Empty Church [Easter 3]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE

READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Ezekiel 34:11-16

• 1 Peter 2:21-25

• St. John 21:11-16

 

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 Service, saying: 
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep”
 
Where is everyone in church? On this Sunday we have heard God speak about the Good Shepherd. Our Good Shepherd. And yet, when we look around at this sheepfold, we find poor management. We see empty seats.
 
The emptiness itself is not what disturbs us. There is space in all life. People try to cow us into fear by shouting, “Overpopulation!” But that is just a myth. The reason why emptiness here, disturbs us, is because they are seats we know used to be filled. There used to be people there. 
 
People used to sit there, whom we thought had been gathered by the Good Shepherd, as in secure. And yet, whether by personal decision or involuntary death, they are no longer gathered in this place.
 
So what is it that we conclude? Do we say that our Good Shepherd is not so good as we thought? That because there is empty space where there was once full space, He is no longer our Shepherd, or simply a shepherd?
 
Yes. In our sin, we do blame our Good Shepherd and we will continue to. If He is so almighty that He can change things the way He wants them to or change them the way we think He should, and doesn’t, then He either can’t or won’t. 
 
So we absolutely lay the blame at His feet and say, “If You would have been here, you could have done something about it”. The same accusation hurled at Jesus, by Martha, at the death of her brother Lazarus saying, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (Jn 11:21).
 
But since it has happened, that the sheepfold appears empty, then we must judge You “not as good a shepherd as you want us to believe”. 
 
Yes, we are the spoiled, petulant child who gets injured, having been told not to do or not to continue to do what they had been doing, which was so dangerous, and turns to their parent or guardian and says “its your fault. You should have done something about this.”
 
And as children, we continue to run towards danger again and again. We continue to chase after the lie that somehow, if God could just change, then people would like Him more. That if His church would just modernize, then we would attract everyone who used to be here and more.
 
That if we would just listen to the devil and his demons, and change God’s Word, then we would see a real shepherd. We would see the pews filled to bursting, just like those other churches who are increasing in attendance and numbers, with our past members and numbers.
 
And there is the lie. There is the lie that somehow, someway, we can measure God’s goodness by the apparent “good” or “bad” that happens in this world, because we all know that the marks of a true church are growth in numbers and external good works. God says that somewhere…
 
Repent! The devil teaches that we can look at this or that group or gathering and conclude “God must be with them” since they are succeeding. And yet, would any of you deny that God was with Christ as He was suffering and dying on the cross? 
 
If it is true that Jesus can be rejected by every single person on earth, that His closest friends can forsake Him in His hour of deepest need, and that He can even cry out on the cross, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” (Ps 22:1), and still we can say, God was favoring and loving Him, then there is no ground on which we can stand to assert, “This church is empty because God’ hates us” because we did things wrong, and there is no godly good in suffering.
 
Dear Christians, in Christ Jesus we say just the opposite. That even though we are few, even though it get to two or three gathered in His Name, it is Good. That even though we go through suffering, it is good. 
 
Because of Christ, we know that it is sin that causes this suffering. We have chased after the devil and his lies of “new fads” and “modern times” and “popular”. We have preferred to hear him and what he is talking about as opposed to Christ and what He is saying now.
 
Here, then is the truth. That sometimes, and we’ll be good Calvinists here, people who were in church, never really believed what the Church taught in the first place. They believed in something else, some other aspect of things. They trusted in their preferences and private tastes. They believed that what they liked and what made them feel good, was how God spoke to them.
 
And when the Church got serious and proclaimed, no, it is in suffering, it is in denying yourself and bearing your cross that we find God, for us. That is where it got too hard and they left, just as happened to Jesus in St. John 6, “After this many of His disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” (Jn 6:66-67), when Jesus was talking about eating and drinking His Body and Blood and having life in Him by those things.
 
Well do you want to go away? Jesus continues in John 6, “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?” (v. 61-62). Would you then believe? What if I came back from the dead? Jesus says, “they would not believe even were a man to rise from the dead” (Luke 16:31).
 
