+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Each week, to pastors who preach on the appointed readings for that Sunday of the Church Year, the lectionary series presents essentially three options. Though I usually like to follow the counsel of those who say to preach most often on the Sunday’s Gospel Reading, this week I seriously considered as potential sermon texts both the Old Testament Reading and the Epistle Reading. Our Old Testament Reading from Isaiah 40 has been a favorite of mine for years, since the choir at the Denver church where I was a member sang a song based on the Reading, a version of which song has since made its way into Lutheran Service Book (#727). The runner in me also reflects on the final verses of the Old Testament Reading, as well as on the final verses of the Epistle Reading from 1 Corinthians 9. And, there is all the other content in the Epistle Reading, too, including Saint Paul’s often misused statement about his becoming “all things to all people”. One of the three Readings had to be chosen, and I guess what decided it for me in this case was when I set out the preprinted bulletin covers in order for George to photocopy the inside. I saw the cover’s picture, which shows a contemporary pastor touching a patient in a hospital bed, and its caption, “And He healed many”. I wondered if the front cover was trying to suggest that the pastor was healing the woman (the explanation on the back was cover was little help in that regard). So, this morning we focus our thoughts about the Gospel Reading as an answer to the question, “Where is the healing today?”
The Gospel Reading today picks up St. Mark’s divinely-inspired Gospel account right where we left off last Sunday. From last Sunday, you may remember Jesus on the Sabbath in the Capernaum synagogue, with His astonishing and amazing teaching, which included His rebuking an unclean spirit. Today, we hear how immediately Jesus left the synagogue and entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. There, Jesus immediately raised Simon’s mother-in-law, in time for her to serve them the Sabbath meal. Later, when the Sabbath was over and people could “legally” carry to Him all who were sick and all who were oppressed by demons, Jesus healed them. And, after a long night of work, followed by an early rising for prayer, He went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.
Recently many of us ourselves have been or still are ill: some with shorter-term sicknesses that come and go, and others with longer-term afflictions that may never go away in this life. Our various “diseases” may be physical, emotional, or even spiritual. When we hear of Jesus’s healing the sick, we might sinfully want such physical healing so much, either for ourselves or for a loved one, that we miss the spiritual healing He gives that really matters. Or, we might sinfully want so much the healing He promises in the next life that we lose focus on the work God has for us here and now. Whether or not you and I might sin in those two ways, we all sin, for we are all sinful by nature. Even though most specific sicknesses are not directly related to specific sins, the Bible teaches that sickness in general is related to sin in general. When God created us, He did not intend for us to get sick and die, but sickness and death came as a result of sin. And, the various diseases that came and that Jesus healed include diseases of body, mind, and spirit. St. Mark records Jesus saying later, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick”, and so, Jesus goes on to say that He came “not to call the righteous but sinners.” Jesus calls you and me, regardless of our physical or emotional health at any given time, because we are all sinners.
Jesus calls you and me to repent. He calls us to turn in sorrow from our sin—from our sin of wanting physical healing so much that we miss the spiritual healing He gives, from our sin of wanting so much the healing He promises in the next life that we lose focus on the work God has for us here and now, or from whatever our sin might be. Jesus calls you and me to turn in sorrow from all our sin and to trust God the Father to forgive us. As today’s Old Testament Reading reminds us, to God the Father we are like grasshoppers, and He can bring even princes to nothing and make rulers as emptiness—blowing on them, withering them, and carrying them off as undesired stubble separated at the harvest from the grain. We should not think that those who are noticeably sicker than we are or that those who are demon-possessed are worse sinners than we are because they suffer in those ways, but we should repent so that we do not perish eternally. When we repent, when we turn in sorrow from our sin and trust God the Father to forgive our sin, God the Father truly forgives our sin. He forgives our sin for Jesus’s sake.
