Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Have you ever felt truly lost?
[00:00:03] And I don't mean the kind of lost where Google Maps alerts you GPS signal has been lost, only to very quickly reconnect with that signal and connect you so quickly back to your original destination. I mean the kind of lost where you're not even sure what to put in Google Maps because you're really not sure where you're going.
[00:00:26] Have you ever been lost like a woman I spoke with years ago once did when she learned she wouldn't be able to give birth to a child. That had been a dream of hers since she was young to have biological children. She came from a big, close family with lots of cousins and siblings and couldn't wait to have children of her own. And though she had a strong marriage and a great career, both of which were meaningful to her, there was this destination that had been in her internal GPS for so long, long that when it was gone, she wasn't sure where she was heading. I remember asking her how she was doing, and she said, I'm lost. I'm just so lost.
[00:01:11] Have you ever gotten an email that read, we're sorry to inform you that our company has had to make the difficult decision to reduce our workforce, and you knew what was coming next. Suddenly you had no idea what your work would be the next day or the day after that. Or maybe you got an email that said that college or university or grad school or job opportunity that you'd applied for, the one you had pinned your hopes and dreams on, regrets to inform you that you've not been accepted. You felt like a sailor lost at sea. Where is the shore now?
[00:01:51] Some feel lost after the passing of a loved one or the departure of a loved one. It's like a part of you leaves with them and you wonder where home might be when they are no longer with you.
[00:02:06] The poet Louise Glick observed this lost state in a poem about her mother after her father had passed. Glick wrote this.
[00:02:15] As I saw it all my mother's life, my father held her down like lead strapped to her ankles. She was buoyant by nature. She wanted to travel, go to theater, go to museums. What he wanted was to lie on the couch with the times over his face.
[00:02:33] I thought my father's death would free my mother. In a sense, it has. She takes trips, looks at great art, but she's floating like some child's balloon that gets lost the minute it isn't held. Or like an astronaut who somehow loses the ship and has to drift into space.
[00:02:55] Have you ever felt like you were drifting into space and weren't sure where the ship was anymore. Have you ever felt like the traveler in Dante's Divine Comedy? Who observes this? In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost.
[00:03:17] What do you do when the straight way is lost?
[00:03:24] In the readings tonight from the Gospel of Matthew, we find people encountering just such a moment, a time when the straight way gets lost.
[00:03:34] Often at this time of year, we hone in on the Christmas story as told in Luke. And don't get me wrong, Luke has a wondrous story to tell, full of shepherds and angels and a babe born in a manger. But one thing I love about Matthew's telling of the Christmas story is how we read of people getting lost and found.
[00:03:55] Luke's Gospel hones in on Mary and telling us the Christmas story. Matthew points the camera instead on Joseph. We read of how he was engaged to Mary. The destination he had plugged into Google Maps was clear. Life as a wedded couple with Mary. Life raising children of their own.
[00:04:17] And then before they'd been living together, Joseph learned that Mary was pregnant and he knew that he was not the father.
[00:04:27] Suddenly, he has come to himself in a dark wood where the straight way got lost.
[00:04:35] After some deliberation, he resolves to divorce her quietly in hopes to find some new path forward.
[00:04:42] The Magi, we read in Matthew, also get lost. These wise men had typed in a destination into Google Maps as well. Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the ancient capital of the united kingdom of the twelve tribes of Israel, and later the capital of the southern kingdom of Judah. The Magi, these keen observers of celestial bodies, had seen a star rising and their interpretive framework. This indicated a new king had been born to the Jewish people. Surely such a king would be found in Jerusalem, they figured. And these astrologers from the east head straight to that city. But then they arrive and the straight way gets lost.
[00:05:26] There's a king in Jerusalem, but it's not a newborn king, it's Herod. And when Herod and Jerusalem with him, learn what these magi had seen. How people from foreign lands are inquiring as to a new king born to the Jewish people. They are terrified. Herod and all Jerusalem with them. It portends political turmoil, uncertainty. At least the magi reach Jerusalem and do not find what they're looking for. Instead, they find themselves and Jerusalem with them. Lost.
[00:06:01] What do you do in the middle of your journey? You come to that place in the dark wood where the Straight way got lost.
[00:06:10] The Spanish author Jose Ortega would say to you and me, receive that feeling in its fullness. Don't fight it. Receive it. It means you're truly, finally alive.
[00:06:24] When you stare life in the face, Ortega writes, and see how deeply problematic and uncertain and contingent everything in life truly is. You see how that perfect family you had envisioned, or that perfect job you thought you'd find, or that perfect place you thought you'd land. It's all an illusion. Well, congratulations, you're alive. You've awoken as if from a dream. You see the human condition for what it is, a state of being shipwrecked at sea, lost in a dark wood. To truly live, Ortega writes, is to know oneself as lost.
[00:07:08] But there's the good news of scripture, the good news of Christmas that we hear this night. God meets the lost.
[00:07:19] God came in Jesus Christ to seek and to save the lost. God did not abandon us, in other words, to our human condition of lostness, but met us right there, spoke to us right there. And a path emerged on the horizon, descending from the heavens like a celestial gift. It's like a north star showed up on the horizon to guide us to shore. And we who were lost were found, were not only guided in the night, we're accompanied on the journey as we make our way to shore, accompanied by a love that will not let us go.
[00:08:00] In his teaching, Jesus would put it like this. He would say, it's like there was a shepherd who discovered one of their sheep was lost. And the shepherd, shepherd dropped everything to go and find that one lost sheep and bring them home to the sheepfold. Scripture proclaims a God who draws near to the lost and tells them they're found.
[00:08:21] Now together, God says, let's journey forward. Don't you see the star before us in the sky, guiding us home?
[00:08:31] God reached out to Joseph in his lost state and sent an angel to proclaim good news. Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, the angel said, for the child she carries is from God. And you will name the child Jesus, for he will save the people from their sins.
[00:08:49] Joseph was lost, but then in a dream he's found, met by God in a heavenly messenger, met by a God who would come to be with Joseph and all people in this child named Jesus, which means God saves a child also named Emmanuel, which means God is with us. Joseph could have sung with the people that day. I once was lost, but now I'm found.
[00:09:18] The Magi, lost as they were in that city of Jerusalem, were met In a way God so often meets people. God spoke to the Magi through God's word. The chief priests and scribes in Jerusalem alert Herod and the Magi to words of the prophet Micah. God had said through that prophet that a ruler would arise to shepherd God's people Israel, and this ruler would emerge from Bethlehem.
[00:09:47] God meets the Magi and God leads them on a glorious star studded path forward to a destination they did not see before God spoke to them. But then, then they see it as clear as a star shining in the night sky. Bethlehem. There they find the God made flesh. There they bow down and worship.
[00:10:12] If you are feeling lost this dark night, if you are disillusioned by all life shortcomings and disappointments, if you're despairing that a home you once dreamed of has become an illusion, welcome, dear traveler, to the human condition and savor the good news of scripture. It was to a people lost in the wilderness that God drew near in cloud and fire, and then drew near in the gift of a word to guide their steps like a lamp in the night.
[00:10:51] And it was to a people centuries later that God would step in and meet this people in a whole new way. A man named Joseph would dream about the promise of Emmanuel. God with us. The Magi would be led to it by a star. And then by God's word, in the fullness of time, the very God in whom we live and move and have our being entered our world in a child born in Bethlehem. Why did God do this? To seek and save the lost.
[00:11:24] To welcome us home.
[00:11:27] We are lost.
[00:11:29] We are and we are found.
[00:11:35] In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Amen.
