Lost and Found Proper 19 Yr C September 11, 2016 St John’s Grace

+Episcopal priest and author Rick Morley says:
Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?
Nobody. No one does this. No one would ever do that. It’s insanity. If you lose 1% of your holdings, you don’t risk the other 99% to get it back. By leaving the 99, you risk them roaming off, being stolen, or being killed and eaten by a wolf.
No one leaves the 99.
Or what woman upon losing a coin, lights a lamp, sweeps the house, and searches until she finds it? And then calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, `Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’
Nobody. No one does this.
You don’t call friends and neighbors together for a celebration only to spend more money feeding and entertaining them. I mean why bother looking for the coin at all, if you’re just going to blow more money?
It’s insanity. Nobody does this.
Except Jesus.
Jesus does this. Jesus leaves the 99 to search for the lost. Jesus sweeps the house and then throws a party when the lost are found. It’s totally and thoroughly insane.
And it’s the Gospel message.
It’s the Good News of Christ that when a soul is lost, when we’re lost, that soul, is missed, longed for, and not only worth the search party, but worth the celebration-party when the soul is brought back into the fold.
Our God is the God of the lost, the God who celebrates when the lost are found .
     At one time or another we've all been lost---literally and figuratively.…we all, now and again, find ourselves tangled in the bramble unable to get free and desperately looking for rescue.
The good news is that the rescue plan is already in place: Jesus Christ. The moment Jesus began to walk this earth, the moment Jesus defeated death through his own death and resurrection, the rescue plan was activated.
We’re never a hopeless case. We’re never lost forever, because God is always, ALWAYS looking for us.
Who goes searching for the one out of a hundred? Who goes searching for the one out of a thousand? Who goes searching for the one out of a trillion? Who goes searching for you and for me, no matter how far afield we’ve flown?
Jesus, the Good Shepherd, Jesus the rabble rouser, Jesus the teller of obscure parables, stories that expose a truth we didn’t even know existed, that’s who. Jesus: the one who will always find us no matter what.
Now a sensible sermon based solely on the readings for today would continue to address all the varied ways we get lost, all the ways we hide from God, the ways we thwart God’s reaching out to us. But today is the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. And for those of us who lived through those attacks we can’t let this day go by without acknowledgement. If we don’t remember then we are causing all 2,996 people killed and the more than 6,000 people injured to be the lost sheep, caught in the bramble, forgotten, dismissed, ignored. We can’t do that, we shouldn’t do it.
For as those buildings collapsed into smoldering piles of fiery dust , as that plane crashed into the Pennsylvania countryside and as the Pentagon burned, hundreds of people, just like the shepherd, just like the woman with the coin, refused to turn their backs, refused to give up on the lost.
If this was a regular Sunday and not the 15th anniversary of 9/11 a preacher would talk about how this Gospel is about sin and forgiveness. That this Gospel tells us that no one is “too far gone” to be saved through God’s amazing grace. But this isn’t any regular Sunday. Because 15 years ago begged the question---where in the world was God as those nearly three thousand people died and those 6k+ were injured? What did those people do to deserve such a fate? And I get that. Why do bad things happen to good people? Frankly I don’t know, that’s my first question when I come face to face with God--- but what I do know is that God was there, in Manhattan, in Shanksville PA and in Washington DC on 9/11/2001. God was in every single first responder who ran toward, who ran into rather than away from. God was with those first responders who wouldn’t get off the smoldering pile until they were absolutely positively sure that there was no one, no one left behind. Where was God then, where is God now? God is in the darkest corners. God is in the most horrific scenes, God is in the most broken of hearts. God is there, God is here. Through you, through me, through every single human being who seeks Christ in  everyone, everywhere, no exceptions, God is there.
And that, my friends is the good news extracted from that darkest of dies. Who seeks the one who is lost and in danger, leaving behind the 99 who are safe and sound? God does.
Today is a sad day in our history, a painful day. But it is also a Gospel day. Because on that day, as the world wept, so did God. As the heroes of 9/11 ran into instead of away from horror, God was with them, as the search for survivors which would turn out to be futile carried on day after day, God was with them. Who searches for the one lost sheep out of a hundred? God does.
Who searches for the one lost coin and then spends three times as much money celebrating finding the coin? God does.