THE SEASON OF EASTER
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LOST AND FOUND – REVISITED**

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me …” John 10:14

As it seems each year after Easter Day, I notice an increase in calls of late from people asking if we have found something they think they have LOST in the church. “I lost my red jacket … my reading glasses … my cell phone … my IPod … my IPod … my MP3/4/10,000. … my Gameboy … my teddy bear … my purse … my sweater … my lawnmower [not really, just checking to see if you have read this far]. Do you have a LOST AND FOUND at the church?” My answer to each of these queries these days is “Sure, we have a LOST AND FOUND. Come to church any Sunday and you will be right in the middle of it!”

The church has been God’s LOST AND FOUND since the days of Adam and Eve. This image is particularly striking to me as Bishop Michael Creighton will visit us on Sunday, May 13 for the purpose of receiving two adults into the Episcopal Church as their family of faith through which they choose to live THEIR baptismal faith. Each of them will now claim their faith formed in them by parents, godparents, church school teachers, and many others. The Bishop lays his hands upon their head, just like the apostles did to those new converts to the early church, our “ordination” into living and serving God and Christ through the church. They stand as fresh, new Christians, and then sometimes we don’t see them again UNTIL their next need for God or the church, their next crisis of life and faith, or just because they are LOST.

The Fourth Sunday in Easter is traditionally known as Good Shepherd Sunday. On this day, we hear the reading of Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” On this day, we hear, from John’s Gospel, the image of Jesus as our Good Shepherd, the one who “… the sheep follow because they know his voice … I am the good shepherd … who lays down his life for the sheep.” [10:5, 11] We are visibly reminded of our Good Shepherd by the Bishop, who carries a CROSIER as a mark of his office and ministry. This is a church word for a long staff the Bishop carries along when worshiping with us. The top of the staff is HOOKED so he can pull us back to the life and faith of the church when we stray. The bottom of the staff is POINTED so he can nudge us forward into the world out there, to share our baptismal faith in the freedom that our baptism brings to us – Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Our faith journey is all about COMING HOME again, new and renewed, lost and found, redeemed and restored. It is all about God’s love of you and me in our risen Lord Jesus Christ, and our baptismal call to LIVE this gift of love always. It is all about living the Christian life as a verb, and as THE matter for our faith, THE matter for our
heart!

Do we have a LOST AND FOUND at St. Thomas’s ? ABSOLUTELY! See you Sunday?

In peace always, your servant in Christ,
Paul+

** RUMINATOR’S NOTE: The essence of this Weekly Rumination is much the same as last year at this time, including many of the SAME items still taking up residence in our “lost and found” with the addition of a few more! So, I offer this returning rumination with a grateful heart AGAIN!