The Search is On: Identifying the People Around Us

Pastor Meyer’s Sermon

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our heavenly Father and from our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus, our Christ.

Just a few weeks ago, on May 12, China was hit with a massive earthquake. It’s the worst they’ve seen in over three decades. The destruction was tremendous. Over 41,000 people were killed and the numbers keep rising. Over 5 million people were left homeless. On May 19, seven days after the earthquake, the Chinese government declared a three-day official mourning period for those who had died during the quake. And the Chinese people recognized this as a shift in focus. The focus before was that of search and rescue but, during that mourning period, the focus became more on reconstruction and recovery. However, on May 21, it would have been the last day of the three-day mourning period, the ninth day after the quake, a 35-year-old woman was pulled out of the rubble alive. And when you take a closer look at the numbers, you’ll see that over 32,000 people are still missing and not accounted for. And when I read that number, the first thing that came to my mind was a question. How long do you wait until you stop looking? In other words, how long before you can say, “Certainly, there are no survivors.”

As we start our sermon series on the Search is On, we are hoping, our prayer is that we can begin to build that passion for reaching out to people around us, just as God has reached out to us. And so we start with that very same question, how long do you wait until you stop looking? Now by looking, we’re certainly talking about we’re looking for people who are buried under the rubble of life who are dealing with their own personal earthquake, who are dealing with aftershock after aftershock of mistakes they have made, of guilt they may be dealing with, yet they do not have a relationship with Jesus.

Now I know, I know, I can see the nervousness in some of your eyes. I can even see you kind of shifting in your seat a little bit because you’re thinking, “You know, I’m not looking for people. Hey, that sounds like another phrase for evangelism. Evangelism? Hey, that means witness. Holy cow, he’s going to be talking to me about how I need to share my faith with other people, with my neighbors and with my friends.” Hold on, it’s okay. I understand.

I understand that you might be a little nervous listening to this but, you know, I think Ezekiel, too, was a little bit nervous. And to understand just how nervous the prophet, Ezekiel, might have been, we need to rewind history a few years. You see, Ezekiel lived during the time of international turmoil in 600 B.C. The northern kingdom of Israel had been destroyed. All the people had been deported out of their homeland. The only thing that was left was Jerusalem and some of the inner surrounding southern cities Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian empire came down and destroyed Jerusalem and those surrounding cities and took all of the people, including Ezekiel, back to Babylon in exile.

And so it is here that God called on Ezekiel to go to and to look for and to talk with those who were buried under the rubble of exile. Now if you know a little bit about the history of Israel, it would be easy for us to say and it would be easy for God to just leave them there and not to worry about them. In fact, in Ezekiel 33, we get a hint as to some of the things Israel was doing during this time. And it’s all an answer as to why they couldn’t stay in the land God had given them. Ezekiel writes, “Since you look to your idols and shed blood, should you then possess the land? Do you rely on your stores and do detestable things and each of you defiles his neighbor’s wife, should you then possess the land? My people come to you, Ezekiel, as they usually do and they sit before you to listen to your words but they do not put them into practice. With their mouths, they express devotion but their hearts are greedy for unjust game.” Hum. It’s interesting because when we think of Israel, when we hear Israel in the Old Testament, we immediately think, “Oh, the believers, the community of believers, those who believed in God.” But in actuality, the majority of the Israelites here no longer believed in God. They did not have a relationship with Him and, if they did, it was solely a relationship focused on themselves and not reaching out to other people around them, just as God had reached out to them. And so after this earthquake of Israel, after this being under the rubble of exile, it would have been easy to give up looking and just to say, “Certainly, there are no survivors here.”

Now before we go (yawn), “Pastor, that was a good history lesson but what does that have to do with me in my life?” I want to ask you a question and that question is, “Some of the things that Israel was guilty of doing, are they all that different than what we see going on in America and maybe even in our own lives?” Think about that for a moment. Do we see people running after idols? Do we see or hear about people doing detestable things? What about hearing God’s Word, even maybe agreeing with it, maybe even expressing devotion but yet not acting it out in their daily lives.

