Lostness

I was talking to a friend today, who told me that he was thinking about heading off on vacation and spending a month in Canada.  

I asked him, "Why Canada?"  He replied that he wanted to get as far away as possible from the crazy political climate and endless hysterical news cycle here in the States.  

My friend wants some peace, and I can't say I blame him.  

As a pastor, I want to speak grace and peace into the anxiety and uncertainty that so many of us feel.  I want to share how I know there's a better way for us to be humans being together on this fragile spinning rock.  

I want to share that Jesus offers abundant life--eternal life that we can begin living right here and now. 

But I also know that in order for me to share this with enough passion and power to be heard over the noise of our culture, I have to fully embrace it myself---as do all of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus.  

We need to be honest with ourselves and with one another---to give up our need to appear like we have it all together, and have all the answers to living the Christian life all figured out.  Sometimes, it's okay to just say, "I feel lost."  

Author and preacher Nadia Bolz-Weber states that she often gets asked by people, "When did you get saved?" which is a church-y way of asking, "When did you become a Christian?" 

Sometimes she responds by saying, "I was saved 2000 years ago," alluding to what Jesus did for us and all of Creation on the Cross.  But there are times when she also answers by simply saying, "This morning."  

In his novel, The Book of Bebb, Frederick Buechner writes these words spoken by his main character, the enigmatic and broken preacher Leo Bebb: 

"It's like every one of us has lost his way so bad we don't even know which way is home any more only we're ashamed to ask.  You know what would happen if we would own up we're lost and and ask? Why, what would happen is we'd find out home is each other.  We'd find out home is Jesus that loves us lost or found or any whichway."  

I love that.  Jesus loves us "lost or found or any whichway."  

That preaches, sisters and brothers.  There is nothing, absolutely nothing that is happening in this world that has the power to separate us from the love of Christ.  Even our lostness, our feelings of abandonment by God can't separate us from that amazing, never-ending love.  

Embrace your lostness.  Own up to the fact that sometimes you can't seem to locate the road to home. And in the doing, may you experience a true home in the sisters and brothers God has placed in your life.  May you experience your eternal home in Jesus, who loved and gave himself for you.  

And may the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you now and always. Amen.