How Do You Know When You’re Lost?

Luke 15:1-10

There’s a group activity at Camp Hanover called the “Great Adventure.” It’s an orienteering challenge in which the entire group is dropped off at a remote location on the far end of camp with the goal of making their way back before dinner. All they’re given to meet this goal is a compass and a heading. There’s no trails to follow through this wilderness, just wood and trees, creeks to ford, and briar patches to dodge.

Imagine you are the counselor for a group on the Great Adventure. You’re taking a hands off approach to the challenge, but the kids are masterfully using their compass heading to make their way. You’ve been walking for about an hour when you realize that one of the campers, who went off to pee, never came back. When was that? 15…20 minutes ago? What do you do? Do you leave the rest of the group in the middle of the wilderness to go off and look for the one who is lost?

I don’t ask this because it happened to me. I ask because it happens in today’s first parable. The shepherd is guiding a flock through the wilderness, a key fact that is often overlooked, or even avoided. There’s an old gospel song that begins with ninety-and-nine that safely lay in the shelter of the fold, but there’s no safety and shelter in the way Jesus tells the parable in Luke. Listen again, “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness…”

The challenge of the Great Adventure kinda presumes that you’re all lost, together. The entire group is lost and trying to find its way. So hypothetical pee pee kid is like…double lost. Lost from a group of lost people. Which begs the question, how do you know when you’re lost? Does it have to do with where you are? Who you’re with? Who you’re not with? What you know? Does it have to do with where you’re headed, or not headed? And once all those questions are answered, there’s the question of who lost who? Did the prodigal potty-er lose the group, or did the group lose them?

In the parable, “lostness” is subjective and related to the perspective of the shepherd. The lostness of the sheep is determined by the shepherd not knowing where the sheep is…or better put, lostness has to do with where the shepherd knows the sheep should be. This has implications for how we interpret this parable. We get a pretty good sense from the way Jesus wraps it up—“just so there will be more joy in heaven”—that this is about the kingdom as the fold of God. If this is the case, then it means that “lostness” is subjective and determined by the perspective of God. It means our lostness is determined by our straying from where God knows we should be.

This means that we can be “lost” without even feeling lost. We can know exactly where we are and where we’re headed, but if it’s not where God knows we should be…does that not make us lost? If this is the case, then here’s what I wonder: can the opposite be true? Can we feel lost and yet be exactly where God wants us to be?

During the season of Lent, we looked at our own journey through the wilderness. We compared it to the time that Jesus spent in the wilderness, fasting and praying. We talked about darkness and silence and feeling abandoned by God. We’ve noticed Jesus’ disciples’ almost constant state of confusion and not-quite-getting-it. That’s why I love that Luke has Jesus telling the parable where the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine in the wilderness. Isn’t that where we are? Sure, we’ve got our compass (the Bible), and we’ve got our heading, (the command to love God and love one another)…but that doesn’t mean we’re at our destination, doesn’t mean we always know where we are on that journey, doesn’t mean we don’t sometimes feel abandoned by God, doesn’t mean that we don’t sometimes resent being left on our own to figure things out. It doesn’t mean that we won’t feel lost on the journey, but it does mean that if we’re using Scripture to learn how to love more, we’re on the right track, we’re where God wants us to be.

But what about the double lost? They’re the ones who stumble onto the well-worn way of the world and think “Finally, I’ve found some direction and purpose!” The challenge in following Jesus comes from leaving the certainty of the paved path, the priority of the paycheck, the upward climb towards wealth, success, and popularity and joining a fold that looks lost, headed in the direction of the poor, the sick, the oppressed. There have been moments in the history of the church, in which it has become double lost, too: Crusades (in which the church, presuming itself to be in the right, violently pursued those it perceived to be lost), indulgences (the selling of forgiveness, again from a church presuming itself to be in the right), supporting slavery (they were using the compass, but the direction they took did not follow the heading of “loving neighbor”). More recently, though it has been controversial at times, the PCUSA has been reorienting itself to the place of welcome for LGBTQ persons within the fold of God.

Just because we call ourselves the “church” doesn’t mean we can’t be double lost, too. When we lose track of our heading, or misread our compass…we can end up where God doesn’t want us to be. Most often, we do this when we think it is our job to seek the double-lost. The little crusades, the excursions to save the lost, more often pull us from where God wants us to be: on a journey of loving. I don’t mean to suggest that we need to avoid people, that we shouldn’t go out of our way to love people. You can’t go out of your way to love people, because love is the way. What we need to avoid is the belief that our job is to change people, to save people, to force them to join us, to place them on our shoulders and carry them. In the parable, that’s the shepherd’s job. The shepherd seeks the lost and brings them back to the fold…but if the fold loses its way…is Jesus really trying to lead the lost to a fold that has lost sight of love?

This brings up perhaps the most important question of all, and one that has plagued the church for millennia: “Does that mean we’re just supposed to stay where we are, then?” We all know that “change” is one of the most frightening words for the church. We’re good at staying where we are, waiting for all the lost ones to be brought to us. But that’s not what this Great Adventure is all about. The life of faith is an orienteering challenge, and a journey. Therefore, if our faith isn’t moving us…we’re probably not where God wants us to be. God wants to bring people into a fold that is moving in the direction of more love. We can’t freak out when the shepherd leaves us to seek the double lost, we can’t lose hope, or lose sight of our heading, we can’t freeze up and stop in our tracks. If we do, we’ll never make it back for dinner, and that’s the goal.

We’ve been told that God is preparing a great banquet, and we’re all invited. That’s our journey, that’s the life of faith: responding to that invitation, moving forward, pressing onward. Jesus shows us the way through the wilderness. Some of those whom God invites, may never join us on the journey, we may never see them until we reach the great table. We’ve got to trust that Jesus will show them the way, too. We can’t force the sinner to repent. We can’t drag them with us against their will…that’s not the way…that’s not love. This doesn’t mean that Jesus doesn’t use us to show the way, too. I think Jesus wants his church to lead the way of love as trail blazers. But the only way to show the way is by walking in it.

Friends, receive these words from the prophet Isaiah:

If you stray to the right or the left, you will hear a word that comes from behind you: “This is the way; walk in it.”