Lost for your Good [Trinity 3]

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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Micah 7:18-20
• 1 Peter 5:6-11
• St. Luke 15:1-10

Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.

Who speaks to you today, saying,

“And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.”

​​In Luke chapter 15, there are actually three things that are lost: a sheep, a coin, and a son whom we do not hear about today; the Prodigal Son in verses 11-32. In each example, we are told of everyday things that we may lose, can relate to, and most importantly it appears we can recover with our own strength.

If you lose a sheep or any part of your livelihood, it is easily recoverable, or at least you can find other means of livelihood in this realm of abundance. If a farmer loses a sheep, he can either buy a new one, breed a new one, or rescue what he lost as Jesus did. If you lose a mode of transportation, a computer, or anything you need to earn a living, there is no need for supernatural intervention to gain a new one or repair an old one.

If you lose a coin, or a paycheck, or a job, though difficult sometimes, these are also easily recoverable using your own strength, talents, and skills. Earning money is easy. We may not like the work, the size of the paycheck, or the location, but there are always humans acting in need of labor and work. Again, no divine intervention necessary.

If you lose a son or any other family member to argument or political disagreement, again, using your own reason and humility, you can win back your family. Humbling yourself, swallowing your pride, and forgiving each other goes a long way on the road to reconciliation. 

So far today, Jesus has effectively preached Himself out of the “lost and found” equation and many teachers today interpret this chapter in St. Luke this way. They tell you that someone is lost. Its probably not you, because you’re sitting there listening to them. So you have privilege because you have been found, supposedly.

So its not about you, but about this other person who is lost, which sounds familiar. Christian, even. So you go along because you have been taught that its not about you. That you are not lost, someone else is. That you have the super-power and mission from God to go and find.

Repent. You believe this not just because it sounds Christian, not just because of your sinful pride, but because its easy. Yes, finding people is easy. They are all around. There’s an earth all around you with a population approaching 8 billion. Though if you’re searching for one specific person, all the rest get in the way, you don’t have to work too hard, invest too much, or be too inconvenienced by finding a lost person.

And that is true. You don’t have to search for very long at all. In fact, the Holy Spirit will tell you that the man in the mirror is lost. So satan twists this part of the Bible this way for two reasons: 1) to get you to focus on someone else and 2) to get you to focus on someone else. He wants you prideful, thinking you are superior to your neighbor and he wants you distracted from your own sin.

What Jesus is actually preaching about in these parables is not things or people simply having lost their way. The word He uses for lost is actually quite a bit stronger than that. These things and people are not just lost, but destroyed; put out of reach of any recovery efforts.

The word is apollumi. You may hear Apollo in there, the Greek god of the sun. He is known as the destroyer or the purifier among the Greeks, but then later mythology toned him down a bit and associated him with nicer things like harmony. Yet, Homer in the Iliad, says of Apollo that he sends the plagues of destruction. Apollinaris was the name of the XV Roman legion, one of the four that destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem in 72 AD.

Sodom and Gomorrah were to be destroyed, because God could not find any righteous men in it (Gen. 19:13), except Lot and his family. Pharaoh’s servants begged him to let Israel go, unless Pharaoh desired Egypt’s destruction (Ex. 10:7). King Herod and the Pharisees both seek Jesus’ destruction in His youth and during His ministry (Mt. 2:13, 12:14). Even the demons understand this word and know Jesus’ business saying, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God” (Lk. 4:34).

What we are getting at here is the truth that simply losing something is not devastating. But having something or someone you love destroyed or put out of your reach, is. And where do we find such a thing happening to us? In death.

Death is the great destroyer; the great purifier. In death we lose those things that are precious to us and have no way of retrieving them. This is part of the reason we erect grave markers over those we love, to mark that what lies there was once someone we knew and loved.

Though we can travel to the marker, we can not go where our loved ones have gone. We have lost that which we held dear and there is no more seeking and finding and rejoicing. When one is placed in the grave, there is no coming back.

This is the anxiety of the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus will not stop talking about His death so much so that the Apostles become exhausted and fall asleep three times. When Jesus is then arrested, that Word of God moves from the spiritual realm to the physical realm and becomes a real certainty and the Apostles can not handle that, so they run away.

Though only John returns to the foot of the cross, the weeping women are the only ones who seem to understand that once Jesus is dead, He is not coming back. Once they bleed Him out, He is gone. Once the tomb is sealed, Jesus is lost. 

“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18).

The one out of a hundred sheep that was lost is Jesus, Who was lost and destroyed in our place, having suffered and died on the cross. The one out of ten coins that was lost is Jesus, Who was buried in the darkness of the Tomb only to be found by the lamp of Easter morning, alive again.

Jesus is the Prodigal Son Who left His Father’s house of riches to seek and to save the destroyed and yet was destroyed Himself by their sin and their wickedness, lowering Himself beneath pigs in order to be found, alive again and received by His Father to His own Wedding Feast.

Make no mistake. You are lost, destroyed and Jesus has come for the lost. You are dead in your sin and Jesus has risen from the dead, baptizing you in His death and resurrection. Jesus made Himself lost to seek and to save you who are lost (Lk. 19:10). 

Jesus’ baptism, which He gives to you for free, is the way to those who are lost, those who are dead in their sins. The Word and the Sacrament, instituted by Christ and powered by the Spirit are the means by which God, and we in Christ, now find lost things on earth. Especially those who are lost beneath the earth.

The Lord promises that “not a hair of your head will be destroyed” when you yourself are betrayed and put to death because of your faith (Lk 21:18). In this Christ-given endurance, you will gain your life. In this Way of Crucifixion, which Jesus has blazed for us, you gain salvation.

In Baptism, you gain life, light and salvation. The Light of the World is given to you, so that when the Shepherd comes seeking, when the Mother-hen comes sweeping the earth, and when the Father looks out from His window, that light shines, even in death.

For, “after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you” (1 Pet. 6-11). He will restore in you the Image of God completely, which is Jesus. He will confirm and fix you firmly on the solid ground of heaven, away from death forever. He will strengthen you so that you be able to stay next to Him for eternity, with no sin. And establish you in your mansion which He Himself has prepared, in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness.

To be lost is no small thing. It is to be dead. To be separated from the Lord. Dear Christians, believe that you may live. Believe that you are lost, so that you may be found, daily. Believe that you are destroyed, in order that you be raised to new life again. Believe that you are afflicted, in order that you better sympathize with your neighbors, who may not be suffering exactly like you are suffering.

For it is all about you and yet at the same time, its not about you. Jesus seeks after you to save you from your sin, making it all about you. But it is also all about His work in accomplishing that miraculous feat. He also gives the fruit of this work to all people and what that comes down to is belief.

We believe that we may know that suffering in this life is only temporary and we hope in the resurrection of all flesh and for all to turn from their sin and live. Because ultimately it isn’t about us, nor is it about our neighbors. It is about God, in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself by His cross and by His Word and Sacrament and in those things, He gives us back all the things and people we have lost in this life and even more than that, in the resurrection.