Seekers [Trinity 2; St. Luke 14:15-24]

Jesus speaks to us today, saying,

“And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is already ready.’”

You may be familiar with Psalm 14 as the April fool’s day psalm, for it says, “The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” But King David does not stop there. He goes on to speak of those that seek out God, saying:
    They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds,
    there is none who does good.

² The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man,
    to see if there are any who understand,
    who seek after God.

³ They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt;
    there is none who does good,
    not even one.”

The Lord looks down from heaven and sees that there are NONE that seek after Him. In fact, this is what our hymn of the day was lamenting, that there are but a few within the fold of the Lord and that faith seems quenched on every hand.

And yet we hear Isaiah giving us a command from God telling us to “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near;” (Isa. 55:6).  Even Jesus gives the command to seek first the kingdom of God (Mt. 6:33).

You are commanded to seek God and many are ready and willing to tell you how to do so and may even use holy Scripture to tell you. The usual place they start, however, is outside of holy Scripture. They demand that you have a “personal relationship” to God, to always desire more of Him, and to fill the vacuum in your life with only Him.

If you would just love God at the center of all you do, spend a lot of alone time with Him, and integrate Him into every area of your life, then you will have “seeked” the Lord. Sounds as though you are trying to find a girlfriend. It sounds as though you are seeking someone to marry. This is not what God has told you to do.

There is no way you can have a personal relationship with God. Just reading the Bible often does not produce the sort of relationship God demands. Neither do you desire more of God, because that means giving up your life and everything that you are. God doesn’t just want the small part of your heart with a vacuum to be filled, He wants all of it.

Neither do you love God. If you try to put YOUR love for God at the center, then you are only loving yourself and your love, not God. If you spend alone time with God, you are not only neglecting your neighbor, but you are putting your trust in how much time YOU spend, not God.

And finally, if YOU are working YOUR hardest to put YOUR God into everything YOU do, then once again, it is all about you. Do you see what happens here? If you are seeking, then YOU are doing the work and therefore YOU get the glory. You, you, you.

Listening to the Gospel once again, we hear of a place where everything is already ready; already completed; already worked for. Think about it. If you are God commanding that You be sought after you are not going to leave a secret code behind nor are you going to hide yourself in earthly blessings or even other people.

If you want to be found, you will make it so you can be found. This is not hide and seek, this is life and death, because if you do not find God, you die eternally. But, if you do find Him, you live eternally and God wants everyone to live forever.

Jesus is the only way and the only reason you have to say that God wants to be found. It is only from Jesus that you hear and know that the Lord is merciful and loving. Jesus, on the cross, is God, saying to the world, “Here am I. Send me, send me.”

Through the cross, Jesus makes Himself painfully obvious and He does so in His Church, but still you do not seek Him. He gives you blessings and cares for your every need, and still you do not seek Him. He makes everything around you point to Himself and still you look in every other place except His Church.

One of the lessons from the Gospel is that God does not hide Himself in success; meaning, the success you have in life is not equivalent to how much God is with you. In fact, as Lazarus taught us last week, it is the opposite. It appears as if, if God is with you, then you will not be successful.

Who gets into this great and wonderful feast? Who is it that receives comfort next to Abraham? Seeking the Lord while He may be found means listening to Isaiah as he speaks more of God’ own words, saying:

“Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near;
⁷ let the wicked forsake his way,  and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
⁸ For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
⁹ For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isa.55:6-9).

Did you never think why your thoughts are not God’s thoughts? You think rich; God thinks poor. You think full; God thinks empty. You think life; God thinks death. The only way for the wicked to forsake his way is to die to sin. His only chance to return to the Lord is by denying himself. A true seeker of God will be seeking forgiveness for being unable to do all these things.

This is what the Lord means by having compassion and abundantly pardoning. It means you need compassion and you need an abundance of pardon. It means that when you hear the Lord forgiving sins, there it is that you have found Him. For, when you hear the word of the Cross, your search is over.

Jesus’ Church will be filled. That is the promise. Whether or not we are in it, depends on whether or not Christ has died for us. Whether we are in or not depends on if we are poor, crippled, blind, or lame.

This is your cross to bear and your constant need for the Church which not only tells you of your utter depravity, but also of your abundant pardon. You do not seek Jesus, Jesus seeks you. He seeks you out in your poverty of spirit; your crippled will; your blindness to sin, and lameness on the Way.

He seeks you out because He has a baptism to give to you. He has a kingdom that has been prepared for you since the foundation of the world. There is a rich Spirit being handed out for free. There is wholeness of bodily senses given to you in the perfected Body of Christ.

For as much as I’ve talked about it, do not listen to all that talk of “uninvited”, or “poor, crippled, blind, and lame”. Because that is not you anymore. You were that way, but not anymore. You still struggle with sin and will have to face death, but they have no power over you anymore.

For you have died to sin and have been baptized into the one true faith, found only in the Body of Christ. You have heard the Gospel and believed that where it is preached in its purity, there the Church of Christ is. You have faith in the words “given and shed for you” and therefore have exactly what they say: forgiveness of sins.

The Lord “may be found” in His Church. The Lord is near, in His Church. His Bride is dear to Him and will never be forsaken. These promises are also for you because you find yourself in that same Church. Not just as a weekly participant and financier, but as a bodily member; a grafted in branch; an adopted son.

This place where the Lord is forgiving sins, is your home. This place where the Lord is handing out salvation, is your rightful throne. This place where heaven meets earth in a beautiful assumption of the flesh, is where you belong.

For you have been brought in, through the cross. You have been invited, in Christ. You are made whole and are forgiven, in Faith alone. Looking back at the first verse of the Gospel today, we now re-work this man’s wrong words for him. It is not, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!”, but “Blessed is everyone who, right now, eats the Bread of Heaven in the Church of God”. For, now has Christ passed through life and death and lives still. It is today that is the day of salvation for you.