Preached on September 14, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Luke 15:1-10.
Chapter 15 of Luke’s Gospel could perhaps be titled the Book of the Lost. We have a trilogy of parables. First, there is the parable of the Lost Sheep. Then there is the parable of the Lost Coin. I read both of those today. Then the third parable is variously called the parable of the Lost Son, the Prodigal Son, the Two Sons, the Prodigal and His Brother, or the Forgiving Father. That third one is too complex to study along with the other two, so the lectionary creators leave it out of today’s lesson and instead put it back in Lent. Remember that these two parables build up to that famous story.
For today, let’s focus on the first two parables. First, the Lost Sheep. Obviously, the original audience for Jesus’s preaching and Luke’s writing would have known a whole lot more about sheep and shepherds than most of us do. I’ll tell you what I know, though. Sheep are almost too stupid to live. For millennia, they have been bred to be docile. They don’t just wander around. They go where they are guided to go. So if a sheep is lost, it’s because it was left behind when the shepherd moved the rest of the flock along.
A friend of mine told me a story about her son’s cat getting out. This cat figured out how to bypass a locked pet door, climb over a 6’ fence, and go down the street and into a storm sewer. That was an animal with some agency, an animal who wanted to be somewhere else and purposefully escaped from its owners.
Sheep aren’t like that. They’re more like our old dog Gypsy. She was about half-blind and half-deaf, so when we visited my in-laws, she would just wander around following her nose. She didn’t move fast, and she didn’t try to run away. She just kinda wandered. We weren’t paying attention, and she couldn’t hear us when we called, so she ended up across the street and down by a neighbor’s house.
That’s how sheep are. They don’t run away. They just eat tasty grass and follow it where it goes. Slowly, with no real direction. So if a sheep is lost, it’s not the sheep’s fault—it’s the shepherd’s fault for not paying attention.
Here we have a shepherd who messed up. Or maybe there were a bunch of shepherds tending the flock, and they all thought someone else was taking care of this one particular sheep. So the one sheep gets left behind when they move the flock along. The good shepherd cares about all of his sheep, so he pursues the one who was lost. When he gets back, he’s relieved and overjoyed that he has found it!
In the same way, the second parable describes a situation where the woman screwed up. She had ten coins, each worth about $100 today. Now, a coin doesn’t just wander off. Clearly if she lost it, it was her fault, even more so than the lost sheep. I know that if I had ten $100 bills in a drawer, then checked and saw that there were only nine, I’d go looking around the house to see where I might have left the other one! Or I might wonder if it was stolen. I might even panic a little. But when I found it, I’d be relieved and thankful.
The setup for these parables is that the scribes and Pharisees are grumbling that Jesus welcomes tax collectors and sinners. Jesus is teaching that he was sent to the lost sheep of Israel, that he was sent as a physician to the ill, and that he is the bridegroom of a marvelous wedding feast. Where the scribes and Pharisees want to erect barriers, Jesus seeks a bigger Table.
So Jesus is seeking the lost, as the Good Shepherd or as a woman seeking what is valuable. Jesus seeks lost people, though, not sheep or coins. But by telling these parables, he is reminding his audience that agency resides not in the people who are lost, but in the community that has lost them.
When we read these parables, we are tempted to think that the shepherd or the woman is analogous to God. That gets problematic when you think, Did God lose people? I thought God loved everybody and was everywhere! To which I say, Amen! God never loses anyone and is always available. The kingdom of God is at hand! God is right here, right among us, waiting for our awareness.
No, I think the shepherd or the woman is analogous to the Church (with a capital C). Jesus would have been referring to the Jewish establishment, but the same holds true for the Christian Church. We are supposed to be Christ’s body, but we frequently fall short of our calling. One way that we fall short is that we fail to serve as God’s ambassadors to the world, and we fail to tend our sheep and treasure each member of God’s family.
And I want to be clear here that I’m not talking about this particular congregation, or anyone in particular within this congregation. The truth is that the big-C Church has lost at least one and probably two or three generations. In the 1950s and ‘60s, there were tremendous cultural tailwinds propelling churches of all types. Nowadays, there are huge cultural headwinds that we are fighting against.
Everyone has a theory about why we have lost succeeding generations. Let me tell you mine. At some point before I came of age—perhaps in the 1970s—an idea took root among American Christians. Parents were taught Proverbs 22:6, “Train children in the right way, and when old, they will not stray.” So, the emphasis was on getting children into Sunday school and keeping them on track until they were confirmed or baptized as teenagers. Then, job done. As a result, most kids drifted away from the church just as soon as their parents stopped forcing them. They were left with a childish faith—not child-like and innocent, but poorly formed, like if you dropped out of school after sixth grade. As I recall, there were about a dozen kids in my confirmation class in 1986, and by the time I graduated high school in 1991, I was the only one still attending worship. Some of that dozen eventually made it back to church, if Facebook is any indication. But not all of them.
So succeeding generations over the past fifty years have placed less and less emphasis on developing a mature, adult faith. As a result, we have lost a lot of sheep and a lot of coins. It’s not that they were raised in the church, drifted away, and will come back when they have kids. Instead, they were never raised in a church at all, so there is no “back.”
Meanwhile, around that same time, the Church bifurcated into liberal and conservative branches. I’m speaking theologically more than politically, although there is some correlation. The old mainline churches—PC(USA), Episcopal, United Methodist, ELCA Lutheran, and so forth—are in the liberal theological tradition. Too many mainline churches are afraid to stand for anything. They’re milquetoast and tepid, like Laodicea in Revelation—neither hot nor cold. Meanwhile, the conservative branch—Southern Baptist, Church of Christ, Assembly of God, and so forth—are increasingly vocal, in ways that are frankly offensive to a broad swath of the younger generations. So, many Millennials and Gen Z adults reject all of Christianity based on the vocal part that they disagree with, never hear about the mainline traditions, and have never gone to church, so they figure it’s all irrelevant to their lives.
That’s what I mean by cultural headwinds. Again, I’m not necessarily talking about anyone in this church. I mean, no matter what choices my kids make about attending church, it wouldn’t matter to us, because they live in Providence and Chicago. Rather, we need to be concerned about the Millennials and Gen Z adults in Rolla. What message have they heard about Christianity? Mostly, it sounds a lot like the scribes and Pharisees. Mostly, it sounds like, “You must do XYZ in order to be acceptable to God as we understand Him.” Mostly, it sounds like, “Everything that matters to you is unacceptable in God’s eyes.” Mostly, it sounds like, “We have exclusive access to God’s Truth, so you need to do exactly what we say or you’re doomed to eternal conscious torment in a lake of fire.” Rarely does it sound like, “God loves you, come on in!” Rarely does it sound like, “Tell us about yourself and help us learn about God from your life experiences.” Rarely does it sound like, “God forgives you, no matter what, and has chosen YOU to be a part of our family.” Rarely does it sound like, “We don’t know all the answers, but we’ll help you find your own path as we tell you about ours.”
Wouldn’t it be great if someone outside the church heard those messages, and could really, truly believe them? Wouldn’t it be great if someone who has never experienced Christ’s love in their life could feel it through us? Wouldn’t it be great if someone could receive new life, abundant life, through a loving, supportive community that helps them navigate the spiritual challenges they face?
Let me tell you about a few encounters I had in the past week. First, Wednesday night, I had my first youth Bible study over at the LGBTQ+ Rolla Community Center. The story there is that a teenage girl asked her mom to find her a Bible study. The mom reached out to our organization, and I said, “Sign me up!” Well, so far, she’s the only one who has come. But that’s OK. I’m sowing seeds in the world. I’m giving her tools to defend herself against people who use the Bible as a weapon. I’m helping her to grow into an adult faith, a deeper faith with stronger roots. And maybe, the ideas and Christian love that I sow in her will bloom into something great among her friends and more broadly in the community.
Thursday, we had Sacred Paths, our campus ministry. I’m concerned about its future because some key members have already graduated and a few others are graduating soon. But one freshman came for her third time, and two sophomores came for their first time. We had a great conversation—everyone was engaged and listening to one another. We’re all in very different places on our spiritual walk, and that’s OK. I don’t think we could come up with a clear statement of faith that we all agree on. Some believe 100% in the divinity of Christ and that our God is THE God. Others are something like agnostic, but find meaning in following Christ’s teachings. And maybe someday, the seeds we plant, the openness we share about our different life experiences, will blossom into God’s presence in their lives.
Then later Thursday night, I had a Zoom chat with Michele White. She attended this church for a short time right before the pandemic shut everything down. She was one of my graduate students who came to Common Call and now lives in Denver. She was really struggling, spiritually. The murder of Charlie Kirk troubled her—not so much that he is dead, but the conflicting emotions she had over his killing. As we talked, it was clear that she has a great circle of friends, a chosen family, but doesn’t really have a spiritual community. True flourishing requires a connection to God, and even though I feel God’s presence when I pray and when I’m out in nature, I mostly experience God through community. We talked for a while, and I counseled her on finding a way to connect to spiritual community.
So, all good, right? Well, one other thing happened. I had posted on Facebook that I was hosting a Bible study at the LGBTQ+ Rolla Community Center, and that sent one person into a tailspin. He has clearly been hurt, deeply, by the Christian church. Just the fact that other members of our community might want a place where they can pursue God’s kingdom brought up all sorts of negative emotions. That’s a huge part of what we’re fighting against here. If someone has been hurt deeply by any Christian church, they paint all of Christianity the same way. Saying “I’m not like that” isn’t sufficient. Only positive, deep relationships can heal the hurt, if ever it can be healed.
So that’s where I am. I recognize that there are many people who have been cast out of the church, or whose only experience of Christianity is negative, or who know that there is Something More out there that they feel drawn to and need help figuring things out. If I can help just a few people flourish who otherwise would have turned their backs on God and would have floundered in despair, I will be a success.
So my challenge to you is, Who do YOU care about? Who will YOU find and welcome in? Where will YOU go to seek the lost, to share God’s love with them, and bring them into Christian fellowship? Where will you proclaim the Gospel for the salvation of humankind? How will you exhibit the kingdom of heaven to the world? And what will you do to heal the damage that has been done in Christ’s name, to demonstrate the relevance of Christianity, and to guide people into a healthy relationship with one another and with the God who loves them?
That’s my challenge to you today, and every day. May God bless your seeking, that in seeking, you may find. Amen.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
One Reply to “Seeking the Lost”
Comments are closed.