Davison's Doodle

Lost. Found. Searching

I was gifted the trust of the pulpit last Sunday at University Place Christian Church in Enid, OK. I offered some words on Luke 15:11-32.

Good morning, church.  It is good to be with you.

I’ve been reading Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. In the prologue, the author suggests that there are three kinds of conversations people have most often.

• What’s this really about? (decision-making mindset)
• How do we feel? (emotional mindset)
• Who are we? (social mindset)¹

I’ve been reflecting on those kinds of conversations as I’ve studied the text this week, been accosted by and absorbed the news of the world,  and pondered this riddle we call the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  It won’t surprise you that the words “lost,” “found,” and “searching” bubbled up.  I think that cycle describes the human condition.

I don’t know what you brought with you to worship today.  It might be exuberant joy, deep grief, apathy, or ambivalence.  It could be that you came for the experience of hospitality, a safe space to be your whole self, or maybe it is that spirit memory “you go to church on Sunday.”  I don’t know if you feel lost, found, or searching.  

Whatever it may be for you, let us be a witness in this worship and with our lives of the good news of God, and remember:
that the Lord’s mercies never cease; 
that the Lord’s mercies are new every morning;
and the Lord’s faithfulness extends beyond our ability to see in a mirror dimly and recognize the image of God in others and our own face.

As you are willing and your spirit able, please join me in a moment of silence and prayer. 
Open our ears and hearts, O God, that our meditations, words, and living reflect our faith in You, who creates, redeems, and sustains all creation and our lives.  Amen.

Buckle up, here we go.

It felt like a Christmas miracle.  Three years ago, Lisa and I were traveling to Fort Lauderdale.  During the layover in Atlanta, we got the message from the airline that they had expedited Lisa’s luggage on an earlier flight, and it would be at the airport in the baggage claim office when we arrived.  We’ve traveled enough to know this had the probability to be either good or bad.  But what could we do?  When we arrived, at 1:15 pm, I went to claim my bag from the carousel, and Lisa went to the baggage office.  Her bag was not there.  The baggage attendants looked and looked.  Not there.  Someone picked it up on purpose or by mistake from the carousel.  Standing with my luggage in hand, we began to work the problem trying to keep panic at arm’s length.

I put Air Tags in our luggage for this trip.  These little devices work with iPhones and other Apple products.  They emit a bluetooth signal and show you the last known location of the Air Tag.  I opened my “Find My” app, and within a couple of minutes, Lisa’s luggage was located at Pier 28, waiting to board a ship.  The problem was our ship wasn’t sailing until tomorrow, and that one sailed at 4 pm that afternoon. Hello, panic.  Nice to meet you.

For the next 4 hrs were a mix of lows and highs, mostly lows, as Lisa worked with the airline baggage claim desk in person and by phone. One person at the baggage claim desk helped her, helped us.  Calls to the port, to the other cruise line, to friends who knew friends who worked at the pier.  I put the Air Tag in lost mode, making it ping its location more frequently and saying to iPhone or Apple users that passed by: “I’m lost.  I belong to Lisa Davison.  Contact her at this number.”  I was too far away to make the Air Tag chirp, play a sound to draw attention to it.  We watched Lisa’s bag on a map move around the pier and into the water, which meant onto the ship.

Four o’clock came and went, and there was no word on her bag.  “Find My” showed it in that same spot over an hour ago.  It’s last known location still on the ship.  After some anger, tears, and thinking, we were at a local mall piecing together what Lisa would need for a week at sea.  She had the meds she needed and a few other things, but the essential clothing, shoes, and all the rest of her week were in her bag.  Her phone rang, and it was that one baggage clerk.  Someone had gone onto the ship and to the cabin of the person who picked it up by mistake.  Her bag was at the customs office at Pier 28.  She could only pick it up between 5-6 am the next day.

We passed through two levels of security to gain entry to the port.  ID and luggage claim check in hand, we entered the customs office.   “Find My” drew a 50-foot circle around the bag. I put the Air Tag in chirp mode. A cruise line worker rolled Lisa’s chirping bag through a door from a secured area and gave it to the customs agent, who verified ownership and gave it to Lisa.  A series of people, mostly unknown to us, helped rescue a trip for someone they didn’t know. A flood of relief began to set in. In a small window of time, twelve hours, we experienced lost, found, and searching.  It was like it was February all over again when Lisa’s mother had died.

With all the technology today, it is hard to be physically lost, but you can certainly feel it.  You can feel “found.”  Most of the time, I think we are searching even when we don’t know it or want to admit it.  What does searching feel like? 
Anxious?
Exciting? 
Disorienting?
Agitated?
Afraid?
Hopeful?

If only there were a “Find My” for one’s moral compass.  A “find my” for our living.  People of faith want to believe that religion is that “find my.”  Christians want to believe that meeting Jesus anytime, particularly along the dusty road on the way to Jerusalem during Lent, will reset or recalibrate a person’s life, but the current state of our Nation is broadcasting a different story about the human condition.  Maybe this parable is a “find my” tale.

Sometimes, you can know a story so well that it is hard to set aside what you’ve thought is the factual or philosophical truth and interpretation for all time and all places.  New information or experience can bring questions and challenge long-held beliefs thought of, like the story, as infallible.  It is the difference between “Obvious or Perhaps.”
“Obvious” closes the door to inquiry.
“Perhaps” opens it.²

This is Lectionary Year C, which means that Luke’s faith experience serves as the primary lens of meeting Jesus, accompanied by a sprinkling of Matthew and John during Lent and Easter.  Here are a few details to keep in mind as we read Luke’s gospel and encounter Jesus.

