Sermon for June 7, 2026, Second Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 9:9-13 (Second Sunday after Pentecost/Proper5—Series A)

“The Lost Follow and Feast”

Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer, Enfield CT

June 7, 2026

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

Our text is the Gospel Reading from Matthew 9:

⁹As Jesus went on from there, He saw a man sitting at the tax booth called Matthew, and He said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed Him. ¹⁰And it happened that as Jesus was reclining at table in the house, also behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining at table with Jesus and His disciples. ¹¹And when the Pharisees had seen this, they began to say His disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” ¹²And when He had heard, He said, “Those who are healthy do not have need of a physician, but those who are sick do. ¹³But go and learn what this is, “Mercy I desire and not sacrifice.” For I did not come to call righteous people, but sinners.”

           Jesus concluded His words to a rich, chief tax collector, saying, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10 ESV). That tax collector’s name was Zacchaeus. But before Zacchaeus had met Jesus after being called down from the sycamore tree, Jesus found Matthew sitting at the tax booth. Both Zacchaeus and Matthew were “lost.” They were those among the lost whom Jesus had come to find and to save.

          We see the motif of lost and found throughout the Scriptures. When Isaiah saw Yahweh of Hosts, he called out in fear of judgement and death, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Is. 6:5). God spoke through Jeremiah the prophet about the people of Israel, “My people have been lost sheep” (Jer. 50:6a). And the Lord made this promise through Ezekiel, “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them in justice” (Ezek. 34:16).

          In the New Testament, Jesus refers to the house of Israel as “lost sheep” (Mt. 15:24). In Luke 15’s parable, the father rejoices at his wayward son’s homecoming, saying, “For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found” (Luke 15:24 ESV).

          To be lost is to be spiritually separated from God, and to be found is to be rightly related to God in Christ. All people, not just tax collectors like Matthew and Zacchaeus, are conceived and born lost in sin and need being found and redeemed by Jesus Christ.

          When Jesus got Zacchaeus down from the sycamore tree and went to his house, Jesus’ opponents “grumbled, ‘He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner’” (Luke 19:7). On another occasion, Jesus was eating with one of the Pharisees and a woman of the city, who was a sinner, anointed Jesus’ feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. The Pharisee said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, He would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner” (Luke 7:40). It was no different in the home of Matthew the tax collector, “And when the Pharisees had seen this, they began to say to His disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?’”

          What the Pharisees did not understand was that, by simply eating with “tax collectors and sinners,” Jesus was not signaling His acceptance of their behaviors and full fellowship with them. Obvious sinners, like Matthew, had already begun to be transformed by Jesus’ authoritative call to faith and discipleship: “And as Jesus went on from there, He saw a man sitting at the tax booth called Matthew, and He said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up and followed Him.” The Holy Spirit was already at work through the Word Made Flesh, Jesus, creating saving faith and the new life of discipleship within Matthew. To people like Matthew, Jesus offered instantaneous and full acceptance through His own forgiveness. There was no trial period where Matthew had to prove himself by doing this or that to show himself worthy. Matthew, a lost and condemned sinner in need of a spiritual physician, graciously received the remedy for his sin and the great gift that Jesus bestowed upon him by grace through faith.

          In finding and then dining with Matthew, Zacchaeus, and other tax collectors and sinners, Jesus showed that He is the Great Physician who had come to call, not those who are healthy, but those who are sick with sin—those lost in sin, separated from God and alienated from Him. Jesus included all lost sinners and wanted to be present with them so that by the preaching of His Word, they might be brought to repentance and faith. Through the Gospel, they received from Jesus the healing medicine of His divine forgiveness. To eat at the table with Jesus was always an invitation to receive from Him forgiveness, acceptance, and restoration into full fellowship with God and with those around Jesus’ table. You see, the point of finding the lost and calling sinners to repentance and faith is not that they should remain sinners, but that they might be made righteous by grace through faith through the gift of Jesus’ forgiveness.