Jesus cuts through sin and all its related sicknesses and demon possession. Jesus is God in human flesh, and, as we heard last week and again this week, the demons knew Him, so He would not let them speak. Jesus’s miracles gave authority to His message, but, to turn communication-theorist Marshall McLuhan’s phrase, the miracles were not the message. To some extent the demons needed to be silent for Jesus to accomplish His mission of destroying the devil’s work and, thereby, saving us. Jesus loved us so much that He gave Himself, to death on the cross, for us. And, having accepted Jesus’s sacrifice for our sin, the Father raised Jesus from the dead. Now, the righteousness that Jesus had—both by the perfect life He lived and by the obedient death He suffered, that righteousness—the Father graciously gives to us through faith in Jesus. The miracles helped awaken faith in those who saw them then, but we do not expect such miracles today, as the Holy Spirit creates faith when and where He pleases in those who hear the Gospel.
That faith-creating Gospel comes in various forms. Like St. Paul in the Epistle Reading, pastors today are entrusted by God with a stewardship that necessitates their preaching the Gospel; in their preaching there is no ground for boasting, only for their saying that they have done their duty. The Gospel connected with water in Holy Baptism works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe. The Holy Spirit given to pastors enables them in individual absolution to speak Gospel words and thereby to forgive sins as validly and certainly as if Christ, our dear Lord, dealt with us Himself. And, in the Sacrament of the Altar, Jesus, Who is the Gospel, gives Himself in bread that is His body and in wine that is His blood, given and shed for you and for me, for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Better than in the Gospel Reading where Jesus raised Peter’s mother-in-law and she served them, in the Sacrament of the Altar, Jesus Himself serves us and thereby raises us. Though the Sacrament of the Altar is a “salutary” gift (that is, a gift beneficial to our health), it does not give us physical and emotional healing in exactly the same way as Jesus’s miraculous healings or castings-out of demons did. Still, the answer to our question, “Where is the healing today?” is that the forgiveness of sins, the spiritual healing we need most, which also leads to our ultimate physical and emotional healing in the life to come—that spiritual healing is found in God’s Word, preached and sacramentally administered. (Maybe the bulletin cover was right in suggesting that Jesus still heals many through the touch of pastors today.)
I am enjoying getting out visiting with the people who have had me into their homes. The other night, someone mentioned that people did not exactly know what to expect from a full-time resident pastor because it has been so many years since Pilgrim has had one. In that regard, previously I have mentioned, as statements of such mutual expectations, both the Diploma of Vocation and its Supplement that you all gave me in my call documents. One of the items listed there is visiting the sick, and I want to be able to do that, though it requires your letting me know when you and your family-members are sick (and, as we have seen, it also requires my being in the state at the time that you and your family-members are sick, though I will always try to leave you with an on-call pastor). When I make such sick calls, I will not guarantee physical or emotional healing, but I can guarantee spiritual healing, the forgiveness of sins.
Even Simon’s mother-in-law and all of the others sick with various diseases whom Jesus healed still eventually died. Death in this world remains a consequence of sin, even though Jesus has removed all of our guilt and thereby freed us from eternal death. In this world, God uses our various sicknesses, as He uses all things, to work together for the good of conforming us to the image of His Son, Jesus, so that by grace through faith in Him we ultimately will have the raising and restoration of our bodies to eternal life. As we wait for that ultimate final and complete healing, we rightly both pray for physical and emotional healing and consider that God works through healthcare professionals. As we wait for that ultimate final and complete healing, the devil may at times successfully lead us sinfully to think little of “where the spiritual healing is today”, in God’s Word and miraculous Sacraments, since what happens there may appear to our human eyes to be partial or nonexistent healing. But, when we repent, God forgives those sins of disregard for His Word and Sacraments, as He forgives all sins. We pray that God would make us more like St. Paul, who, as he wrote in his second letter to the Corinthians, learned to be content with his weaknesses, for, when he was weak in himself, then he was strong in Christ. May God grant us such spiritual health and contentment.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +