One day last year, I lost my wallet. Somehow, between the time I got out of my car and entered the house to change my clothes and 15 minutes later, when I got back into my car, it vanished. I retraced my steps and looked everywhere. But after several hours of intense searching, I gave up, figuring my wallet would eventually turn up on its own. And then I cancelled my ATM and credit cards, secured a duplicate license, and went on with my life.

Now compare that aggravating experience with the day I lost track not of my wallet, but of my three-year old daughter. I had taken Lizzy with me on a quick shopping trip to the local department store. She had just outgrown her stroller and was very curious, quite independent, and delighted to be able – finally – to walk around unconstrained – a dangerous combination, to be sure! I made sure that I kept her little hand firmly and safely enveloped in mine. I let go of it only for a moment, it seemed, while I quickly looked through the clothes on one of the racks. But when I reached for her hand again, it was gone – and so was Lizzy.

If you’ve ever been in a similar situation, you may be familiar with that feeling of utter panic that grips your heart when your child is suddenly among the missing. I ran up and down the aisles calling Lizzy’s name. I looked all over the store, in the dressing rooms – everywhere – while the menacing image of a child snatcher loomed in my imagination. And just when I had run out of places to look, I heard that familiar, beautiful little voice call out with a giggle, “Here I am, Mama!” as she emerged grinning from under a rack of clothes.

Losing track of your wallet is an inconvenience. But losing track of your child is terrifying.

In this morning’s lesson from the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells two parables about loss to the Pharisees and scribes -- those dutiful, religiously devout keepers of the law who criticize Jesus for eating and hanging out with tax collectors and other sinners and outcasts. The Pharisees see salvation as a matter of being good and doing the right thing at the right time, and they self-righteously believe that people should get what they deserve: do good things, like they do, and you deserve good things; do bad things, like those sinners, and you deserve bad.

But that kind of thinking leaves no room for God’s grace – the unmerited, utterly unconditional, completely free, no-strings-attached, cannot-be-earned gift of God’s love. And so, Jesus responds to the legalists with these stories to illustrate the extent of God’s gracious and forgiving love.

In the first, a shepherd leaves his 99 sheep to search high and low for the one that has gone astray. Common sense would tell us that the shepherd should treat the one sheep like I treated my lost wallet – put some effort into finding it, maybe, but then simply cut his losses and let his rogue sheep go its own way.

But instead, the shepherd puts the same effort into finding that sheep as I did into finding Lizzy. To the shepherd, that sheep is unique and irreplaceable, and he has to find it. And so, he traverses the treacherous crags and ravines of Judea; he walks along narrow cliffs where one misstep could mean death; he faces the potential of wild animals and murderous thieves – all to recover his one precious lost sheep. And when the shepherd finds his sheep, he pulls it close to him in a loving embrace; and he feels so much joy that he invites his friends and neighbors to celebrate with him!

The story of the lost coin echoes the same themes; the woman lights a lamp and looks high and low, sweeping her house until she finds her coin. And when she finds it, she calls together her friends and neighbors together, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost coin.”

And so it is with our God, our shepherd. This image is used throughout the Bible, especially by the prophet Ezekiel, as we read in this morning’s Old Testament passage. Ours is a God who seeks us out when we are lost – when we become estranged from God and God’s people, when we turn away from God and God’s purpose for our life, when we lose faith or never had it to begin with. These parables tell us that God is not out to punish us when we become lost, but rather seeks to reconcile with us and draw us back into God’s loving arms.

And it’s so easy to get lost, to lose our sense of direction. We get confused by the intersections of life; we take the wrong turns, make the wrong decisions. We think that money, power, possessions or any number of other things will show us the way when all we’re doing is growing more distant from God.

Sometimes we’re not really lost – we’re just hiding. Sometimes we tuck ourselves away in deep and dark crevices. We hide behind our professional pursuits, our social personas, we hide behind excuses and alcohol and material things and constant activity. Sometimes we keep ourselves so pre-occupied with external concerns that we don’t even have time to listen to our own heartbeat, to recognize the presence of the divine in our lives.

We hide from God and we hide from others because it’s safer that way – safer than opening ourselves up to a relationship, safer than becoming vulnerable and showing our frailty, safer than revealing – or facing up to – what lurks in our heart of hearts. But even though we may turn our back on God, God does not abandon us. Even as we hide, the One who searches for us knows that what we most long for, what we most deeply desire, is to be found. And we will only find ourselves when we allow God’s forgiving love to find us.

A couple of months ago, I found my wallet – it had fallen out of a pocket onto the floor in the back of my closet and was soon covered up by a pile of shoes. When I did finally discover it, my reaction was a matter-of-fact “Huh – whaddya know.” You see, it didn’t matter any more to me because I had already replaced everything in it. But that’s not the way it is when God goes looking for us.

We are each precious, unique, and irreplaceable in God’s eyes, and like the shepherd who goes looking for his lost sheep, or the woman who turns her house upside down in search of her lost coin, God relentlessly seeks us out and rejoices when we are found.

Sometimes we may get lost and sometimes we may hide – from ourselves and from God. But we can do nothing so wrong that God will forsake us, nothing so wrong that God will not forgive us; we can never wander so far that God will not seek us out and welcome us home with joy.

When we feel most lost or most like hiding, there is God’s hand, ready to love and forgive, ready to heal when we are ready to receive, ready to restore when we are ready to step out of the shadows and into God’s light. Thanks be to God! `Amen.

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