St. Andrew’s Pictou, September 12, 2004

 

Finding (is) Joy!

 

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28

1 Timothy 1:12-17

Luke 15:1-10

 

It is amazing how many ways that it seems that life can be divided into two!

 

It seems that life can be divided into:

-good and bad,

-life and death,

-back and white,

-happy and sad,

-positive and negative,

-inside and outside, and on the list goes.

 

One of my favourite tools in helping people is for them to understand that when they consider themselves and all people on the face of the earth, there are only two ways that each person sees themselves: either as “a victim,” or as a “non-victim.”

 

Each person you will meet sees themselves either as a victim or a non-victim.

 

Now anyone can be victimized. If you are walking down the street and there is a bank robbery and you get in the way of a stray bullet, you would be “a victim” of that robbery.

 

So anybody can be a victim, as we all are at one point or another, but not everybody who has even been a serious victim sees themselves and lives out their lives, as “a victim.”

 

I was given a book last week from a minister friend of mine, Rev. Bob Syme. The book is about how the psychology industry is taking patients or clients and creating victims out of them. Bob’s hair has all fallen out from his cancer treatment and he was showing me what the chemo had done to his skin; it was red and hard and it breaks open. He has to sleep ten hours a day, but he did not present himself to me as a cancer victim!

 

He told me that he was so happy to see me. He is feeling well. He gave me a critique of this book, and wrote a thoughtful inscription in it. I hadn’t seen him for over and year and he told me that he hadn’t been able to replace me with another minister who would be a lunch partner and friend.

 

One of the quotations in the book is by a woman with a big scar across her face, She said, “Don’t you dare call me a victim!” - a good lesson for all of us to refuse to be a victim!

 

I remember a story about a man who was interviewing a young woman in Florida who had beaten, raped and left for dead, but she lived, and he was interviewing her from her wheel chair, when she was now confined for the rest of her life.

 

Finally, his curiosity got the better of him and he said to her I find it rather amazing that you don’t seem to have any bitterness for the man who did this to you.

 

Her reply was: “I refuse to give that man one more minute of my life!”

 

She might have been victimized, and he destroyed a great deal of who she had been, but she was determined that he wasn’t taking any more from her; “not one more minute!”

 

In spite of her horrific experience, and what she “lost,” this woman “found” something. She found that happiness is a choice. She lost a lot, but she found that with her choices, she was still able to find enjoyment and happiness in life.

 

The dynamic of finding and losing is what our topic is all about today: finding and losing.

 

The woman in the wheelchair’s experience is really a microcosm of what we all experience in life. We all want to be happy and have our lives, but we are confronted by life’s losses.

 

So, at any given moment, we are all in the process of either finding or losing.

 

Instead of a wheel chair in the reading from Jeremiah, the people are in the midst of a barren landscape: they have lost their faith and deserted God. Invasion and desolation threaten their existence: even the birds have left, the vegetation has turned to desert, and the cities were laid in ruins. They had experienced massive loss.

 

In spite of how bad things are there is hope: God still claims that this is not the end and that restoration is still possible. “I have not relented nor will I turn back.” God tells the people.

 

All of us need to know Jeremiah’s pronouncement from God, when we experience what appears to be total desolation in our lives: that the story in not over. God is still there.

 

The apostle Paul found this reality to be true in his letter to Timothy: He had been a total reject about Jesus, who Jesus was and what he was about. Yet we see him when Paul’s life had been totally turned around.

 

“I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence.” Paul had Christians put to death you know; he was really a murderer.

 

What Paul just wrote shows us that he had been a lost man, but he found Jesus and it changed his whole life for the better; he found faith and love. “… the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.”

 

Paul points to himself, as formerly being such a bad person to prove that Jesus can redeem anyone if he can save someone the way he had been. Paul had “lost” himself, but “found” himself in Jesus.

 

The act and practice of “finding” has a lot to do with being a Christian.

 

The three examples of “finding” in the ten verses we read in Luke has Jesus giving examples of great searching to find, with either the shepherd who goes to great lengths to find his lost sheep or the woman who finds her lost silver coin.

 

All the churches in Christendom would be full if people in the pews sought out the lost.

 

“Which one of you… does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?”

 

What I want to emphasize today is the joy of finding;

THE SHEPHERD, searching for the lost sheep:

“When he found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices.

And when he comes home he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.

IN HEAVEN, Jesus said:

“Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

THE WOMAN, who lost her silver coin:

“When she has found it, she calls her neighbours, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that was lost.’”

FOR EMPHASIS Jesus again states:

“I tell you there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

 

“Repents” means a changing of the mind; from going away from God, to going towards God; from losing God to finding God.

 

The joy is in the finding what was lost! (Remember the father’s joy in the prodigal son story?)

 

Whether you find your lost sheep, your lost coin, your lost son, or your lost soul: you rejoice!

 

Now you will notice in Jesus’ words, that when joy is experienced, even if it is alone, must… be… shared.

 

It seems that joy is a group experience:

-the shepherd called together his friends and neighbours,

-the woman called together her friends and neighbours,

-even in heaven: the angels rejoiced together.

 

It is God’s intention in Jesus Christ that we all find the joy of being at home with God.

 

The irony is that while we want to find joy, the actual “finding” is the joy.

 

My prayer for you is that over and over again we experience that joy; that moment when we can share with each other and rejoice and say: “Rejoice with me, for I have found what was lost!”

 

Amen               Rev. Alan Stewart