Lost and Found: Sermon for the 14th Sunday after Pentecost, September 14, 2025

The Parables of the Lost Coin and Lost Sheep, by Gary Roulette

by the Rev. Leslie Scoopmire

Readings:

Exodus 32:7-14

Psalm 51:1-11

1 Timothy 1:12-17

Luke 15:1-10

Does God change God's mind?

There are those who claim God does not-- that God has already foreordained everything that happens-- and they often voice this idea, almost without thinking about what they are saying-- at the most inopportune times, such as when a calamity has occurred. "It's God's will," they will say, and sure, for some, that provides comfort. But I heard someone say that at a funeral for a toddler who had died in surgery. The parent erupted with a quiet fury and grief. "I don't believe in a God who would do such a thing." And I told him when we talked later that I didn't believe in that God either.

People who believe that God never changes God's mind also have a tendency to believe that God has already decided who is going to Heaven and who is going to Hell-- even before those people are born. To most of us, this exposes the enormous flaw in their thinking. First how can they discount the dozens of incidents in scripture and in experience when God is shown to be seeking us out, since God always initiates revelation?

Then there's this: If God already knows if we are going to be believers and disciples or stumbling blocks and unrepentant doers of evil, then what is the point of our lives? And frankly, is there really any need for God at all? Is there any sign of God's love, God's grace, or God's mercy if God can set in motion the eternal torment of millions of people without care? Is it any wonder that so many people have turned away from this very common depiction of God?

No. The foundational characteristic of God is love and care, seeking relationship with us, and seeking our flourishing. The intricate abundance of creation itself is testament to that. Stories like the one we hear in our reading from the Book of Exodus makes it clear that God does indeed change God's mind-- and also provides evidence that God has NOT foreordained everything that happens. It also implies that intercessory prayers are not just a waste of breath, as Moses pleads for his stubborn, and spiritually lazy, people. God does NOT, actually, lead us into temptation-- we can find it on our own, thank you very much. We humans have got it favorited in our spiritual GPS.

This is a word I think many of us desperately need to hear after a week from Hell, here in America. Wednesday, September 10 saw a heinous, repugnant, targeted assassination of a far right political activist, Charlie Kirk, on the campus of a university in one of the most conservative areas in Utah.  It was a profoundly unAmerican and evil act. Jesus instructed us to pray for our enemies and those who hate us. Not deprive them of life.

That was bad enough. But consider that before that vile incident, there were 31 incidents of gun violence already that day, which resulted in 11 deaths and 21 injuries. After the assassination, there was another 27 incidents of gun violence all across this nation, with 9 dead and 22 injured. These numbers include an incident in St. Louis in which a 15-year-old was shot and injured at a McDonalds, and a ten year old child was shot and injured in his own bedroom when someone sprayed his apartment complex with more than 40 rounds in St. Joseph. These numbers exclude those killed by police without shooting anyone, of which there were 8 incidents and 8 deaths.

On a single day, 67 gun violence incidents, resulting in 29 deaths and 42 injured. And since 2022 firearms have been the number one cause of death in children ages 1-19. More than car crashes. More than cancer. And yet the elected leadership of this country lacks the will to act to reduce this scourge of gun violence, and we do not hold them accountable for it.

Did God foreordain or "allow" these things to happen? Of course not. In every case, human beings made the choice to buy a gun, pull a trigger, often multiple times, and attempt to take a life.

The stories from Exodus, and our Gospel, show a God who is deeply invested in God's relationship with God's people. A God deeply involved in human flourishing. A God who is affected when we choose to worship our own wills, when we set ourselves in the place of God, thinking we should have the power of life and death over other persons. A God who knew that those around the Israelites who worshipped human-made idols usually appeased those idols with acts of cruelty, even human sacrifice.

Trying to imitate those around them, the Israelites had made for themselves a golden calf, made by their own hands from their own golden jewelry and plate. They then claimed that that calf was God-- a God they could reduce into a small statue, a God they thought they could contain. A God who could be ignored most of the time while they did what they wanted. They worshipped a God of their own making. And that is always the danger, then or now. For far too many in this country, guns are a golden calf, and they are worshipped above human life.

No human-made system, no tool, no possession should be placed over our love and obedience to God, to the debt of forgiveness and mercy we owe God. Placed side-by-side, these two readings remind us to place our relationship with God first in our lives, and to make our relationships with each other centered around restoring the lost and the vulnerable to their place within our community, and being willing to sacrifice ourselves to do that.

God can change God's mind, and God calls us to change our hearts, especially our inaction in the face of violence, dehumanization, and exploitation of others.

Being a disciple means getting our priorities, and our hearts and wills, aligned with those of God: "thy kingdom come, thy will be done," we will pray soon. Love of God, and obedience to God's will for us to truly love each other, are to take priority over self-centeredness and estrangement. We are never to substitute the works of our hands or the systems we've devised as objects of worship in place of God, not economic theories, not money, not power, not tools or weapons, not tribalism, not our own delusions of grandeur and invincibility nor our fears and insecurities over the love and lordship of God in our lives.

Our gospel poses an important question for all of us: what is the value of a person, a single living, breathing human soul? What should we be willing to risk or to spend or regulate to prevent the loss of innocent life, or to reclaim those who have turned away from God's command that we love each other and instead worship one of the many modern idols like guns, or political power, or wealth, or prejudice, or contempt for creation? How can we truly take these questions seriously, and how might it affect our views on violence, on justice, on respecting the dignity and worth of every person?

Our gospel indeed insists that God does not, in fact, will anyone to be lost,  anyone to be forsaken, and God will exert every effort into calling us back when we have turned aside and wandered off, or worshipped other things. Instead God is portrayed as a shepherd who leaves the 99 behind to go find the one who is lost. God is also portrayed as a woman who searches unceasingly for a single lost coin.

And so the emotional arc of today's readings shifts from rejection by the Israelites, anger by God, pleading by Moses, grumbling by the critics of Jesus, to God and the heavens rejoicing. Rejoicing, because Jesus, the Son of God, exemplifies the life of faith as one that reaches out to the lost, standing up for the vulnerable and oppressed, even to the point of self-sacrifice. That is the path of a disciple and believer in the peace he preached and the path he called us to follow.

Our communities, and our nation, are in crisis. We are in crisis because we have rejected the love that is at the center of human flourishing. We were made for God, and we were made for each other. The love and interdependence that sustains us, and all creation, requires us to melt down the golden calves that we've built, and instead recover our own humanity and will to stand together. Let us pray for that revival within ourselves. Pray, yes, for the strength to ACT-- then act to live our faith boldly and for the blessing and well-being of us all, friend or foe, saint or sinner, in the name of love, and in the name of our Savior.

Amen.