NRS Luke 15:1
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them." 3 So he told them this parable: 4 "Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? 5 When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' 7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
8 "Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9 When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' 10 Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

Sisters and Brothers in Christ, grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Son our Lord Jesus the Messiah. Amen.

During my recent vacation I did what lots of Lutheran pastors do in their time off: I cleaned the garage. Well, I'm not sure lots of Lutheran pastors clean their garages while on vacation, but I do, and yes, I know, it's kind of weird. It's not the only thing I did on vacation, but I did take a couple of days to sort through some of the various boxes of mostly junk we'd stashed in the garage when we moved in last summer. And wouldn't you know, amid all that kitsch and clutter, I found a couple of little prizes. On this last cleaning binge, I found a bottle of very nice shampoo that was still almost a quarter full. I found the sleeping bag liner I had bought the last time I took my youth group on a backpack trip in the Rocky Mountains in 2004. I found a perfectly good, if slightly dented boom box that still had in the cd player Bush's "Sixteen Stone," a disc I thought my son had played the grooves off back when it was popular in 1996. I found two of those shower caddie things that you hang from the shower head in your bathroom, in addition to two bottles of Windex, a shoebox of photographs from when bell-bottom jeans were still in, a pair of channel-lock pliers, a three-ring binder with notes from church council meetings in the early '80's, and enough trim line to keep my weed-wacker happy for a very long time. Dryer sheets, Scotch tape, a baseball bat, an unopened box of double-a batteries, and two flashlights that actually worked, I was on a roll. And then, I found this.

It's a little toy dinosaur, a stegosaurus, I think. It probably came out of some happy meal God knows how many years ago. At one time it seemed like we had hundreds, for all I know thousands of these little things all over the house. Big Bird, Bert and Ernie, My Little Pony, Rainbow Bright, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I couldn't walk out the bathroom without stepping on one. I can't even guess how much money we spent on these little lumps of plastic, and for the life of me, I can't tell you where those little people went who used to play with these little toys.

Mike and Carolyn Button are now virtual "empty-nesters." Our daughter graduated a year ago last May and is now working in New York City. Our son is into his senior year with a scant 25 hours between him and graduation. And the only question I ask more often than "Will I ever be solvent again?" is "Where did all that time go?" It seems like just yesterday we were bringing them home from the hospital; it seems like just yesterday I was stepping on stegosaurus here as I was getting out the shower.

Some years ago my friend Ronnie Crowder warned me of this. As a funeral director, Ronnie pretty much qualifies as an expert on the passage of time, and he told me, "Boy, when they hit high school, that's when the time really starts to fly." And boy, was he right. Time does fly, but not just for us empty-nest types. I remember as a kid how the summers used to zoom past, and even when I walked across that dais for my high school graduation, I can recall wondering at how fast that time had flown.

So where does it go? Where does all that time fly off to? And as the time flies, what about our own lives? Just yesterday I had this head of big, dark, bushy hair, so where did this thin, gray stuff come from? Just yesterday I was wrestling rug rats, so how do I now have a couple of twenty-somethings? When my older sister turned sixty, in a fine case of pot calling kettle black, my father asked her, "How'd you get so old?"

Every once in a while I come across some truly terrifying statistic, and not long ago I heard something that made my blood run cold. According to the Texas Traffic Institute, the average driver is now spending 60+ hours/year in traffic jams, up from just 16 hours in 1982. Is this how we're spending our lives? Is this where our time is going? How much of our lives are we losing staring out over seas of red taillights? How much of our lives do we waste in the Express Lane at Wal-Mart, or the drive-thru at KFC, or just zoned out in front of the TV? The lost minutes turn into the lost hours that turn into the lost days, weeks, months, and years of our lives. And how do we get that back, or is it just lost forever?

Nine years ago this last August my family and I suffered through a major crisis, and at that time I swore to God that I would never again take for granted the time I was given to share with my wife and children. I would treasure every day. I would make the most of every hour. In the words of an old James Taylor song, I would master the secret of "enjoying the passage of time." I would pray more. I would worry less. I would smell more flowers and savor more sunsets. That was nine years ago, and not nine weeks later I was pretty much back into the same old ruts, spending hours fretting over this, railing at that, losing my life in dribs and drabs of time swirling down the drain of oblivion, all the while asking, "Where does it go?''

We're always losing track of our lives, and the great, glorious good news of today's Gospel is that God is always searching and finding the lives we're so prone to throw away. In these parables from Luke 15, Jesus first likens God to a shepherd who will not relent until he has returned the one lost sheep to the fold. In an even more striking metaphor, Jesus suggests that God is like a diligent housewife who turns her home upside down until she finds the coin that was lost. In either case, God finds us, whether we've lost our lives to drugs and alcohol or to the rat races we confuse with daily life. God finds us, whether we've surrendered whole decades to soul-numbing abuse or dribbled away whole decades in soul-numbing routine. With great rejoicing, in heavenly celebration, God finds us, to give us back our lives, to make us whole, to return us to the family where we are loved and valued and cherished.

And because God finds us, the church is that community in which we get our lives back. After we've squandered our days in dumbness, after we've lost our selves in carelessness, after we've misplaced the priorities we swore we'd never ever again misplace, here is where God reassembles the scattered pieces of our lives. In the water poured, the bread broken, the Word spoken, here is where Jesus the Good Shepherd meets us. Here is where Jesus the Diligent Hausfrau gathers us. Here is where Jesus the Crucified and Risen One gives us his life to raise us to the life that we can give away in acts of kindness and deeds of mercy. Yes, here is where we get our lives back, but not to hoard and keep for ourselves, but to spend in listening to those who need our ears, in supporting those who need our arms, and in reaching out to those who are, like us, so easily lost and even more easily forgotten. It sounds, I know, a little crazy, but God finds us so that we may lose ourselves in seeking his will, walking his way, and surrendering to his purposes.

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.