A couple of stories to begin with today! Many of you know my dog Luigi who is often here at St. Matthias with me. He is very old now and he gets confused. He gets lost around the house and yard and we have to go searching for him. He gets stuck behind furniture and the other day he managed to get into a closet that was slightly open. One day recently he got out through a hole in the fence, and several neighbours were helping me to look for him for nearly an hour. He doesn’t bark to let us know where he is but waits patiently for us to find him. Seeking Luigi and locating him in all his improbable locations has given me some empathy for the shepherd managing not one creature but a hundred of them. 

The second story relates to a small change purse. It wasn’t just any change purse but the one my grandma who transitioned into eternal life thirty years ago, used every day. My mother always carried it with her and one day she mislaid it and was frantic as she searched for it. It had no intrinsic value, but it was precious to my mother because it was something that her mother had used every day. I carry that change purse with me now. Three generations of women using the same simple item, that connects us all, and when I use it for parking change or to buy a cup of coffee I think of mum and grandma doing the same thing through these many years. 

The point is that these things have value for me because they are this dog and this change purse!  I have spent considerable amounts of time searching both for the dog and for the lost purse.  I have also known times in my life when I was lost and needed to be found, both geographically, and spiritually. 

When was the last time you were lost? I regularly get lost trying to find a particular location, even with help from Google Maps. And there are times in all our lives when we are deeply lost, out of our depth, powerless! - the death of a loved one, deep concern for a son or daughter or a grandchild, a difficult health diagnosis, a change in circumstances or living arrangements. Sometimes the lostness comes about through poor choices, through the consequences of our actions, 

Luke 15 is the great ‘lost’ chapter of the bible and it really speaks to that question of who is lost. Jesus is speaking to two groups of people: sinners and Pharisees and we might ask ourselves the question: which of these two groups are the lost? Really, at one time or the other, both sinners and pharisees were lost, so which group are we? The answer is that we are all both at times, but as much as the story refers to a lost sheep and a lost coin, the point of the story is that our God loves us intensely and will always seek us out when we are lost. It is about the persistent pursuit of a God who will never, ever give up on us. 

So, in the story we see that Jesus was hanging out with a lot of sinners but what we are referring to here is people whose sin was perhaps, let’s say, more apparent while for the other group, the Pharisees, their sin was perhaps more hidden. I’ve heard it said that there are many alcoholics living their lives behind the mask of success and wealth, while addicts living on the streets are disparaged. The difference was that those who acknowledged and repented of their sin were able to receive the forgiveness and healing that Jesus was offering. They were ready and receptive to being found and it’s the same with us; we can’t find ourselves when we are lost. We need someone to look for us and to find us, and of course, that is what Jesus did. 

Is Jesus telling these parables to the tax collectors and sinners who were coming near to listen to him, or is he telling them to the Pharisees and scribes who were grumbling about him welcoming sinners and eating with them? 

Yes. It is for them, all of them. And it is for us. The difference between the tax collectors and sinners, and the Pharisees and scribes is not that one group is lost, and the other is not lost, one group is sinful and the other righteous. The difference is that one group is lost, and they know it and the other group is lost but they don’t know it. 

To be lost is something we’ve all experienced. Sometimes we know we are lost and other times we don’t.  

When have you lost a part of yourself? What parts of your life are you searching for today? Where do you need to have more wholeness? Have you ever said that you need to get your life turned around? Have you ever felt like something was missing? Maybe you knew what it was or maybe you didn’t. You just had a restless longing, a sense that there was something missing, something more to your life.  

Sometimes we lose parts of ourselves to grief and sorrow, when life becomes overwhelming and confusing, to the pain and wounds of life, to circumstances that are nobody’s fault, and sometimes to the choices we’ve made. Sometimes we lose ourselves to fear, anger, jealousy, wanting to be right more than doing right, judgments we make of others, refusing to forgive. Sometimes we lose ourselves to success, gaining approval, meeting the expectations of others. Sometimes the lost part of ourselves is faith, hope, a dream. It is so easy to lose a piece of ourselves and it can happen in a thousand different ways. 

Today’s gospel is an invitation to wholeness. We are to look at the entirety of our life. Every sheep matters. Every coin matters. The gospel of Jesus is not about making bad people good. It’s about bringing people back to life. It’s a path by which we find ourselves. It’s a call to wholeness. Jesus is always calling us back to ourselves, back to wholeness. Our life’s journey is a journey toward wholeness. And it is a lifelong search to integrate and live a whole life. Where are you on this journey?  

We know these stories as the Parable of the Lost Sheep and the Parable of the Lost Coin. But that’s not completely accurate. They could also be called the Parable of the Found Sheep and the Parable of the Found Coin because that’s how both stories end. The shepherd is once again whole. The woman is once again whole. And there is rejoicing. They are not just stories of losing but also of finding. It’s both. 

Jesus said the shepherd goes after the lost sheep “until he finds it,” and the woman “searches carefully” for the coin “until she finds it”. There is a promise and a call in that for us too. The promise is that there will be a finding for us too and the call is to search until we find.  

Sometimes it’s a call to light a lamp, sweep our house, and search carefully in the very place in which we live and have our relationships, the place that is most known and familiar. And other times, the call to wholeness takes us into the wilderness, into the wild and untamed parts of our life.  

That kind of searching is not a searching outside of ourselves but a searching within. It means searching until we value ourselves beyond what we have done and left undone, beyond what we have or don’t have, beyond our successes and failures, beyond what is or might have been.  

When the Good Shepherd seeks and finds us, it is to return us to our authentic selves.  Amen.