Remember that time when you got lost at the mall or in the grocery store? Remember that sudden panic you felt when suddenly, mom is gone? Remember the terror? The fear? As kids, we used to love to hide in those circular clothing racks at the department store. We’d tuck in there, arrange the chiffon blouses just so, and giggle at the fact that we had disappeared. My mom would get so mad. Or, having to deal with yet another one of our temper tantrums, she’d “left” us at the end of the cereal aisle, kicking and screaming because we wanted the box of Lucky Charms.
But when the time came to peek out of those neatly hanging clothes, or we suddenly turned off our tantrum to realize that our audience is gone, we’d experience this terrifying feeling that we were alone in a world full of strangers. We were on our own. Mom was gone.
Maybe you stopped, paralyzed, dead in your tracks. Maybe you wandered around, calling out “Mom? Mom?” Maybe you tugged on the hem of a familiar looking skirt only to look up in horror into the face of someone who was decidedly, NOT mom. Maybe you cried until the store manager came over and he took you to the front of the store and reported your presence through the loudspeaker.
That feeling of being lost, that feeling of being utterly alone, that hopeless chasm of nothingness that we felt as small children, is still there, still tucked somewhere under our rib cage. We can still access it. We still feel it. In fact, I bet we feel it more now than we did when we were little. Because we’ve screwed up a lot more. And a lot more is at stake. Any time we’re separated from the ones we love, anytime we’re distanced from our community, any time we’ve made a mistake or pissed someone off or “sinned against” another, we come to realize that we’re a little bit lost, a little bit alone, roaming around in unfamiliar territory. We’re in trouble. We’ve made a wrong turn. We’ve wandered off from the fold. It’s fear that we feel. And fear can get us to do things that’ll just make things worse.
Every summer, my family would pack up the strollers and the snacks and the baby wipes and the sippy cups and we’d go to the Indiana State Fair. It was this strange, fascinating place in the heart of the city where we’d get to see real farmers and real cows and giant pigs and tiny piglets and eat greasy food and watch the ferris wheel spin around in the sunset. It was crowded full of people and tractors and livestock and food trucks and carnival rides. There were noises and smells and flashing lights. So much to look at. So much to grab our attention. So much to stop us in our tracks, staring a little too long at the old fashioned kettle corn machine or the ducklings as they climbed up and then slid down their slide over and over again.
And every year, we got the same lecture. If we were separated, we were strictly ordered by Mom and Dad to stay put. Don’t move. Don’t go looking for them. If we saw a police officer, we could ask for their help, but otherwise, we were to wait for them to find us. It was all very practical. Don’t go wandering around looking for them because then we’d just end up even more lost than we were before. In our trying to rectify the situation, we’d just end up making it worse. We might find more danger. We might encounter some folks intent on doing us harm. If we just stayed put, Mom and Dad would search high and low for us, in every nook and cranny, and eventually, they’d find us. But if we kept wandering around, odds are, we’d be constantly missing each other.
It was the same when we were teenagers. If we found ourselves in some sort of trouble - if we’d gotten drunk or pulled over or the police crashed the party - my parents told us just to call them, that no matter what we’d done wrong, they’d come and find us. They feared that if we tried to solve the problem by ourselves, if we tried to hide that we’d done wrong, we’d just end up making things worse.
That’s why I love this passage today. It’s so very practical. Even if it’s not very easy. It gives us instructions for what is inevitable in any long term relationship. We’re going to wander away. We’re going to mess up. We’re going to hurt each other. We’re going to break our promises and we’re going to build up walls of resentment that will erode our relationships. That’s the nature of family. We’re going to spend ten years loading the dishwasher wrong, until finally one night, your wife just loses it on you. Or we’re going to watch our partner, for ten years, load the dishwashing wrong, and we’re going to lose it on them. We’re going to “borrow" and then break one another’s toys. We’re going to refuse to share, and we’re going to lie. We will call each other names. We will chase each other around the house and punch each other in the arm and tear up the drawings just to be spiteful.
We will say things we don’t mean. And we’ll say things that we do mean. We will lose our tempers and yell and throw things and go to bed letting the sun go down on our anger. We’ll be disloyal. We’ll choose someone else. We will lie and cheat and steal and betray and abandon and forget. We will neglect. We will assume. We will take each other for granted. We will. I used to spend so much time and energy trying NOT to do these things, only to encounter the inevitable: sometimes, even with our best intentions, we’re going to hurt each other. We’re going to let each other down. Whether it’s by doing or not doing, there’s going to be a rupture in the relationship.
So what do we do when there’s a rupture in the relationship? What do we do when we’ve been hurt by those we love, by those who are supposed to be in our family, our church, our community?
To be clear, this passage isn’t about the evils outside of our communities that do us harm. This passage is not about the strangers in the dark alleys or the unbridled hatred of a terrorist organization. This passage is about what we should do when someone we know, someone we love, hurts us. What do we do when we’re separated, distanced by the pain done to each other, when we can’t seem to find each other? What do we do when someone we love is lost?
So often, this text is used to tells us what to do if we disagree with someone. What to do if someone’s lifestyle choices are different from our own. It’s been used to justify our rejection of one another, to justify us saying who is in and who is out. If you don’t vote this way or have these kinds of relationships or support this political agenda, then you’re out, you don’t belong. If you make this or that choice, or you don’t follow our rules, or think this or that about infant baptism and transubstantiation and the ordination of women, then that’s it, you’re wrong, you’re out, excommunicated, lost, separated from the flock. And you deserve to be. After all, we tried, right? We tried to tell you to straighten up. We brought some buddies with us to convince you to stop whatever it was you were doing. And then finally we set the whole church on you, in order to bully you into doing or acting or being something different from who we are. We take a lasso and we swing it over our heads and we grab you by the horns and drag you in. We get you to toe the line. We get things back under control. We get people to behave. You can belong, we say, as long as you behave. But that’s not what this passage is about at all.
