"Ministered to by Angels"

There are many ways of getting lost in the world. It's an easy thing to do, and it can happen to any of us. Pastor Shulz was lost for a while, after Ada died, and then afterwards, when folks didn't understand why he didn't come back as quickly as they would have liked, and they asked him to leave his church - that was another kind of lostness. If Our Redeemer hadn't found him, he might still be lost today.

Bob and Ray Souder were lost another way. They never really thought of themselves as lost, merely as drifters, until the Thorelson girls found them. Until then, they were lost in the wilderness of alcohol, one of those wildernesses that is full of rocky crags where you can simply drop off, and there is no bottom. You just keep going and going until you're gone, and few ever come back out of that place. But they both did, and they've been dry and happy for a couple of years now.

John Parkinson just retired. He was the Safeway manager, until they closed last month. He's spent the last forty-two years opening and closing the store, putting in seventy and eighty-hour weeks. It's all he knows how to do. He's never had time for hobbies, or church, or much of anything else. But when they closed, he sat down, and as he did every morning, every day of his life, he made a list of all the things he had to do. And he came up blank, for the first time in his life. So he thought about it, and thought about it, and finally, he put down, "go to church." Then he laid aside his list, got out his suit, and he's been here five weeks in a row now. It's strange to him, because the last time he was in church five weeks in a row was back in high school, and that's how it seems a bit to him - like he's back in school, wondering what he's going to do for the rest of his life. Except he's fifty-seven years old. So he's in a kind of wilderness, too.

So is his daughter, Ellen. She kind of takes after dad - always working. She's worked herself up to a top position in a Fortune Five Hundred company, and moved to New York five years ago, to the corporate headquarters. It' a different kind of life - a lot faster than she's used to, and more cut-throat. She found out the hard way that it's hard to have friends when everyone is competing for the few jobs at the top. She's at the top, but feels powerless. She's surrounded by people who seem friendly enough, but has no friends. She seems to have life on a string, but feels lost. She wants to come home, but doesn't know how to get there.

It's an amazing thing to me, that in a day of instant communication, where any information you can conceive of is right there at your fingertips, on the internet, when it seems that we have paved over most of the countryside with highways, so that you can get anywhere from anywhere - so many people are lost, and can't seem to find their way back to where they need to be.

I guess that's why the book of Hebrews makes that amazing statement, "Jesus was tempted in all ways like us, except without sin." And all the Gospel writers include this story, of Jesus wandering in the wilderness, and getting tempted. It's as if they want to say, "Yes, he knew what it was like, too." And then John makes that amazing statement, right near the end of his Gospel, when Jesus is hanging on the cross: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" It's from Psalm 22, and it ends up as a cry of faith, but it doesn't start that way. It starts out in the wilderness, where there is only lostness, and seemingly no way out, and then God finally steps in, and sends ministering angels. And I think that's the clue to it all - we need angels, when we can't find our way. They came to Abraham and Sarah, as they were wandering around Canaan, and wondering whether God was going to keep his promise to them. They came to Jesus, after he was tempted out in the wilderness. And if we think of them in the way that the Greek word says we should, angelos, which is the root of the word, euangelion, which we translate as "good news," or "the Gospel," it means that they are messengers of good news. So the Thorelson twins were to Ray and Bob, and the folks of Our Redeemer were to Pastor Shulz. God doesn't mean for us to lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps. That's why he surrounds us with angels.

Pastor Shulz is going over this week to talk to John about what he's going through, and how the church can help him. Hopefully, he and the people of Our Redeemer can be his angels, and show him a way out of his wilderness, or at least walk through it with him. Maybe he'll discover the joys of fatherhood, and share the good news with his daughter too, before it's too late. You never know, but his instincts are right so far.

And, hopefully, we'll be o.k., too - as long as we remember, through all of the temptations we face, and as we walk through this wilderness, that God has sent us angels to walk with us. None of us was ever meant to walk alone.

And that's what's happening over at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, a little church not very far from here where George Shulz is pastor, a congregation that doesn't seem like much in the eyes of the world, but is precious in the sight of God.