“Silence and Celebration”

Have you ever noticed how we can feel that something’s wrong when the familiar sounds disappear? Those first days of Melbourne’s Stage 4 lockdown, walking through what should have been bustling streets, hearing your own footsteps echo off empty shopfronts. The trams still running, but ghostly quiet. That familiar hum of our city suddenly gone. Just this strange, unsettling silence where there should have been the sounds of life.

Jeremiah felt something like that. He was watching his people lose their way, forgetting God, making choices that led nowhere good. And suddenly he had this vision of what it would look like if it all just… stopped.

This morning’s reading from Jeremiah brings back that eerie silence: “I looked, and there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled.” Do you sense it? That same unsettling emptiness. The prophet talks about a world that is empty and has no people, no birds, or other living things. Jeremiah was seeing what happens when the relationship between God and his people breaks down: There is a spiritual emptiness that starts to seem physical.

There is a woman who lost her cat. Smokey had been inside for twelve years but he got out when the metre reader came. She put food out on the porch, called ‘kitty, kitty’ a few times, thinking he’d come home when he was hungry.

Day two: still no Smokey. Day three: she was walking the neighbourhood with a flashlight. Day seven: she had printed flyers, posted on social media, and was crawling below doorways. Her husband kept saying, ‘Honey, he’s just a cat. We can get another one.’

But she couldn’t forget about it. ‘You don’t get it,’ she told him, ‘He doesn’t know how to survive being lost.’

That’s exactly what Jesus is trying to tell us about God. God searches. God is like this woman with her flashlight, crawling under the decks of our lives, refusing to listen to the voices that say, “Just give up.” Because God knows, we cannot find our way back.

The shepherd in Jesus’ parable, he’s got that same persistence. Any sensible sheep farmer would cut his losses. By ordinary standards, ninety-nine sheep would be more than enough. But not for this shepherd. God refuses to give up.  He calls into the darkness, follows broken branches and scattered wool, because he knows something the rest of us forget: every single sheep matters. Every single one.

It is risky, even reckless. Yet this is the very picture of God’s love. God is not content with ninety-nine percent. God’s love will not rest until the one who is lost is found. To the world, you may seem small, insignificant, one among many. But to God, you are of infinite worth. You are worth searching for. You are worth being carried home on the Shepherd’s shoulders, rejoiced over, celebrated.

And when he finds that sheep, he doesn’t scold it. He doesn’t say, ‘Do you know how much trouble you’ve caused?’ He lifts it onto his shoulders and calls his friends: ‘Rejoice with me!’ There’s a party because what was lost has been found.

Jesus has another story. A woman loses one coin, just one in ten. Most would dismiss it. ‘Nine out of 10 is OK. But she lights every lamp, sweeps every corner, moves every piece of furniture until she finds it. And when she does? She calls the neighbours to celebrate.

That is God’s heart; not passive, not indifferent, but persistent, relentless, determined. God does not simply wait for us to come home; God goes out looking. God does not stop until we are restored. And when that happens, all of heaven rejoices. Jesus says, ‘There is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’ Think of that: heaven itself breaks into celebration over you, over me, over every single soul that is found.

Paul knew this joy in the deepest way. He calls himself ‘the foremost of sinners.’ He remembers being violent, arrogant, a persecutor. He knows how lost he once was. But then he encountered the mercy of Christ. He was not destroyed but forgiven. Not discarded but called. Not abandoned but entrusted with a new life. ‘The grace of our Lord overflowed for me,’ he writes, ‘with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.’

So where does this leave us today?

First, it reminds us who we are. We are those who have been sought and found by God’s love. However far we may have wandered, however lost we may have felt, God has never given up on us. We are carried on the shoulders of the Shepherd, we are the coin clutched in the woman’s hand, we are the sinner transformed by mercy.

Second, it calls us to become seekers ourselves. If God has sought us, then we are sent to seek others. To notice the ones who are missing, to go after the ones who have wandered, to rejoice when the lost are found. In a world that often gives up too quickly, God calls us to do the same. To be people of patience, mercy, and hope.

And third, it broadens our vision. Today we worship in the Season of Creation, which reminds us that God’s relentless love extends not only to human souls but to the whole earth. The God who does not give up on one lost sheep does not give up on forests or rivers or creatures either. Just as we are found and restored, so God longs to restore all creation. Our calling is to walk gently upon the earth, to join in that work of seeking and healing.

Smokey came home after nine days, skinny and scared but alive. She was overjoyed, gave him special treats, and wouldn’t let him out of her sight. Her lost cat had come home. Jeremiah’s vision of desolation is real, but it is not final. The last word does not belong to chaos, but to grace. Not to despair, but to hope. The last word belongs to God, who seeks and saves the lost. So let us live as people who know what it is to be found. And let us become seekers ourselves, seeking the lost, caring for creation, bearing hope in a despairing world.

For this is the gospel: that God’s relentless love will not let us go. What was lost will be found. What was broken will be healed. And what seemed like the end will become the beginning of new life.

So, let me leave you with two questions to take with you: What feels silent and empty in your life right now? And who around you is ready to celebrate being found?