"Lost and Found: A Lost Sheep, a Lost Coin"

Between illnesses, canceled services due to weather, attempted times of revisioning retreat, etc., I haven’t sent a Sunday Morning Update out in a month!  It’s bizarre how strange it feels not to have done something for a month that you’ve done every week for the past 15 years...

But in that time, we had a wonderful time of Testimony sharing in January, as well as a week of conscientiously recognizing Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, a visit from YWAM missionary Melinda Merz before she heads back out of the country, and a week where I encouraged everyone in our church to stop and think about some New Year’s Resolutions regarding what we want to commit to letting God work on in various areas of our lives.  Why not take a moment while you’re reading this right now to prayerfully consider what God might be calling you to resolve with your Lord:

            In my personal life, I will...

            In my home life, I will...

            In my church life, I will...

            In my community life, I will...

            In my life with the Lord, I will...

And then this week, we began a new sermon series, looking at the “Lost and Found” series of parabolic teachings from Jesus documented in Luke 15-16.  Most of us are probably familiar with the term, “parable,” but we tend to forget where it came from.  A parable isn’t just a story or an analogy -- it’s one where the story or analogy makes its point by looping around to the side, coming at its conclusion from left field.

For instance, why is the hated Samaritan the hero?  Or why is it that the sinner’s prayer was better than the Pharisee’s prayer?  Or why did Jesus say that the righteous Kingdom of God was like unclean leaven?  The whole point is to catch you off-guard and make you think about His point.

So when we talk about the lost sheep or the lost coin, and Jesus asks, “Wouldn’t you do the same thing?” the original answer from the parables’ original audience would’ve been a resounding, “Of course not -- that’s a horrible shepherd and a crazy woman!”  And that’s Christ’s whole point.

For instance, the point isn’t that the shepherd in the parable really was a good shepherd (because it’s a bad shepherd who abandons 99 sheep in an open field, since his whole job is predicated on the truth that leaving sheep alone and unattended is a bad idea).  The whole point of the parables is that God genuinely loves the lost at a level that is insane and unnatural to our rational ways of thinking.  He’s more dedicated to saving them than we are to any of the things we dedicate ourselves to in our own lives, and at a level that seems almost reckless from our perspective.

So what does that suggest about how you and I should perceive our role in interacting with those around us?  If God loves the lost that much, and that energetically, and that consistently, then how should we feel about those outside of the church today?  Are they impediments, enemies, or are they the very lost sheep we’ve been called to reach out to as individuals?