It is the Truth that drives people away and it is our sin that gives strength to our running legs. Most of the time it is not our doing, that people are not here, in our church. It is nothing we did, nothing we said. It is not necessarily our fault, though we have faults of our own. 
 
It is simply the Truth at work. It is the Good Shepherd at work, chasing out the hireling, chasing out the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Not that we think ill or bad of those people, or try to accomplish those things ourselves, or try to judge in the place of God. It is only the Shepherd Who judges. The Good Shepherd.
 
So it is only the Good Shepherd Who does things that appear bad to us and yet our entire Good is accomplished in those things, for us. That is, that He suffers and dies and rises again. Completely not good to us, but eternally good for us.
 
That He also ascends to the Right Hand of God. Disappearing! Completely unacceptable. Bad for us. And yet, completely Good for us. And then He sends His Holy Spirit to those Whom He chooses to reveal Himself (Mt 11:27) and to reveal the Father and to give faith and to save. He chooses, which means its exclusive. Bad for us because we are so Inclusive, but eternally Good for us.
 
Then His Holy Spirit chooses to create the Church, sanctifying the Bride of the Good Shepherd, giving Her all of His gifts, that of the Preached Word, Baptism, the sacrament of the altar, the Office of the keys, Calling of pastors who deliver such gifts, prayer, and bearing the cross.
 
This is so horribly bad in our eyes and yet this is the Goodness of our Good Shepherd. That He gives us, not only access to Him and access to His sheepfold, but also the Way to find His Goodness, true goodness. Goodness that surpasses all earthly understanding.
 
That is what He has promised. Heavenly goodness, not necessarily earthly goodness. He has our eternal Good in mind. And although we receive all earthly goods and all good things from Him that have to do with the support and needs of the body, it is of more significance to Him, of more importance that we look to His Son and believe.
 
And in Christ, we see things better than our daily bread. He has come to redeem us from those things which cause suffering and death to us. He comes to take us away from sin, death, and the power of the devil, and bring us to His side where we will not be susceptible to those things ever again.
 
At His side, we will be able to always enjoy His gifts and true goodness, with no repercussions, having been rescued from the lie told at the tree of the knowledge of Good and evil. 
 
And so our good shepherd will continue to exercise His rod and His staff for our good. Guarding and defending us from all danger and all evil of both body and soul, for our goodness. They will sting and they will hurt, but it will save us from even greater shame and vice.
 
For it is only our Good Shepherd Who knows us, Who knows our need and can supply it. We think we know, but we are just the sheep. We wander. We put any and everything in our mouth whether its good for us or no and we blame our shepherd when its not.
 
But our Shepherd just smiles, suffers the punishment for our wayward-ness, and goes to the cross in Joy. He rises again on Easter and says, “Yes you will suffer, but you will rise again with me. You will be with me. All my glory will be yours and my righteousness will be yours. And there will no longer be a question as to what is good and what is bad.
 
There will no longer be a question as what good our Good Shepherd has made for us, in this life or the next. So our pews may be empty and they may get emptier. But this does not mean that we turn away from our Shepherd, telling Him He has done poorly, and abandon His Word and Sacraments.
 
No, it means we cling to them even harder. We run to them even faster. It means we believe in them even more and say, if change is going to happen, then the Good Shepherd is going to have to do it. It is not going to be us. We will not necessarily make a difference, or fill this or that seat, or make this or that good or not.
 
It is only Jesus and His chosen way of interacting in this world, with us. 
 
So how do we fill this church back up again? More Jesus. And where do we find more Jesus? In His promises. In His Word and Sacrament. In the Sheep-pen which He has specifically suffered and died for that He might create on earth, for us. That is where we find more Jesus and that is where find Him working His salvation and spreading His Gospel to the ends of the earth.
 
He has done it. He is faithful. Our Good Shepherd has laid down His life on behalf of the sheep so that our eternal good is secured and that we can find our eternal good in a foretaste of things to come, in His Church on earth.
 
Alleluia!  Christ is Risen!