You can lose a lot of things.

You can lose your mind, your memory, or your marbles.

Your confidence, self-esteem, or your mojo.

You may lose your way, your place or you can even lose face;

Your reputation, self-respect, manhood, or virginity.

You can lose sleep, where did the time go, you are past your prime.

You may also fail, suffer defeat, or take and licking and keep on ticking.

You can lose an argument, a game, or a war.

And if you lose your wealth or your health, you then lose hope.

You can be lost in space, lost without your love,

Jesus said You can lose your life to save it, or save your life only to lose it.

You might even lose your faith…

We seem to be real losers.

Poor little sheep who have lost their way.

No wonder there is so much joy in heaven when we are found.

Apparently the one thing we can’t lose is God.

Our stories of being lost and found are central to our identity. That’s why we sing Amazing Grace a little louder at the words “once I was lost, but now I’m found.” Those words were written by John Newton, a slave ship captain who later became an Anglican priest and hymn writer. Many saints of the Bible were wanderers trying to find their way; Abraham and Sarah, Moses, Ruth and Naomi, Jonah and his whale, the Apostle Paul, even Jesus had 30 years of life lost to us by history. If you have ever felt like a wanderer trying to find your way, you are in the right place. Most of our best stories are written about people who lost their way, yet found a place in God’s story. Church is the inn for wanderers and seekers, we set the communion table for believers, questioners, and questioning believers. 

Some of our stories are about the whole community losing its way. The freed slaves wandered for 40 years in the Sinai wilderness. The prophets called people back to truth and justice when they pursued greed and injustice. The great Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians and many people went into exile. They came back and rebuilt the Temple, and it was destroyed again about the time the first Gospels were being written. Being lost, wandering, searching, and being found again is the old, old story. 

We are living the lost and found story again in our time. A pandemic creates multiple loss stories. Think for a minute about what we have lost:

A sense of gathering for community, meals together, and family connections.

Young adults and children have lost valuable learning time, proms, and graduations.

Over a million Americans lost their lives.

Churches have lost at least a third of their attendance on average, 40 percent of clergy have left the ministry or retired, the UCC is losing a congregation every ten days.

We may feel we have lost civility, predictability, and accountability.

The world feels less safe for everything.

We each have our private stories of loss, but this is a collective tragedy as well. We long to find our own way, recover our souls, but we also need a restoration of the soul of the church and community. Acknowledging our losses can help us move through them. We sometimes stop and lament as the Psalms teach us to do. But the story is never simply, “I’m lost. The End.” The story is “Once I was lost, but now am found.” That’s the story we are longing to hear and searching to feel. 

What can we learn from these two short parables about lost sheep and lost coins? First, the context is important. Jesus is teaching and tax collectors and sinners are coming to hear. (No one wants the IRS around!). The Pharisees are grumbling that Jesus is welcoming sinners. Apparently, they don’t want the wrong kind of people in their club. No losers allowed.  This is the greatest self-defeating behavior of the church for centuries. Joyful community cannot survive time spent on deciding who is in and who is out. 

Jesus interprets the message of these two parables in both verse 7 and 10. There is great joy in heaven when a sinner repents, when the broken is made whole again, when the lost is found. Jesus does not say there is joy in heaven when we have assembled the best and brightest, when we finally know who the winners and losers are, or we have purged the church of the unfaithful heretics. Our core stories are about moving from lost to found.

This parable about one lost sheep has profound lessons. You might think, aren’t 99 sheep enough? Why expend all that energy on one sheep? The herd always loses the weak to predators and disease. It’s just natural selection at work. But what if you were the one? Don’t you hope someone would notice and come find you?

A favorite memory of being with my grandparents was going at in the evening to count the cows. They raised beautiful black angus cows and had blue ribbons in the basement that my dad and siblings won showing cows at the State Fair. We would go out before dusk each night, flooded in beautiful golden light and count the cows when they were out to pasture. The cows would all come and stare at us and a few would call to us with low moos. Occasionally one or two would be missing. My grandparents knew them all. They had been present for many of the births and labored their whole lives for this herd. It would be unthinkable to not look for the missing cow. Sometimes we found a calf who had wondered off or fell asleep and lost the herd. I remember a little calf kicking up its hind legs with a joyous leap as they found the herd again. We found cows with a foot caught in a hole, a broken fence or sick cows who needed a vet. The way you kept a healthy herd is you value and protect every cow. So, I understand the joy of the parable of finding the one lost calve.

It is essential that we find the joy of being community again. We have lived through a time when community is a threat. Hanging out together during COVID has been dangerous. It may never be 100 percent safe again. That must not stop of from seeking to be joyful community working together again. How can we be a full flock together? We may need to brush up on some of our social and welcoming skills. As we come together, we may be so joyful at seeing our closest friends we neglect other people. Let’s be intentional about greeting and engaging people who aren’t in our inner church circle. Notice that the parable says people rejoice when the one sheep is found, there is a big party. It’s not just the shepherd who rejoices, the shepherd throws a party inviting everyone to joy. How can we be a joyful community again, taking more delight in each other? Much of this may happen beyond the 10 AM hour on Sunday. We need many smaller activities to engage people where we are. To fully experience church, I think people need one place beyond Sunday to engage. It might be in formal groups like choir, bell choir, or the Mission Committee. It might be in small groups like Bible Study, or Sunday Adult Education or a prayer group. Maybe we need more informal things, ranging from potlucks, a small gathering on your porch for tea, a walking group, kayak somewhere, watch a movie together. Whatever works. Let me modify the parable in one way. The real ratio of lost and found is not 99 found to 1 lost. I bet at least half of us feel like the one lost sheep this morning. Whether you feel lost or found, search for each other.

The second short parable says a woman has lost a coin, and she sweeps the entire house just to find it again. One tradition holds that when a woman was married in the ancient Near East, she wore a headdress with 10 silver coins sewn into it. If you lose one, you have lost a powerful symbol of your identity and connection, like losing your wedding ring. This may symbolize losing a part of ourselves. If you only have 9/10 of yourself, you are not complete. We become restless and will stay restless until we sweep and search everywhere and find what we need. As Augustine put it, “We all have a God shaped void in our souls. Therefore, our souls are restless until we rest in thee.” 

The lost sheep parable speaks to our need for community. The lost coin points to the deeper purpose of the community and human life. Together we search for what we have lost. Together we search what we need to be whole. It is in this seeking that God is present, because God is also searching. God is the Good Shepherd who leads us to green pastures and still waters, who restores our souls. The searching is mutual-we long for God and God for us. 

Once I was lost, but now I’m found. That is our great story. Seek and you shall find.