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The Concordia Publishing House bulletin cover, which credits Linda Steward and iStockphoto.com, on the back perhaps wrongly suggests “During Epiphany, we remember that it is our joyous duty to continue to spread the fame of Jesus’ words and deeds until there is no place left where He is unknown.”
+ + + 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.
“It” was an Academy and Golden-Globe award-winning musical film in 1980, an Emmy and Golden‑Globe award‑winning television series from 19‑82 to 19‑87, a musical staged in hundreds of amateur and professional productions in every major language, a reality competition television series in 2‑thousand‑3, and a theatrical remake in 2‑thousand-9—“it” is “Fame”, the story of a group of students at the fictional New York High School of Performing Arts, learning how to dance, sing, play music, and act as ways to reach fame and riches. I was reminded of that “Fame” by this Sunday’s bulletin cover, with its quotation from the final verse of today’s Gospel Reading about Jesus’s fame spreading everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee. We may wish for our own 15‑minutes or more of fame, being widely honored and acclaimed with a favorable public reputation, but this morning we reflect on today’s Gospel Reading under the theme “Jesus’s Fame”.
In the Gospel Reading, fresh from calling brothers Simon and Andrew and James and John to be fishers of men (Mark 1:16-20), Jesus went into Capernaum and immediately, maybe as soon as the next day, on the Sabbath entered the synagogue and, at the customary invitation of the synagogue leaders, was teaching, explaining Holy Scripture. Unlike their usual teachers, the scribes, Jesus taught as one Who had authority, not quoting others about Holy Scripture but explaining them as their author. As He did elsewhere, Jesus likely preached that the time was fulfilled and the Kingdom of God was at hand (Mark 1:14-15), that He Himself was the fulfillment of Holy Scripture (Luke 4:16‑21). Jesus’s teaching astonished His hearers, and they were further amazed when His teaching immediately was accompanied by His rebuking an unclean spirit, a demon, who confessed Jesus to be the Holy One of God. Jesus’s hearers understood that a miracle had occurred and questioned themselves about His teaching, and immediately Jesus’s fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee (even without today’s social media). We might ask how much His hearers understood about Him, but the more important question is how much we do.
In the Gospel Reading, Jesus’s teaching and miracle astonished and amazed His hearers. In our time, does teaching about Jesus and His miracle astonish and amaze us? Do we have unrealistic expectations about preaching, perhaps expecting to be astonished at the rhetorical flourish of the oratory? Do we have unrealistic expectations about miracles, perhaps expecting to be amazed by identical rebukings of unclean spirits? Maybe we sinfully miss the true power of the preaching and miracles that we have. We are all sinners by nature, not necessarily having an unclean spirit such that we are possessed by demons, but we all are under the influence of the devil and have unclean spirits in that way. We all think, say, and do things that are immoral and damnable for all eternity.
In the Gospel Reading, the unclean spirit recognized that Jesus’s presence meant judgment. The eternal fire of hell was prepared for such unclean spirits, the devil and his evil angels (Matthew 25:41), but the eternal fire of hell was not prepared for us, though some may end up there. Rather, God wants us to repent: to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and to want to do better than to keep on sinning. As we said in our opening versicles and repeated in the Introit that quoted their source in Psalm 32, when we so confess our transgressions to the Lord, then He forgives the iniquity of our sin. He forgives all our sin for Jesus’s sake.
The idea in the movie and television show “Fame” was that the students had to start paying the price for their fame at their School of Performing Arts. Insofar as we repent of our sins and believe in Jesus, He has paid all that needs to be paid for us. As even the unclean spirit in the Gospel Reading confessed, Jesus is the Holy One of God, the Prophet like Moses, promised in today’s Old Testament Reading, raised up from among his brothers (Deuteronomy 18:15-20). Such demons may know that the Man Jesus is also the Son of the Most High God (Mark 5:7), with God the Father’s commission and authority, but that knowledge does not do them any good. On the other hand, those who could benefit from that knowledge, Jesus’s hearers, were astonished and amazed at His authoritative teaching about Himself as the author and content of Holy Scripture, God in the flesh present and overcoming the powers opposed to Him. Their reactions led the leaders of the Jews to be afraid of Jesus, and so they put Him to death on the cross (Mark 11:18; confer 3:6), but that death on the cross was God’s plan for all sinners, including for you and for me, for so, as the unclean spirit in the Gospel Reading knew, Jesus came to destroy the devil’s work (1 John 3:8).
Of course, after defeating sin, death, and the power of the devil on the cross, Jesus rose from the dead, and now He freely gives us the benefits of His death on the cross in His Word and Sacraments, the teaching and miracles of God’s merciful providence on the holy days in our time. Whether or not our Holy Baptism includes the rebuking or exorcism of our unclean spirits, when we are baptized we, through water and the word, receive the Holy Spirit. So baptized, we who believe are made fit for communion with God, and we at this rail receive Him in bread that is Christ’s body and wine that is Christ’s blood, and so we receive the forgiveness of our sins, and thus also life and salvation. As our second Distribution Hymn will put it, here we find “consolation”, “Comfort in [our] tribulation, / Balm to heal the troubled soul”; here God “Cleanses [us] from sin and error, / [and] Makes [our] wounded spirit[s] whole (Lutheran Service Book 620:4).
In explaining the image on the front cover of today’s bulletin, the box on the back cover says that “During Epiphany, we remember that it is our joyous duty to continue to spread the fame of Jesus’ words and deeds until there is no place left where He is unknown.” Does such a place even exist today? Neither during Epiphany nor at any other time do we need to be “beat up” about a “duty”, “joyous” or otherwise, to spread Jesus’s fame. To be sure, when we who believe are astonished by His Word and amazed by His Sacraments, we talk among ourselves, and Jesus’s fame does spread. Some who hear may not be interested at all, others who hear may be interested but fail to believe, and still others who hear may be interested and join us in believing. We live our lives not offending and so sinning against them and Christ, in ways such as those described in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Corinthians 8:1-13), and we live our lives together in the forgiveness of sins.
The award‑winning theme song for the original movie “Fame” asked if the hearers knew the singers’ identities and told them to remember their names, and the theme song suggested that by their fame they would “live forever” and “make it to heaven”. In fact, we live forever and make it to heaven not by dancing, singing, playing music, acting or even, on this Sunday of the Super Bowl, by playing football or other sports, but we live forever and make it to heaven by knowing Jesus’s identity and remembering and trusting in His Name, Jesus’s fame. In the Gospel Reading, Jesus enacts the Good News of God’s Kingdom by overcoming the powers opposed to it, and in our time through Word and Sacrament He does the same for you and for me: He overcomes the powers opposed to us—the powers of sin, death, and the devil. As we prayed in the Collect, the Almighty God knows that we live in the midst of so many dangers that in our frailty we cannot stand upright, so He grants strength and protection to support us in all dangers and carry us through all temptations.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +