"Lost, and Found"

 May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock and our redeemer. AMEN

She was a 7 pound ball of fur, light gray, with a long tail and two perky, slightly oversized  ears. Everyone in the family  doted on her and fought to see where she would sleep, and on whose lap she would sit   when we watched TV. She went by the name of Minnie, also Mimela, and other terms of endearment. One  night in  July, a few years ago, we discovered that she was gone. Total panic in the Robert household.

 Have you ever lost a precious object, a tool, or a piece of jewelry, an important  paper or  file, a  wallet, a passport , a set of keys?  Have you ever had a dog run away, or a cat go missing ?

If you are like me, once you know of the loss, you spring into action. So my husband Patrick and I grabbed flashlights and went looking for our cat. We went first to the woods, calling her name , but   we got no answer.  Patrick  remembered that he had heard a cat fight earlier in the evening, but thinking that Minnie was inside, he hadn’t paid attention. Since she was an indoor cat, all I  could think of was that  my poor little creature was hurt and  bleeding  somewhere out there in the darkness. At one point I thought I saw her in a neighbor’s yard, but she just walked right past me and disappeared into thin air. How do cats do that  ? 

We searched until 1:30 am and then totally exhausted,  and mosquito bitten, we went to bed and tried to get some sleep, which we barely did . At 5,  I was up again  and flagged down the New Haven register delivery woman and asked her to keep an eye out . Every early morning jogger or walker got a full description. By 7 we had printed out a reward notice and  by 8 I had  100 copies made in bright yellow and green. By 9 we had taped these to every mailbox in the neighborhood, and all the telephone poles. I guess I’ve watched Law and Order once too many times, I know the first few hours are crucial. Still, no cat.

That morning I called the vet, the public  works department, animal  control,  the police, and even the editor of the local paper to see if she would take journalistic pity on me and write up a story about my missing cat. Let me add that I am not  usually so efficient  so early in the morning, nor am I what is commonly referred to as a cat person. I just loved Minnie and wanted her to come home. I knew that things were getting a bit out of hand when  I started to call around to the army navy stores to see if I could get a pair of heat seeking infra red glasses. Clare, I then said, get a grip. I felt forlorn, a bit silly to be making such a fuss, after all, she’s  just a cat, right, not a person. I also felt  anxious, restless, and sad.

At 2 in the afternoon, having searched in all directions most of the day , I took a break. I had to go out for  appointments and errands, so  I left, leaving  the doors of the house wide  open in case she wanted to get in . I was gone  for about three hours.

In our reading  this morning, we have stories of  the sheep,  the coin, and the prodigal, stories linked by the idea of God’s great outgoing love for what is lost.  Luke portrays God as persistently searching, forgiving and joyful at the return of the lost.   God goes looking for what is lost, and tries everything possible to get the loved object back.  When the sheep is found, the coin located, the son comes home, all is forgiven, and there is great rejoicing—  this return to God is what God longs for. Implied in the stories, especially that of the prodigal,  is that God’s love is free and not forced, for the father cannot make the son come home. He waits, hoping, but cannot force the son’s  hand.

God’s love is outgoing, persistent, seeking. The loss  of one sheep is enough to send the shepherd out looking, and the single lost coin is the object of a fervent search. God seeks us  and God is always out here with bright yellow and green posters and one flashlight in each hand and the infra red glasses. God is trying to get our attention and calling our name in the darkness and in the daylight. The sheer beauty and abundance of creation—the magnificence of mountains, the variety of fruits and seeds, the wonder of our human bodies, the constellations on a summer’s clear night--  all these  can be read as messages from God, flags flying to get us to notice.  And sometimes we just walk by, not even aware of how much God is pursuing us and showing us love.

It’s a little out of our bailiwick and beyond our human comprehension to think that God would expend all sorts of energy to get our attention, that God would do everything to get us back, and that God aches for our love. But that is what these stories are telling us.

Perhaps it makes us a little nervous to think that God loves us so much. We question: Who, me ? What did I do to deserve this?  The answer is—nothing. Simply by being you,  God has given you and me this  free gift . This is wonderful, blessed good news.

Probably we can see this  most clearly at the moment of infant baptism in our church, when the newborn babe or little toddler is taken up and down the aisle. There is a audible  ahh in the congregation, and everyone relaxes a bit and coos at the child.  All eyes turn to this little person who has done nothing but be born  and who is, at that moment the most adorable child on earth.  To God, each one of us is  always that adorable child, and each one of us is precious and beloved in God’s sight.  Without having to work at it—it is unconditional.

God’s love is also forgiving. For the prodigal, no questions asked, just come home, all is forgiven. The father does not want to hear where the son has been or what he has done, although the son wants to tell him, wants to make it right. No, the father goes straight to forgiveness.

