This scripture really hit home for me this week. I recently started working in the locked mental health units at the VA. After my first week, I realized I had already known 7 people from when I worked in the long term recovery units from the past 6 months. When I first started at the VA as a Chaplain, I was working in the long-term recovery programs that dealt with recovery from mental health and addiction issues. Many times we would get people who came from the CB units which is where I work now. The individuals I knew from my time in the recovery program had graduated their programs or were doing well in them and now here they were back here on the 5th floor of the locked mental health unit getting crisis intervention. Again. This was not how that was supposed to work. I quickly learned that many of the people that were there would be back again and some of them were frequent fliers. My goal going into chaplaincy was to help people heal- to help them get better. But what could my goal be with these people? People who on paper didn’t seem like they could be helped. I had to ask myself, what am I doing? What good is this worth? What’s the point?
These passages that we read today are called the Lost parables. Lost sheep, lost coin, lost son. And they are so intriguing because they are so contradictory to today’s culture- except maybe the one about looking for a lost coin because we might actually do this either because we are cheap ( that’s me) or because we value money just a tad too much. In our culture we don’t go looking for lost things though or lost people. We don’t even take time to grieve the lost- we are already on to the next thing or the better thing or the thing that distracts us from the lost thing. It seems that more often than not nowadays we do not put much stock in the looking for the lost thing and go straight into the new thing. Let us look at these passages- 100 sheep and 1 goes missing- all that time and energy over 1 sheep- over 1%. And a lost coin? Whatever happened to what our time is worth? That coin is literally not worth looking for. And yet clearly that sheep means more than its production value. And that coin means more than what it’s literally worth.
So we have these first two stories- And then there is the 3rd with the son. This one makes a little more sense because it’s dealing with a person except that the son tricked the dad into giving him his inheritance, spent it all on “wild living” (yes, there was a fair share of wild living in Biblical times) and now that he’s broke and starving wants to come back home. So the son decides to come back home and he assumes there will be a lot of groveling and then maybe, just maybe his dad will let him work again in the fields with the servants, but no, the dad is filled with compassion, is overjoyed and puts on what sounds like the biggest party that town has ever seen. Apparently… when something is lost and then is found it is very, very important
In case you were wondering, and you probably weren’t, writing sermons is almost like therapy- in a way it helps the subconscious arise and you suddenly understand something that has been laying under the surface for quite some time. I’m not recommending that you stop going to therapy- don’t do that. But if you need an extra little bit of help one week- try writing a sermon and see what it does. I say that because as I was sitting at my desk at the VA writing this sermon about lost things and lost people and asking myself what on earth I am doing and really wishing I was one of those millennials that seems to be able to travel all the time, work remotely and still have enough money to buy a house- while all this was going through my mind, I felt like God was speaking through this sermon writing process.
So what if… what if the goal is being found…no matter how many times you are lost. What if the gift of finding far outweighs the energy and time spent? That seems to be what Jesus is saying here. In all three of these stories there is a celebration that is happening. The first 2 stories say that there was much rejoicing but we don’t know what that celebration really looked like until the third story which tells us this “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.”
What exactly are we celebrating though? The first two stories give us glimpses into what God is getting at here- the intensity at which God feels about things. The third one is actually about a human- not a resource to our livelihood or an essential aspect to our livelihood but an actual livelihood. In this story we see much more detail and emotion than we did in the previous two. The celebration here is about the relationship- the connection- the belonging. All is at it should be. What was lost has now been found.
When something is lost and then is found it is back where it belongs. Belonging is this intense need to feel like you matter- like you’re important. In my work, I’ve found that many have trouble feeling like they belong but more than that have trouble feeling like they deserve to belong. They need to be told and shown over and over and over again that they do indeed belong. And then, they need to be shown again. In these parables God does not just tell us we belong but when we go missing – we are sought after. We are sought after until we are found and brought back into belonging. Humans need to be shown that they belong. Some of us get this at a young age from our families, some of us later in life from our friends or our spouses and some are maybe still waiting to be found- to be brought into belonging. Even if you have felt belonging though, like I mentioned earlier it is not a one and done deal and I am sure we still feel at times like we don’t belong or that we are lost.
Maybe that’s what I’m doing at the VA- helping the lost be found. Bringing people back into belonging. Sure, they will get lost again… many times. But I think God knows that about us- sheep go missing more than once, we know coins go missing all the time, and so maybe so do we. But God doesn’t seem to care how many times we go missing- just that we are found and reunited. Every. Single. Time.
There is a guy on one of my floors who has paranoid schizophrenia. He is a quaint elderly man who has the softest eyes and bright white hair. You can’t understand a word of what he says though. For some reason and I’m not quite sure why (I should ask a nurse) but his words come out too fast and sounding almost like a different language. He seems to understand what I say but when he answers I can’t understand anything. But the other day he came up to me and he looked at me, reached out his hands and said the word prayer audible enough for me to hear it. I assumed he wanted me to pray for him so I said sure and took his hands and he started praying the Lord’s Prayer and I could understand every word clear as day so I started praying with him- in the middle of the hallway with people walking all around us, we stood there holding hands reciting the Lords Prayer. Every time he sees me now he comes up to me and we do just that. I don’t have any other interactions with him but for those 2 minutes- that man is found. He belongs. And it is to be celebrated.
