Finding Ourselves Found--September 16, 2025

Finding Ourselves Found--September 16, 2025

[Jesus said:] "Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." (Luke 15:8-10)

Okay, let's be clear about something here. Coins can't move.  Coins can't make a sound if they are sitting still on a floor somewhere behind the couch or under the coffee table.  And in an era before technological gizmos like AirTags that you can stick on objects so that you can track them from your phone with GPS, coins couldn't give off a signal to reveal their locations.  In an era before flashlights, you couldn't even count on their shiny metal surfaces to reflect much light to help you find one.  Unlike a sheep, which might start bleating if it gets lost, pull itself free from the brambles if it gets stuck in some shrubbery, or even theoretically wander its way back toward the shepherd or the farm by sheer dumb luck, a coin is stuck where it is, as it is. All of this is to say that a lost coin contributes absolutely nothing to its own getting found.  Precisely zilch.  The coin doesn't even really know it's lost--it's just a stamped circle of metal, after all.

That means, at least within the bounds of Jesus' story, which many would have heard in worship this past Sunday (if you were observing the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, rather than Holy Cross Day, which is a little bit of liturgical inside baseball for church nerds), everything depends on the woman who is turning her house upside down in search of the lost coin.  It all hangs on her willingness to keep looking, to lift furniture and sweep every nook and cranny, and to risk looking like a fool when she invites her friends over for a party once the thing is found.  Jesus' tale is not at all one of a coin that strains and strives to squirm out from the shadows to be noticed by its owner. Neither can the coin do a thing to earn or achieve a spot back in the piggy bank where it was supposed to be.  All the coin brings to the situation is its lostness--and the fact that the woman who owns the coin deems it precious.  All the work of seeking, reclaiming, and celebrating is done by the woman who finds it in the end.  And to all of that, Jesus just says, "Yup. That's what it's like for God. God is the woman tearing her house apart to find one dinky little lost coin and throwing a party afterward once she has found it."

That just floors me.  Honestly, every time I read this passage wandering through Luke's gospel, I am gobsmacked. Jesus, after all, is the one who has invented this little story, a follow-up (or a build-up) that comes right after the parable of the shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep to fend for themselves to go after the one that was lost.  Had he chosen, he could have picked a case of lost-ness where the item in question has a little more agency, or has to do something first in order to warrant being reclaimed.  A story about a lost dog or homing pigeon could have featured a happy homecoming with the lost pet coming back by its own innate sense of direction, or a donkey that came untethered from the hitching post might at least bray and allow itself to be found from the noise.  But Jesus has chosen an inert, unaware, immobile coin as the lost thing in this story, almost as if to drive the point home--this is not about our efforts to get ourselves found, but about the God who relentlessly seeks us, no matter how far off to the edges or how far down into the cracks we have fallen.

All of that helps us to see where Jesus' emphasis is in this whole chapter of Luke's gospel, which begins with Jesus being criticized by the Respectable Religious Leaders for eating with "tax collectors and sinners" (and presumably for not shaming them, scolding them, or demanding some measurable life-improvement before he shared a table with them).  Jesus constantly emphasizes rejoicing on the part of the finder than on some prerequisite ritual of repentance on the part of the lost.  It's easy to hear Jesus' phrase at the end, about "joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner who repents" and to try to make that bear all the weight of this passage.  In other words, it's tempting to say, "Sure, Jesus will welcome you back--and is happy to do so--as long as you first do X, Y, and Z; you know, to repent." In some traditions, that is a prayer in an altar call. For others, a ritual with a priest and a certain number of recited prayers while rosary beads are counted.  Others insist on a properly worded expression of sorrow for sin and confession in the start of worship on Sundays to get the bad marks off the permanent record.  But none of those are in Jesus' story.  A coin can't say, "I'm sorry for getting lost." It doesn't even know it's slid off the tabletop and onto the floor. A coin can't make a promise not to get lost again, nor can it make a valiant effort to improve its behavior.  A coin can't stop being a coin or try to change from being a nickel to being a dime. It can just get found.  Maybe whatever it means to "repent" ultimately looks a lot more like letting yourself be found--or perhaps "finding yourself found by God"--rather than trying to earn our approval, put on a song and dance, or making ourselves look religious... and therefore acceptable.  Maybe God's not even waiting to see if we have truly turned our lives around first; maybe there's no six-month probationary period to test if we have become good little boys and girls first. Maybe repentance is simply the word for when it finally sinks in that God has been seeking us relentlessly all along, and discover that God never stopped loving us, but has been overturning chair, table, and desk necessary to get through to us.

All of that seems to be the thrust of Jesus' story, where the woman who stands in for the seeking God does all the work and the coin who stands in for all people who have slipped through the cracks is sought and found with tireless joy.  And if that's right, then Jesus doesn't go out to find folks at the margins and stand a few feet away, shouting, "If you will just take the first couple of steps on your own, then I'll welcome you into my embrace." But rather, Jesus goes all the way to the folks in the deep dark shadows where no lamplight would have found them and no broom would have reached them, and takes them by the hand and says, "I've found you.  You are reclaimed." And from there the celebration ensues.

I've always been kind of struck at the wonderful foolishness of that last moment of this story.  It's one thing to be diligent in searching out a lost coin if you keep the search quiet (it does have monetary value, after all).  But when you find your coin, would you seriously invite all your friends and neighbors over for a party to celebrate that you had found it?  The cost of the cocktail napkins alone would be worth more than the coin itself!  Who would do such a thing--and who would risk their own embarrassment by throwing a party over finding a lost coin?  Nobody--at least nobody respectable.  Only a God who is less interested in looking "strong" or "reputable."  Only a God who loves the ones who are found more than God's own ego or reputation.  Only then does such rejoicing make sense.  

And of course, that is precisely what Jesus says God is like.  God is the One reaching into every corner, getting down on hands and knees to look beside the dust bunnies under the cupboard, looking utterly foolish all the while, all for the sake of finding what was lost and then throwing a block party when it is restored.  There is never a point where God says, "It's too much effort to go to reach that person," or "Those folks are just too far gone for me to care about." There is never a point where God says, "I'm giving up on getting through to you," at least the way Jesus tells it.  If God is the woman turning her house upside down to find a lone coin that doesn't even know it's lost and cannot do a thing to make itself found, then God is never giving up on seeking out any of us--even the folks we think are "too far out there." And when all that is lost is found again, that same God intends to throw a party for the whole universe, no matter how reckless and foolish it sounds.

This is the sort of community we have been brought into as followers of Jesus--and that's the posture we are called to model for the world, too.  There is no one we can write off as being outside the bounds of God's reach.  There is no one so far beyond our experience that we do not share humanity--and thus the image of God--with. There is no one that God is willing to give up on.  What would happen if we treated every single person in the world--including the ones who frustrate us the most--in light of that truth?

Lord God, enable us to find ourselves found, and to join in your work of reaching out to everyone with your love.