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'Perverse and foolish oft I strayed, but yet in love He sought me...' Lord, open our hearts and minds afresh to the search-light of Your love as we reflect upon Your Word for us today. Amen.
I wonder when you last lost something?
In the Barr household, there are frequent mini-crises over lost items: lost purses, keys, diaries; lost shoes, jewellery, homework… Fortunately we haven't had any 'lost dog' crises…
Whenever you lose something, even something inexpensive but meaningful, it can create feelings of panic and anxiety. And when you find the missing object - there's a sense of relief and rejoicing. As there was for the shepherd in Jesus' parable, who found his lost sheep after much searching. And for the woman who, after turning the house upside-down, found that missing coin.
What if it's a person who is lost? A human being who has wandered away from where they belong. A child of God who has shut him or her - self off from the searching love of their heavenly Father, and who is so vulnerable to the adversary, the devil who, as a roaring lion prowls about seeking whom he may devour. If and when that person comes to their senses, turns away from what is wrong and turns to the light and love of God in Christ - then how great is the sense of relief and rejoicing?
It was about just such people that Jesus said: 'There is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents'. Heaven has a party and the angels join in, every time a lost and sinful man or woman returns to the Lord.
But the punch line of these parables of Jesus depends on the Jewish belief that the 2 halves of God's creation, heaven and earth, are meant to fit together and be in harmony with each other. In other words, if you discover what's going on in heaven, you'll know how things are meant to be on earth. That's the whole point of praying, as we do every time we say the Lord's Prayer, that God's Kingdom will come 'on earth as it is in heaven'.
So if God in heaven is searching for His lost children, shouldn't we be making every effort to do the same?
And if heaven celebrates whenever a single sinner sees the light and begins to follow God's way, then we'll be out of tune with God's reality if we're not doing the same.
The Gospel shows us how Jesus' attitude and actions on earth corresponded exactly to God's love in the heavenly realm. Now Jesus asks us to go and do likewise. That, along with worship, is the reason for the existence of the Church. The Church exists "to respond to God's love in worship, to welcome all in the name of Jesus Christ and to reach out in the power of the Spirit".
That's the theory! How is the Church doing in practice? Well, the reputation that the Church has in the media at the moment is hardly encouraging. If an alien from outer space were to base his understanding of what the Church is about on what he heard, read and saw in our national media, then he'd think that all Church leaders are perverts or pilferers, and that all Christian communities are obsessed with ecclesiastical architecture and furniture. Take Ambridge, for example. OK -so The Archers is fictional! But this Radio 4 soap prides itself on reflecting real issues in today's world - from Foot and Mouth Disease to the future of church seating. And what a time the poor old Vicar of St Stephen's Ambridge is having; his proposal to introduce flexible versatile seating, so that the church building can become more welcoming to rock band members and other 'sinners', has sparked outrage - not just in this fictional village but in 'the real world'. The Daily Telegraph reports that The Victorian Society has launched a campaign to save the Ambridge pews, as its director said that the Archers saga "mirrored that of churches all over the country that planned to scrap antique furniture".(p.2 Telegraph 12.9.07)
You and I, who love and serve the Lord Jesus, know that He never intended His Church to become a museum for antique furniture. How sad it is, then, when we say, write or do anything that might suggest to the watching world that we care more about saving particular styles of furnishings than we do about saving lost souls. We know, as St Paul puts it, that "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners" (1 Tim. 1:15) and that our calling is to carry on reaching out to the lost in Christ's name - aware that we ourselves have received Christ's loving mercy and forgiveness in abundance, unworthy though we are. We MUST not let anything distract us from this Gospel priority.
Today's Gospel reading reminds us that sticking to this priority, turning our vision into reality, involves both risk and rejoicing.
First, risk. The shepherd who leaves 99 sheep in the open country while he goes after one lost creature, risks not so much the remaining 99% of his flock, as there would doubtless have been assistants to keep an eye on them. What the shepherd risks is his own well-being, safety, possibly even his life, as he sets out to seek the lost sheep in difficult or dangerous terrain. But again and again, the New Testament teaches us that Christian life and faith involve risk-taking. How could it be otherwise for those who would follow in the way of Jesus Christ - which is the way of the Cross? So if we mean business about getting in tune with God's reality and searching out and welcoming the lost, then we must risk having self-righteous folk mutter about us, grumbling and complaining as the Pharisees did about Jesus. We must risk our own comfort and convenience for the sake of making others feel genuinely welcome and comfortable. We must risk sacrificing our personal preferences and even deeply held opinions - if that means we can help another person who does not yet know it, to come to experience for themselves the deep, deep love of Jesus.
Perhaps, most scary of all, we must risk change. At the moment, the Church in the West has got it all wrong about change. We are quick and cavalier about changing things that shouldn't be changed. A couple of Sunday's ago, John and I had a conversation after the service with two visitors from the Episcopalian Church in the USA. They were thrilled that in the Priory we'd just sung the hymn 'Jesus is Lord', while grieving over the fact that many of the American branch of the church's leaders and members are eager to change ethical and moral principals, even central tenets of Christian doctrine, like the affirmation that 'Jesus is Lord'. That movement for change, away from orthodox Biblical faith, is gaining momentum here in Britain too. So on the one hand, there is a readiness to change what should never be changed: timeless truths about God and His will for His Creation. While on the other hand, folk fight tooth and nail to avoid or tone down changes to the things that, in the light of eternity, are of no significance whatsoever.
If church people are to bear faithful witness to the message of the Gospel, then we will not try to change or water down its credal tenets. But, in extending a genuine welcome to those who are not yet church members, we certainly will risk changing pretty much anything else - if it means saving a lost generation for the Lord.
Second, rejoicing. Heaven has a party and the angels join in, every time a lost and sinful person returns to the Lord. And yet we - we take ourselves and our church life so seriously. Again, we lose sight of Gospel priorities, getting over-anxious and stressed about stuff that is here today and gone tomorrow and doesn't match up at all with what's going on in heaven right now. Every day, you and I need to turn off the godless chatter that goes on in and around us, silence the cynical sneering of the enemy, and receive afresh the amazing truth that "the King of the ages, the immortal, invisible, the only wise God" - loves us. In Christ, He has risked all to save you, and me. You are that lost sheep, pulled out of the mire and mess and tenderly carried home on the Good Shepherd's shoulders. I am that lost coin, rescued from the dirt and dust and rejoiced over in heaven. When you and I remember that, then we will not only become risk-takers for the sake of the Gospel, we will do so with rejoicing. We will be people who, even in the midst of the sufferings and struggles of this life, have about us an infectious joy and an irrepressible hope - born out of the confidence that our Heavenly Father loves us and rejoices over us.
I've recently been re-reading the 'autobiography' of one of the world's leading evangelists, Michael Green, who was Rector of St Aldate's Church in Oxford and a great influence on me when I was a Theology student. Reflecting on 50 years of Christian service and work with churches in different parts of the globe, Michael writes this:
"It is vital to realize, and demonstrate by our way of life, that the Church is the community of hope. So much in our society tends towards despair. We in the Church must be a shaft of hope, living in the light of the resurrection... This community of the Church is ultimately what draws others to Christ, or alienates them further from Him".
(Adventure of Faith, Zondervan 2001, p.167)
Mary Barr
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