You see, it’s easy for us to think that this nation of America is a Christian nation. It’s easy to believe without being here in the Midwest, without being in the breadbasket of the United States, that most people know about Jesus and have some sort of relationship with Him. It’s easy for us to believe that our neighbors know about Jesus and have a belief in God when in actuality, we are living in an increasingly un-Christian nation. Believe it or not, the United States is the third largest mission field in the world. In fact, in Polk County alone, over 66% of the people living here are unchurched. And for those who say they are Christian, close to three-fourths of them do not go to church. No, that’s not all that different than Ezekiel’s time.

But we see that God didn’t give up looking. He certainly believed there were some survivors and so He sent Ezekiel into the epicenter of the destruction, into the midst of the exiled people and He told him to tell the prophet, to tell the people these words, “I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness. I will search for the lost and bring back the stray. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak.” You see, God showed His love to these people who were in exile by sending Ezekiel to them, to let them know that He Himself will care for them, that despite their being buried under the rubble of mistakes and misdirection, God would not give up on them.

Now Ezekiel must have been very nervous to go to people who didn’t know God and to tell them that this God would take care of them. After all, if you remember, the majority of the people did not believe. They probably would not have been receptive to him. Some may have been negative and some even hostile but even though that may be the case, Ezekiel knew he had a responsibility. That responsibility was given to him in his call and we hear about his call in Ezekiel 2 where God tells him, “I am sending you to the Israelites, to a rebellious nation that has rebelled against me. They and their fathers have been in revolt against me to this very day.” But Ezekiel knew the care and the love that God had for His people, to continue to look for them. So Ezekiel didn’t just hear God’s words, he didn’t just express devotion, he didn’t say, “Hey, that sounds like a good idea.” No, he actually went about acting it out in his life.

My friends, we have that same responsibility because, you see, we know the love that God has for us. Even though we’ve been misdirected and misguided and buried under the rubble of life and guilt, we know God so loved the world that He sent His one and only Son that anyone who looks to Him will be saved. We know that our sins were placed on that cross with Jesus and Jesus died for us so we could be without sin. We know Jesus rose again from the tomb so that we, too, can be made alive in His name and so we also know that the love God has is not just for us. No, it’s also for everyone. In fact, He told the Israelites. He told the Israelites through Ezekiel, “I will search for the lost and bring back the stray. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak.” And God does that through Jesus’ words, for He tells us the same thing. “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them everything that I have commanded you.”

Now I know this makes us nervous, doesn’t it? Because, you see, we know what kind of society we live in and we know that society will not be all that receptive to what we have to say. In fact, there would be some people who will be downright negative by saying, “Hey, it’s okay that you believe whatever you believe but don’t force it on me. I want to believe what I want to believe.” And we might even hear people telling us, “You know, you’re being pretty insensitive and uncaring by going about telling people that they may be lost or they may be going down in the wrong direction.” But how could we be unloving? How can we be uncaring? Because if we really want to get real here, we don’t know how long we have on this earth. We don’t know how long our family and our friends are going to be here with us and they need to know the news because time is short. We need to hear Jesus telling us to go and make disciples because Jesus is not only commanding us to go and look for those buried under the rubble of life. He’s telling us to go and to tell those who do not know the love He has for them.

So we, too, need to go to the epicenter of destruction and we need to dig down to that student who is depressed because he has no support while pursuing his dream. We need to tunnel down to that couple who feel like they no longer love each other and their marriage is collapsing. We need to go and get that man who is daily fighting with an addiction only to lose time and time again. Because in the rubble of life, bodies are hurting and souls are crying. Marriages are bruised and families are aching and we need to announce to them the Lord will rescue them. He has searched for them and longed to bring them back to Him. He will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak. Lives can be made whole again and healing can take place in bodies and in marriages and in families.

So again, I ask the question, “How long do we wait before we stop looking?” Who will you look for this week to tell them that even though they are buried deep, even though life looks like it’s collapsing all around them, Jesus has a promise for them and that promise is, “Surely I am with you even until the end of the age.” Amen.

Copyright 2008 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church