Fourth Sunday before Advent

2 Thessalonians 1 Luke 19.1-10

Gill is always forgetting where she has put the car keys. I cannot help there either because I do not always see where she puts them. We had to solve the problem. Then we saw the ideal gadget, a bleeper attached to the key ring, and which sounds when a button is pressed. Now, the keys are never lost.

For something to be lost it can take on different meanings. If we are looking at the car keys they are lost when they are no longer where they are expected to be found. Day after day the keys have always been put in the same spot or on the same place on a shelf. But, on this one occasion, they were placed somewhere different. To all intents and purposes they are lost, especially if it is some days later when the keys are required and cannot be found in their usual spot.

The other sense of something being lost really applies to us. When we are uncertain of our place in life’s pathway we too can be considered lost. but for us it is far more important that we should be found than say the car keys which we could possibly manage without for a time. There is always a taxi that can be called to relocate us to where we need to be if there is a sense of urgency in our trip.

We often talk about being lost in life. We are in a place populated by the dammed and the doomed. I love Dad’s Army on the television. It is a program full of clean humour and almost impossible situations happening. One of the humorous lines is when Fraser says, ”We are doomed, doomed….” The company are in a situation where they can see no easy or practical way out. The future is grim. They are doomed indeed. They are hopelessly lost.

But in the gospel treading this is not the type of being lost that we are looking at. Here it is the condition of being lost in one’s place in society. We might know where we are, at a road junction for instance, but where we are in the eyes of others may completely allude us. Where are we when we look at ourselves and our position with God?

The last line of the gospel reading read, ‘the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.’ Jesus, the Son of Man, does not have a magic button. We, as the children of God do not come with a bleeper attached to us. So, there is no button pressing and bleeper sounding that can happen to announce where we are that we may be found.

Instead, we have the gospels which are full of directions, like an atlas which is full of maps showing us the roads that we may take to reach our destination. There are parts in the gospels which relate to us at every point of our life. But, just reading the words without actually taking on board what they are saying to us will not necessarily help us to find our right position in life. The words demand from us action. Jesus speaks to us from the pages, from events in our life, from many directions, and it is in every one of these ways that he is expecting from us a response. He is looking to a change in life from us.

Listening to the Word of God, hearing Jesus speaking to us, by whatever means, is very comforting. We are gradually and gently being brought back into the fold. The fold is the whole family of God, as his children we are being brought back as a farmer retrieves a lost sheep. We resume our rightful place in the household of God and in our Fathers’ family.

Collect for the Fourth Sunday before Advent

Almighty and eternal God,

you have kindled the flame of love in the hearts of the saints:

grant to us the same faith and power of love,

that, as we rejoice in their triumphs,

we may be sustained by their example and fellowship;

through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,

who is alive and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever.