When I was young, although I played it quite often with my young church friends, I did not enjoy the game of Hide and Seek. The trouble of searching for well-hidden friends was always too tiresome, and the risk of not being found always made me a bit scared of hiding too carefully. Even scarier was the possibility that my young friends with their short attention spans, having found some other game even more interesting than this one, would turn their attention away from seeking me out from my secure hiding spot, and I would stay so well-hidden that I would be completely forgotten -- left alone to my own devices.
Although the point was not to be "found out" too early in this children's game (it was for some a test of how deceptively they could hide and for how long), for me, the point of the game was in the discovery -- of me! I enjoyed being sought out, and in fact, I was many times relieved to be the first or second person discovered by the seeker. I didn't care too much about hiding, and was often intentionally careless in selecting a hideout.
In this Sunday's gospel reading (
Luke 15:1-10), Jesus tells two stories of Lost and Found. I think the poignancy of the story is in the endings of the stories -- the rejoicing that occurs when the lost items are found. It is a collective joy, one in which the whole community participates. I like that emphasis much more than the one that I hear in sermons that I've heard in the past, in which the emphasis is typically placed on the fact that the Seeker (whether it be the shepherd or the woman with coins) never gives up. As listeners of the story, we are reassured that the seeker will always go searching for the lost, no matter how small, no matter how insignificant it may appear in the eyes of others. As the audience of this very familiar story, we are often lulled by the reassurance that Jesus is our Seeker, the shepherd, and no matter how much we stray, we'll be found.
At dinner earlier this evening with some colleagues, we talked about the communal and catholicity of God's universal church -- in essence, we can't be Christians alone. Believing this, I'd like to shift our focus to the seeker not as one individual -- one shepherd or one woman -- but as a community of faithful disciples. Remember the stories? The shepherd "calls together his friends and neighbors" (v.6) to celebrate with him; the woman who lost the coin calls her own friends and neighbors together, inviting them to rejoice with her - not by herself.
Following their examples, how can we who are the body of Christ be a church that works together to seek out and celebrate the discovery of the lost? And, imagine how much more fun the game would be if we had an entire community of people looking for us, letting us know that we are special, wanted, sought after, desired. The rejoicing would never end. It would be like an infinite Jubilee!
