READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Micah 7:18-20
1 Peter 5:6-11
- St. Luke 15:1-10
Grace, mercy, and peace [are yours] from God the Father and
Christ Jesus our Lord. (1 Tim 1)
Who speaks to you today, from His Gospel heard in His Church, saying:
Jesus does not send out recruitment fliers for His religion. His is an invitation. The difference is, an invitation stresses the importance of the individual, whereas recruitment does not care who is there.
Any main-stream sport today, except golf, is based on gathering points. The more points you have, the better your chance at being first place. If you have the most, you win. This works for board games as well as war and empires. Possession of the most pieces, the most flags planted, and the most people enslaved to taxation wins!
You see that your “club” needs members and so you recruit. You search the world for talent and you screen and shortlist. All this, because you just don’t want rabble, you want the best. You want productivity. You want growth.
This makes perfect sense. In our sinful worldview, we measure everything by success. If we plant a garden, we want success. If we start a relationship, we want success. If we start a business, we want success. And what does it mean to be successful? Numbers.
Here, the devil itches our ears. We hear from God “make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19), popularly called the Great Commission. And from St. Mark 16:15, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.”
These, and other words from Jesus, give us the standing orders to go and spread the good news, whatever that means. But it takes more than one person to do something of that scale, so we recruit. Many hands, make light work, we say. And this is how we treat God’s Church, as if it were an earthly kingdom in need of recruits.
And the devil’s itch grows stronger. We begin to replace the “good news” with “go and tell”. We begin to transform Jesus’ Church into a recruiting station. Instead of bringing people in, we are sending them away to “go and tell”. And in continuing this practice, this dogma, we cry and wail over how empty the Church is.
Repent! In a very backwards lesson from the Gospel today, Jesus is not going for numbers or quantity. He leaves His lucrative “mega-church” of 99 righteous and searches for the poor, miserable sheep. He forsakes guarding the 9 silver coins in favor of giving all His focus to one.
You think these parables mean that Jesus abandons those He has already saved to seek out the lost, as is believed in many other churches. No. The 99 and the 9 are Self-Righteous. They “have no use for repentance” as our Gospel reading said. These are not the churched and the saved, these are the Recruiters who have no need for a Crucified Savior.
The Good News, or the Gospel, is not a business slogan or a “gatcha” to fish for men. The Gospel is the free forgiveness of sins in Christ Crucified. The Gospel is the justification of the sinner by grace, through faith, for Christ’s sake. The Gospel is the Word made Flesh. The Gospel is for you.
This fact, the sinner immediately forgets and the Recruiter immediately throws away. Because Jesus’ work is to save the world through His suffering, death, and resurrection, the Recruiter cannot sell that message. He must gloss over that and go for the sale of “make yourself righteous for God”.
What sin, death, and the devil do not understand is that the way of the cross is not a way of death or a path for a dead man. Hebrews 4:12 tells us: “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword.”
This means that the Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ is living and acts in His own way. This means that the man Jesus Christ is living. He lives and breathes and is His own individual. He dictates to His Creation and He dictates to His Church. His Church will be a cruciform Church for the forgiveness of sins.
The devil believes in numbers. He believes that if he has enough souls, eventually more than God, he wins. He does not want you, individually, he just wants supremacy. So when a church begins to focus on numbers and recruitment strategies…
Jesus does not forsake the 99, but He does focus on the 1. The difference is the 99 are able to live out a life of Faith, having heard of the Good Work of the Good Shepherd. The repentance purchased and won on the cross is for them. They simply love their sins more.
The one has yet to hear, because he is dead in his trespasses and sins (Eph 2:1). His ears are stopped, his tongue is locked up, and his eyes are blind. In order to rescue that one, the Son of Man must be lifted up. In order that God so love the world to give His only-begotten Son “that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16), He must be lifted up in two ways.
