Finding Forgiveness

17^th Sunday after Pentecost; Yr. C, September 15, 2013

Exodus 32:7-14; Psalm 51:1-10; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10

Sermon preached at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church

            So a woman lost one of her ten silver coins, and she searched the house up and down until she found it.  It reminds me of the time I lost an ear ring, and I search the house the car, the pathway to the church door, the parking lot and the grass around my car.  I desperately wanted to find it, because what do you do with just one of a pair of earrings.  But I didn’t find my lost thing.  It stayed lost, probably sitting in some obscure dusty corner … waiting to be found.

            I knew that earring was lost, because I still had its partner in my left ear.  The only thing harder then losing it, was telling Nancy that it was gone … because it was her earring.   She had bought them for our wedding in New Hampshire.  Someone told me I should pray to St. Anthony, because that always works, but I didn’t.  That’s never really worked for me.  I just kept looking.  Something inside me made me believe that it was somewhere near by, that I was probably looking right at it, but not seeing it.  If only I looked in the right place … the lost thing would be found.  I imagined myself finding it, and running inside to tell Nancy.  Look, the lost have been found, I’d say!  It’s right here in my hand! We’d both smile and jump for joy.  We’d do a little happy dance in the kitchen and celebrate!  My guilt would be lifted and peace restored.  But I never did find it.

            When I lost the earring and went in and told Nancy, she was disappointed, but not angry.  The earring has some sentimental value, but my losing it was not the end of the world.  My guess is that when I told her that the earring was lost, within a short time, I was forgiven.  Nancy forgave me, long before I forgave myself.  It wasn’t the earring that was important.  What was important was our relationship with one another.  I said I was sorry, and I promised to wear earring backs in the future when I borrowed her earrings.  For her, I think it pretty much ended there, at least … I think it did.

            You can’t be in relationship with someone and not have something like that happen.  We hurt one another, many times unintentionally.  What matters is what we do in those relationships when difficult stuff happens … when we put something or someone else in higher place than the one we’ve pledged to love.  As Christians, the most important relationship we have is with God.  Our God is a jealous God, we shall not put anything else before God.  When we start worshipping our own golden calves … our work, our stuff, our freedom, our time, our food, our whatever it is … how will we respond.  Will we run and hide like Adam and Eve in the garden and deny any wrong doing?  Maybe, because we don’t always recognize what’s going on.  We don’t always realize it when we’ve started walking down the path toward fear or insecurity or pride.  If that happens, I think what our gospel reading is telling us, is that God will always coming looking for us. 

            God is hopelessly in love with us.  So much so that if God were the shepherd of a flock, he would go out into the wilderness to look for us … and leave the others.  God would do the risky thing … go out into danger to find us.  And when we are found again, and brought into right relationship with God, the whole community would celebrate … because we would be whole once again.

            God is hopelessly in love with us.  So much so that if God were a woman with ten silver coins, God wouldn’t cease looking for the one that was missing until it was found … even though he still had nine other precious coins.  He would grieve the one that was lost and search tenaciously for it.  When that coin was found, and brought back into right relationship with God, the whole community would celebrate … because we would be whole once again.

            Do we trust God enough to believe that?  Christ Jesus came into the world to save us from sin, to reconcile us to God and one another.  God wants us to have the joy of sharing in relationship, in relationships rightly ordered … relationships that celebrate and respond in love and caring … relationships that know mercy and compassion … relationships that hold us accountable … relationships grounded in forgiveness and hope. 

            Do we trust God enough to believe that no matter what we do, there is absolutely nothing that can separate us from God? Do we?  It’s hard.  It’s beyond our imaging, because we only get glimpses of it from in our human relationships.  We believe in a hopeless God, one hopelessly in love with us … one who will never stop seeking us … whose patience is eternal.  Trust in that and imagine each act of repentance and reconciliation as a grand party in the household of God.  Every time is an opportunity to come back to God’s loving embrace, God’s arms wide open to welcome us home. 

We just need to trust that it’s possible.  Nancy offered me forgiveness long before I accepted it.  We never found the earring, but we did find each other.  That makes all the difference to us and to God.

           

Amen.