God Leaves The Flock To Find You

Well, very good.

This uh is our last in our Broadway series.

I hope you uh have uh enjoyed it.

It's kind of a way for us to get out of the regular routine, it seems, and maybe even talk into the relevancy of the world around us.

Uh but this particular story takes a little bit.

There's a little bit of complexity to it, so I'm just gonna jump right in.

Uh, Evan Hansen is this young man in high school, 17 years old.

He's got severe social anxiety.

So the therapist that he goes to gives him the suggestion that he start writing affirming letters to himself to remind himself of what is good about his life and to remind him what is good about himself to build his confidence, right?

So he would start these letters with the phrase, dear Evan Hansen, to himself.

Now, while at school one day, a classmate who was a bit troubled, Connor Murphy, he takes one of those letters, all right, uh, and and then kind of shoves in his pocket and leaves with it.

And then in a tragedy of early on in the story itself, he ends his life, but he has that letter inside his pocket.

So when his parents are able to re-engage with him and find this letter that says, Dear Evan Hansen, they assume that their son, who had given up his life, was really close with Evan Hanson.

He thought they were very, very close friends.

And so they invite Evan to come over, and Evan, he feels bad about this.

Uh, he feels that he that there's been a mistake, and yet he doesn't want to ruin this comfort that they have found.

And so he kind of just expands on the uh this fabrication, this understanding, right?

And he starts inventing stories about this secret relationship that he had with Connor.

Then he gets together with one friend named Milana and who has a tech savvy student friend named Jared, and together they make up this whole email history of a relationship that Evan and Connor had that nobody knew about.

What it culminates in is that Evan is asked to speak at this memorial that they have at the school for Connor.

Uh, and it is such a moving, viral moment.

Uh well, it is such a moving moment that it goes viral.

Everybody starts listening to the words and the song that Evan sings and starts getting really moved by it, really words that they really needed to hear, obviously, because it goes viral.

People really are there for it.

As the movement grows, though, that fabrication starts getting a little bit too challenging to maintain, and Evan eventually confesses.

He confesses to the to Connor's family, confesses to the public, and what happens is massive backlash, online harassment, the disintegration of his relationship with the Murphys.

It just blows up on him when he confesses.

He's left along with his single mother to kind of rebuild a life amidst those uh ashes.

Uh, and a year later we learn, spoiler alert, we learn that he's figured out a way to accept all of his actions and to repair a lot of the relationships that he allowed to uh get burned and even moves towards a place of some self-acceptance, which was the initial um the initial desire as the story started.

So that's the story of Dear Evan Hansen.

It's probably the story or the show that we've used, and the song that we've used, it's the most on the nose of the whole series.

We're using a song called You Will Be Found, and it's paired with Luke 15 about the lost sheep.

So do you hear me when I say it's kind of on the nose?

This one was a little easier than others to map out.

And actually, scripturally, it's just the first of three lost stories.

Not everybody recognizes that or has looked through to see that.

The first is that story of the lost sheep, right?

That the shepherd uh loses just one of the sheep and leaves the rest of the flock to go and get just the one that was lost.

Then there is a second story.

It is uh an old one older woman who doesn't have many resources, doesn't have much money, and she loses a coin.

And Jesus asks us, oh, how how much is she gonna look for that coin?

She's poor, she needs that coin, and how much will she celebrate when she finds that coin?

And then the other lost story is one that many of us know as the prodigal son story or the lost son story.

The one in which the the son uh decides that he'd rather have his uh inheritance that uh will be due to him when his father passes.

He wants it now rather than later.

His father gives it to him, he goes and wastes it all on wine, women, and song.

And then comes back humbled to his uh to his father, whom he thinks will probably just tuck him in a back door somewhere and give him a job, but instead he's met with grand forgiveness and grace.

Those are the three lost stories.

Now, if Pastor Darren was writing scripture, there would have been a fourth lost story, the lost hairline.

Bless these follicles, my lord.

They know not what they do.

But the message seems pretty clear of these lost stories. First, we're invited to see God as this shepherd, this shepherd that loves us so deeply that if we are lost, God is willing to leave the rest of the flock to come find us.

God is this woman, a woman who is very much in need of her resources and how how valuable her coin, her coins would be to her, and how hard she would search for that coin and how much she would celebrate when she finds it.

That is God's vision of us and how important God is to us.

And then finally, uh the last story that God uh um God is like the father in the prodigal son story forgiving us even when we've made the choices to have ourselves astray.

God is still greeting us.

We're supposed to recognize the heart of God for the lost in these passages.

Sometimes I wonder when I read these how something like this was received back in ancient times, biblical times, the intimacy of this relationship with God is so clear.

A God who who loves us so much.

And not just the special people like Moses, but all of us.

I wonder how counterintuitive it might have been for them in that ancient world to to believe that there is a God, that the God we know would love us that deeply.

