Lost & Found
(Free Version): Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost- Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10
Find this week’s readings here. This week, in our “Deep Dive,” we include more on the historical background of the Jeremiah reading, as well as quotes from Eugene Peterson and Walter Brueggemann; a modern-day parable about a prince and a priest; and reflections from a modern-day shepherd on the risk and danger of shepherding.
Part of the Christian life is coming to grips with the depth of our brokenness, of the places where we’ve missed the mark. Without God, we are nothing. We move towards desolation, anti-creation, disintegration.
C.S. Lewis famously wrote,
It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
Like Israel in the time of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28), we worship the gods of sex, of production, of vengeance, and of control. Yet, these things lead us nowhere. They are silly. Like Jeremiah would say, “We are stupid.” And yet, like with Israel, God never gives up. He chooses us in our weakness, our brokenness, and calls us to be part of his rebuilding work.
God never gives up. Like Paul, each of us, at times, may consider ourselves the Chief among sinners (1 Timothy 1:12-17). And that is exactly who God chooses. We are invited into the divine community, not because of anything that we have done, but simply because we are lost. This will always lead to celebration and thanksgiving.
God never gives up. Like the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine to go after the one, like the woman who turns on lights and sweeps her home looking for her precious lost coin (Luke 15:1-10), like the Father who runs to his son who has squandered his inheritance, our God seeks us out and brings us home. This, once again, will lead us to celebration and thanksgiving.
Such a reality raises an important question for the church: With whom are we celebrating? Are we living the kind of lives that would beg the question that Jesus is asked: “Why does he hang out with them?” Who are those who society has given up on?
In what ways might God be calling us to these places? This means that we will be a party-throwing people. Our doors will always be wide open and we will always be celebrating.
At the communion meal, there is a moment when the celebrant descends from the altar to serve the congregants. The congregants often receive kneeling at a rail, a posture of weakness and humility. In many ways, as the meal is distributed, it is an embodiment of the ways in which the life of God steps into the world, pursuing all who are lost. At the same time, it is a celebration, a banquet. We are the lost ones, the chief sinners. But the holy wind has been breathed on us. We have been broken down. We have been rescued. Once we were lost, and we have been found.