• The author Luke has the Gospel of Mark, a collection of Jesus sayings that scholars call Q, other material not found in the other gospels, the letters of Paul, and his own experience as source material.
• The author is probably well-educated, and scholars think is also the author of Acts.  Most suggest reading Luke and Acts as a two-volume work. 
• Luke is a rich narrative about the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth that contains details and parables not found in the other synoptic gospels.  The trifecta of “Lost” parables, sheep, coin, and prodigal, are only in Luke.
• Luke is the last synoptic gospel written sometime between 85 CE and maybe as late as 110 CE.³  All the gospel writers were active participants in their cultural moment, which was as edgy as our own.

The parables are often divided into two categories: simile and metaphor.  I’m not a biblical scholar, but I think some parables are riddles.  What does a riddle do?  It presents a question or story designed to exercise one’s ingenuity in answering it or discovering its meaning.  The website Just Riddles and More offers, “A riddle is not generally answered by a fact or information found in a reference book.  A riddle often uses misdirection – some of the words are there to get you thinking about something else.”

So, let’s try a few riddles mid-sermon to get our brains firing.  If you have an answer, shout it out.

Where is the ocean the deepest?⁴

What animals keep the best time?⁵

At night, they come out without being fetched, and by day, they are lost without being stolen.⁶

The beginning of eternity
The end of time and space
The beginning of every end,
And the end of every place.⁷

Two words.  My answer is only two words. To keep me, you must give me?⁸

When I think about all the parables, the two that I read as riddles—maybe the greatest riddles ever told—are “The Greatest Commandment” and “The Prodigal Son.”  Usually, the Prodigal Son has been interpreted as an allegory about searching, repentance, forgiveness, love, and inheritance.  Just before the story, Luke, overjoyed at finding a lost coin, asserts that these stories have something to do with repentance.  But, neither sheep nor coins need to repent nor know they are lost.  There is joy in searching and finding.  New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine reminds us that nowhere in the text does it say that anyone repents.  “The prodigal’s motive for returning to his father may be economic need rather than theological recognition.”⁹

What kind of conversation is Jesus having with the disciples and the people he encounters on his way to Jerusalem?

Reading the sacred text, we often begin with, “What’s this really about?”  Different groups of people are projected onto the brothers.  The Holy One is always the father (parental) figure.  In your lifetime, you’ve probably identified with one of the characters in the story.  That’s the human condition.  Have you ever noticed there is no mother worried for her child.  And the slaves.  What are they thinking as they serve and watch this family?  This would be a perfect Downton Abbey episode.

The text doesn’t provide a “now you know the rest of the story.”¹⁰
There is no happily ever after. 
Just a “perhaps.”  The rest of the story depends on you. 
It is a “Who are we?” conversational riddle.

Lent is a time to search for your spiritual “find my, ” something that can help you when you are lost, whether you know it or not.  As the parable suggests, you may be found and don’t know it.  An old familiar poem captures it this way:

Why, when I have needed you most,
have you not been there for me?”
The Lord replied, “The times when you have seen only one set
of footprints, my child, is when I carried you.”¹¹

On the way out the door to college, a mother stopped her son.  She said, “Your father and I have raised you the best we could.  We know you know right from wrong.  You are going to make mistakes. Don’t make excuses. Learn from them so you don’t repeat them.  It won’t be easy.  Do your best not to embarrass the family name or yourself too often.  We will always stand by you.  We love you.”

Lost.  Found.  Searching.
The Lord’s mercies never cease; 
The Lord’s mercies are new every morning; and the Lord’s faithfulness extends, embraces, confounds, and welcomes even those that call you or call me an enemy and those who you, who I, don’t think deserve such faithfulness nor mercy.

What kind of conversation are you having with Jesus, with this community of faith, with friends, or with our society?  

Followers of Jesus do Jesus like things. When I stop and look around, it seems to me that sometimes, often of late, that is at odds with what is identified as Christianity in our Nation and specifically political Christianity.¹² Mr. Rodgers said it this way, “Look for the helpers.”¹³

What “find my” is guiding you?

Disciples, there is ministry to do and gospel to be from this corner of Enid that only you can do and only you can be.  You’ve got to decide what kind of ancestor you will be right now and go be it.

1. Charles Duhigg, Supercommunicators. Random House (New York) 2024 pp 17-22. ↩︎
2. Seth Godin, March 28, 2025. accessed March 28, 2025. https://seths.blog/2025/03/obvious-vs-perhaps ↩︎
3. Much of the information in these points come from seminary notes and: Marcus J. Borg, Evoloution of the Word: The New Testament in the Order the Books Were Written. Harper One (New York) 2012. p 423-28. ↩︎
4. A: On the bottom. ↩︎
5. A: Watchdogs. ↩︎
6. A: The Stars. ↩︎
7. A: The letter “E.” ↩︎
8. A: Your word. ↩︎
9. Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, The Jewish Annotated New Testament (NRSV). Oxford University Press (New York) 2011. p 133. ↩︎
10. The tagline of Paul Harvey, a radio personality from the last half of the 20th century who told stories usually around the lunch hour about people and history. He told the backstory of a person or event that ended with this tagline and “good day.” This is an interesting juxtaposition of Edward R. Murrows sign off, “Goodnight and good luck.” or Walter Cronkite’s, “And that’s the way it is, (the date) goodnight.” ↩︎
11. Authorship contested, “Footprints.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footprints_(poem) ↩︎
12. An addendum, with the Mr. Rogers’ quote, added for this post, but not part of my original text. ↩︎
13. Fred Rogers — ‘Look for the Helpers’. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/look-for-the-helpers/ ↩︎