Now, in today's world, I could see it also being a difficult concept, a difficult belief to have.

I mean, to a certain extent we know what it means to be loved in this world, whether it was by parents or friends, mentors, right?

We've each known at least in some way uh some love in our lives, and we know what that feels like, but we also likely know times of feeling not loved.

Maybe even lost in the world around us.

I like to use the word unmoored.

But I'm the only one in the world who likes to use the word unmoored.

Does anybody else like to use the word unmoored?

Maybe now.

Maybe now, or yeah, yeah.

We do have a special club of us, the unmoored club.

There is no meeting time and no meeting place.

Do you know why?

We're unmoored.

No, I I do though, that just that word just it really speaks to how I feel when I'm in that place of being lost.

I'm I'm disconnected from the tracks of my life.

I'm feeling just uh um being tossed to and fro in the ocean.

I'm unmoored, I'm unsure, I'm disconnected.

This is the headspace that Evan Hansen is in as we start the story.

This is where he is.

He is um so deep into this unmoored, unsure, not feeling worthy place that he has the therapist having him write self-affirmations.

The show itself, the musical, speaks to this challenge we have as a as a society right now.

Some might even say it's a bit of an epidemic of this feeling lost, of our young people really feeling lost.

It's a bit ironic because of today's technology, right?

We are more connected than we have ever been virtually.

We are invited into each other's lives more than we have ever been invited into each other's lives virtually.

And it's different.

It's different than that that real experience, and we're learning that it might not be all that healthy.

The awareness of this concern is so prevalent.

I don't feel like I'm preaching anything new or anything you guys haven't heard already.

I'm not going to emphasize it more.

But the fact that this story becomes as significant as it did, this became a very well-known uh uh musical, that should not be lost on us.

It's the story itself uh would it would invite us to understand this as a reality of our time.

Our young people seem to identify with this kind of pain, this kind of loneliness.

It might be how in how we understand the reason for our pain.

There could be a question of of worthiness that sits in our minds, right?

Sits in our psyche.

We have things not go our way, and we're asking ourselves, uh, what is the universe saying to me?

What is God saying to me?

Am I not worthy?

And then we have the whole other layer of uh questions of our own ownership in our pain.

Are we really victims?

Or did we have something to do with why we are hurting?

Did we really get lost?

Or did we just fail to stop and ask for directions?

This may also be why we have to remind ourselves to have com compassion for the lost human being.

Definitely for when that human is someone else, but especially when that human is us.

We need to have compassion in the way that is modeled to us by God in the stories that Jesus teaches us.

We are blessed that in our scriptures, with teaching from Jesus Himself, we are taught about the heart of God, which holds unconditional love for each and every one of us.

God loves you enough to leave the flock to find you.

God finds you so valuable that when you are finally found there is celebration.

Even when you stray from God, sometimes even reject God, your return is going to be met with forgiveness, joy, and celebration.

So the song we picked could be considered as God's words to us in this spirit.

Like I said, it's called You Will Be Found.

It does have an interesting lead up.

It occurs in the part of the story when Evren is fabricating that story of the relationship with Connor, the other troubled youth.

In the chaos of all that, he is able to create an actually uh strong life-affirming message.

It is such a strong life-affirming message that it becomes viral, that it starts really touching people in their hearts in a way that it's getting spread all throughout the world of technology, the social media, and all of that.

And the irony being that it touches people's hearts, that it is so meaningful, and that it's made up.

It didn't really happen.

What we should probably recognize is the way that the message is received.

It goes viral because the words are needed by so many people.

It's so often we are wondering why if we are really, really lost, or at least why we're feeling lost, disconnected, unsure of what the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do, disconnected from any sense of uh purpose and place, leaving us in that spot of asking, is God really looking for us?

Are we really valuable to God?

As valuable as a poor woman's coins.

What if I make bad choices?

What if I really mess up?

Is God still searching?

This is what's on the hearts of the community that makes this moment go viral.

To me, it's clear that heaven is singing this song.

He's singing the song that he wishes was being sung to him.

This is the song we all want sung to us.

This is the song we want Jesus to be singing to us.

The song we want God singing to us.

This morning you're invited to listen to it as God's words to you.

Let them remind you of the God that we've come to know in this world.

Our God who loves us unconditionally.

Have you ever felt like you could feel?

So let that lonely feeling wash away.

Cause maybe there's a reason to believe you'll be okay.

Cause when you don't feel strong enough to stand, you can reach, reach out your hand, and oh someone will come running, and I know they'll take you home.

Even when the dark comes crashing through, when you need a friend to carry you, and when you're broken on the ground, you will be found.

So let the sun come streaming in 'cause you reach up and you'll rise again.

Lift your head and look around.

You will be found.

You will be found.

You will be fine.

Every time that you call out.

If you only say the word from across the colour, you can't do that.