9-20-2026

“UNTHINKABLE GRACE”

Text: Isaiah 55:6-9 – Pentecost 17

Sunday September 20th, 2026

Trinity – Creston

       Grace, mercy, and peace is yours from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!

       Our text for this 17th Sunday after Pentecost is the Old Testament lesson from Isaiah 55 that was just proclaimed.

Let Us Pray:  Dearest Jesus, send your Holy Spirit to remind us that because of your unlimited grace that we can’t possibly understand, there’s no need to justify ourselves or question who you give it to.  Rather we rejoice in your generosity to provided salvation in your way and how you freely give it.  Amen.

Dear Fellow Redeemed in Christ:

It was a sunny day on the Florida coast without a cloud in the sky, perfect flying weather. NASA had been heavily promoting this day as one that would impact American education forever.

New Hampshire schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe would become the first civilian in space, joining the crew of the space shuttle Challenger. And the American space program invited classrooms across the country to watch the launch live.

What happened next was unthinkable. On live television, Challenger blasted off into the bright blue sky, soaring for seventy-three seconds before it broke apart in midair. That cloudless coastal horizon was now dotted with disaster—smoke and debris—as the shuttle and the seven people aboard disintegrated before the country’s collective eyes.

Schoolchildren could not believe what they saw. Neither could NASA. Because the Challenger tragedy was more than just a technological failure. It represented an emotional rupture.

For years, NASA had symbolized American innovation and excellence. Spaceflight had become almost routine. But in the Challenger aftermath, the romantic fascination of traveling among the stars was bleakly interrupted by the cold reality of the fragility and fallibility of scientific endeavors, exposing the limits of human control in high-risk technologies.

3.  The fact is, the unthinkable happens with uncomfortable regularity.

a. The human definition of “unthinkable” is anything evil we pretend couldn’t happen; space shuttles just don’t explode in flight. But:

(1) Kingdoms do fall and leaders do fail (Ps 146:3–4).

(2) Technologies like NASA do stumble, and economies do crumble (Phil 4:12).

(3) Protectors waylay, and our friends do betray (Ps 41:9).

(4) Our best-laid plans come to ruin (Prov 19:21).

b. Scripture tells how very common these unthinkables are to the human condition.

(1) From the fall in Eden, humanity has continually done the unthinkable.

(a) Cain murders his baby brother (Gen 4:8).

(b)Jacob scams his old, blind, dying father (Gen 27:1–35).

(c) God’s people build a golden calf at the foot of his holy mountain (Ex 32:4).

(d)An apostle betrays his Lord with a kiss (Mt 26:49).

(2) “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23).

(a) Paul himself battles with his sinful nature (Rom 7:7–25).

(b)Paul reveals that he thinks about the unthinkable more than he’d like to admit.

c. Martin Luther diagnoses this as a condition of the heart.

(1) The epidemic infects us all.

(2) Our perspective is so inwardly focused that we cannot see how badly we have it.

(3) We are left with a very small, very dark space in which to devise our ways and plans.

(4) This confined space limits what we imagine is thinkable. (Give specific examples of opportunities to love and care for others that we miss seeing.)

Transition: It is within this prison of our own sinfulness that the Lord does the unthinkable.

  2. The Lord redefines “unthinkable”—as grace.

a. Throughout Scripture, the Lord has shattered human expectations with grace.

(1) Over and over, he proves he is not far off.

(2) Rather, he comes close in order to deliver grace to the undeserving.

(a) Feeding grumbling families in the wilderness (Ex 16:13–14).

(b)            Empowering cowardly Gideon (Judges 6–7).

(c) Healing the Aramean commander Naaman (2 Ki 5:14).

(d)            Engaging the Samaritan woman at Sychar (Jn 4:16–18).

b. We find this, the Lord’s particular brand of grace to us, to be unrelatable and uncomfortable to our sensibilities—unthinkable!

(1) “For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die” (Rom 5:7).

(a) We show “grace” to people who have earned it; we give second chances.

(b)            But we warn, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” (Give examples.)

(2) There is nothing that makes sense to us about helping the helpless, about serving someone who hates you, or about being kind to a friend who’s betrayed you again and again.

(3) It’s not simply that the Lord’s ways of grace are unfamiliar to us. They are unreachable to us—that is, morally and intellectually.

(a) The thoughts of God are more noble and honorable than ours.

(b)            The thoughts of God defy our ability to comprehend.

c. The Lord’s ways of unthinkable grace actually even threaten us.

(1) We are only comfortable when we are in control of how we are seen and treated by others.

(2) We’d understand God blessing us if he based it on how good we’ve been, but can we really trust that he’ll care for us when we’ve done nothing to earn it?

(3) We act like the prodigal son’s older brother: Surely all the good I do is worth something!

Transition: God’s unthinkable grace upsets the very foundations of the world as we know it—and he had no intention of leaving the world as we know it.

1.  So rather than remaining far off, the Lord does the unthinkable: draws near.

a. “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near” (v 6).

(1) What ought to strike us by this invitation isn’t the urgency; it’s the accessibility.

(2) The Lord knows what we’ve done, and he draws near anyway.

(3) He comes to break us free from the small, dark prisons of our own sinfulness.

b. Jesus is the Lord-Come-Near.

(1) Unthinkably, our God becomes one with our humanity. In the incarnation, our self-revealing God makes himself findable.

(2) And by his cross, Jesus does the unthinkable.

(a) One Man dies for all men.

(b)            The Righteous dies for the unrighteous.

(3) The cross reveals God’s true thinking about us.

(a) “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8).

(b)            The folly of those who are perishing turns out to be their only hope (1 Cor 1:18).

(c) While unthinkable to us, the Lord loves us the only way he knows how.

(4) Resurrected and reigning, the Lord continues to defy our thoughts and ways with his grace and pardon.

(a) He is present for us in his Word and blessed Sacraments.

(b)            Always is he ready to deliver his scandalous, abundant pardon to us, his sin-sick, betraying, grumbling, morally bankrupt, wandering children.

(c) As our Lord-Come-Near, Christ makes every moment ripe with grace.

 Tyler let out a heavy sigh on the front porch. He could hear the commotion from the backyard, even smell the burgers on the grill. But it had been a long three years. And the last time he was home, it had ended with shouting and a slamming door.

The people on the other side were still his family, but between the never-repaid loans and the drugs and the jail time, how could they ever welcome him back?

Without ringing the doorbell, he gave up, and his cold feet turned to leave. But as he turned, Tyler saw shoes on the sidewalk. As he lifted his head, he saw khakis, a polo shirt, and a smile: his father, holding a paper plate with a burger and all the fixings. “It’s just how you like it,” Dad said.

A tear fell down Tyler’s face and tattooed neck.

Just as the Lord’s ways are higher than our ways, so his grace is higher than a homecoming barbecue. The table he sets is grace. The meal he serves is grace.

He doesn’t wait for his children to clean themselves up before he’ll welcome them home. Rather than expecting us to walk through the door to him,

The Lord Comes Near in Christ Jesus with His Signature Brand of Unthinkable Grace and Abundant Pardon.

We are not in control of how our Lord sees us or treats us. And thank God for that! Because if he thought as we do, we’d all be condemned.

But instead, we are called. Called to be scandalized by grace. Called to forsake our way and come home. Called to find life in Christ and his unthinkable Gospel. Amen.

Now may the peace of God which surpasses all human understanding keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior...Amen.