My son Bobby loves to have me tell him stories. When it’s time to go to bed he says, “Tell me a story in the dark.” So I attempt to relax my brain cells and see what comes to me. “Once upon a time... there was a boy named... Leroy who lived beside... a big pond.” What will happen next? We don’t know, and that’s what makes stories interesting. Perhaps there is a giant fish that lives in that pond. If so, what happens between Leroy and the fish? Or maybe there is a treasure in the pond. If so, how did it get there? Maybe there is a lonely wolf that comes every night to drink from the pond. If so, is it dangerous?

The thing that holds our attention with a story is wondering where the story is headed. What will happen next?

We all like a good story, and the reason, of course, is that our lives are stories. Our lives take place -- as do stories -- moving through time and space. The story of our lives compels us to contemplate: “What is the meaning of our past? Are there any clues to be found there that give us insight as to where we are headed?”

Peoples’ stories deserve attention. Unfortunately, the stories of human beings often get lost. One of the most depressing aspects of nursing homes is he loss of the stories behind the present lives of the old folks who live there. You have this 95 year old woman sitting there in a wheel chair, and there is no awareness of anything other than this present, dreary moment -- no recognition that this woman and her sacred soul have lived a life full of love and heartache and joy and sorrow that has brought her to this moment.

Have you ever opened up a novel in the middle -- a novel you have never read -- and tried to read a random paragraph? If so, you know how meaningless it will seem -- places, characters, feelings referred to that have no frame of reference. The woman in the nursing home can seem like that meaningless paragraph.

But if you go back and read that novel from the beginning, when you come to that same paragraph -- aha! now it has context, it has meaning. What if people could take the time to ask, and to listen to, the old woman’s story?

As you know we are beginning Sunday School this morning, and a large part of what will happen there is the sharing of stories. The children will share their own stories, but they will also hear stories -- learn stories. The Bible is largely a story book.

This morning they will be reading the very first story that occurs in the Bible -- the story in Genesis 1 of creation: How in the course of six days God created the heavens and the earth, and declared that it was all good.

One of the questions that Bobby used to ask me -- he doesn’t ask me so much any more -- was, “Is this a true story?” By which he means, was there really a boy named Leroy who lived next to a big pond? To which I have to answer, “No, I’m making this up.” But if its a good story -- if I succeed in telling a good story -- it will have a measure truth in it, in so far as says something about what it feels like to be a boy living next door to something as mysterious as a big, deep pond.

Genesis 1 tells the story how the universe came into being. Is it true? Did it happen the way it is described there -- the sequence of events. If you pressed me on this I would have to say, “No, I don’t think that’s how it happened.” Scientists can tell a fascinating story about how the universe came into being which would tell a far more accurate accounting of how it all happened, but this story in Genesis is not trying to answer the how questions. It is addressing certain questions that the scientists can’t answer, such as why did it come to be? For what purpose? What does it all mean?

And what the story declares is that there IS a God who brought everything into being. Why is there everything, and not nothing? Because of a God of love who wanted there to be this creation with all its beauty and order and brought it all out of chaos. And that this creation is inherently good -- this refrain that we hear over and over: “And God saw that it was good.” That’s not something that a scientist’s story can tell you either: there are no value judgments in science.

And finally, on the final day of creation, we are told that we have a special place in creation -- that these children were made in the image and likeness of God -- that we have a special purpose given to us from the very start -- to help God take good care of God’s good creation.

Jesus used stories as his primary teaching technique.

He said, once upon a time there was a man going up the road to Jericho who got the living daylights beat out of him...
In this morning’s Gospel lesson he told two stories. He said, “Once upon a time there was a shepherd who had 100 sheep, and one of them got lost, and the shepherd went looking for the lost sheep till he found it; putting her up on his shoulders, bringing her home, throwing a big, blowout party to celebrate.
He said, “Once upon a time there was a woman with ten silver coins who lost one. She got out her broom and swept until she found that lost coin, and then she invited all her neighbors to come over and party with her.”

Now, we could ask, “Are these stories true?” Well, if we mean, did Jesus really know a particular shepherd, and a particular woman, who did what he described.
I don’t know for sure, but I doubt it.