First, as the Bronze Serpent. Jesus must take on the role of the Chief of Sinners (2 Cor. 5:21), not with His own sin, but with everyone else’s. Second, He must be lifted up from the sleep of death. Then, in that work, He may go out to search, sweeping the house with the Light of Life, to preach the Law and Gospel to the dead sinner.
Jesus did not start off with 100. He started with zero. He has to create what He is seeking. His recruitment station was abandoned for lack of success. There was no one who stopped and today that remains true. No one is righteous. No one seeks God. No one.
Though Jesus wants His Father’s House filled with wedding guests, as we heard last week in St. Luke 14, He wants you. He goes to search, not for just anybody, but you. He leaves His heavenly recruiting station to bring the Gospel to you. Because, for Jesus, it is not a numbers game, it is life and death and He has defeated death, so there is only life to give out.
His life, to you. It is not enough for Jesus to have the bigger team, He wants the biggest family. He already has His angelic army that fills the heavens and the earth, as we hear in Joel 2:11. His glory already fills the heavens and His praise, the whole earth (Hab 3:3). He has no need for you to be a drop in that bucket.
He has a need to suffer and die on the cross. He has the need to rise again from the dead. He has a need to purchase and win baptism for you, so that you would be baptized into His Body. He has a need to secure His Body and Blood for you, so that you would be fed heavenly medicine, conforming to His image and becoming more Christ-like, literally.
He also has need of preparing and perfecting His Gospel, wherein He completes His Righteousness and fulfills Confession and Absolution in order that you would be able to repent and be the cause of endless rejoicing in heaven.
It is not the self-righteous “soldiers of the Lord” who hear the voice of their Lord and follow Him. It is His own sheep. His own sheep which He has raised from the dead. His own sheep who have had their dead ears and dead eyes and dead tongues made alive again, through the Gospel.
The Gospel that the Lord has need. He has need of personally invited guests to enjoy His victory over sin, death, and the devil. The strife is over. The battle won. The soldier’s job is no more. Instead, be lifted up with Jesus. Be raised to shoulder level with Jesus. Come and repent and enter into the Kingdom of Word and Sacrament, “you who are blessed by my Father, [and] inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (St. Matthew 25:34).
Who speaks to you today, from His Gospel heard in His Church, saying:
“Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven
over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no
repentance.”
Jesus does not send out recruitment fliers for His religion. His is an invitation. The difference is, an invitation stresses the importance of the individual, whereas recruitment does not care who is there.
Any main-stream sport today, except golf, is based on gathering points. The more points you have, the better your chance at being first place. If you have the most, you win. This works for board games as well as war and empires. Possession of the most pieces, the most flags planted, and the most people enslaved to taxation wins!
You see that your “club” needs members and so you recruit. You search the world for talent and you screen and shortlist. All this, because you just don’t want rabble, you want the best. You want productivity. You want growth.
This makes perfect sense. In our sinful worldview, we measure everything by success. If we plant a garden, we want success. If we start a relationship, we want success. If we start a business, we want success. And what does it mean to be successful? Numbers.
Here, the devil itches our ears. We hear from God “make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19), popularly called the Great Commission. And from St. Mark 16:15, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.”
These, and other words from Jesus, give us the standing orders to go and spread the good news, whatever that means. But it takes more than one person to do something of that scale, so we recruit. Many hands, make light work, we say. And this is how we treat God’s Church, as if it were an earthly kingdom in need of recruits.
And the devil’s itch grows stronger. We begin to replace the “good news” with “go and tell”. We begin to transform Jesus’ Church into a recruiting station. Instead of bringing people in, we are sending them away to “go and tell”. And in continuing this practice, this dogma, we cry and wail over how empty the Church is.
Repent! In a very backwards lesson from the Gospel today, Jesus is not going for numbers or quantity. He leaves His lucrative “mega-church” of 99 righteous and searches for the poor, miserable sheep. He forsakes guarding the 9 silver coins in favor of giving all His focus to one.
