Jesu Juva
“The Joy of Finding and Being Found”
Text: Luke 15:1-10; Ezekiel 34:11-24; 1 Timothy 1:5-17
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
Searching. Searching for sheep. Searching for a lost coin. Searching for people. You’ve searched for things, for people. You know what that’s like. You know the worry, the frustration, and you know the joy of finding.
Today was a day that a great searching began. September 11, 2001. Once the dust cleared in New York after the towers collapsed and here after the Pentagon crumbled, the searching immediately began. At first, it was a searching to rescue any who might have survived and were still clinging to life in the rubble. No one knew for certain how many people that might have been, how many were in or around the buildings, how many were missing. Estimates ranged from hopeful - just a few thousand, if not all had arrived at work yet, and many of those who had had managed to escape, to fearful - upwards of tens of thousands if the towers and Pentagon were full.
The searching was frantic and desperate at first. If there were any survivors, surely their injuries would be grave and they wouldn’t be able to survive long. The searching was hard. The piles continued to burn, making it difficult to breathe. The rubble was enormously heavy, and there was so much of it. In all, twenty survivors were found and rescued, and there was great joy when they were.
But even after the time had passed when anyone could have survived and been rescued, the searching went on, only now it was not a rescue, but a recovery operation. The workers were no less diligent in their searching, day and night, to find the family members, friends, and loved ones who had perished that day. And many were found. Some whole, most not. But some never found, an absence that still causes grief and sadness today.
But there was more than one searching that started that day, September 11, 2001. The other was the searching for the man and the people responsible for this act. The man and the people who rejoiced, not mourned, all the death that day. This search was no less diligent. In fact, it continued on for a much longer time than the months it took to go through and clear the piles. They searched for years. They searched in different countries and cities, they searched caves and tunnels, they would not give up. When some of the men were found, and then when the man at the head was found and killed, there was much rejoicing all around the country. A large crowd gathered in front of the White House, as well as in cities and homes across the country, to celebrate with great joy.
Searching. Searching for sheep. Searching for a lost coin. Searching for people. Jesus searching. For you. For each and every person buried and lost in this world of sin and death. This world of destruction and hate. Jesus wants not one single person to be lost in this rubble. His is a rescue, not a recovery, searching. To rescue us to live before the searching stops, before it is too late. That we come out of this world alive and live a new life. And for every person that is found, for every sinner who repents, there is great rejoicing in heaven.
Two searches began on September 11th. Two searches that were the same, but at the same time different. For the first was a searching in mercy and love. To save any and all lives that could be saved. But even after that, the searching was to help the grieving by finding their loved ones.
The second searching was quite different than that. It was a searching for justice, for vengeance. It was a searching not to save life, but to punish and perhaps take the lives of those who had themselves taken so many lives.
Jesus’ searching is, of course, a searching of the first kind. A searching not to mete our justice for what you have done, but a searching of mercy and love. Of a shepherd, a very good one, searching for His sheep, as Ezekiel explained. Not to reprimand them for wandering off - and maybe for wandering off AGAIN! But to feed them and give them drink. To bring them back home and to a good pasture. To bind up the injured and strengthen the weak. A searching Jesus did not just for a few years, while He walked this earth, but ever since Adam and Eve fell into sin and He came to the Garden in search for them and called out for them, to Paul, whom Jesus found and pulled out of his life of opposition and persecution of Jesus and His Church, to today, as He works and searches through His Church and His people in this world. To find people buried in the rubble of their lives. To find people who are trapped in sin - like all the sins Paul mentioned in his letter to Timothy. To find people and give them life again. So in the two parables we heard today, Jesus is the Shepherd searching for His sheep, and the Church is the woman acting in the same way, searching for her lost coin. And both rejoicing when the lost is found.
The Pharisees and scribes were not rejoicing though. They were grumbling whenever Jesus found and rescued and pulled out of the rubble another sinner. The Pharisees and scribes were save yourself kind of folks. Pull yourself out of the pile folks. Some worth saving, some not, folks. Justice folks, not mercy and love folks.
Now, there is a place for justice. We do not live in a lawless world, a wild west where everyone does what they want, it is every man for himself, and do what is right in your own eyes. Jesus Himself would speak of justice and the just retribution for sin. There is a price to be paid.
