In normal daily life we are often, if not usually, distracted from that basic reality. We fall for the temptation to believe that security depends on ourselves, our job, our comfortable homes, our family, the size of our bank accounts, stock funds, or insurance policies; or, in the case of the nation, on political arrangements, diplomatic skill, economic dominance, and of course, military might. But the essential human condition was revealed to us Tuesday morning, shattering, for a few days at least, delusions about the nature of personal and national security. Life does not always go on as usual. Terrible things can happen. We can end up realizing we are lost in a wilderness of sorrow and pain, and no power of our own can save us. People need the Lord.
This is exactly what Jesus is teaching us in our gospel today. God, he says, is like a shepherd who goes out into the wilderness to find a poor, frightened lost sheep and carries it with joy back to the safety of the flock. Or God is like a poor woman who searches all day long for one missing coin, and when she finds it, blows it all on a party with her neighbors.
In the midst of the horror this week we saw a powerful modern parable of what Jesus was teaching about God: in the disaster of lower Manhattan, all the police, firefighters, search and rescue workers, rushing to the rubble of the World Trade Centers, to seek and to save the lost. Christ is teaching us that it is his mission to rush toward the lost and wounded, full of passion for rescue. And God’s joy lights up heaven whenever even one lost soul is found.
People need the Lord. In the frightening wilderness of this terrible crisis special religious services were held all over America. Churches, synagogues, and mosques were filled with people crying out to God, bleating like frightened lambs, calling for the Good Shepherd. This is the truth, the reality, the bottom-line: people need the Lord. God alone is our refuge and our strength. No amount of weaponry, terror, intimidation, or self-righteous ideology will give us lasting security, or true and abiding peace. This is the word of the Lord both to America and to the terrorists. People need the Lord.
Thus, we are gathered here this morning to live from within the power of the gospel of Christ. Most of us find ourselves agreeing with our President that we must stand up to terrorists and their crimes against humanity. There must be some response, some justice. But in these days when our feelings run strong, let us not fall for the temptation to think that the answer to our gnawing feelings of anxiety over our vulnerability in the world is to be found in a glorious war. It is tempting for us to believe that if America just flexes its considerable muscles now, and using all the force at our command to get rid of Osama bin Laden and all the terrorists in the world, then we can rest easy, so that, with our problem solved, we can go back to normal.
If we think that way, we are like the self-righteous Pharisees and religious leaders, who skated on the surface of life, sat on the edges of Jesus’ banquet with sinners, and criticized him for the company he kept. The company he kept, you see, was with those who’d lost everything, and had no illusions left about their ability to make something of themselves. They had no holdings, no political power to shield them with a veneer of secure respectability. But once they met Jesus they knew they could face the stark truth of their existence because they had found the bedrock of existence: people need the Lord.
Among the many painful-to-watch interviews this week was one with a CEO of a large investment company, who broke down many times during his heart-wrenching narrative. His company occupied several floors high up in one of the World Trade Center towers, and his entire office complex and all of the hundreds of staff people present at work that day, vanished in the cloud of dust and smoke when the Tower collapsed. The only reason he wasn’t there was that he wanted to take his young son to his first day of kindergarten, and thus was late for work.
You see, any given day the façade of our normal world can be ripped away. Any given day, we are but a heart beat away from losing everything and everyone we hold dear. Any given day something can happen to show us that all the props we have in our life can be knocked out from under us. "And all the kings horses and all the king’s men can never put Humpty together again." It doesn’t matter how safe we think we are, people need the Lord.
Thank God, then, to be among those who have come to understand that they are being carried to safety on the shoulders of the Good Shepherd--the One who on Good Friday went into the blood-soaked wilderness of suffering and death to find us. In our dealings with one another, and with our families, neighbors, and co-workers, we must live and speak clearly this fundamental reality: in the face of all that has happened and can happen in life, we are but lost, broken, scared and confused sinners—we are, all of us, always and forever people who need the Lord.
And if we are really convinced of that, then, because the lost are everywhere, we will turn our churches into spiritual search and rescue teams.
And then the lost will be found.
And God will bless us.
And there will be joy in heaven.
And there will be peace on earth.
People—all the people--need the Lord. Amen.