And that’s why I’ve added a few more verses to our lectionary passage today. Because context is everything. Because this passage isn’t about behavior; it’s about belonging. It’s not about dragging the one who has hurt you back into the same situation, the same place where the hurt was experienced. It’s about changing the situation and the place altogether.
It’s not about getting them to come back to you. It’s about going out to them.
I’d wager my salary that, nine times out of ten, we don’t really mean to hurt each other; we just find that we’ve gotten a little bit lost.
So, Jesus says, “go out there.” Go find them. And then you tell them they’ve hurt you. And if that doesn’t work, you bring some friends along so that they can hear your story, too. And if that still doesn’t work, then you grab your church to come with you, and you tell your story to the whole community. You tell them that you’ve been hurt, you tell them about the pain, you tell them what has happened that has caused you so much grief. You tell your story. You are heard.
But the point is that you go out to the one who’s done the damage. You go out into the wilderness, out into the uncertainty, you take some risks and you try to find the one who has hurt you.
And that is so hard. Because you’ve got to go out and actively find the one who hurt you. You’ve got to take the risk of telling them that they hurt you. You have to be vulnerable. You have to admit that they had enough power over you to do some harm. You have to show them your wounds and the scars, you have to tell them that they caused them; somehow, you have to try to get them to understand your pain, and that’s no easy thing.
And we’d much rather just lash out. We’d much rather make them pay. We’d much rather punish and do to them what they have done to us.
Or we’d rather sever the relationship. Give it up. Let it go. Ignore the hurt and the pain and just move on.
That’s what we do when we’re scared. Fight or flight. Get them a taste of their own medicine, or run away.
But Jesus tells us that neither option is the right option. Between letting people abuse you and you abusing others, there is another option. There is a third way. Between getting revenge on the one hand, and ignoring your own pain on the other, there’s something else you can do. You can go out there, go out into the wilderness, go find the person who is lost, go get them, and then tell them the story of your pain. And if you do that, and they still don’t hear you, then you bring some friends along who can hear your pain. And if that doesn’t work, then you bring your whole community out there, and you tell the story again. You send out a search party. You find the one who’s lost. You tell them the story of the scars they’ve made.
And if that still doesn’t work, if you still can’t find them, or if they still can’t hear you, if they keep running away, then, Jesus says, treat them like a Gentile or a tax collector. But, fair warning, be reminded how Jesus treated the Gentiles and the tax collectors. Be reminded how Jesus taught us to treat the Gentiles and the tax collectors. No one is ever really lost for good, no matter how far away they seem. No one is ever truly a lost cause, no matter how much damage they’ve done. Sure, you’ll need to protect yourself. You might need to stay away for awhile. You might need time to heal. But if there was love there once, there can be love again. We all wander away from each other. And we can all find our way back home. But we’re gonna need some help.
And sometimes, sometimes you won’t be able to do this with your own power. Sometimes you’re not going to be able to risk yourself and tell your story and tell the one who hurt you just how much you’ve been hurt. Sometimes the chasm is too wide. Sometimes you just can’t get there from here. Just remember that Christ is there, reconciling us, reconciling us to himself, and to each other. Christ is present, making up the difference. Christ is the one who can forgive even when we can’t. Christ is the Good Shepherd who goes out to find all of his lost sheep. The power to reconnect us, to bring us back into community, comes from Christ. And where two or three are gathered, there he is. Christ is there. Even when we can’t be. Christ is the Good Shepherd, always pursuing, always tracking, always searching, looking for us, finding us.
When you’ve hurt someone, stop what you’re doing. Stay. Stop running around. Stop making things worse. Just wait. And be ready to receive. And then be open to change. Be open to hearing the story of how you’ve hurt someone. Be open to being found.
When you’ve been hurt by someone, go and tell them. Tell them the story of your pain and where it came from. Be vulnerable. Take the risk. If they hear you, maybe they’ll come back home with you. Maybe they’ll want to belong again. And maybe they won’t. Either way, you’ve voiced your story, you’ve named your hurt, and you’ve left a trail for them to follow back home.
And if you can’t do that, then it’s ok. That’s what Christ is for. Christ is the ultimate Story of pain and betrayal and reconciliation. Christ brings us all home, eventually.
The Christian faith has never been about staying the same. Staying stuck. Staying where we are. Being frozen in fear. The Christian faith is about going out there, out into the wilderness. Going out to find the one who has hurt you, reaching out, and trying again. It’s about growth and change and disruption. It’s about rupture and repair. It’s about sin and reconciliation. It’s about death and rebirth. It’s about taking the risk to go where we’ve never been so that we can be changed, we can be molded, we can try again. It’s about belonging, even when we’ve hurt each other, even when we’ve wandered away, even when we’ve lost the ones we love. It’s about being found, and all the mending that can happen when we are, when we find each other.
If I strayed, if I wandered, if I disobeyed, my parents told me to stay put. They told me to stop getting myself more lost. They told me that they would come and find me. And then they did. And after they shook me by the shoulders and told me how very terrified they were, after I saw the tears in their eyes and heard the fear in their voices, after they said they looked everywhere for me and they almost lost hope and they were about to give up and about how their hearts were broken, and how could I do such a thing, I’d hear them, I’d say I’m sorry, and maybe I’d tell them my side of the story, and how hurt and scared I was, and then I’d say I’m so sorry again, and they’d say they’re sorry too, and then they’d wrap me up in their arms and bring me home again.
I’d be found. And they’d be found.
Thanks be to God.
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