Well, if you are one who watches television, this has been quite a week. Just as the networks are preparing to wind up their summer shows, and advertise the new shows for the fall, WHAM! - they got hit with something they couldn't refuse. For most of Tuesday and Wednesday, it didn't make much difference what TV channel or radio station you tuned in - CNN was there covering the news of the twin towers in New York, and it seemed that the networks and the independent stations were all showing CNN, maybe with an announcement here and there by a local person. As the week came to a close, the channels were different in ways, but they still showed the same stuff, the same confusion that was there about just what had happened. And then yesterday, it seemed that the channels all showed the same things:

     Over 70 policemen lost.
     Over 300 air passengers lost.
     Over 400 firemen lost.
     Over 4,000 workers in the twin towers and the Pentagon lost.
And in the Gospel lesson this morning, we hear again the word, lost.
Let us pray.

  Father, we cry at the word lost. Families and friends, wives and lovers, walk the streets of New York City searching for those who are missing, afraid that they will hear that they are finally lost. Grant them, grant each of us, faith in you. Give us strength in the knowledge that your Son died for us, and that because of him, we can never be finally lost. Help us as we search in your name, to bring back to you and to celebration those who have been lost to you, and to life eternal. Amen. Now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.

  Lost.

  Lost is a word that we do not want to hear. A man lost his keys in the snow one winter, walking from the car around to the back of the house. He searched and searched for them, before he finally gave up to the cold, and accepted that he had a spare set of keys inside. He gave them up for lost.
  Lost is something that we do not want to be. Driving in heavy snowfall, coming south on the highway from Swan River, the snow getting thicker and thicker, I sat in the van with a group of pastors as we headed home. Suddenly there was a complete whiteout, and the driver of the van drove off the edge of the road as he stopped. We had no idea where we were, and we sat there surrounded by white, lost as any of us had ever been, and we were afraid that we would wind up spending the night in the cold van.
  Jesus talks about being lost in the Gospel lesson, too. A sheep is lost. It's only one of a hundred sheep, but every sheep was valuable - if that were not so, why would the shepherd have even counted them? And when he discovered that a sheep was lost, the shepherd left the rest, and went to search for the lost sheep, the one that might be just around the hill, or might have fallen into a crevice in the rocks and been harmed.
  In another story, a coin is lost. This is a silver coin, obviously valuable, but only one of ten.   Again, if it were not valuable, why would the woman have known it was missing, and why would she have begun searching for it? And so she searched, moving the furniture, sweeping the floor, even lighting a lamp when it got dim, because she did not want to give up.
  That man in the first story, the one who lost the keys? The next spring they were lying there on the grass a few feet from the back door, but I kept it a secret still. It didn't feel good to be one who had given up.
  And that second story, about being lost in the whiteout? We sat in the van for a while, used our cell phones to call for help, and finally dug the van out and pushed it back onto the road with the help of some other pastors who had stopped behind us. And just as we began to work our way down the road, the whiteout cleared, and about 20 feet from where we had been stuck was a fence, the back fence of a motel where the sign flashed "Vacancy!"
  Now what happened in the story about the lost sheep, and the lost coin? The shepherd, and woman in the house, never gave up. They kept on searching until it was time for another word.

Found!
  The shepherd found the sheep, put it on his shoulders, and carried it home.
  The woman found her coin.
  But neither of them stopped there. They called their friends and neighbors, and said "Come to my place, I'm having a party. I found my lost sheep."
"Come over and join me to celebrate. I found my lost coin."

  And the party they had probably cost more money than the sheep was worth, and more than the silver coin was worth - but that wasn't the point. I think that we need to go past the lesson for today, to the next parable, to get the point.
  You remember that parable - the young man who asked that his father split the inheritance between him and his brother, so that he could do what he wished. It was tantamount to saying "Dad, I wish you were dead so that I could have a better life" - but the father split things up, and he lost that son. The son went off to another place, where he proceeded to lose or spend all the money, and finally to come home. The father didn't chase after him, but waited. And when the spendthrift son came walking up the driveway, the father ran to meet him, had a fine robe placed on him, and called for a party to celebrate the fact that the son, who had been lost, was found.

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