Lost and knowing it. Lost and knowing it not.

The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Trinity Church, Wethersfield
September 15, 2013

Proper 19C - RCL
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
Psalm 14
1 Timothy 1:12-17
Luke 15:1-10

    Here is Jesus, once again standing in the middle of a crowd that has gathered to hear what this captivating if often confusing preacher has to say. Confusing, yes, but for some who are in the crowd he is also somehow a source of hope and encouragement. Today he is talking about being lost and being found. Again today he is talking about sheep. Most of the crowd, who are poor people and farmers and shepherds, know something about sheep. They know that by nature sheep wander away and get lost. It happens all the time. Often with disastrous results.
    Lost sheep need to be rescued. Very few ever find their way home on their own. The crowd around Jesus all know this. And what makes it more poignant and sad is that they also know that lost sheep know that they are lost. Lost sheep know that they are lost; and they can be very afraid. Those gathered around Jesus know that a “lost sheep that is able to bleat out in distress often will not do so out of fear. Instead it will curl up and lie down in the wild brush hiding from its predators. It is so fearful in its seclusion that it cannot help in its own rescue. The sheep is immobilized, so the shepherd must bear its full weight to bear it home.” (Montgomery Debevoise in Feasting on the Word, Year C, volume 4, page 70.)
    These people who know about sheep and shepherds know too what it is to be lost themselves. They have gotten the message that they don’t count. They have gotten the message that they don’t measure up. They have gotten the message that somehow some others in the world have it more together than they do.
    They know too what it means to be afraid. Life can be scary. Death and disease and disaster can happen at any moment. And most of these people gathered around Jesus are acquainted with loss. Loss of health. Loss of income. Loss of those they love. The majority of those who are hearing Jesus’s words about lost sheep know that the story he is telling is about them. That is why they continue to follow him around. He knows what their lives are like and what scares them and what threatens them.
    They are you and me whenever we feel that we have lost our way. They are you and me whenever the safety and security of life  – for ourselves and for those we love  – have slipped away and we find that we are somehow more alone than we want to be. Jesus says that our God knows this and that when we are lost in those ways, God is out looking for us. Longing to bring us back into the safety of the knowledge of God’s love; back into the safety of a community that can hold us up until we can stand on our own. God is like a shepherd, never counting the cost, but always searching for us when we are lost. Not waiting until we find our way home, but searching for us. Every hour of every day until we are once again safely on his shoulders, safely in his embrace. That is good news for those listening to Jesus. It is good news for any of us who ever have ever – or who may at this very moment know or feel that somehow we have lost our way.
    But along with the story about the sheep, Jesus tells a second story. He tells a story about a woman who has lost a coin and who searches for it with all the earnestness of the shepherd who searches for his sheep. The coin is very important to the woman. It is precious to her.
    But a coin – unlike a lost little lamb – can’t think, can’t fear, can’t know that it is lost. The woman, however, values it; and won’t rest until she has found it.
    What is Jesus up to? What is this story about. Who is this story for? This story is for those in crowd who have passed judgment on all the rest. This other, smaller group of religious and intellectual big shots has written off those whom Jesus compares to beloved sheep.
    “They are poor,” say these self-important people, “they are not religious enough, they don’t live the right kind of lives.” “Sure, they are lost,” say these others, “and they are not worth looking for.” “They might or might not find their way home,” says this judgmental crowd, “but that is their problem. They are not worth searching for. They are not worth rescuing from what life has done to them,” they say.
    Jesus is talking especially to these judgmental ones in the crowd – in this case the proud and the cold hearted, those who are quick to judge, quick to condemn. These sad, self-important people are like the coin: They, too, are lost; and what is worse, they don’t even know it. They don’t know, they can’t know in their current frame of mind that they, too, have lost their way. God is searching for them, too, whether or not they even know that they are lost.
    Even in their unawareness, insensitivity and confusion-about-what-is really-important, God is searching for them too, though, as yet, they are unaware of it.
    Which are we? Which are you? The lost sheep that knows it is in trouble? Knows that it has strayed from the path and is afraid? Take heart. Even now, this very morning God is searching for you and will rejoice to bring you home.
    Or are you, are we, the judgmental ones who are wandering through life not even knowing that we are on the wrong path, and are lost even if we think we know where we are?
    Part of our problem in this second case, is “we can’t know that we don’t know that we are lost.” Not knowing is not knowing. Until something or someone confronts us, brings us to greater consciousness, we run the danger of having a diminished kind of life without even knowing what we are missing, without even knowing what we are losing.
     Here is a story, a story to confront us so that we might come to our senses:
    “A young couple moves into a new neighborhood. The next morning while they are eating breakfast, the young woman sees her neighbor hanging the wash outside. "That laundry is not very clean; she doesn't know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap." Her husband looks on, remaining silent. Every time her neighbor hangs her wash to dry, the young woman makes the same comments. A month later, the woman is surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and says to her husband: "Look, she's finally learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this? " The husband replies, "I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows." And so it is with life. . . . What we see when watching others depends on the clarity of the window through which we look.” (From a Facebook post, 9.14.13, by my friend Stephen Hathcock, MD, of the faculty of Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.)
    To the degree that we and those we love are lost and know it, take heart. God will never rest until we are found. To the degree that we have not yet realized how lost we are or can be, take heart. God will never rest until we are found. And there will be great rejoicing in heaven when we are finally at home, with ourselves, with our neighbors and with God.