          As you can I consider our previous standing before God, we were lost too. Luther allows us to confess this when we speak the Explanation of the Second Article of the Creed— “I believe that Jesus Christ . . . has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person.” In God’s eyes, we were “tax collectors and sinners,” separated from Him because of our sinfulness, unclean before Him because of our sinful thoughts, words, and actions. Remember Isaiah’s reaction about His uncleanness before the Lord? That should be our reaction too—I’m unclean, lost and condemned, unfit for eternal life with God! In His holy presence, I’m as good as dead!

          But what did Jesus say quoting the prophet Hosea? “Mercy I desire and not sacrifice.” Mercy, sometimes translated “steadfast love,” is what God desires of His people because mercy and steadfast love is what God offers and bestows upon His people. We deserve His wrath, punishment, and condemnation because we are lost and condemned people in our sins. According to His gracious favor, God gives us what we have not deserved—mercy in the forgiveness of all our sins. This is because our Father in heaven punished and condemned Jesus to death and hell on the cross in your place and mine.

          Jesus redeemed us lost and condemned people by shedding His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death. Jesus has rescued us and reclaimed us from powers we cannot overcome—Satan, sin, and death. His great love and undeserved sacrifice won us lost and condemned creatures so that we are now His. Jesus has found us in our sins. Through the Holy Spirit, He speaks His Word of repentance and faith to us by means of the Gospel and Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Christ bestows upon us the forgiveness of sins. He has rescued us from death and the power of the devil. We are new creations, the redeemed children of God, who have been called by the Lord Christ to follow Him as His disciples.

          In the new life of saving faith that the Spirit created in us, just as He did for Matthew, we are able to follow Jesus in faith and discipleship. Again, the finding belongs to Jesus. The forgiveness belongs to Jesus which He gives us freely according to His grace and mercy. The following of Jesus by faith now flows from the Lord’s own Word by the work of the Holy Spirit.

          And that following leads us to a feast! Christ the Lord calls Matthew to follow Him. And the next thing we know, Matthew is with Jesus at the table. Jesus called Zacchaeus, and the next thing we know, Zacchaeus is with Jesus at the table.

          Jesus calls us to follow Him through His Word and the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. This morning, Bennett has been called by Jesus through water and the Word to be a child of God, a disciple of Jesus Christ. The Baptized in Christ are instructed in His Word, and they find that they too are invited to Table with Jesus. Jesus invites sinners who are now also His redeemed saints, washed in Baptism, to come and dine with Him at His Supper. The Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, is a feast of welcome for Baptized sinners who recognize that Jesus is present with His Body and Blood who have faith in these words, “given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” It is a meal in which all who eat and drink the bread and wine truly receive the really present Body and Blood of Christ. But only those with saving faith in Christ and trust that His Body and Blood are truly in and with the bread and wine receive the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Those are the gifts that Christ provides to those who have been called by Christ in Baptism to be His disciples, those who have been instructed in the chief articles of the Christian faith, and those who believe Jesus’ promise that His Body and Blood are “given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”

          As Christians, we confess that we sinners are “worthy” to commune at the Lord’s Table because Jesus welcomes sinners who repent of their sins and believe His promise that He gave His life and shed His blood for their forgiveness. We trust that it is Jesus alone who gives us His true Body and Blood in this Supper which is also a foretaste of a greater, heavenly banquet feast to come. In this Sacrament, salvation is given and the Lord transforms us as He equips and strengthens us to live as His disciples until the last great day of eternal feasting.

          Jesus Christ, our Savior, called the Lost like Matthew, Zacchaeus, and you and me to follow Him as His disciples. Through Holy Baptism, we have been found and saved by Christ. Our sins are forgiven and we have eternal life through faith in our Savior by the power and grace of the Holy Spirit. Until the Lord Christ comes again, we gather at His Table according to His Institution and receive His Body and Blood for forgiveness and the strengthening of our baptismal faith so that we may follow Him ever faithfully until we are together at the banquet feast in the new creation which has no end. Amen.