In the name of the God who is love ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
What a joy and blessing it is to be here with you all at Grace and St. Stephen’s! There I was, minding my own business and trying my best to do faithful ministry in Salisbury, North Carolina when the Holy Spirit did what the Holy Spirit so often does – stirring things up. One of the things that makes grace so amazing is how it surprises us and comes unexpectedly. About a year ago, I was celebrating my 10-year anniversary as the Rector of St. Luke’s and I distinctly remember thinking, “I can’t imagine that I’d ever encounter another parish that I’d want to serve.” Truly, I was not looking for a new call, and I wasn’t even open to the idea at first. But the Holy Spirit’s clear call, along with the fantastic parish profile that you developed and your energy and hospitality during the interviews helped to open my imagination enough to know in my heart and mind that, indeed, I was being called to Grace and St. Stephen’s. And I’m so incredibly excited to see what the Holy Spirit has in mind by bringing us together.
Thank you so much for your warm and generous welcome to me and my family – Tyler, Eleanor, and Rowen. We moved here on August 16 and have appreciated all that you have to help us feel at home, which we do. Colorado Springs is absolutely beautiful – and we’re so enjoying living here. Eleanor and Rowen are doing great in school, and Tyler has adjusted well to working remotely. My first day at Grace and St. Stephen’s was Monday and I can’t tell you how much joy I’ve had this week in meeting with people and getting acquainted with this wonderful Parish.
Since February, I’ve been checking in on your livestream and know that, for a long time, you’ve been praying for your next Rector. You didn’t know you were praying for me and I didn’t know that I was being prayed for in that way, but those prayers are much appreciated and they were felt. There were so many little things that lined up to make this call work; so many moments of grace that I experienced this past spring that were paving the way for this. Thank you for your faithfulness in praying for us throughout this process. It will be my sacred duty to care for you all, and I so appreciate the ways in which you have already cared for us.
As St. Paul was developing his relationship with the church in Corinth, he sent them a series of letters and at the end of the introduction to what we call “Second Corinthians,” he writes this – “It isn’t that we are trying to control or rule over your faith, rather we work with you for your joy.” That’s what I see my job as your Rector being – to work with you for your joy, which is of course rooted in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Grace and St. Stephen’s is already a thriving parish – you don’t need me to rule over things. You’ve been without a called Rector for nearly two years, you clearly know how to faithfully lead a parish. Yes, of course, I know that I have duties and expectations to lead as the Rector, and I will. But what excites me, where my focus is, is working with you for joy.
My office isn’t quite setup yet, but when it is, I’ll hang a picture on the wall that is a print of the center portion of the Isenheim Altarpiece which is at museum in France. Using artistic license, Matthias Grünewald depicts John the Baptist at the Crucifixion of Jesus and John is pointing at Jesus with a verse from John is there next to his finger – “He must increase and I must decrease.” I keep that print in my office because it reminds me of what my job as a priest is – it’s to point to Jesus; to guide us towards the saving love of God that has no limits, no boundaries, no exceptions. Jesus is what is fascinating, attractive, and redeeming about our faith, and there is so much joy and relief in knowing that we are loved by the One who loved all things into existence, who loved the world so much as to come among us to live and die for us, and whose love stronger than even the grave. Many, many, many years from now when I reflect back on my ministry here, it is my deep prayer that it will have all been about being drawn nearer to the joy and peace of Jesus.
And this is precisely what the two short stories that Jesus tells this morning in Luke are all about – the joy of being found. Now, to be found, we have to first be lost – an experience I’ve had recently on a run near our house in Ute Valley Park. I had looked at the map before I set out, but after a few miles, I soon realized that I wasn’t quite sure where I was or what the best way back home was. We’ve all been lost before – whether it’s geographically, emotionally, relationally, politically, or spiritually. We find ourselves in a place where we’re not exactly sure how we got there or where to go next. And along with that uncertainly comes fear and panic.
Look around our culture right now and what do we see other than a people who are lost, who are marked by fear and panic? Johnathan Haidt wrote a book last year called The Anxious Generation, whose title says it all, about the state of young people in our culture. But we’re all anxious, all a little bit, or a lot bit, lost.
The readings from Jeremiah and Psalm 14 make the point painfully clear, “For my people are foolish, they do not know me; they are stupid children, they have no understanding” and “Every one has proved faithless; all alike have turned bad; there is none who does good; no, not one.” Now, look, I’m all for telling the truth and being direct, but wow. No mincing words about it this morning. But they aren’t wrong. As one of the great hymns of the church puts it, “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.”
