31st Sunday: Lost and Found

Being lost can be a scary situation. I have a great sense of direction and being a geologist, who used maps and compasses, helped. Yet, one time, while hiking in Northern New Mexico I got seriously lost. Thinking I could save some time, I got off trail on a shortcut of my own devising. But when I got amid the trees, and it was cloudy, so I could not see the sun, I lost all sense of direction. I began to panic. I swear I even heard a wolf (coyote) howl. So I remember telling myself stop, breathe. I was able to re-trace my steps, got back onto the path, and eventually got to where I needed to be. My heart racing a bit, humbled a lot.

These days with our technology getting lost seems less to happen, or so it seems. However, it still happens.  And there are still places where that technology will not work.

Technology does not help with other and maybe even more serious kinds of lost.  How many of us get lost in our depression, our addictions, our heads?  

Sadness occurs when we know someone who is an alcoholic but refuses to believe it, even though being drunk is normal, drinking all the time…  We want them to get better, but they will not.

I see people so lost in their own wounds too. How many of us know those people who have legitimately been hurt, and yet, refuse to seek help, counseling, refuse to forgive...and they become lost in misery, in anger, in hate.  

We all can know people become lost in the pressures of trying to live life. They feel so much pressure to perform, to be a certain way, to achieve a certain status...and if they fail, they do violent things against themselves and others.

Who are we?  At the very core of our being, who are we?

Jesus Christ makes it clear. He reveals nothing new, but brings to fulness the scriptures and tradition.  The very core of our being, we are the children of God, we are a child of God.  The very starting point from which all else derives comes from us being God’s children.   This means we are always loved, as the first reading reminds us.  This means that love will never be taken away, as Jesus’ own death and resurrection demonstrates. 

This love becomes our strength to grow and develop as persons, as human persons. We experience our self. It is the foundation upon which we are female or male, daughter or son, brother, sister, friend, and beyond!

This is part of the Good News!  We are God’s Children.

And yet, what happens in life?  We try for shortcuts, we stray off the path, we get distracted… . We forget our core, we misplace our core on something other than God… . Stuff… . We become lost in this world, and when lost, we are weakened, we are vulnerable.

It is no secret that this passage from Luke is one of my favorites.  Jesus intends to pass through, not stop. Zaccheus wishes to see this man he has heard of, but being short, he cannot.  Yet so desirous to experience Jesus he is willing to place himself in the way, and accept the ridicule.

Who does Jesus see?  Jesus sees the child of God, his brother in front of him.  He sees the potential in him, and Jesus changes his plans.  I love too what happens next. It says the people who knew of Zaccheus’ history grumble, they gossip about him. They do not see the child of God, they see the sins, they see something less.

And maybe my favorite line...it says Zaccheus stands there.

He, having been treated as a child of God, is now empowered by Christ.  No more will he be manipulated by the gossip, the comments, the machinations . NOW, from his core, his true self comes forth. He knows me made mistakes, he accepts and he amends, and he gets back on the path.

What path do we walk?  

In confirmation 2 last week, we went over the Genesis scene of creation and the fall, among other items.  One of the students asked about the first man and woman, Adam and Eve.  The story of the fall, in the Hebrew context, was that it was not just one event. We are all Adam and Eve, we all fall off the path and place our energies into things that are not God. 

We commit the original Sin on a daily basis.  We get lost.

How do we know? Look at the levels of despair in our lives. Look at the levels of anger, of fear, and how much others manipulate us on that… Look at the acrimony in our world.

And Look at the levels of compassion, mercy, generosity, kindness, JOY . This will tell us if lost or not.   "Zaccheus received him with JOY!"

If lost, okay, let’s get back to our core.  Return to who we are, a child of God.  Return to our center, that we are loved:  That we are capable of so much goodness.

This Eucharistic feast calls us to our center.  The LOST need to come here, and we need to ensure that we are here to welcome them home.  In the Eucharist we are called home, to our very cores, to who we are.  I hope that in every Eucharist we experience on some level that we are God’s child, God’s children, and we are loved at the most basic core of our being.  It can be an incredible experience to grasp this simple, yet profound belief.:  “I am a child of God”

It pulls us back to our center. It empowers us to go on and not only survive but we can thrive.  It can truly change our way of life.

And then there is this...once we begin to grasp this, even in the smallest of ways, we will want to share this with others.  In fact, this is our mission: as those who have experienced the Gospel of Jesus Christ we will in JOY want others to experience it as well.  Because there is a world that is hurting out there, and in here.

There are way too many of us lost, and way too many hurting others and hurting themselves because of this.  We as Christ’s disciples, as his sisters and brothers, we need to make sure that we help all to make to know themselves.  When our kids hurt themselves, which we read in our news way too often, we have lost our own center as church.  

Our ministry needs to listen to our youth, to hear them speak of their struggles.  They climb trees trying to be seen. We must look up.

So many others, not just our youth, also try to be seen. We must look up.   Or to your left. Or to your right.  To our friends, to our siblings, to the many strangers who wander alone.

We as God’s children...what will we do?