Found in Christ

Now all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. ²And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ 3 So he told them this parable: 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? ⁵When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. ⁶And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” ⁷Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance. 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? ⁹When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” ¹⁰Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’

Luke 15:1-10

“Found in Christ”

On July 5^th this past summer, I was in Birmingham at Independent Presbyterian Church for a presbytery personnel committee meeting. I was excited to see a dear friend, Catherine Bonner Goudreau, who was supposed to begin her first day as Independent’s youth director that day. Catherine and her brother, Drew, were both very active in our college ministry and church family while they were students here. They both worked with our youth groups, and they are part of a wonderful, faithful family with four children. As we were beginning the meeting, one of Independent’s ministers pulled me aside to share the awful news with me that Catherine and Drew’s brother had taken his life the night before. He had just finished his freshman year at Ole Miss and had so much life to live ahead of him, but he was also lost in the illness of depression, depression that robbed him of his sense of self, that robbed him of his life. Since that terrible day, and the many days in between, Catherine, Drew, and their amazing family have been lifting each other up in love. They have been sharing stories of faith in their sermons and writings and prayers, sharing stories about the illness of depression and sharing stories of suicide awareness on social media. They are doing everything they can to celebrate Michael’s too short life with other people, hoping to keep any other parent from losing their child or any other brother or sister from losing their sibling. Through this family and their witness over the past several months, I have learned a lot about more about grieving, and much about the rejoicing that comes through faith.

As one of our ruling elders, Anne Leader, reminded us as last week as we entered our tie together in our prayers of the people, September is suicide awareness month. To honor her brother this week and to further our awareness of suicide and depression on social media, our friend Catherine shared a beautiful blog post written by a Yale Divinity student after she also lost her brother to suicide. In the post, Ellen Koneck shares about the nature of depression, the nature of grief and loss, and the nature of her Yale divinity community who rallied around her just when she needed it most. Ellen writes this about her conversation with the dean as he figured out a way to share the awful news about her brother’s death with their seminary community. She writes:

Walking barefoot around the circle driveway of my parents’ home, I cried as [the dean] expressed his quiet sorrow and asked me gently whether I might return to classes, assuring me that I could, even with a few absences. He asked if I wanted to send an email to my classmates. I told him I didn’t know; that I wanted the prayers and the support of my spiritual and academic community but I didn’t know how to gather words for the task. So Dean Lewis sent me a draft… so that I could approve the language and prepare myself before it went out to the hundreds of students and faculty on the listserv. The email reflected what we had spoken about, saying that my brother’s life “was lost to suicide” rather than the alternative—because there is a long history of violence and condemnation in the language of “killing himself,” and because depression and alcoholism are diseases, just like cancer, that can diminish the will to live and can cause death, just like cancer.

What Ellen Koneck writes here is hard and beautiful, and she goes on to share how her community of family and friends, how her community of faith found her in deep grief and saved her when she felt so lost. Our friend Catherine and her family have expressed the same thing in the last two months—they have lost so, so much in the loss of Michael to suicide, but have found so much love and support in their community of faith, found love and solace in a God who has sought them out in great love and shared with them in grief. And they have found solace in Christ, who has welcomed their son and brother home.

These stories about loss, combined with our text from Luke this week, have helped shed some new light for me on the meaning and nature of being lost. The text finds us in the middle of several healing stories and parables, stories about Jesus’ healing of folks at different times and in different places—healing in the temple, healing on the Sabbath when no work is supposed to be done, healing those who are so lost and in need of help, in need of being found, in need of some kind of salvation. Jesus is being watched closely by the scribes and religious leaders of the temple. They are nervously watching him break the Sabbath laws, nervously watching him reach out to the folks whom they have deemed unworthy of Jesus’ healing. Christ knows they are watching him and judging him, but he doesn’t let that stop him from doing what is right. The only thing that matters to him is helping people to a new life, calling them to a new life--that people are lost in a world of illness, of depression and sadness, that people are lost to the world because they don’t fit into a certain social class and are unnoticeable and easy to ignore, that people like the religious leaders are lost because the only thing they know how to do is judge without any sense of empathy. He knows the rulers and religious leaders are judging, but he heals the folks who need it most. He sustains them and offers them hope once again. He finds them and brings them back to life.