And isn’t in some way this is what we all hope for- that no matter how many times we get lost that our loved ones will not give up on us? And only not give up on us but celebrate us out of pure joy of being with us again. This gospel paints such a different reality of the way things should be rather than how they are.
How easily we have counted the lost as too far gone. How easily we have decided the lost our not ours to find. How easily we have given our time and energy to things that are not so difficult to obtain. I could give up at the VA and say that it’s not doing any good or I could change my perspective of what it means to be lost and what it means to be found and what actually happens in belonging.
Let’s look at what it means to be the lost. Who are the lost, what are the lost? These passages show that God values every human life equally, that belonging matters and that it is to be celebrated. Historically when pastors have taught about these passages they have talked about the “lost” being those who don’t know God. And you know- maybe that’s true- but not in the way it has been depicted. We are all lost in some way because I think lostness has to do with love being with-held at some point which we all experience. The lost are those who don’t know how to love- maybe those who for whatever reason haven’t figured out what it means to really love others well. The lost are also those who haven’t been given love in some way, such as the oppressed- the immigrant, the one who suffers trauma (childhood trauma, sexual trauma, military trauma), the one who is sick- physically and mentally, the one who has been forgotten, the one who has strayed. We are all lost in one way or another at some point or another. But this passage calls us to seek the lost, to bring others into belonging as well. God has equipped us to do this just by being ourselves.
Some of you may be thinking, well I don’t feel like I belong- I feel lost so how can I help bring someone else into something I don’t have? I have felt this as a Chaplain- I have asked these questions. We are taught as Chaplains that a big part of helping someone feel understood and known is by having a reciprocal relationship- so it is not just I, the Chaplain who has something to offer but rather both parties have something to give one another. It is in real relationship that we are changed and made a little more whole. I no longer go to work thinking how can I help these people, but more so how can these people help me? How can being in relationship with them heal the parts of me that need to be healed, how can they teach me about myself, how can they help me feel like I belong? In asking these questions, I realize that we are found in one another.
So if you feel like you do not belong or you are lost, that’s okay because it’s precisely in each other that you are found. Earlier, I said we often need to be shown over and over and over again that we belong. I think we can show other people they belong even when we don’t feel as if we do and that in turn it will help us feel like we belong. And, I think we do this by sharing and hearing each other’s stories. By hearing someone’s story we are saying that they are important- that their story matters, that they matter. You make them feel heard and understood and known. That is something we can all do- we can listen to one another’s stories. We can validate where they came from, what they’ve gone through and who that has made them to be. And in turn maybe we can be inspired and strengthened to tell our own stories- and give ourselves the opportunity to let someone else bring us into belonging.
So even though I am a pastor, it is my boyfriend, Jon who naturally has some of those pastoral qualities you would typically think of- like friendliness, empathy, wanting to make people feel included. He’s much more observant than I am and when he see’s someone that feels out of place or like they don’t belong he wants to help them not feel that way- like I said, he’s very empathetic. So Friday night we were at a bar and we are deep in conversation about who knows what and he sends me a text that the guy sitting next to me looks like he really wants to talk to someone (This happens often- but this is also why I love him). So I turn around and this guy unashamedly is basically like, “So are you guys done having that deep conversation yet?” We started talking to him and making connections and when he found out that he was talking to a pastor and a soon-to-be counselor, not only did he apologize for swearing (which also happens often) but he started telling us about his recent divorce and sharing his story with us. It was such a privilege to get to hear this man’s story, especially while he was experiencing some pain in his life and helping him to feel validated. I validated how isolated he must feel and Jon asked how he was taking care of himself and I really think that guy felt like he belonged even if only for that hour. All that to say, you can hear someone’s story anywhere, even a bar… maybe even especially at a bar.
In our culture today, there are so many stories that need to be heard and validated. Stories of immigrants and refugees, of those in the LGBTQ community, victims of sexual and physical violence, those who have lost loved ones due to systemic injustices. Along the way we have stopped loving, stopped listening and decided that it required too much time and too much effort for so little gain. But our scripture today shows us that the result of finding the lost- of restoring a love that had been with-held far outweighs what we give to it. Belonging is crucial to what it means to be human and that is what we see being celebrated here. What a triumph to make someone feel that they belong! Who in your life has a story that needs to be listened to? Whose story needs to be validated and accepted? Can you find belonging in your attempt to help someone else find belonging? I think that might be precisely how God designed it to be. In a time as divisive as we find ourselves in maybe in each other we can find the belonging we so desperately long for.
Amen.
Floundering With A Purpose 