The searchers who combed through the piles after September 11th came to realize this. Long days of hard and exhausting work took a toll on their bodies. Breathing in air filled with toxic dust wreaked havoc on their lungs. But it wasn’t just the physical toll - there was a mental toll as well. Knowing the death that was in those piles. Seeing and hearing grief everyday for so many months. And if their bodies didn’t break down, their minds did. This was true also of the military and those folks searching for years to bring those who did this to justice. Many lost their lives in this searching.
And for Jesus, too, the Good Shepherd searching for His sheep, there was a price to be paid. And Jesus paid it. He took responsibility for all the sin, all the rubble, all the death, all the chaos, all the grief caused by our sin.
Here’s how one of our hymns puts it:
Our rebel will wrought death and night.
[Or collapsed this perfect world, because]
We seized and used in prideful spite Thy wondrous gift of liberty.
We housed us in this house of doom,
Where death had royal scope and room,
Until Thy servant, Prince of Peace, breached all its walls for our release.
Thou camest to our hall of death, O Christ, to breathe our poisoned air,
To drink for us the dark despair That strangled our reluctant breath.
(LSB #834, vs. 2-3)
When we look around at our world, it may not look so bad. But that’s because we don’t know what it was like before sin, the way God created it and intended it to be. But when He looks around at our world, He sees a scene far worse than September 11th. Far more destruction, far more hopelessness, far more death.
So He came. To search and to save. And to pay to price, giving His own life in the process. On the brutal cross. His life for yours. And when He searches for you, He doesn’t ask where you are from, what color you are. He searches for and wants to rescue and save all people. And when He finds you in the rubble, He doesn’t ask how bad a sinner you are, and then judge whether you are worth saving or not. He saved you. In a sense, He took your place under the rubble so that you could be free. Forgiveness we call it. The great exchange, Luther called it. Jesus getting our place and we getting His. Jesus paying the price for us who could not pay, who could not set ourselves free, who could not get out of the rubble. And every time a sinner is found and rescued, there is not only great rejoicing by the one who is found and pulled from the rubble of life, there is great rejoicing in heaven, too.
For another lost one is now washed clean in the waters of Holy Baptism. Another lost one gets to hear those words of absolution: I forgive you all your sins. Another lost one is fed and nourished and strengthened here with the food of Jesus’ Body and Blood. Gifts that are here for us every week, and realities for every day of our lives. Maybe we’re spoiled. Maybe we take it all for granted. But we shouldn’t. We shouldn’t when we know what it cost Jesus, the price He paid to set us free. That the joy of heaven be our joy as well, both when we receive those gifts, and when those gifts are given to others. Even the worst of the worst. Like Paul, who confessed that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. Words that could be, should be, ours as well.
And when they are, when we know the joy of being found and forgiven, rescued and saved, baptized, absolved, and fed, when what we deserve is to be left in the rubble to die . . . when we know that joy, of being found, we then join in the search. Or perhaps better to say: Jesus uses us in His search. That we might know not only the joy of being found, but the joy of finding, like the woman in the second parable Jesus told today.
So you who have been buried under and burdened by sin - sin you have committed that brought consequences down on yourself, or sin that has been committed against you that has buried you - you’d still be there, were it not for your Good Shepherd. You’d still be there, hoping for a way out. You’d still be there, hoping for life. Hoping for someone to move that rubble from off you and reach a hand down to you and pull you out. And Jesus has. I forgive you, He says. And His Gospel is for you to breathe again. And His Supper is for you to be strengthened. And while you rejoice in this, in these gifts He freely gives, He does even more.
And then you go back out to the rubble, when you walk out those doors. To a crumbling world. A world crumbling under sin and death, trapped in evil ways, more crashing down every day. Violence, hate, deception, mutilation, selfishness. And longer buried, you can be the hand that reaches out, that reaches through the rubble; the hand of help, the hand of hope, the hand of forgiveness. It might not be easy; in fact, it will probably be very hard. But when you lift up another, when you forgive them, when you reach out to them in their gloom, when you are a hand of hope, not justice, there is also joy. Not only for the one you reached out to, but for you. And in heaven, too. The angels rejoicing over them, and rejoicing over you.
Or as we sang in the Introit earlier:
You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever!
In the Name of the Father, and of the (+) Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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