In our Gospel text this morning, the scribes and religious leaders are beginning to close in, beginning to speak in louder tones, beginning to judge him more harshly for helping the ones who are lost. So Jesus begins talking, sharing a parable with them: “Which one of you, if you have a hundred sheep, wouldn’t leave the rest behind to go find one who was lost? And which woman, having lost one coin out of ten, wouldn’t turn the house upside down to find it? That is what the kingdom of God is like—in God’s kingdom, we look for the ones who are lost, the ones who can be found. And most importantly, we rejoice and celebrate and dance and sing when they are found.” And in the story that follows our today’s text, Jesus goes on to explain this idea of being lost and found again as he tells the story of a son who has wasted his life and his inheritance and his hope away, a son who is lost, a prodigal son who is welcomed home at last by a rejoicing father who sees him coming down the road and runs to hug him and welcome him home with joy—reminding us all that this is what God does for every single one of us.

We are reminded here in this 15^th chapter of Luke, reminded every day in our lives, that we all can be lost in so many different ways. Some of us are lost because we think we follow every religious law to the t, causing us to judge those who can’t or don’t perfectly follow the law. Others of us are lost because we simply lose our way like a single sheep and can’t find the road back to our flock, even as hard as we try. Some of us are lost because we are lost in a sea of illness, be it cancer or depression or a disorder or an addiction. Others of us are lost because we are so broken that we don’t know how to help or love our sisters and brothers enough to help them back to health. Some of us are lost because we can’t afford to lose one simple coin out of ten, forced to turn over sofa cushions to find every last coin. Others of us are lost because we have too many coins that we don’t know what to do with them all and will never notice that one single coin is missing. And, yes, some of us are lost because we have done so much we don’t even know how to begin to repent even though we know we need to do so, and some of us are lost because we are so arrogant and misguided and judgmental that we think everyone needs to repent but ourselves.

The story tells us so much about the nature of being lost, and challenges us to think about our own stories of feeling lost in the world, of being separated from our flock, of being dropped like a coin, of being alienated from our families and loved ones. These stories help us know, if we don’t already, that feeling lost to the world is a pretty brutal thing to deal with. But the good news for us to hear today is that, as much as these stories tell us about the nature of being lost, they tell us even more about a God who does everything possible to make sure we are found. This gospel reassures us, promises us, that just as easy as it is for us to get lost, or feel lost, and to be lost, Christ finds us, loves us, and is with us all along the way. Our God who loves us leaves 99 other sheep in the pasture to come and brings us home. Our God turns over every sofa cushion and looks under every chair to find us like a coin. And our God runs down the driveway to greet us and throw a big party for us as we return home from being lost. And the gospel also reminds us that being found in Christ also means being found in the community of Christ, in a community of believers, a community who sings with joy. “Rejoice with me,” Jesus says, “for I have found my sheep that was lost…there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents that over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance…Just so, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God.”

Through these parables, we are reminded by Christ that the community is not complete if one of us is missing. I love how Helen Debevoise paints a picture of this community and this rejoicing in her commentary on the 15^th chapter of Luke:

These parables call the community to open its doors and rejoice. This call is repeated again and again. Sinners and tax collectors gather at the table with the Christ? Rejoice! Laugh! Be glad! They have returned home and now sit in the presence of God. The sheep who wandered off from the rest of the flock, lost in the thicket, is now safe and sound! Hallelujah! Worry no more! The coin that fell through the cracks was easily forgotten but is blessedly retrieved. We can feast! Hope is restored! When one in our community goes missing, we are all affected. When one is restored, we are all better off for it. That is how it is in the household of God. (from Feasting on the Word)

Yes, the community of God is called to rejoice, and that community is not complete until every person whom God has created is found—because we are all affected when someone is lost. When the community is restored, and only then, can we rejoice with cries of “Hallelujah,” with shouts of “Welcome home!”

No matter how we are lost, we are found in Christ, found in the community of Christ. Sometimes that community is complete here on earth as we welcome and love all whom God welcomes and loves. And other times, when our time here on Earth has ended, that community is complete in heaven as God welcomes the lost home and invites them to rejoice in the grace and gift of salvation. Thanks be to God for that mystery. And thanks be to Christ for the gift of being found. Amen.

The hymn "A Woman and a Coin" was sung after the sermon. Too beautiful not to include!

A woman and a coin: the coin is lost!

How much it means to her, what time and toil,

what part it was to play in her bright dreams!

Am I that treasured coin worth searching for?

I'm found, and you rejoice! What love! What love!

A shepherd and a sheep: the sheep is lost!

Far from the flock, the one in hundred cries,

then, risking life, the shepherd's voice and staff!

Am I that treasured sheep worth dying for?

I live, and you rejoice! What love! What love!

A parent and a child: the child is lost!

The parent feeds on memories and hope,

the prodigal on husks and one last chance.

Am I that treasured child worth waiting for?

I'm home, and you rejoice! What love! What love!

Dear God, you sought us when the world was lost;

You gave your only son at what a cost;

your Spirit welcomes home the tempest tossed:

now we can be all you were dreaming of.

We're safe, and you rejoice! What love! What love!