Whether it is an Anglo-Saxon gold-hoard, the royal remains of a Richard III or the scattered stonework of St Andrews cathedral, the discovery of what was lost or forgotten is nowadays celebrated with TV footage and newspaper columns.
‘Lost and found’ is the theme of Luke 15. A shepherd finds his lost sheep. A woman finds a lost coin. A father finds a lost son. These simple word-pictures define a Gospel in terms that go beyond dictionary understanding, beyond intellectual comprehension. We have a Gospel that penetrates life’s problems and life’s anxieties.
There is another couplet. It takes matters a stage further. We read in John 9 of Jesus encountering a man blind from birth. Jesus restores his sight. This does not have the Pharisees jumping up and down with elation. It antagonises them. They see Jesus’s action as a threat to their accepted status. They harry the man, pointing out that Jesus was not a verified practitioner as they understood the matter. There must be some mistake. But the man with his sight restored stuck to his guns. ‘All I know is this: I was blind and now I can see,’ he said. He presumed to go no further. He stuck with what he knew to be the case.
The Pharisees and their associates were on safe ground as far as their understanding of the matter went. God had delivered a system which they were administering. It was not for a common citizen to claim that God had worked outside that system.
In these events the finding is all. So is the seeing. We do well to be self-deprecating as we make claims for the faith that we have entered into. Argument takes us so far. Experience takes us further. It engenders its own authenticity. A humanist is familiar with the same kind of thing in the appeal to nature as the ultimate arbiter. We have to choose.
Here is a jubilant shepherd, a jubilant householder, a jubilant parent. Each one is eager to share his happy experience with others. In days when we are recovering from Covid we do well to emulate them. Might a day of thanksgiving for deliverance be appropriate? Tinged with grief it would have to be as we remember all those loved ones who have been lost.
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