Saturday, September 28, 2019

Lost, Searching, & Found

Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach. This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he was associating with such sinful people—even eating with them!  So Jesus told them this story:  “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do?  Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it?  And when he has found it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders.  When he arrives, he will call together his friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’  In the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven’t strayed away!  Luke 15:1-7

Paul Leeland, resident Bishop of the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church[1] told the story of his seminary days in Baltimore to a gathering of preachers.  When he arrived at the seminary there were no TV’s in the dorm rooms, and no coffee machines.  He quickly secured a coffee pot and a small portable TV for his room so he could drink coffee each morning as he listened to the news and got ready for classes.  He said it didn’t take long for four floors of seminary students to find out there was coffee and TV on the third floor, so his room was seldom private.
One day he heard the local news anchor lament that in a certain neighborhood, notorious for racial tension and violence, first responders, police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel were slower responding to calls than in other more secure parts of the city.  Later that day Leeland and a buddy went to check out the area.  They lingered a little too long and these two young, white men, after sundown were lost in a seedy section of town.  Now the eventual bishop was bright enough to recall that even in Baltimore the sun sets in the West (which was the direction of his dorm room), and so he figured if he just kept the car moving in that general direction he’d be safe, and find home.  About the time he figured that out, the light at the next corner turned red.  His car stopped right in front of a group of young men who were having a good time teasing each other.  But when they saw the out-of-place white seminary students, they encircled the car with menacing looks and a frightening presence.  With the obvious interpersonal skill and quick-thinking of  a Methodist Bishop, Paul Leeland turned to his buddy and said, hey, jump out and ask our new best friends how we can get out of the city. His buddy said, (well, never mind what he said…they may have performed an illegal launch through a red light, but they lived to tell the story).
Reflecting on the story Bishop Leeland said that, like the lost sheep in Jesus’ story Paul Leeland was also lost in Baltimore.  The Bible word for lost really means out of place.  Even out of place people have value.  He was still a husband, father, and pastor at a little Methodist church.  But none of that mattered when confronted with a mob surrounding your vehicle.  A sheep that’s lost provides no wool for its master.  The lost coin in next story that Jesus told could purchase no food or olive oil to feed the household.  Lost is out of place until it is found!
And that is the whole point of the missional mindset of a church.  People who are lost, out of place, cannot function as they were created…as a sheep providing wool, a vine providing fruit, a human engaging in relationship with Creator God.  Out of place must be found.
Our baptism is a mark of the redeemed, the lost and out of place being found and restored to the place of God’s embrace and love. 
We must never lose sight or hope of being the locators and lovers of the lost.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…Amen!

Go to VIDEO


[1] Bishop Leeland at Macedonia United Methodist Church, Take Thou Authority event, September 19, 2019


[i] Title Images:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com.    All Scripture quoted is from The New Living Translation (unless otherwise stated) 

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