You think these parables mean that Jesus abandons those He has already saved to seek out the lost, as is believed in many other churches. No. The 99 and the 9 are Self-Righteous. They “have no use for repentance” as our Gospel reading said. These are not the churched and the saved, these are the Recruiters who have no need for a Crucified Savior.
The Good News, or the Gospel, is not a business slogan or a “gatcha” to fish for men. The Gospel is the free forgiveness of sins in Christ Crucified. The Gospel is the justification of the sinner by grace, through faith, for Christ’s sake. The Gospel is the Word made Flesh. The Gospel is for you.
This fact, the sinner immediately forgets and the Recruiter immediately throws away. Because Jesus’ work is to save the world through His suffering, death, and resurrection, the Recruiter cannot sell that message. He must gloss over that and go for the sale of “make yourself righteous for God”.
What sin, death, and the devil do not understand is that the way of the cross is not a way of death or a path for a dead man. Hebrews 4:12 tells us: “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword.”
This means that the Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ is living and acts in His own way. This means that the man Jesus Christ is living. He lives and breathes and is His own individual. He dictates to His Creation and He dictates to His Church. His Church will be a cruciform Church for the forgiveness of sins.
The devil believes in numbers. He believes that if he has enough souls, eventually more than God, he wins. He does not want you, individually, he just wants supremacy. So when a church begins to focus on numbers and recruitment strategies…
Jesus does not forsake the 99, but He does focus on the 1. The difference is the 99 are able to live out a life of Faith, having heard of the Good Work of the Good Shepherd. The repentance purchased and won on the cross is for them. They simply love their sins more.
The one has yet to hear, because he is dead in his trespasses and sins (Eph 2:1). His ears are stopped, his tongue is locked up, and his eyes are blind. In order to rescue that one, the Son of Man must be lifted up. In order that God so love the world to give His only-begotten Son “that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16), He must be lifted up in two ways.
First, as the Bronze Serpent. Jesus must take on the role of the Chief of Sinners (2 Cor. 5:21), not with His own sin, but with everyone else’s. Second, He must be lifted up from the sleep of death. Then, in that work, He may go out to search, sweeping the house with the Light of Life, to preach the Law and Gospel to the dead sinner.
Jesus did not start off with 100. He started with zero. He has to create what He is seeking. His recruitment station was abandoned for lack of success. There was no one who stopped and today that remains true. No one is righteous. No one seeks God. No one.
Though Jesus wants His Father’s House filled with wedding guests, as we heard last week in St. Luke 14, He wants you. He goes to search, not for just anybody, but you. He leaves His heavenly recruiting station to bring the Gospel to you. Because, for Jesus, it is not a numbers game, it is life and death and He has defeated death, so there is only life to give out.
His life, to you. It is not enough for Jesus to have the bigger team, He wants the biggest family. He already has His angelic army that fills the heavens and the earth, as we hear in Joel 2:11. His glory already fills the heavens and His praise, the whole earth (Hab 3:3). He has no need for you to be a drop in that bucket.
He has a need to suffer and die on the cross. He has the need to rise again from the dead. He has a need to purchase and win baptism for you, so that you would be baptized into His Body. He has a need to secure His Body and Blood for you, so that you would be fed heavenly medicine, conforming to His image and becoming more Christ-like, literally.
He also has need of preparing and perfecting His Gospel, wherein He completes His Righteousness and fulfills Confession and Absolution in order that you would be able to repent and be the cause of endless rejoicing in heaven.
It is not the self-righteous “soldiers of the Lord” who hear the voice of their Lord and follow Him. It is His own sheep. His own sheep which He has raised from the dead. His own sheep who have had their dead ears and dead eyes and dead tongues made alive again, through the Gospel.
The Gospel that the Lord has need. He has need of personally invited guests to enjoy His victory over sin, death, and the devil. The strife is over. The battle won. The soldier’s job is no more. Instead, be lifted up with Jesus. Be raised to shoulder level with Jesus. Come and repent and enter into the Kingdom of Word and Sacrament, “you who are blessed by my Father, [and] inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (St. Matthew 25:34).
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