Luke 15: 1-10
Lost.Maybe some of you have read or seen in movie form the story A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. If you haven’t seen it, the story begins with a young girl, Meg, talking with her science-loving, brilliant, inventing Dad telling her about his latest invention but also about love. “Love is always there. Even if you don’t feel it, it’s always there for you.” It’s almost like he’s saying goodbye.
Then, the scene changes. It’s four years later and Meg is now a young teenager. Her father has been missing for 4 years. Whatever he was on the brink of discovering in his research on time and space travel, he has been gone and they’ve heard nothing for 4 years.
But Meg’s mother reminds her daily of her father’s lesson, unfolding a paper octahedron that, when unfolded, shows a heart in its middle.
“This is our love,” her mom reminds her.
“It's...it's not gone. It's just...it's just getting enfolded.”
We know what it’s like to feel lost. Whether we’ve been lost or we’re worrying about our loved ones, we know that feeling and how hard it is to remember in the tough times, love is never lost.
We know what it’s like to feel lost. We’ve been like that sheep wandering off the edges.
Or we’ve been part of the 99, anxiously wondering where in the world the Good Shepherd has gone and when this One who has taken care of us so well will be back.
We know what it’s like to be lost.
But maybe what is much harder to grasp, to remember deep in our bodies, is how it feels to be found.
Thanks to the gift of time granted by this congregation and the Lilly grant that funded a whole summer of renewal… I was able to take a Sabbatical this summer. The grant we received funded Christ’s needs—Sabbatical pastor, guest preachers and activities of the summer--and it funded learning opportunities, rest and travels for me and my family. I was able to take two weaving classes this summer and had moments of awakening to the importance of open space and gaps as my classmates and I created fabric that didn’t exist before we started working on it.
I worked my way through an artist’s training book called The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron. This book has been on my shelf for 20+ years but honestly, I hadn’t even thought of it until I was doing a 6-week online cohort in preparation for Sabbatical. That guidebook was mentioned and I thought, “Huh, I have that book. It’s a 12-week process. I have 13 weeks… I could do that.” And it helped me explore the very real factors around and inside me that block and stifle my ability to listen to God, the Creator, and to create as a faithful response to who God has made and continues to call me to be.
During Sabbatical, I made things. I wrote, painted, wove, took photos. I watched for God. I cleaned and swept and purged and packed. I practiced flow. Finally, I could write again.
I searched and searched for what has been lost… and to see what could be found.
In her moving book One Coin Found: How God’s Love Stretches to the Margins, a long meditation on this very gospel that we’ve read this morning, Emmy Kegler writes:
Whenever we are pushed to the edges, our voices silenced, or our stories dismissed, God goes out after us--seeking us until we are found again. And God is seeking out those whose voices we too quickly silence and dismiss, too. Because God's story is a story of welcome and acceptance for everyone--no exceptions.
Kegler shows us that even when we feel like lost and dusty coins--rusted from others' indifference, misspent and misused--God picks up a broom and sweeps every corner of creation to find us.
God is creative, persistent. She is a Shepherd, yes, but she is also a broom-bearing God. She sweeps every corner of creation to find us.
Where have you been found this summer? Can you think of a moment where love was at the very center of you, the very center of whatever was unfolding?
We’ve done some milestones today in worship already… but we will have more time at the close of worship for you to share more moments when you have known, when you have noticed that you are deeply loved, that you are found, that God who sweeps every corner of creation to find you has done exactly that.
And in a spirit of gratitude for God’s boundless goodness, God’s never-ending love, let us pray.
O Great Creator, we are gathered together in your name that we may be of greater service to you and to [others]. We offer ourselves to you as instruments. We open ourselves to your creativity in our lives. We surrender to you our old ideas. We welcome your new and more expansive ideas. We trust that you will lead us. We trust that it is safe to follow you. We know you created us and that creativity is your nature and our own. We ask you to unfold our lives according to your plan, not our low self-worth. Help us to believe that it is not too late and that we are not too small or too flawed to be healed--by you and through each other--and made whole. Help us to love one another, to nurture each other's unfolding, to encourage each other's growth, and understand each other's fears. Help us to know that we are not alone, that we are loved and lovable. Help us to create as an act of worship to you.
-- An Artist’s Prayer by Julia Cameron
