"Commissioned to Reach Out Together"
or
"Hide and Seek with the Lost and Found"

Luke 15:1-10

40 Days of Community, week 2

This past week of wonderful, cooler weather (if you can call 90o cool) reminded me of my childhood days when the first hint of fall would come after those long, sultry, summer days in southern Louisiana. After months of steamy humidity and 100+ degrees, the first breath of cool weather seemed to energize everyone. People would get outdoors again, and the neighborhood would hum with the sounds of dogs barking, screen doors slamming, neighbors talking, and of course children playing. In those days before the internet, VCRs, Ipods, and computers, when school got out we children would take to the street with long matches of capture the flag, kick the can, and of course - hide and seek.

These weren’t ordinary games to us. They were moments of high drama. Each afternoon kids up and down the street would run from one backyard to another, feet pounding, voices calling to one another in urgent whispers and triumphant shouts. "Have you found her?" we would gasp. "Where is he?" "Let’s split up into two groups to look!" And so on and so forth, until the last person was found and the game was over.

Hide and seek, of course, was not a totally innocent game. Every so often it would turn ugly. Someone would hide a little too well, the search would go on a little too long, and the group would get frustrated. "Come on!" we’d yell. "No fair hiding inside! Make a sound! We’re not going to look any more unless you give us a clue!"

That, of course, was the ultimate threat, for once the group stopped looking, the game was over. I remember one evening a friend hid so well none of us could find him. We tried to coax him out, but when he still failed to appear we all gave up and went home. Unfortunately, we forgot to tell him the game was over. Hours later he tearfully confronted me at my house: "But you were supposed to keep looking! It’s not over until you’ve found me!"

Wishful thinking. In real life, it’s over when we quit looking.

There is another kind of hide and seek that still goes on every day, only it’s not a game. It is discussed in Luke 15:1-24, through the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son. We know these stories well. I read a couple of them to you. They tell of the shepherd who left his ninety-nine sheep in the wilderness in order to search for the one that wandered off; the woman who turned her house upside down in order to find a precious coin that was missing; the father who waited perhaps years for his wayward son to return home. These were people who kept looking and hoping, people who knew that the game wasn’t over until everything and everyone lost was found again. The stories tell us something important about God’s reaction to people who are hiding or lost: no matter how they come to be lost or how well they hide, God will keep looking, for as my friend long ago said, the game is not over until everyone is found.

These stories remind us that Jesus always had a special concern for the lost. He was passionate about seeking them out. Much of his ministry focused on searching for people who had gotten lost within the community: tax collectors and prostitutes, lepers and lunatics. He went to the ordinary people who simply felt they were too busy with life to fool with religion. Whether they were victims of circumstance or had simply made bad choices, he wanted to find them. He went where they were. He listened to their stories and accepted invitations to their homes. He showed his care by reaching out to them.

We can see Jesus’ concern for the lost in the story of Zacchaeus, found in Luke 19:1-10. Do you remember Zacchaeus? He was a despised tax collector, looked down upon by all, treated with scorn. No one cared about him. No one wanted anything to do with him. He was one of the lost. But when Jesus came by one day, of all the people who were crowding around him, he singled out Zacchaeus, the one no one else saw. He went to where Zacchaeus was. Jesus listened to his story. He showed Zacchaeus God’s love. Later Jesus would say, "Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost."

Why was Jesus so concerned about the lost? Why was he willing to risk his reputation by going out of his way to find the people everyone else wanted to forget? Maybe it was because he knew that even though these good people hadn’t become lost the same way, they all had one thing in common: none of them had anyone looking for them. The game was over; the search parties had given up on them long ago. Now nobody really cared if they were found or not.

Does that sound familiar? It should. There are people all around us who are hurting and struggling. There are families with tremendous financial burdens. There are youth today who are being raised by parents who never went to church, and young adults who didn’t grow up with Sunday School and VBS and have no memories of the church. There are older adults who over the years have become so disillusioned and beaten down by life that they can’t bring themselves to trust God any more. There are so many others who just don’t know Jesus as Savior.

We don’t know what to do with them. We don’t know how to relate to them, so we ignore them, stop reaching out to them, until they finally become lost. Friends, if no one cares enough to look for them when they’re lost, if no one reaches out to them, if no one prays for their return someday, if nobody tries to help them with their burdens - in short, if no one wants them to be found... they probably never will be.

The good news is that there are a lot of people around us who are looking for more, searching for answers, calling our for attention, who want to be found. If we are willing to go to them, to listen to them, to love them, to be friends with them, they will respond. I want you to hear about one such effort by a small group of people in our congregation to reach out to the unchurched and about the response they have had. (Invite Lance, Jenny, and Spencer to share for 3-5 minutes about ArtBeats and their new worship service.)

This is just on example of what can happen when we reach out to people around us - our friends, family, co-workers, neighbors - and love them in the name of Christ. This past week during our 40 Days of Community, the daily devotions have helped to remind us not only of the importance of reaching out to others, but also that only God can cultivate in us that deep desire to love the people around us with the love of Christ,

40 Days should remind us that we will always do this better together. As we saw last week, it begins with loving one another. After all, if you are going to invite someone to church, it helps if the church is acting like family, doesn’t it? Our love for each other will most clearly show the love God has for us. When we pray for one another’s efforts, when our Community Groups become places of true hospitality, when we reach out into the community together, we are helping each other make a difference. Tonight and this week in our Community Groups we are going to talk about how we can join together in concrete ways to help one another reach out for Christ. I hope you will attend.

I do believe that there are a lot of lonely, lost people pleading for us to keep looking and searching and sweeping the corners for them. I do believe that there are people all around us who need to know that they are precious in the eyes of God and in the eyes of the church. I’m thinking now of the words of Jesus in John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life." Friends, if God loves people that much, so should we. If people matter that much to God, they ought to matter that much to us. If God doesn’t quit looking, neither should we. Remember, in this game of life we are supposed to keep looking for the lost, for the game’s not over until we’ve found the very last one. Amen.