Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Lost and found illustration?

What is the most important thing you have ever lost?

I lost my SHSU ring just a couple weeks after getting it.

Have you ever lost something and then later found it in someone’s lost and found.

Nothing like it, right?!

Luke 15 is all about God’s lost and found.

The context is important.

Jesus is speaking to a diverse group of people.

He has done just enough to begin catching the attention of the religious folks who feel threatened by him and by the sinners and tax collectors.

Sinners and tax collectors are specific terms used here by the author because the point is that they are the ones that are not welcomed by the religious community, the Pharisees.

The crowd would be tense as Jesus would jump into teaching that would imply that all people there: religious and non religious, teacher and sinner, Roman tax collector and expert in the Jewish law, are all on the same level playing field.

He is about to point out that this lost and found collection has different items but they are all still lost.

We start here tonight because before we can even be sent we have to know what it is to be found.

(and being found infers being lost) So like the diverse crowd we join in to hear these stories that Jesus is going to share.

Text here?

Different kinds of Lost

I want to begin by considering what Jesus has identified as being in this lost and found:

Lost sheep

Missing coin

Prodigal son

sometimes overlooked, there is another missing person in our last story, the older brother

Let’s look at these one at a time:

The sheep that took a wrong turn

We do not have the details of the sheep wandering but if you know anything about sheep this wasnt like a prodigal escape.

Sheep didnt think to himself, well forget this shepherd, I am sick of being told what to do and he took off.

No for the sheep security, food, family, belonging was all with the flock and the shepherd.

Still sheep are prone to wonder haphazardly (no wonder we are compared to sheep so frequently in scripture).

How did it happen?

Probably one quick distraction, or something that scared the sheep, or something that look tasty to the sheep and before the sheep knew it she was lost from the flock and the shepherd.

The coin that just disappeared

This one was always interesting to me because it is about an inanimate object surrounding by sheep and human both lost....things with pulses at least, right.

But still, I think this one will be important for us tonight.

The coin with no doing of it’s own is lost.

misplaced.

fell out of the pocket.

You know what its like to lose that sock, remote, keys, or pocket change down into the couch.

This coin is gone.

The coin is lost.

My Son Luke just hides stuff non stop

The son that ran away

Then there is the prodigal son.

Most of us have heard some of this story in some form.

The son decides he wants to do things his own way.

Asks for his inheritance and takes off.

When he asks for the inheritance he is essentially telling dad, I wish you were dead.

He takes off and squanders everything.

Foreign country, no one to turn to, nothing to eat, or no way to provide for himself.....

He is lost.

The son that was lost at home

Up to this point the theme was the same.

Something was lost, then it was found and a celebration ensued.

Then the pattern is broken right at the end.

There is another brother in the prodigal story.

He is the older brother, the one who stayed at home and did what he was supposed to.

Stuck to his responsibilities, was waiting patiently for the day when he would become head of the household, day in and day out.

And he was mad about all the hooplah caused by the Father over the other son.

He was mad at the other son, made about everything.

What’s interesting is Jesus is telling this story in a specific way for his audience.

See he opened talking to Sinners, tax collectors, and

then in the closing verses of this narrative the story turns towards them.

The ones who were lost at home.

Or lost and they didn’t know it.

Look closely at this interaction:

Luke 15:28-

The brother seems to proclaim “I am not lost,” and the Father says....yes you are.

Same kind of different as me:

One of the best books I have ever read is a true story about a wealthy suburban white couple and a homeless black man and the way they changed each other’s life.

It’s called “Same kind of Different as me.”

Denver, the homeless man, has had a very rough life.

He has become harsh and violent after decades of racism and injustice and suffering at the hands of brokenness in the world.

Debbie and Ron begin to serve at a homeless shelter in the burbs of Dallas Fort Worth.

That’s where they meet Denver.

Early on it seemed that they were just too different to be real friends.

Ron and Debbie were facing their own issues but they were different than Denvers.

Still they stuck it out.

At the end of the story Debbie has lost her fight with cancer and Denver is the one she wants to speak at her funeral.

In reflection of this journey he says.....

“I used to spend a lotta time worryin that I was different from other people, even from other homeless folks.

Then, after I met Miss Debbie and Mr. Ron, I worried that I was so different from them that we wadn't ever gon' have no kind a' future.

But I found out everybody's different - the same kind of different as me.

We're all just regular folks walkin down the road God done set in front of us.

The truth about it is, whether we is rich or poor or somethin in between, this earth ain't no final restin place.

So in a way, we is all homeless - just workin our way toward home.”

I think Jesus chose these seemingly random ways to talk about being lost.

The sheep, the coin, the prodigal son, the older brother.

Different but the same kind of different....lost.

See there is not some degree of lostness to this story, just how aware of the lostness that they are.

So where are you tonight?

Have you just slightly wondered off the path?

distracted or afraid or saw something that looked good and did not even realize what was happening.

Maybe you feel like you have been misplaced.

Like you have no idea how you got here, feel like if you were ever in “God’s pocket, then you fell into the couch some how.”

We do not choose our families, or where we are born, or some of the things we have to endure around us

Maybe you are the prodigal.

Ran from home, away from everything because you were selfish or thought you could do it on your own and do it better, maybe you have chosen self-indulgence so that you could enjoy your life and missed the grace available for you

Maybe you are the older brother, grown up in church, 15th UM Army, or the adult volunteer here this week, serving, showing up, and just feel like you are missing something.

I believe this story is for all of us.

You are the same kind of different as me

The Search