"Lost"
These words were written by Alicia Titus, a flight attendant on United flight 175 which crashed into the Tower Two at the World Trade Center on September 11th. She wrote this three years before her death.
Happiness is such an elusive emotion.
One day you're soaring on its wings,
the next you're looking about hoping to catch a glimpse
of its sunny magnificence,
trying to convince yourself it was real
and not just a memory of a fairy tale from childhood.
Over the years my recipe for happiness has changed.
Used to be, all I needed (or thought I needed)
was a knight in shining armor.
Then, it was the King and his kingdom,
next I just needed the kingdom,
I could rule.
What ingredients do I need today?
1) An infinite amount of love to give
and receive freely
2) A purpose, goal, destination,
I'm still working on it.
Those who have known
the greatest happiness
have opened themselves
to the most gut-wrenching sorrow.
It's a gamble, you have to play to win.
Or maybe those who have endured suffering
have a greater respect for joy,
can appreciate it wherever they find it,
the smell of a rose,
the sight of a baby,
an old couple holding hands.
And those who've lived their lives
in a heart numbing cocoon
of sanity, safety, and contentment
don't have the capacity for pure joy.
Or, maybe this is what I tell myself
in order to pick myself up,
dust off, and hop on again.
Back into the battle. -
By Alicia Titus
Written January 4, 1999
I begin at the place of loss this morning, because that is where our text asks us to go. In response to the grumbling of the Pharisees about how much time he is spending with the sinners…the lost of society, Jesus tells stories of everyday life. A wandering sheep, a lost coin that is of great worth for a poor widow. Also part of the lost in this chapter, is the story of a lost son that we know as the prodigal. Jesus reminds us of loss to tell us of the depth of God's care that will search out the lost and alone, the desperate and destroyed….and of the rejoicing that will be present when one is found. The lost objects in the parables have this in common…they cannot help themselves. They need some kind of intervention, someone to care enough, to search enough, to be diligent enough in order that they might be found. We are reminded that no matter how hard we try to pretend otherwise, that it is true of us-we cannot do it on our own. No matter how hard we try we cannot pick ourselves up. We need the love and support of each other….we need God.
And we find in this morning's parable that God will go to great lengths for us. I believe it is because God understands the possibility of losing us. As our Parent, God knows the pain of losing a child. Yesterday I listened in the pit of Ground Zero as Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke in the opening moments of the 9/11 anniversary ceremonies. As you are probably aware, this year it was the parents and grandparents who read the names of those lost on that day. He said: "….when a child loses a parent they are called an orphan. When a man loses his wife he is called a widower. When a woman loses her husband she is called a widow. But there is no word for a parent who has lost a child, for there are no words to describe such loss." I spent much of Friday and Saturday with Alicia's parents. They shared with me their daughter's words we heard earlier, as well as the pain of their loss. Even in her twenties, Alica had somehow known that it is perhaps those who know the greatest happiness are those brave enough to be open the realities of pain and loss in life.
Again, It is there I understand God's diligence in searching for the lost of humanity as told in these parables. In creating humankind and loving us God knows not only the possibility, but the reality of deep, gut-wrenching loss. It is the kind of loss that I understand to be those pain experienced by parents who lose a child. There are those in our midst who know that kind of loss personally. There are others of us who cannot bear to imagine what the loss of one of our children would be like. All of us can at some level grasp that horrible possibility. It is loss that became clear to me in the weeks after 9/11…when in calling my father one afternoon having him ask if he could call me back because the police had just arrived to get a DNA sample from him. I hung up knowing that scene was being repeated in over two thousand other families…thinking that no parent should be asked to do such a thing so that the remains of their children could be identified. In creating us a God's children, God experiences such depth of loss when we are lost.
How dare the Pharisees grumble then as Jesus seeks out those lost souls of society. Jesus directed harsh anger at those who sought to prevent people from finding God. How dare we grumble under those same circumstances. Yet we grumble and complain so much. The church can be such a small place sometimes….ever visit at a church, and know you have sat in someone else's pew? We grumble at people who do not live up to our standards, at people who don't dress right, at people who don't seem to behave properly. At our worst we can be as petty as the Pharisees. Those grumblings then become the rumblings of the world. And our world is certainly rumbling. We know the results of that in remembering the pain of 9/11. We reel in shock over the hundreds of school children killed in Russia. Everywhere we look there is loss arising from those who give into hatred and violence. And yes, even our petty grumblings contribute. At the heart of our attempts to weed out and exclude others is the pain God experiences when one of his own is lost. We cannot be the judge of who God can and cannot love….for all are the sons and daughters of God. In God's sight, none are so far gone that they are lost for all time.
The depth of God's love for God's also leads to great joy. There we find the good news of our text. Both the possibilities and realities of the loss of one of God's own, leads to great joy at the restoration of one previously lost. At some level we who sit here this morning know the joy of God as we receive the incredible, lavish love of God. We also know, in our own pain and sorrow of loss, the hope and possibility of restoration. We have heard the rejoicing in heaven as we are found in God's love. As the people of God we have the privilege and joy of participating in God's search for others. We know the joy that God's love will bring when God's lost children are restore. And so go forth to diligently search for the lost children of the world that they may be brought home, and their voices added to the joy in heaven.