As I mention in the opening of the sermon, this first Sunday in September is a busy day at both church, with new Bibles for some of the kids, blessing teachers and students for the new school year, service projects for God’s Work, Our Hands” Sunday, and most importantly, a baptism at Christ the King!
In today’s Scripture readings from 1 John 3:1-3, 16-24 and Luke 15:1-10 (yes, that’s actually next week’s lectionary Gospel), we’re going back to some basics of our faith: We are God’s beloved children, called to reflect God’s love by serving our neighbors. And when we wander away, God comes to find us and bring us home. Thanks be to God!
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Grace to you and peace in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
Welcome to September! I don’t know if this is true for all of you, but for me and my family, this month has started with a week of transition.
We’ve traveled a lot this summer, with a youth mission trip and a retreat, a friend’s wedding, and just family outings, and it’s all good, but I’m also glad to be home for a while. And between my weeks away and many of you also having busy summers, I feel like it’s been a while since I’ve seen some of you!
The biggest transition for us is Micah started kindergarten on Wednesday, which is a big change having him gone both mornings and afternoons. I know we have others starting kindergarten or at new schools as well—lots of transitions.
Here at church, we’re transitioning to the new season as well. Here We Grow day camp is over, and we have new ministries starting with MomCo at Living Hope, Sister Circle and Rachel Circle resuming at Christ the King, and new things happening in Sunday School. Lighthouse kicked off a new year this week, we’re giving Bibles to kids, and we had the school blessing this morning.
Today is also “God’s Work, Our Hands” Sunday, which is a day our ELCA denomination invites churches across the country to do a service project together, so stay after worship for that, and last (but most importantly), we’re celebrating Avery’s baptism this morning at Christ the King.
My job this morning is to cover all that in a sermon short enough for us to still have time to tie all the blankets and be done before when the Packers start their new season at 3:25.
So, let’s focus on some basics.
In Luke 15, Jesus tells a story about a shepherd who has a hundred sheep. When one sheep wanders away, the shepherd doesn’t just say, “Oh well, 99 is a pretty decent flock.”
No, the shepherd goes out to look for the missing sheep, searches until he finds it, then carries it home. The point, of course, is that we are the sheep, and Jesus is the shepherd.
This story Jesus tells is one of the best pictures we have of God’s love for us, God’s amazing grace, and yes, we’re going to sing “Amazing Grace” a little later in the service—remember, back to basics this morning.
I had a moment last weekend where I connected to this story. For Labor Day weekend, our family went up north to Silver Birch Ranch, a Christian camp on Sawyer Lake—it’s about half an hour from Antigo—with my sister and her family, my parents, and my grandmother, along with some other people from the church I grew up at, and about 150 people from another church group.
We had a great time, lots of outdoor fun and family bonding, but there was a brief moment on Sunday morning when Jonah tried to play the part of the lost sheep.
We came out of the dining hall after breakfast, chatted on the porch for a few minutes, looked around, and Jonah wasn’t there. We started to spread out and look around, remember what he was wearing, all of that. It turned out he’d gone back inside with his aunt and cousins to get a cookie from the snack table, but for two or three minutes, we didn’t know where he was, and I think I got a brief glimpse of how God feels about us when we wander away.
First John chapter three says, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”
This is the good news: We are children of God. God has claimed you, called you beloved. That’s what Avery’s baptism today is all about. In the waters of baptism, she’s joined to Christ’s death and resurrection, and raised to new life.
She’s cleansed, named, and claimed as God’s child. Baptism is a means of grace, a way God says, “I love you.”
Baptism gives us a foundation in life, but it doesn’t mean suddenly everything in life is perfect. You might hear me say “Jesus loves you” this morning and believe it, then go home and get some news that makes you doubt if God even exists at all. You might not believe a word I’m saying right now! Doubts are ok. We all have doubts and questions.
That reading from First John goes on to say there’s a lot we don’t know about the future. “What we will be has not yet been revealed.”
We’re going to start a series next Sunday where we spend six weeks wrestling with doubt, and hopefully finding faith among some of the hard questions, questions like, “Is God real? What about when prayers aren’t answered?” Heaven and hell, those sort of questions.
Having doubts is part of having faith. And knowing we are children of God, being baptized, that doesn’t stop us from sinning.
We should know better, we should do better, but as we confessed, there are things we do wrong, and there are things we ought to do but have failed to do.
Luke says, the Pharisees and the scribes (the religious elite, the people who thought they had everything about God figured out), they were grumbling about Jesus, saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
And of course, they mean it as condemnation, as criticism. “Look at the company he keeps!” But their statement, their complaint, is the Gospel! It’s good news! Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them. Jesus spends time with people who don’t have it all figured out, with people who are wrestling with questions and doubts, people who get it wrong even when they know better—people like us.
When we wander away, Jesus comes looking for us. And when he finds us, he rejoices!
As 1 John says, “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us.” In Jesus Christ, God entered this world to seek us out, all for love.
And then it continues with what we do about that love: We serve our neighbors. We receive the love God shows to us and we reflect it to our neighbors.
That’s why we’re spending time after worship today tying blankets; it’s one small way of sharing God’s amazing grace.
The heart of our faith is this: Jesus loves you. You are a child of God. And when you get lost, God will always come find you and bring you home.
Amen