But grace is so amazing that us being lost is the perfect condition to being found. For me, one of the most insightful and important passage in all of Scripture is Romans 5:8 and it uses one of the most important theological words – “but.” “But God demonstrates love for us in this – while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” “But” is such an important word in our faith. We turned away from God, but God loves us still. We are lost, but God seeks us out. We killed the Lord of life, but on the third day Jesus got up with all power in his hands. We were fearful and unsure of what to do, but God sends us the gift of the Holy Spirit to guide and comfort us.
“But” is an extremely important word in our faith because it’s a word of grace. “But” points us towards the incongruous nature of grace – we have done nothing to deserve our forgiveness, our blessing, our belovedness, and yet, because God is love and God loves us all, we are given these things as gifts. And the really good news about this is that if we haven’t done anything to deserve these things, we can, instead, enjoy them. We don’t have to worry about losing our belovedness or forgiveness because earning them was never up to us in the first place. When we’re lost, we don’t find ourselves, rather, we are found by God’s amazing grace.
As you’ll recall from those times of being lost, it is such a relief to be found. One of the things that you’ll pick up about me is that I like to use the word “relief” as a synonym for the word “grace.” I’m borrowing this idea from Dave Zahl whose book The Big Relief came out earlier this year. Talking about grace as relief is really helpful because grace can be hard to define and is easily confused with being graceful, making us think that it’s about our fluidity or manners. But it’s not. Grace is like that sigh of relief when the surgeon tells you that the margins of the tumor are clear, or that your bill has been paid for, or that you see a familiar path that leads out of the woods.
A spiritual writer of the Middle Ages, Bernard of Clairvaux, put it this way, “Christ came because of us, so that the mercies of the Lord might be revealed with greater clarity. What amazing condescension on the part of God, who searches for us, and what great dignity bestowed on the one thus sought.” In other words, you are so precious that God would stop at nothing to demonstrate just how much you are loved, not the messiness of human life, not the pains of the Cross, nothing.
There is so much joy in that sort of relief; it frees us to living as if love is the only thing that really matters, because it is. Grace opens us to living lives that go with the grain of God’s love, instead of against it in our fear and anxiety about having to make it ourselves and secure our own worthiness. That’s the difference that Christ makes – he takes on our burdens and assures us that because he is always with us, all shall be well. His love for us is what enables us to, in turn, love our neighbors, love our enemies, and love ourselves. This relief, that’s what our culture is hungry for, what people are tirelessly searching for. And, thanks be to God, that relief is exactly what we have in Jesus Christ.
These parables tell us that God is like a shepherd, God is like a woman, searching urgently for that which has been lost. Sure, the shepherd still had 99% of the flock and the woman had 90% of hear savings, but God doesn’t care about percentages. Unless the whole is together, it is incomplete. This is where these parables become instructive for us.
First, we rejoice that we have been found. That’s what the picnic later today is sort of about – we’re rejoicing that a new call has been found and that we are together. Because of God’s amazing grace, the Church ought to a be a community of joy and celebration, and I look forward to the party. And then, based on that relief and joy of being found, we seek out others and like John the Baptist in that painting I mentioned, point others towards the joy of Jesus.
These parables of the lost sheep and lost coin would have us to look around and ask, “Who have we lost?” Maybe it’s people who used to be a part of this community. Maybe it’s people who have been wounded by the Church. Maybe it’s people who haven’t yet come to see how much they are loved. Maybe it’s people who we haven’t fully welcomed into our midst.
The Church isn’t so much a place where the lost come to be found, it’s a place where the found are reminded of our mission to seek out the lost. In terms of sports, Church isn’t a home game; we’re on the road. This wonderful campus isn’t where the game is played, this is the practice facility. This is where we practice generosity, where we practice saying “I’m sorry” and “I forgive you,” where we come to be nourished in the Eucharist and reminded of our belovedness declared at Baptism. But these are not ends in and of themselves, we do these things for the sake of the world.
These parables help us to ask, “who have we not welcomed, who needs a fresh start, who needs a place of rest?” One of the things that attracted me to this parish and that I love is the wording on our reredos – “In this place I will give peace.” To a weary, wandering, and lost world, our call is to point to this peace that the world cannot give and cannot take away. It is the peace, the relief, that comes from having been lost, but being able to joyfully breathe a sigh of relief and say, “but now I’m found.”
Friends, like the woman who rejoices in finding the lost coin, God rejoices that you are here this morning. And I rejoice that I’m here with you. I pray that each of you hold that truth in your hearts – that no matter what, you are found in and by God’s love. And I also pray that through our witness, many others will find the relief of God’s love for them. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, I once was lost, but”, well, you know how it goes.
