on 25 October 2024
The other day I found myself in the City of London and my phone battery had died. I was confident I knew that I knew where I was going. I was slightly smug that I could find my way around central London without needing a phone. It was only after walking 20 minutes and seeing buildings for the third time around I began to realise that my confidence might have been misplaced. I asked a shop worker about the street I was looking for but they barely spoke English and were no help. There was no A-Z (those under 40 won’t know what that is) that I could buy in the newsagents I passed.
It took me a while to awake to the realisation that I was lost. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was. There was something humbling, dare I say humiliating about it. I’d lived in this city for 25 years and yet did not know where I was.
One writer has said that for the first time in history there is a generation growing up that will never say in a response to a question, “I don’t know”; instead, they will just google the answer. In the same way, technology has moved at such a pace that no one has a Sat Nav anymore, but they just use their phone with Google maps and different apps to help them find their way. No one need ever be lost again because of technology- of course, that is if the technology works.
My issue was the realisation that I had been lost all this time, but I didn’t realise it. I was so confident in my own ability and rightness, an assurance that I knew the way – I was utterly blind to my lostness.
I think we see this in our culture consistently. In so many ways, our world thinks that it knows better than previous generations. It clearly displays what CS Lewis called ‘chronological snobbery’. However, there is rarely any awareness of lostness. There is little recognition in our culture of where we have come from, where we are, or where we are going. There is a refusal to admit that we might be lost. There are millions of people in our city blind to their lostness.
The word lost conjures lots of distressing images. The child in the supermarket separated from his mother in floods of tears. The driver in an unfamiliar city having no idea where he is. We talk of being lost in our thoughts, that is someone being so focussed in one’s thoughts that they are no longer paying attention to their surroundings. We talk of someone having “lost it”, meaning that they suddenly lose control of their emotions and start to shout or cry or laugh. When someone is said to have lost control, that is never seen as a good thing.
The great chapter in the Bible on being lost is Luke chapter 15. There Jesus presents us with a lost sheep, a lost coin and a lost son. Jesus tells those parables to religious people who were pretty confident of their own righteousness.
In his first parable there is a sheep who is lost, he is only one of 100, but this shepherd remarkably leaves the 99 and goes after the one. There is enormous joy because the one sheep has been found. The good shepherd goes after the sheep and searches for it until he finds it.
The next story is of the lost coin. Here there is a poor woman who has lost one of her 10 silver coins. She cleans the house, searches the house, turns the house upside down and then finds it. Again, the emphasis is on the woman searching, seeking that which is lost and the joy of it being found.
The question we could ask is, ‘What would have happened if the lost sheep and the lost coin had not been found?’, and the very simple answer is that they would have been lost forever. The shepherd is looking for the sheep, but the sheep are not looking for the shepherd. The woman is looking for the coin, but the coins are not looking for the woman. There is no hope for the sheep or the coin until they are found.
The first two stories picture a God who came to seek and save the lost. He is the one who seeks, searches, saves and finds. We need to pray that people would recognise that they are lost, they would face up to the clear reality and stop pretending. If they are not found they will be lost forever.
The other truth we need people to see is that they are valuable to God. He cares for the lost, that is clear from Luke 15 – the lost sheep so valuable to the shepherd, the coin so valuable to the woman and obviously a lost son so valuable to his father
The third story is different however, there are two sons. The older dutiful, seemingly well-behaved older son. The younger is wild and kicks off the traces. He goes off into the far country, squanders his inheritance and ends up in a terrible way. The father in the story does not go after him, does not send a search party, he waits and he waits and he welcomes. It’s a beautiful and sobering picture to us of the joy that awaits those who will repent and come back to the father. There is a response that is called for to the good news of a God who comes to seek and to save – to come to our senses and return to our father.
The older son, close to home, turns out to be just as lost as the younger one, but he doesn’t realise it. The punchline of the chapter is the religious leaders whom Jesus told the parables too have no idea that they are lost and outside the party
Luke 15 is a chapter for our day. It speaks to the religious, and irreligious; the one who knows he’s lost, and the one who doesn’t. It makes us face up to the reality of our lives. It shows us the terror of what it is to be lost and the glory of what it is to be found. It tells us of the wonder of a God who comes down to rescue, and man’s response to God. It should move us as a church that the people around us are lost, without hope and without God. It is easy to be anaesthetised to this. Most of all it should cause us to live lives of humility, grace and thankfulness that we are people who have been found because “The Son of Man came to seek and save that which was lost”.