Sermon by Garrett - March 6 - Lost and Found

Lost and Found. One of the great themes of our lives.

“I was lost, but now am found. Was blind but now I see.”

We love Lost more than we love Found, though. Lost sells.

It was a great TV show – Lost. People were crazy about this show. Were any of you Lostoways, or Losties, getting on Lostipedia?

Anybody seen the show “Found?” I don’t think it exists. It doesn’t sound near as good.

We are a culture that loves the lost. How celebrities lose their marriages, or their minds. How many little blurbs do you see on how so and so lost his marriage and lost 30lbs. I clicked on one of these and read every word, and lost 10 minutes of my life.

We like drama, we like disorientation, and lostness. “Stinks for them,” as we put the magazine back on the shelf and continue checking out.

Well we know the story. The prodigal tells his Father to get lost. He demands his inheritance. In effect, he wishes death upon his father.

And you know what he does next: he loads up his Volkswagen or his camel or whatever he had, and he heads for Sin city. He brushes the dust of home off and takes to the wind.

He’s going to find himself.

Well, the prostitutes and the poker tables take him for all he’s got, and he lands among the pigs.

But “no one gave him anything,” the text tells us, not even the pigs. And friends, it doesn't take a seminary degree to know that when Porky and Babe won’t share their scraps with you, you've got it bad. And it was bad. He was lost.

Of course the younger son is not the only one lost either. The Father has lost his boy, lost a lot of his money, and probably some of his last brown hairs. He is crushed and pained. He sits up late, walks to the window to check outside one more time, and returns to his chair. His prayer is nothing more than, "Just come home son."

The older brother is lost too – he is lost in his own resentment. The older brother is responsible and honorable, he works hard, and even got in to the honors college where he studies Moral Theology or ethics. He tries to control his life by crossing his t’s and dotting his I’s, but he’s as lost as anyone else. He too needs to come home to the Father's love.

Lost.

We’ve been there. We’ve given ourselves to instant gratification; we have left home to find “that thing” that promises us freedom. We have become prodigals who chase after networks or net-worths. We know the feeling. Lost. “We have gone astray like lost sheep,” the Bible says about us. We’ve lost relationships; opportunities; even lost our sanity at times.

And where is God in all this?

“God is at home; it is we who are in the far country,” said Meister Eckhart, a German saint.

And that’s exactly right. The Father is at home. He has given the son space. He isn’t there to control us; to tell us what we have to do. He lets us be. And he is pained that any of us has left our spiritual home of being unconditionally loved.

But I am not just telling the story of “lostness.” This gospel is not primarily about that. It is primarily about being found. About coming home.

“I was lost but now I’m found!”

This story has traditionally been called the Parable of the Prodigal Son, but it might as well be about the Prodigal Father as well. The son lives extravagantly in sin; but the father is all the more extravagant in his love.

Isn't that Good news that the story of our lives isn't about our sin, but Gods love?

The son is a long way off. And though he has decided to come home, things are still not looking up for him. Being as sinful as this guy doesn’t come without a price. The boy would have been publicly shamed by the community, something called the Kezazah as they insulted him and told him that he had no place in their midst.

But the father is too full of love to let this happen. The father, the text says, “is filled with compassion.” Compassion moves the father to take off in sprint towards his boy. Can’t you see it, the Old Jewish guy hikes up his robe and takes off?

He runs, as recklessly as the boy squandered his life, the father runs with the same abandon. And the boy doesn't even have time to deliver his carefully crafted confession of sin.

The father embraces him. And starts jumping up and down. I imagine it to be like the scene on a pitchers mound after a perfect game has just been thrown. With one exception: the boy isn't perfect; no he's just home.

“Come on Son it's time to party. Come on, let's get this robe and crown on you. You aren't a slave, you are royalty. Come on home, we've got some partying to do."

The father does not, you’ll be glad to hear, sit down with his boy and talk about upright behavior. He does not hand him a book – say Thomas Aquinas on Virtue. The father is beside himself, drunk… in delight. “This son who was dead is alive.”

He is found. We are found.

Joy.

Being lost may be interesting to read about or watch on television, but it is never the last word on you and me. We have been found.

That’s really good news.

(Even for the elder brother, Mr. Immaculate – the Father comes out to him to. He loves this child just as lavishly. And the Father doesn’t give up. “Come on Morris, it's all yours; it always has been. Forget about moral theology for a second. Just come home.”)

The father is always ready to throw a party. Whenever we want to come home. He’s there.

What is coming home? What does it look like for us prodigals?

Is it coming to church? Or sitting beside someone whose sick? Maybe it’s when we are a little gentler with ourselves? Or when we ask someone "how they are doing" and listen as if it's the most important thing ever uttered? Or maybe it's when we take up the spiritual discipline of laughing more, especially at ourselves?

From the smallest gesture to the most dramatic, God is delighted to always welcome us home.

We are prodigals in the company of a prodigal father.

And so I imagine the Father saying to all of us…

Come on home. Come who are hungry, the fatted calf is killed and is being prepared. Come who dirty, the royal robes and crown have your name on them. Come home and put your funny hat and your dancing shoes on.

“Get in here and join the rowdy band of prodigals;" he says, "I think you know the song they're singing, can't you hear it: 'I was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.'"

Amen.