loving others.

The idea of seeking, of the initiative being God’s, doesn’t just speak of Jesus seeking individuals but of God sending Jesus to earth.  It is a statement of the gospel itself, the good news that Jesus came to help us to remember that we are spiritual beings whose relationship with God is broken and needs mending.

The seeking carries on until:  my mum carried on looking for me in that shop until she found me, the shepherd in the parable continued looking for the sheep until he found her and Jesus keeps on seeking us out until we turn again to God and seek again that intimate relationship with him.

The message is that Jesus never, ever, gives up on us.  Never.  No matter what we have done, no matter how badly we think we have failed God, Jesus seeks us out when we are lost to bring us back to God.  Jesus does this because he loves and cares for us.  Just as a shepherd in first century Judea was willing to give his life for his sheep if they were attacked and was, indeed willing to risk his life to go out into the wilderness and find a lost sheep; so Jesus was willing to give his life on the cross so that each one of us can be drawn back to intimate relationship with our God.

Indeed it is through Jesus’ death on the cross that we are able to come back to God, that we are able to move from being lost to being found and are able to experience the joy of life with God.

How does Jesus death on the cross bring us back to God?  When we are lost in our state of sin, lost in our own selfishness and greed, we cannot see God.  Our sin separates us from God, forming an impenetrable barrier.  Jesus’ death on the cross shatters that barrier and enables us to know and experience God in the most intimate terms, as our true Heavenly Father and Mother.

Our final word is joy.  I remember somebody saying to me at last year’s Bramhope Village Show that there should be joy in the church and they were quite right.  There is joy in coming here on a Sunday morning to worship God together, to hear his word for our lives and to enjoy friendship and fellowship!  There is joy in singing hymns of praise and in praying to our Creator.  When we join together on a Sunday we should feel joy.

But all the joy we feel is as nothing compared to the joy that is felt in heaven when a lost soul turns from their sin and returns to intimate relationship with God.  As Jesus said, “There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety nine people who do not need to repent.”  A minister friend of mine once put it this way: the angels throw a big celebration party!

That is why Jesus ate with outcasts, with sinners, because he knew they needed him, he knew that they were lost and that they needed him to lead them back into right relationship with God.  So did the Pharisees and teachers of the law.  The difference is that the sinners would be willing to recognise that they were lost, whereas the Pharisees wouldn’t have even admitted that.

We were all once lost sheep, but Jesus came an found us and brought us back to God.  If we ever stray again he will seek us out and bring us back again.

As Jesus disciples we too are called to seek out the lost and bring them back to God.  Just as Jesus went to them, in the place they were and ate with them so we too must be willing to seek out the lost outcasts and sinners, to welcome them into our lives and treat them as equals.

I leave you with two questions to ponder.  Who are the lost sheep ion our community and society?  Where can we go to seek them out?