Like many people, perhaps like you,  I left churchy things during my adolescence and early adulthood.  I   did have a moment of turning  back to God just before I finished college. In those days I was a good Catholic girl, so  I decided that I needed to go to confession, since I hadn’t been in years.   First, though,   I  wanted  to  have a conversation with the priest. Kind of soften him up by putting the difficulties in perspective,  so to speak. Probably I thought I would get off with a lighter penance if  I could give him some “context” for the confession.   We sat face to face, and I told him about my life. I was just  getting ready to list my  transgressions—just getting down to cases  -- when he broke in to my monologue and offered me absolution.  Putting aside all the theological discussions about forgiveness, sacraments and Roman Catholicism, it was an interesting move on his part. He did not  separate my sins from my story.  And so my whole turning away was taken up in forgiveness, just like the prodigal. God  forgives without questioning the details, and wants to reorder our whole existence.   No matter what these specifics  might be,  Its ok, God knows. And God forgives.

This forgiveness is also a joyful response to the sinner. In the story of the prodigal, the forgiving father wants to share the good news, and  goes straight to readying the banquet celebration. Let’s have a party, my son is home at last ! This joy might strike us as a bit excessive, but is very important to all three of our stories. In each one,  the focus is not placed on  the time away or the time lost but on the present  moment , the fact that what was lost is now found. The past is over, the present is what matters—and also the future together. A future which begins with a party.

Perhaps like the son who had stayed behind, we protest the father’s extravagant love. Many times when we hear this story, we are identifying with this   “good” son, the one who stayed home and played by the rules. Maybe its out of concern for fairness, but maybe because we’re so surprised by what seems excessive . Not that we wouldn’t be glad if we found  our lost object, of course we would. But aren’t we a bit taken aback by the emotion, the elation, the utter joy of the finder? You mean God is that happy when we move closer to God? The angels dance, the fatted calf is killed. For me? For you? 

Yes. Yes.

God’s persistent love and outgoing seeking of the lost   is restricted in one way however: God will not force anything on us.  No one can make you do any thing,  not even God. This freedom of the  human will is glorious, because it makes turning to God meaningful for us and for God, but it means that God must exercise  eternal patience.  And not just for one of us but for all of us ! God can  lead us, God can show us , God can delight us with coincidences which seem to point the way , but God cannot force our hand.

The father has to wait for the prodigal son to decide on his own that he wants to come home, and sometimes it takes  a long time. The son makes a number of detours into a wasted life before he gets the idea that things really would be better in his father’s house. He pursues all sorts of worthless avenues, trying to find some pleasure in  life, but finally realizes that its smarter to return home. 

 How many times do we have to learn and relearn  this lesson? Its so easy to be distracted, and there are so many other paths to take besides the one that leads us to God.

But when we do return, when  we are found , like the lost sheep or the lost coin, like the sinners and tax collectors, all those outsiders who will now be insiders, there to meet us is the joyous One.

At our home, the doors had been left open, and when I arrived  a few hours later, around 5 p.m.,  Minnie was in the house. We never knew where she had  been, or how she managed to find her way. We only knew delight and joy that she had figured out how to find us, and had come back. Like the prodigal, perhaps she thought that she had a better gig with us, than out in the wild.

Of course, having our cat go missing and connecting that to God’s outgoing love can only take us so far .  My care for Minnie is only a pale, pale shadow of God’s infinite love for us.   But during those moments with Minnie was lost in the woods, or who knew where, I think I had a glimpse or a glimmer  of what God must feel when we are seemingly lost to love.

As Christians we know that God calls us most clearly through the life and teaching of Jesus.  The Incarnation was meant for our good, so that we could see more directly  the deep and ever present love of God for us spelled out in the human being Jesus of Nazareth.  In the cross, we see the ever present love of God who will go to any length, even  to death,  to show that nothing will come between humans and God. And in the Resurrection we learn that the permanent connection which Jesus has to God is our inheritance as believers.

Luke’s stories  takes us to the heart of the gospel. As much as we might identify with the  son who stayed home and played by the rules—we are all wayward, and we are all prodigals. No, its not that we have run away from home and are leading dissolute lives. It doesn’t have to be that dramatic, as in the story. God simply wants to be closer to us, than sometimes we want to be to God.  And this outgoing love of God toward us is an endless grace, which we only dimly understand even in our most lucid moments.

Often, in our Christian story telling and theology, we focus on the  cost of discipleship, as Deitrich Bonhoeffer, the martyr and Lutheran theologian put it so pithily. And rightly so. God’s  outgoing love toward us is not cheap grace, but came  at a cost to God. Our response will cost us some of our precious ego and other self satisfactions. But always to our good,  as we become more of our truest selves. I do not minimize this cost, but,  joy is an important part of the story too.  Our joy in finding our way back home, and God’s jubilation that we heed grace and return. The door is always open, the light is always on.  The banquet is ready, for all of us, always. Our father mother God waits for you, for me, for all of us.  What are we  waiting for ?

Amen