Luke 15:11-32

Dr. Jim McConnell graduated from Harvard Medical School and did his residency at Mass General Hospital in Boston.  Near the end of his residency, the chief of medicine called Jim into his office with a proposition.  He asked Jim to give the next year helping to create an organization to bring health care to the homeless citizens of the city.  Jim agreed, later saying that he really had no choice, he’d been drafted.  And instead of a one-year term of service, he ended up making this his life’s work, spending the next 32 years developing the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program.  It now includes 400 employees and they treat about 11,000 homeless people each year.

The Program offers medical care, socks, soup, and friendship to people who are rarely even given a casual glance by those passing by.  Jim and his team learned that the most important and first step in the process was to develop a relationship of trust with the people they wanted to help.  The Street Clinic at Mass General and the Street Team that goes out into the city in a van treat everything from infected cuts to drug overdoses, cancer, heart disease, frostbite, and hernias.  Just like their particular diagnoses, the homeless people are not all the same.  Some are addicted to drugs or alcohol.  Others are mentally ill.  Some used to be professionals and include lawyers and university professors.  Others were blue collar workers who found it difficult to hold down a job.  They are young and old, men and women, white and black and Hispanic.  Some are ex-cons who found it hard to adapt to life on the outside.  And most were abused as children.  Some are homeless because of choices they made; others are on the streets because of circumstances beyond their control. 

Jim has gotten to know many of these people and they have come to trust this man who makes himself available to listen to their stories and get to know who they are.  The most important thing isn’t that the person receive the medical care they need; it is that they feel cared about.  At a lecture, Jim said, “Most of the patients I’ve been close to over these thirty-two years are dead … But when you work with people who’ve had so little chance in life, there’s a lot you can do.  You try to take care of people, meet them where they are, figure out who they are, figure out what they need, how you can ease their suffering.  I was drafted into this job, I didn’t pick it, but I lucked into the best job I can imagine.”

The story of Jim McConnell, told in Tracy Kidder’s book, Rough Sleepers, is an excellent example of the fact that there’s no gone that is too far gone.  No matter where the homeless people came from, no matter why they are on the streets, no matter whether or not they accept Jim’s care, Jim and his team still go out to them, reach out to them with genuine concern, and treat them with dignity and respect.  Jim’s van goes out to all parts of the city, seeking out those who seem to want to get lost and stay lost.  And sometimes the team fails to connect with those in need.  But the point is, they go out there and try.  They try to reach the lost and forgotten and let them know that they matter.

It all reminds me of an ancient story told by a master storyteller.  Jesus was keeping the wrong sort of company according to the Pharisees and religious scholars.  It seems that a lot of men and women of doubtful reputation were hanging around Jesus and listening to him teach.  The Pharisees and scholars were not pleased with that, not at all pleased.  They growled, “He takes in sinners and eats meals with them, treating them like old friends.”  And their grumbling triggered this story.

It seems that there was a man who had two sons.  Both of these sons was lost in his own way.  The younger son was lost because of his actions.  He demanded his share of the inheritance while his father was still alive, in essence saying, “I wish you were dead.”  And the father divided his property between his sons.  Please notice, both sons received their inheritance at the same time.  The younger son soon packed his bags and left for a distant country.  In short order he managed to waste everything he had, living high off the hog.  After he had gone through all of his money, a famine struck the land, and even though he had nothing, no one would help him.  He finally ended up living low off the hog – feeding pigs for a farmer.  He was so hungry that he would have gladly eaten the slop that he was feeding the pigs.

But one day he came to his senses.  He realized that even his father’s servants ate three meals a day, while here he was starving to death.  He made up his mind to go home and apologize to his father and ask to become one of the servants in his father’s household.  So he got up and set out for home.  But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him.  How did that happen?  Because his father was looking for him.  He may have been sitting on the front porch of his house, looking down the road, hoping against hope that he would see his son on the way home.  And one day, there he was.  He knew that walk anywhere.  And the father ran to meet his son, hugging and kissing him.  Before his son could even get out his apology, the father called for clean clothes to be brought, a ring for his finger, and sandals for his feet.  And he insisted that they prepare a feast to celebrate the good news that his boy who had been lost was now found.

While all of this was going on, the older son was out in the field working.  He hadn’t gone off to a distant country, but he was lost because of his attitude.  When he came home at the end of the day, when all the work was done, he heard the sound of music and celebration.  He asked one of the servants what was going on, and he was told that his brother had come home and his father had ordered a feast.  The older son was so angry at this that he stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to come in to the house. 

When the father realized what was going on, he went out to where his older son was standing.  He tried to talk to him, but the young man wouldn’t listen.  Finally the son blurted out, “After all these years I have been here serving you, never giving you any grief, you never threw a party for me and my friends.  Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on prostitutes shows up and you give him an elaborate feast!”  The father must have been stunned.  He said to this son, “You don’t understand.  You’re with me all the time.  Everything that is mine is yours.  But this is important, wonderful news!  We had to celebrate.  This brother of yours was dead, and he’s alive.  He was lost and now he’s found!”

I’ve often wondered what happened next.  The story just ends there.  Did the older brother join the party?  Did he ever make peace with his father or his brother?  Or did he just continue with his angry sulking indefinitely?  We don’t know.

There are people around us who are lost.  Some of them feel that they are too far gone to be found.  There are those who were abused as children who have never healed in body, mind or spirit.  There are battered wives too afraid to leave their husbands because they have no way of supporting themselves.  There are those who are addicted to opioids who would do anything for that next fix.  There are elderly people forgotten in nursing homes, bitter and lonely and afraid.  There are people who have left or never had faith in God or in the church.  I’m sure you may think of others.

But the good news of this story is that there is no gone that is too far gone.  Like Jim McConnell and his Street Team searching the streets of Boston for the hidden homeless people, God goes out into the world looking for those who have gotten themselves separated from him.  And God does not go out to judge them, to punish them, or to push them farther away.  God goes to embrace them and kiss them and welcome them home.  And that is the way those of us who follow Christ are supposed to respond.  We don’t stay inside the walls of our church, safe and secure and comfortable, hoping that the lost will come and find us.  We have to go out into the world and look for the lost who are unable, unwilling or afraid to walk through the doors of the church.  We have to let them know in no uncertain terms that there is no gone that is too far gone.  No matter what they have done or not done, no matter who they are or who they were, God has a place for them, and so must we.  After all, God has a place for us – and for everyone – to call home.