Who Am I?

1 Chronicles 29:1-2,10-18

1 Then King David said to the whole assembly: “My son Solomon, the one whom God has chosen, is young and inexperienced. The task is great, because this palatial structure is not for man but for the Lord God. 2 With all my resources I have provided for the temple of my God—gold for the gold work, silver for the silver, bronze for the bronze, iron for the iron and wood for the wood, as well as onyx for the settings, turquoise, stones of various colors, and all kinds of fine stone and marble—all of these in large quantities. 

10 David praised the Lord in the presence of the whole assembly, saying,

“Praise be to you, Lord,
    the God of our father Israel,
    from everlasting to everlasting.
11 Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power
    and the glory and the majesty and the splendor,
    for everything in heaven and earth is yours.
Yours, Lord, is the kingdom;
    you are exalted as head over all.
12 Wealth and honor come from you;
    you are the ruler of all things.
In your hands are strength and power
    to exalt and give strength to all.
13 Now, our God, we give you thanks,
    and praise your glorious name.

14 “But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand. 15 We are foreigners and strangers in your sight, as were all our ancestors. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope. 16 Lord our God, all this abundance that we have provided for building you a temple for your Holy Name comes from your hand, and all of it belongs to you. 17 I know, my God, that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity. All these things I have given willingly and with honest intent. And now I have seen with joy how willingly your people who are here have given to you. 18 Lord, the God of our fathers Abraham, Isaac and Israel, keep these desires and thoughts in the hearts of your people forever, and keep their hearts loyal to you.”

Who am I?

What is the most beautiful church you have ever seen? I may be partial, but I’ve loved all of the churches I’ve served. I think they’re each beautiful in their own ways.

My phone recently reminded me of some memories of our trip to Germany a couple years ago. There were some amazing churches over there.

My sister-in-law was just in Spain, and she shared these photos of the Sagrada Familia which she thought was the most beautiful church she’d ever seen. Based on the photos, I don’t doubt her.

Some of the most beautiful buildings in the history of the world have been churches. And even though many of the magnificent cathedrals in Europe are empty shells of what they used to be, and even though they may have been built so that the pastor or the prince or the architect might make a name for himself, they still stand all these many centuries later as monuments to the glory of God. And what may be even more amazing is that as beautiful as these buildings are, they are only a pale reflection of the splendour of God.

There was one church, though, that would have put all these to shame. We read a little bit about it in our first reading this morning from 1 Chronicles 29.

David wanted to build a temple to the Lord. He even gathered all the materials to do it:

With all my resources I have provided for the temple of my God—gold for the gold work, silver for the silver, bronze for the bronze, iron for the iron and wood for the wood, as well as onyx for the settings, turquoise, stones of various colors, and all kinds of fine stone and marble—all of these in large quantities.[1]

David wanted to build a temple to the Lord. It was a good and godly desire, from a good and godly man. David was the most moral, God-pleasing king Israel ever had. David was known as a man after God’s own heart. But when David asked for God’s blessing on his temple project, God said, “No.”

The way David explained it to the officials of Israel was that because David’s reign was spent conquering Canaan, God didn’t want his temple to be associated with war, but with peace. That would make sense. God is not a god of war. He is a God of justice, but also of grace and mercy. It would make sense that God wouldn’t want his temple to be associated with war.

But David wasn’t telling the whole story. You can tell, even from today’s text, that there was something else that troubled David:

“But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this?”[2]

David knew who he was. He may have been the best, most moral king that Israel ever had, but that wasn’t really saying much. He may have been “a man after God’s own heart,” but he was far from a saint. He had had a salacious affair with the wife of one his best soldiers and subsequently had him killed to cover it up. He had been a bad dad and looked the other way as his children ran amok, not only making a mockery of his family but leading open rebellion and inciting a civil war. The same man who slayed the giant with nothing but a sling and a stone, succumbed to fear later on in life and trusted more in the number of troops in his army than in the strength of his God, and as a direct result of his distrust, he caused the death of 70,000 men in Israel.

When David asks, “Who am I?” he means it. He knew all too well all the many reasons he was unworthy to do anything for God, let alone be the one to build a glorious temple to his name.

Do you ever feel that way? “Who am I?” Who am I to serve on council, to be a Sunday school teacher, to talk about Jesus to a classmate or co-worker? Who am I? I’m a screw up. I’m a failure. I’m not a role model. I don’t have it all figured out. I can barely play two cords on my mandolin. What makes me think I can accompany worship? I’m already stretched thin. What do I have to offer? If these people knew my past, they wouldn’t let me pump gas for them, let alone listen to me about grace and forgiveness. What could I possibly contribute?

Honestly? Nothing.

It reminds me of a story I’ve told you before about a platypus. When I was about 5 or 6 years old, I wanted to get a Christmas present for my Uncle Ted. He was goofy and good with kids. He was always kind and generous.

The problem was, I was 5 or 6 years old. I didn’t have any money to get him anything. Do you know what I did? I asked Uncle Ted to loan me some. Then I went to the store and saw something that I liked and assumed that he would like it too. Who wouldn’t want a stuffed platypus for Christmas?

Then, when we got back to Grandma’s house, I needed to figure out how to wrap the thing. I was 5 or 6 years old. I didn’t know how to wrap anything, let alone a stuffed platypus. Do you know what I did? I asked Uncle Ted to help me.

The poor man! Not only did he end up buying and wrapping his own Christmas present, but it wasn’t even something he ever asked for or wanted.

Uncle Ted died about 10 years after that. He was technically my great uncle, i.e. my mother’s uncle, so when it came to dividing up his estate, I was pretty much at the bottom of the list. But do you know what he still had? This silly, stuffed platypus that he never asked for or wanted, but that he clearly delighted in and cherished enough to hold onto for a decade, even until he died.

You don’t have anything that God needs. You can’t offer him anything that he doesn’t already have. But that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t delight in your service to him. God delights in anything you do for him.

God didn’t ask David to build him a temple. God didn’t even want David to build him a temple. But that didn’t stop David from wanting to serve his God.

David knew who he was. He knew he wasn’t worthy of God. He knew he was a sinner. But he also knew what God had done for a sinner like him. Verses 10-13 have no fewer than 15 reasons why David was happy to serve his God. I want you to listen to those verses again and see how many you can spot:

“Praise be to you, Lord, the God of our father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, Lord, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all. Wealth and honor come from you; you are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all. Now, our God, we give you thanks, and praise your glorious name.[3]

God had been good to David. God had blessed him as the king of Israel with victory and wealth and honor and glory. God had made the nation strong, even when David was weak. And that would have been enough to earn David’s unending thanks and praise. David was a wealthy, healthy, happy man and he owed it all to God.

But David’s praise was much more personal than that. “Who am I?” he asked. He knew all too well the sins that separated him from his God. That’s why, of all the ways he could have shown his thanks and praise, he chose the temple. It was the temple that served as the place for sacrifice. It was the temple that stood as a testament to God’s grace and mercy. It was the temple that pointed ahead to Jesus.

All the animals that were sacrificed on the altar that David’s son Solomon would eventually build were nothing more than allusions to the sacrifice that God would ultimately make on a hill not too far away. All the blood that was shed in those temple courts was just a symbol of the blood Jesus shed for you and me to purify us from all our sins, the same blood that he gives us in the sacrament today to give us the assurance that he has taken our guilt away.

We may still say, “Who am I?” or “What could I possibly give to God?” But to Jesus the answer is not nobody or nothing. You are Jesus’ own sister or brother. You are someone he died to save. You are someone he loved enough to give his life for. Anything you give him will be precious in his sight – even if it’s something as silly as a stuffed platypus, or a few weeds pulled or leaves raked, an hour spent watching the little ones so their parents can go to Bible class or choir practice, or serving on a board or committee or going on a mission trip or building a church.

Your service to God doesn’t have match David’s piles of precious metals and stones, but your service to God can equal or exceed even his thankfulness and praise, because of all the good that God has done for you, whether that’s material wealth, physical health, professional success, personal happiness, or none of the above. Even if you have none of those things, you still have a God who gave his Son for a sinner like you, so that when you ask, “Who am I?” it is not with a sense of guilt or gloom, but with a spirit of thankfulness and joy.

Who are you? You are someone God loves. You are someone God has saved. You are someone God has blessed. You are someone qualified and motivated to serve. And so I pray with David,

“Lord, keep these desires and thoughts in the hearts of your people forever, and keep their hearts loyal to you.”[4]

Amen.

[1] 1 Chronicles 29:2

[2] 1 Chronicles 29:14

[3] 1 Chronicles 29:10-13

[4] 1 Chronicles 29:18

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Are You Worth It?

Luke 15:1-10

1 Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gather around to hear Jesus. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

3 Then Jesus told them this parable: 4 “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

8 “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? 9 And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ 10 In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Are You Worth It?

Are you worth it? That’s the question that our Gospel reading for today poses: Are you worth it? Jesus tells a pair of parables about two people who lost something – a shepherd who lost 1 of his 100 sheep, and a woman who lost 1 of her 10 coins. In both cases, both the shepherd and the woman had to ask themselves, “Is it worth it? Do I spend the time and energy chasing after, searching for, this one sheep, this one coin?” What Jesus says might surprise you:

“Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?”[1]

Jesus makes it personal. He wants us to imagine ourselves in the shepherd’s shoes. “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them.” But then Jesus asks the question in such a way that he makes the answer seem obvious: “Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?” To Jesus, it is obvious that the shepherd would. But would you?

If you were in that situation – if you had 100 sheep and 1 went missing – would you leave the 99 in the open country to go chasing after 1? I don’t know that I would. A 99% success rate is pretty good. In most areas of our lives, we are comfortable with a margin of error. There are certain losses that, while unfortunate, are nevertheless acceptable.

Most students wouldn’t cry if they got 1 question out of 100 wrong on a test. My favourite football team plays its first game today; I would be elated if they only lost 1 of their 17 games this season. 1 loss, much less 1%, is usually not a big deal.

But it is to God.

Jesus thought that the choice was obvious. Of course, he would leave the 99 to go chasing after the 1! That’s how important every single one of his sheep is to him. They don’t have numbered tags hanging from their ears to help him identify them; he knows them all by name. He doesn’t reduce their value to him to a dollar amount; he loves them just for who they are. When our Good Shepherd looks out at his flock, he doesn’t see a sea of sheep. He sees each one of you, and he cares about each one of you, so much so that he notices when you’re gone. And not only that, he leaps into action to bring you home.

To Jesus, the choice was obvious. Of course, he would leave the 99 to go chasing after the 1! The fact that we would even have to think about it tells you all you need to know about us, doesn’t it?

Remember why Jesus is telling these parables:

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”[2]

When the Pharisees and the teachers of the law saw Jesus associating with tax collectors and sinners, they were disgusted. To the Pharisees, these people were a basket of deplorables; they were the undesirables in society, people you would cross the street to avoid. You definitely wouldn’t share a meal with them. The Pharisees took one look at their behaviour and wrote them off as lost causes, not worth their time or energy.

Is there someone you feel that way about – that they’re a lost cause, not worth your time or energy? Is there a whole segment of society you write off because of their behaviour? Are there people you actively avoid like the plague, when in reality you are in the perfect position to offer them help and healing? Do you know someone caught in sin whom you are more interested in seeing punished than saved?

Well, then, maybe you are the sheep who has strayed away from the flock, because that attitude is not at all like your shepherd’s. To Jesus, the choice was obvious. Of course, he would leave the 99 to go chasing after the 1! We rarely feel the same way.

Even when we do end up doing the right thing, isn’t it often with the wrong attitude, i.e. with silent judgment in our hearts or a disappointed shake of our heads, with resentment or bitterness at the time or energy it cost us, with skepticism and cynicism that assumes that they’ll just get stuck and need help all over again?

Again, if that’s the way your heart feels, like mine sometimes does, then, maybe you are the sheep who has strayed away from the flock, because that attitude is not at all like your shepherd’s.

“Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’”[3]

The shepherd didn’t scold his sheep. The shepherd didn’t grumble under his breath the whole way home. He joyfully hefted that seventy-pound straying sheep on his shoulders and walked all the way home with a smile on his face planning the celebration he’d throw with his friends: “Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.”

That’s the attitude that our shepherd has toward every sheep that strays. That’s the attitude that Jesus has toward you. And, while what Jesus says next is a stern rebuke of our own self-righteous pride and stone-cold hearts, there’s more than a glimmer of hope in these words too:

“I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”[4]

Shame on us for our severe lack of sincere love for the lost. Our God in heaven has so much more joy over the recovery of a single repentant sinner from that basket of deplorables – the undesirables of society – he has so much more joy over the repentance and recovery of a single sinner than 99 of us who may be doing all the right things outwardly, but whose hearts are inwardly self-righteous and stone-cold.

Another way to say the same thing is that our God has no joy when we feel we have no need to be sorry about anything. If you feel that you have no need to repent, then God has no need of you. As I said before, that makes you the lost sheep whose heart has wandered far from the attitude of your shepherd. These words are a stern rebuke of our self-righteousness.

But they are also a promise of grace and love and full and free forgiveness. If you are the lost sheep, then that means that Jesus is willing to leave the 99 to go chasing after you. Then that means that Jesus thinks that you are worth it.

Your God went to great lengths to save you. He spared no expense, and no cost was too high. When it comes to saving his sheep, a good shepherd would even endanger his own life. And that’s what the Good Shepherd did for you. While you were still a sinful, self-righteous, straying sheep, God sent his Son for you – to seek you and to save you, to bring you home and to rejoice over you.

Jesus told these parables on his final, fatal trip to Jerusalem. When he got there, he would be arrested, put in prison and sentenced to death. But it’s not as if Jesus was defeated by his enemies. He went there of his own volition, willingly making himself vulnerable, even to the point of death, for you.

And he did it lovingly, not begrudgingly – not like a shepherd who trudges home, lugging a seventy-pound sheep over his shoulder while muttering under his breath. No, Jesus sought you and saved you because he loves you. Jesus extended his arms on a cross and died so that he could scoop you up in those same arms and carry you home in his nail-scarred hands. When Jesus died, he forgave all your sin and promised you a future with him forever at home in heaven.

But even now you have a home here – and I don’t necessarily mean these four walls or this street address. I mean the fellowship of believers, i.e. the great flock of our Good Shepherd, where we hear his voice as he speaks to us in his Word, gathering us by his grace and calling us by name. Your Good Shepherd loves you and he misses you when you stray. He eagerly desires your recovery and your return; he wants you to repent. And when you do, he does not hold it over your head or shame you into obedience. He rejoices over you and so do all the angels in heaven.

I didn’t plan it this way. Luke 15 is the assigned text for this Sunday. But it’s the perfect text for Back to Church Sunday. It’s the reminder of why we come – because our Good Shepherd loved us enough to seek and save us, and, because he did, we have a home here and one waiting for us in heaven, where we will live in his joy forever, because he thinks you’re worth it. Amen.

[1] Luke 15:4

[2] Luke 15:1,2

[3] Luke 15:4-6

[4] Luke 15:7

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