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The Concordia Publishing House bulletin for The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany 2015 for the image credits Lars Justinen and GoodSalt.com and quotes Mark 1:37 from the English Standard Version of Good News Publishers.
+ + + 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.
What are you looking for? Everyone is looking for something. Are you looking for food or shelter? Healing or financial security? A sense of belonging or companionship? A sense of value or respect? Maximizing your full potential, perhaps by giving of yourself to others? Everyone is looking for something, or maybe everyone is looking for someone. What or who are you looking for? Are you looking for Jesus? The Concordia Publishing House bulletin cover for today, the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, both shows Jesus at prayer and, from today’s Gospel Reading, quotes the disciples’ statement to Jesus that may well have interrupted that prayer: “Everyone is looking for You”. We might think that that statement was hardly true then and that that statement is much less true today. Still, this morning we consider today’s Gospel Reading—with its account of the healing of Peter’s mother‑in‑law, of Jesus’s healing others that evening, of His departure from Capernaum, and of the beginning of His first preaching tour in Galilee—and we do so under the theme, “Everyone’s looking for Jesus”.
Today’s Gospel Reading is a vivid and simple account, even understating Jesus’s miracles. Today’s Gospel Reading comes immediately after what we heard last week: Jesus’s astonishing teaching in the Capernaum synagogue and His amazing rebuke of an unclean spirit, both of which resulted in Jesus’s fame spreading everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee (Mark 1:21-28). Having left the synagogue with the disciples He had called perhaps only a day before (Mark 1:16-20), immediately Jesus entered the house of Simon and Andrew, perhaps for the customary meal after the Sabbath synagogue service. Immediately they told Jesus that Simon’s mother‑in‑law was lying there ill with a fever, perhaps they expected Him to heal her or were excusing what might have appeared to be her lack of hospitality. Clearly concerned about the ill woman and having come to her and gently having taken her by the hand, Jesus was lifting her up from lying down, and the fever left her, and she began to serve them, so completely well was she. That evening at sundown, free from the fear of violating the Sabbath law, they brought to Him all who were sick or oppressed by demons, and the whole population of the city was gathered together at the door of Simon and Andrew’s house. So Jesus healed a great number, all the ones there who were sick with various diseases, and He cast many demons, just like we heard last week, not permitting them to speak about Who He was. After that late night, Jesus rose very early the next morning, departing while it was still dark, and went out to a desolate place, where He could have private conversation with His Father, perhaps for the work He was about to begin in Galilee. And, there He was praying when the group Simon led in searching for Him found Him and said, no doubt with a little hyperbole, “Everyone is looking for You”.
Today’s Gospel Reading does not tell us why everyone (or really, even any one of them) was looking for Jesus. Jesus clearly made a “deep impression” on people, and they likely desired “that Jesus should remain with them” (Taylor, ad loc Mk 1:37, 183-184). But why were they looking for Him? Commentators I consulted who speculate as to why do not give good reasons, suggesting people misunderstood Jesus as a “wonder-worker” and that even Jesus’s disciples may have wanted to exploit Him (Grundmann, TDNT 9:538 n.307; Friedrich, TDNT 3:713-714). Surely some reasons they might have had—and we have—for searching for Jesus are sinful.
A number of us from Pilgrim yesterday attended our Circuit’s annual retreat, where this time the topic was “addiction”. The presenter, Rev. Jim Otte, did a good job identifying consequences of humankind’s fall into sin that lead us to fear such things as not mattering, having a meaningless life, being deprived and abandoned. Whether or not we turn to such things as cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, social media, or pornography, by nature and apart from grace we all are hopelessly lost. Those in the Gospel Reading who were sick or oppressed by demons were not worse sinners than us but perhaps more obvious evidence of sin’s effects in the world. And, none of us can look for Jesus apart from His first revealing Himself to us, for He alone has dominion over sickness, demons, and sin.
At the end of today’s Gospel Reading, apparently in response to the disciples’ statement that everyone was looking for Jesus, Jesus said to them, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.” Whether Jesus was giving the reason why He came out of the house or why He came in general is not precisely clear, but probably of little difference. Jesus came out of the house and came from heaven to preach the Good News that the time was fulfilled and the Kingdom of God was at hand, to call sinners to repentance and faith in Him, God in human flesh to suffer on the cross and rise from the grave that all people, including you and me, might have the forgiveness of sins. Rather than let the demons speak about Who Jesus was (glorify Him), Jesus revealed Himself in His way and time, giving the greatest glorification of God and the greatest revelation of His love on the cross. So great is God’s compassion, so much does He love and value you and me, that, while we were still sinners, Jesus Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). Jesus’s preaching and His miraculous signs awakened faith that He was God’s anointed Savior. When we repent of (turn in sorrow from) our sin and believe that God forgives our sin for Jesus’s sake, then God truly forgives our sin, whatever our sin might be.
Some congregations have what they call “seeker services”, and others try to “market” themselves to a specific demographic “audience”, as if all people, whether or not they recognize it, do not have the same basic need for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus preached that forgiveness of sins in the synagogues, where there perhaps were services three times per week, and cast out demons, giving evidence of His authority to preach as He did. Jesus called His disciples to go with Him and later sent them out as apostles to preach on their own. In today’s Epistle Reading, we heard St. Paul write by Divine‑inspiration of his need to preach the Gospel (1 Corinthians 9:16-27), and from elsewhere we know that St. Paul performed a miracle similar to Jesus’s miracle with Simon’s mother‑in‑law (Acts 28:8). We pastors today do not need to work such miraculous signs—instead combining the authoritative Word with elements in Baptism, Absolution, and the Lord’s Supper—we pastors today are similarly compelled to preach to others and to pray that, after doing so, we should not be disqualified from obtaining its goal. Preaching, Baptism, Absolution, and the Lord’s Supper are the ways God works today what Jesus did in the Gospel Reading. They are the ways God has appointed for believers today to receive His forgiveness, and believers do not sinfully seek signs other than these.
Still, we believers remain sinful and so easily relate to the voice in today’s Old Testament Reading that thinks its ways are hidden from the Lord and its right (or “just cause”) is disregarded by its God (Isaiah 40:21-31). We can (and, at times, do) too much want the kind of healings and exorcisms that Jesus personally gave the people in the Gospel Reading, as if our “best life” were now. As God commands us to pray, and as He promises to hear our prayer, we can and do ask for physical healing now, but only for healing according to His will. We do not ask as if that physical healing now were the greatest gift God had to offer. Even those Jesus healed and revivified later died and they themselves still have yet to experience the full benefit of God’s greatest gift, the forgiveness of sins, and the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.
“Everyone’s looking for Jesus” may not be the same “looking for Jesus”. To be sure, not everyone is looking for Jesus. Some may be looking for a different Jesus. Others may be looking for something different than what Jesus offers. Still others may be looking for what He offers but be looking elsewhere than in His Word and Sacraments. In the Gospel Reading, “everyone” may have been looking for Jesus, but we are only told that His disciples found Him. Those seeking Jesus for the forgiveness of sins and for the eternal life that forgiveness brings, through faith in Him, graciously receive those gifts by His Word and Sacraments. As we, with daily repentance and faith, live in that forgiveness of sins, we have meaning in our lives, and we are not deprived or abandoned. We have what we need, and we belong to and are valued in the Church. Our best life is not now but yet to come.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +