Adapted for the people of Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Adell from a message included in the Concordia Publishing House Lenten Series For Us

For Us He Seeks

Text: Mark 1:35-39

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

          Tonight, we continue to look at the ancient hymn “O Love, How Deep” and how God’s work through the church leads to rejection.

The remarkable thing about this text from Mark 1 is how ordinary most of Jesus’ works are. He prayed, taught, and worked. Now, to be fair, some of that work involved miraculous healings, exorcisms, and the like. But for the most part, Jesus was a traveling rabbi who brought the Word of God to the people He encountered. And in encountering the Word of God, everything changed.

There is a saying that people will always act according to their own self-interest. In other words, most people will only work, sacrifice, and do things if it will benefit them or their family. This is, in some way at least, the very heart of what we might consider an American philosophy. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. If you want to get something done, go out and do it, especially when it’s good for you. And people are predictable. They’ll buy what they consider to be the best deal. Factors may include price, quality, availability, color, or other things. But at the end of the day, people will buy what is best for them.

That’s no more obvious than when we look at the health-care system in the United States. Every time you get a bill, I’m going to guess that there’s at least one part of you that thinks, “Aren’t they supposed to be there to help us?” But as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. Because our health-care system is largely run by money and insurance, that means hospitals, doctors’ offices, urgent care centers, and everything else are run in order to make money.

When you and I go to get help, they give us help because it’s being paid for. It may be paid for by insurance, the government, or patients directly, but you can be certain that someone, somewhere, is paying for it. That is how the world works.

But that’s not how God works. As our hymn puts it,

For us He prayed; for us He taught;

For us His daily works He wrought,

By words and signs and actions thus

Still seeking not Himself but us.

In other words, everything that Jesus did on earth was not for Himself but for you and me. His teaching, His preaching, His defeat of Satan and His overthrowing of death and the grave, all of it was done for us.

In many respects, this is what makes studying the life of our Lord so worthwhile. Who else’s life can you look at and say that it’s completely and utterly selfless in every way?

That’s why the ordinariness of Jesus’ life is so important. He did miracles, yes, and we’ll continue to talk about them. But perhaps His greatest miracle is that He forgives our sins over and over again.

But this was not only Jesus’ work when He was here on earth. This is the work of the church, His Body, to this very day. Martin Luther put it this way in the Large Catechism: “Everything, therefore, in the Christian Church is ordered toward this goal: we shall daily receive in the Church nothing but the forgiveness of sin through the Word and signs, to comfort and encourage our consciences as long as we live here.”

The daily work of God for us is to forgive sins in Jesus’ name over and over and over again. To the world, it looks ordinary—boring even. “They’re just words,” you might say.

But this is why God sent His Son out in the first place. He sent His Son so that He might seek us out, find us where we are, and care for us when we need it most.

Do you remember that scene with Jesus before Pilate, which we heard just a few moments ago? What was it that offended the council so much? Again and again they tried to catch Him in His words, but the Word of life will not be tricked. He who is truth in the flesh has no reason to lie or deceive. Ultimately, Jesus was judged to be crucified because He said He is the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus admitted that He is the Messiah, the one who has come to save His people from their sins. And for that so-called blasphemy, they condemned Him to death.

It’s hard for us to accept the ordinary work that God does in Jesus Christ. It’s hard for us to believe that God works through simple words and ordinary objects to point us to who He is and what He does for us in His Son. Our sinful nature rejects it as too easy, too obvious. Yet everything in the church is ordered so that you receive the forgiveness of sins and new life in His name here and now.

The Messiah seeks you out. In “words and signs and actions thus,” as our hymn puts it. He seeks you out so that you will repent of your sins and turn to Him. So, come, and continue to receive this gracious gift of forgiveness that He so generously offers. Amen.

The peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.