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Sunday, September 12, 2004
Sermon: “When the Lost is Returned”
Luke 15:1-10
Reverend Larry Gerber
PP1
(I plan on going out to the congregation and asking a few questions, such as:
Ever been lost, or lose something? What did you do? How did you feel about your
situation?)
PP2:
Forget where you put your car in Disney World, and a cast of professionally
perky parking attendants will use a host of high-tech tools to help you find
what you have lost. With equal enthusiasm, God looks for us —— and
then throws a party when we are found.
There are more than 105 million parking spaces in America, and your vehicle
is probably occupying one of them.
But which one?
That’s not a hard question while you are parked in your church lot, but
even with that small space, people sometimes forget which side of the building
they parked on and exit by the wrong door.
Now think Disney World. The parking areas there include more than 46,000 slots,
and every day, a good number of guests cannot remember in which one they left
their car. Visitors arrive at the theme park revved up to have a good time,
and they aren’t paying attention. What’s more, they may be piloting
a rental whose color and make they haven’t noticed, but even if they have,
it’s identical to several hundred other cars nearby.
Disney employees do what they can to help absent-minded visitors observe where
they park. Each parking section has a Disney character name —— Chip
& Dale, Pluto, Goofy, Dopey, etc. —— clearly identified with prominently
posted pictures. As arriving guests board the trams that carry them into the
park, the tram drivers tell the visitors what lot they are in and urge them
to take note. Still, so many people fail to remember that Disney employs a small
army called “the parking cast” whose job is to reassure these folks
and reunite them with their autos.
The parking cast! Can you believe it? Only Disney would create a cast for the
entertainment event called “Finding Your Car”!
The parking cast uses an array of tools, including perseverance, technology
and clues elicited from the guests. For starters, Disney keeps track of when
each lot fills. That way, if visitors can remember approximately when they arrived,
the cast can narrow the search to specific lots. Disney workers also ask what
visitors remember seeing en route to the parking lot. If the misplaced car has
OnStar, cast members might suggest the driver call it, so a global positioning
satellite can pinpoint the misplaced car. Often, Disney employees drive the
lost individuals around in company vehicles, while the guests lean out the window,
pushing the panic button on their key chains, hoping the car will sound off!
Through one means or another, Disney usually manages to re-link guests with
their vehicles, finding the lost and enabling park visitors to go on their way.
And so the guests do, probably feeling that no matter which lot their car was
actually discovered in, they had parked in Dopey.
PP3.
We don’t know if the members of Disney’s parking cast have a favorite
Bible passage, but the two little parables in today’s gospel are good candidates.
With their stories of losing and finding, it’s obvious why not only the
parking cast but also the hapless guests might identify with them, but there
is one point at which the parallels break down: Jesus indicated both the shepherd
and the homemaker are so thrilled at finding the lost that they need help to
celebrate. Both call neighbors to gather for a party.
But do you suppose that’s how the parking cast members react? For them,
helping baffled visitors is all in a day’s work. We doubt they party every
time they succeed. As for the chagrined guests, finally stumbling upon the location
of their transport no doubt brings a wave of relief and maybe even reprieve,
but probably not much joy.
So how do you usually react when you finally locate some missing item? Like
most of us, you’ve probably lost and then found not only coins, but keys,
glasses, watches, pens, books, socks, slippers and a myriad of other things,
but how often have you felt a party was warranted when you found them?
PP4.
So when Jesus asks, “Which one of you would not have a party?” a lot
of us would confess that we would not.
The outcome in both of these parables actually seems unreal, and there are several
reasons why:
PP5.
For one thing, it’s difficult to identify with shepherds. Still, since
a lot of us get attached to our pets, it’s not unreasonable to assume that
the shepherd actually cared about the individual animals in his flock. In that
case, the shepherd’s searching for the missing sheep was more than just
trying to maintain the profitability of his flock. The finding of the lost sheep
becomes a source of joy because the flock would otherwise feel incomplete to
the shepherd.
So which pet owner of you, having lost your animal companion and then found
it again, might not at least call your friends and tell them how happy you are?
PP6.
Then, too, it takes effort to identify with people who have only a few things.
We have dozens of pens, and if we misplace one, it’s no big deal. We just
pick up another one. Even for gadgets where we don’’t have extras,
it is often easier to simply go buy another than to spend time searching for
the wayward one. But that was not so in the first century. People owned far
fewer things, and the lost silver coin in the parable was the equivalent of
a full day’s pay.
One pastor tells of working at a church camp that hosted children from low-income
homes. Before arriving, each child received a list of items they should bring
—— flashlight, soap and towel, rain gear and so forth. But as each
new group of kids arrived, many simply did not have several things on the list,
and some said their families had no way to get them. One boy proudly showed
the pastor his toothbrush, explaining that it was a loan from his brother since
he had none of his own.
What child in those circumstances, having misplaced his toothbrush and then
finally finding it, would not say to his brother, “Be glad with me, for
the lost has been found”?
PP7:
Finally, it’’s not easy to identify with God, but that’s whom
these two parables are really about. After each of them, Jesus gives the moral
of the story, stating that the repentance of a lone sinner is the occasion for
great joy in heaven.
Who can say why, after all the members of the human race God has created, God
experiences such exhilaration over the conversion of a single individual. But
we are learning some things about the nature of joy that help us understand
why it especially arises when the found is not an animal or an item or a vehicle
but a human.
Walter J. Freeman, a professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology
at the University of California, Berkeley, writes about what scientists who
study the brain have concluded about joy. He acknowledges that both electrical
and chemical stimulation of the brain have significant impact on moods. That
includes the effect of such naturally occurring chemicals as dopamine, endorphins,
serotonin and oxytocin. But in each case, says Freeman, the result is not happiness.
But, Freeman explains, some pioneering neuroscientists have figured out that
our brains do not store information from the environment as if they were recording
devices. Rather the experiences we have in life trigger neural activity in the
brain that results in a ““construct.”” The stimulus from
the experience drains away, but the construct remains. And since all of us have
different experiences, we all have different constructs, creating a situation
where none of us can fully feel what another person is feeling. Freeman shorthands
this as ““lonely brains.””
But that is where joy comes in. Although we cannot be fully of one mind with
others, any time we can overcome the solipsistic barrier between our self and
another through cooperation and shared activities that result in trust, friendship,
community or partnership, we feel joy.
While it is always foolish to say we know the mind of God, such verses as Isaiah
43:21 —— “the people whom I formed for myself so that they might
declare my praise” —— and Revelation 4:11 —— “for
thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created”
(KJV) —— as well as the image of God as a jilted lover in Hosea at
least suggest a Creator who is lonely for his created ones.
Thus, when even a single sinner turns to God in trust, God experiences joy,
and there is a party in heaven! Jesus confirms that with these two parables.
And since the sinner found is the other participant in that new relationship
of trust, he or she experiences the joy as well.
The guests who have lost their cars in the Disney World lots are, in some ways,
more lost than their cars. They approach the parking cast members, saying, “We
don’t know where we parked. We don’t know what kind of car we drove.
We don’t know what to do.” But those parking attendants, like the
good shepherd and homemaker, purposefully go about their work of helping the
lost to become found.
PP8.
Jesus let us know with these parables that God goes about the business of seeking
us just as purposefully. That is great news for us whether we are parked in
Dopey or dopily wandering around, wondering where we are. God looks for us because
it is his great joy to find us.
And when God finds us, there is a party in heaven. One more joyful than anything
the Disney parking cast could ever engineer.
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Sources:
Freeman, Walter J. ““Happiness doesn’’t come in bottles,””
Svenske Dagbladet(Stockholm, Sweden), May 24, 1996. Reprinted in English in
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 4:67-71, sulcus.berkeley.edu.
Zaslow, Jeffrey. ““It’’s 9 p.m., do you know where you parked
your car?”” The Wall Street Journal, February 25, 2004, A1, A8.
Let me know what you think. The church Email is: SLUMC@att.net, Phone: 480.895.8766