But the story is TRUTH on a much deeper level than that. It is true, first of all, because it talks about lostness, something we all know something about. We lose things, we lose our way, we lose ourselves, we lose a sense of meaning and purpose to our lives, we lose God. I know there is no one in this room today who doesn’t know something about what it feels like to be lost -- the truth of which this parable speaks.

But the story goes on to say something else. And you may have missed hearing precisely what it says. The shepherd goes looking for the lost sheep. How long does the shepherd look? Does he look for a day, a week, a month, a year? What does the story say? The story does not say, “If he finds the sheep, he brings him home...” The says, “When the shepherd finds the sheep.” It isn’t a question of “if.” The sheep will be found.

The same is true with the story of the woman and the lost coin. How long does she sweep, searching for the lost coin? An hour, a day, a week, a month? The story doesn’t say; the implication is simply that however much time it takes, that woman will sweep away until she finds the lost the coin.

The shepherd will find the lost sheep. The woman will find the lost coin. There is something wonderfully hopeful here. When you and I and our children get lost in life, which will surely will, the story assures us that we will be found. Not “if.”

At a couple of occasions I’ve had to preach at funerals for people who have taken their own lives. And I turn to these particular stories of Jesus. Because it is easy to imagine someone who enters into death in such despair and lostness to be lost forever, but that is absolutely not what the stories say. The stories says tell us that somehow -- I know not how -- after death, the search for the lost sheep continues, and the Good Shepherd WILL find the lost sheep. You can count on it.

There is something wonderfully gracious here if you can hear what the story is telling us.

Three years ago, yesterday, something happened that affected the stories of all of us. When those planes crashed, when the towers fell, we were changed forever. In my lifetime there hasn’t been any other event -- with the possible exception of John F Kennedy’s assassination -- that has impacted all of us. Each of us knows where we were when we first heard the news. It frightened us, making us feel more fragile, more vulnerable. The violence that is in this world. We Americans had been so fortunate -- before violence on this scale had always been something that happened in faraway places -- not here.

What do our Bible stories say to us as we interpret this event?

The epistle lesson this morning comes from Paul’s first letter to Timothy. At first glance, the thirteen letters of Paul in the New Testament seem to be an exception to what I said earlier -- that the Bible is largely a story book. Paul writes lots of theology and ethics. But if you push Paul and ask him was behind all this theologizing, he’ll tell you a personal story. He says, “Once upon a time I was a mean SOB, full of violence and hate, a hard-hearted man. And something happened to me. It wasn’t something I did myself -- it was something that happened to me. Jesus came to me -- I experienced “amazing grace” -- and I was changed. Jesus took out the violence and made me an apostle of peace and love. That’s Paul’s story that underlies everything else he writes. ‘I once was lost, but now am found.’ And his story gets intertwined with the story of Jesus, how Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of which he was the chief sinner. To be that shepherd who seeks out the lost sheep.

And that story for Paul has two basic parts to it, and we need to get hold of this story, and so do our kids. The first part of the story tells how when the Good Shepherd came into this world he got nailed to a cross. Here we hear again of the lostness, that is so much a part of human life.

If we know the story, on some level, the events of 9/11 doesn’t surprise us. We’ve heard all before. It is the ongoing story of the crucifixion of Jesus. It’s another instance of Jesus being nailed to the cross. Lostness happens.

But for Paul the story does not end with this horrific event. God raised Jesus from the dead by God. In the end, violence doesn’t win. In the end, God will triumph over the forces death and violence. The lost will get found. Be not afraid.

If Paul’s terrorist heart can be healed, so can everybody else’s.

So there is always hope. All the broken pieces are going to be put back together. Beyond every cross there is a resurrection.

Our kids, like all of us, will get lost along the way in the story of their lives. You can count on it. But if they have this story inside them on a deep level, they have a way to interpret their lostness that gives them hope. The Good Shepherd is on the way.

The very best is yet to come. The 95 year old woman has the best part of the story ahead of her, as strange as that may seem from the point of view of this world.
 

In the kindness of Jesus,
Pastor Jeff