September 11, 2022 – Pentecost +14C, Luke 15:1-10

¹Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to [Jesus.] ²And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
 ³So he told them this parable: ⁴“Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? ⁵When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. ⁶And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ ⁷Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
 ⁸“Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? ⁹When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ ¹⁰Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

My children are professionals at losing things.  We have lost more soccer socks, practice jerseys, camp shirts, sweatshirts, socks — you name it we have lost it.  Over the years I have been on a constant and unrelenting search for something my children have lost, like a practice jersey, or a sweatshirt, or one of my jackets my sons have borrowed without asking. In the conversation or interrogation, I have with the culprit, I might be able to decipher where the item may have gone missing – and then I will visit said establishment. Have you ever ventured into the lost and found box at an elementary school, high school, or gym facility? In the famous words of comedian Tom Pappa, “I have”.  It is scary how many things go lost – and how quickly. I visited the Middle School one year during the first week of school, and already there were two tables of jackets, shirts, bottles, bags, etc. overflowing the tables. One time I ventured into a skating rink looking for a lost jersey. I asked the nice gentleman behind the desk where the lost and found bin was, and he pointed me to 2 enormous bins filled to the top with discarded and lost clothing items.  It was truly clothing carnage. There was so much clothing that it was not going to be an easy search – what with the amount of clothing……..and then there was the smell.  All of that lost clothing and people do not take the time to come and search for what they have lost. We have become so much a “throw-away” society that we are preconditioned not to look for something we have lost – unless it has enormous value.

This issue of “lost-ness” is always smacking me in the face numerous times throughout each week, because I am always losing something. I was cleaning out my car one day when an older couple walked up my driveway. They were looking for a BMW key fob that the wife had lost – thinking she may have lost it while parked on our street a few weeks ago.  I took their name and phone number and told them I would ask our neighbors if they had found it, because, I know how expensive those key fobs are. You are always hearing about stories where something has gone lost, and years later it is remarkably found and returned to the owner. One year it was some workers on Simpson Street in Mechanicsburg who were resurfacing the road. While digging down into the street, a man noticed something shiny. He picked it up and realized it was his high school ring he had lost some twenty or thirty years before, when they were resurfacing the road. Miraculous? G-d works in mysterious ways, Amen?

You see, people are ultimately more important than lost socks, lost jerseys, and lost buttons, yet we often treat them the same.  We lose a sock, and rather than really taking time to find it, we simply throw the other one out. My friends, socks and shirts might be throw-away commodities – people are not. I do not care how much someone may appear to be a sinner, an outcast, or an outsider, or even how much we may consider someone to be an outcast, outsider or a sinner, the Kingdom of G-d will never be complete while there is still one person missing, Amen?

Pastor Dave

September 10, 2022 – Hebrews 8:12, The Funny Shape of Faith

“[Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself” -Matthew 22:37-39

“Love God with all of your heart, soul, and strength.” How do we do this? Because the answer is not clear-cut, we pray to and confide in God-and develop a relationship that brings us closer to the mystery than, say, any road map. And “love your neighbor?” This includes people in far-off places, but it begins in the very places we live, play, and work each day.”

(Laurie Hanson. The Funny Shape of Faith: Devotions for the Rest of Us (p. 97). Kindle Edition.)

Are These “Written in Stone” or Ten Suggestions?

In the song “In the Stone” by Earth Wind and Fire, part of the first verse and the chorus goes something like:

I found that love provides the key, Unlocks the heart and souls of you and me — Love will learn to sing your song, yeah, Oh yeah, love is written in the stone

In the stone, you’ll find the meaning — You’re not standing tall
In the stone, the light is shining — Ever touching all

What we tend to forget about the Ten Commandments is that G-d gave us the written law out of love for G-d’s children, not out of punishment. G-d loves G-d’s creation and seeks to be in relationship with the same. And since G-d loves all of creation we are called to do the same – loving G-d, loving all people and loving the creation as well.

My friends, these instructions are not holy suggestions, they are rules to live our lives by – beginning in the love of G-d and sharing that same love with all people.

Let us pray,

Loving and compassionate Lord, I want to stop treating others out of a place of judgment. Your kingdom is a place of love – and we are to be instruments of that love. I accept the challenge to become the person you created me to be. Help and feed me. Amen.

Pastor Dave