Mark 2:1-12

Trinity 19

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

There is a strange thing that Jesus often did during His ministry.  On several occasions after performing a miracle, He would tell the people who saw it not to tell anyone else about it.  That’s not the main thing Jesus wanted to be known for.  There was something much more, much better even than multiplied loaves of bread or healed bodies.  Those things were signs of something greater that they would only be able to grasp fully after He had died and risen again.  The main thing about Jesus is the forgiveness of sins.

In today’s Gospel the paralytic’s friends bring him to Jesus.  And it says that when He sees their faith–not the faith of the paralytic–when He sees their faith, the friends, then He deals with the paralytic in mercy.  This is a little bit like Christians bringing an unbelieving friend to church and to Christ, or like parents bringing their baby to baptism.  By nature we are all spiritually paralyzed, unable to do anything to bring ourselves to the Lord.  We must be brought by someone else so that the Lord may do His forgiving and saving work on us.  

Remember that when dealing with your unbelieving friends or family.  You can put your faith to use for their good.  You may not literally be able to carry them to church. But you can confess your faith to them and invite them.  They’re paralyzed, and they need you to do that.  And they need your prayers.  The Scriptures say that the prayer of a righteous man avails much.  When you pray for your friends and your loved ones in the name of Jesus, the righteous Man, those prayers are heard.  Now, you cannot believe for someone else, just as the paralytic’s friends couldn’t believe for him.  If your children have turned from their baptism and wandered away from church, no matter how much you love them, that does not mean that they love God or that they are saved.  But the prayers of a righteous mother or father avail much as well.  So you keep on praying, you keep on waiting, you remind God of the promises He has made, you carry them on the stretcher of prayer to God, and you wait and see what He will do.

After all that the paralytic’s friends did in order to get him to Jesus, they had to be expecting and hoping for a healing.  But when Jesus sees their faith, He says to the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven.”  Well, that seems a little anti-climactic.  What they wanted wasn’t forgiveness, but a healing; they wanted him to walk again.  They had just gone through all this trouble to get to Jesus, literally going through the roof, risking embarrassment, and maybe a bill for repairs, and this is all He does?  Well that’s a little bit of a let-down.  Jesus didn’t seem to live up to their expectations.

Why is it that we are so disappointed with the forgiveness of Jesus, as if it were nothing special?  Why are we not content with that, always wanting something different, something more exciting or interest-grabbing?  When I did my vicarage near downtown Las Vegas back in 1988-89, it was virtually a daily occurrence that people would come in off the street asking for money or food or gas.  Everyone had a story, some more believable than others.  It happens here, too, from time to time.  Though sometimes I can give them some food or other assistance, usually I tell them that we don’t have any money to give out.  The only thing we have to here is the Gospel, the forgiveness of sins.  That I can give them in abundance.  But they are rarely interested in that offer.  “No, I know all about forgiveness and stuff.  What I need is some cash.”

So it was, I think, with the paralytic and his friends here.  When Jesus says to him, “Your sins are forgiven,” you can almost feel his disappointment.  “OK, fine.  I’m still stuck here on this mat.”  There are some Christians who like to say that we shouldn’t always be talking about the forgiveness of sins.  There’s other more important stuff to be focusing on.  But they are wrong.  Everything about Christianity comes back to and is rooted in the forgiveness of sins.  If it is truly Christianity and not just generic spirituality and religious self-help, then it all is based in and comes from the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, everything.  It all comes back to this fundamental reality: that He does not hold our sins against us, that He loves us and accepts us, that we are forgiven.  

The truth is that the paralytic could have remained paralyzed and been OK, because his sins were forgiven.  He could have endured that kind of life, difficult as it was; he could have gone on, he could have waited for the time when he would walk again on the last day, because his sins were forgiven.  For his true sickness was cured; his deepest need was met.  The power of the curse was broken; his soul was healed; he was right with God forever.  From that comes the power to live with difficulty, the power to suffer, the power to submit and to believe that God is good, even in the dark times when it seems that He is absent or that He has taken His promise away.  

The story might well have ended there, were it not for the scribes questioning what Jesus was doing forgiving sins.  The reason that the paralytic gets healed doesn’t really seem to be so much for his good as it is to put those scribes in their place who say, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?”  They are shocked at Jesus’ behavior.  Why?  Because He is a man.  How can a man forgive sins?  Who does this Jesus think that He is?  Of course, He thinks that He is God, that He has authority in heaven and on earth, that what He says, is.  And that’s true.  Jesus is a man, but much more.  He is God in the flesh, who most certainly has the authority to forgive sins.  And He demonstrates that fact by healing the paralytic.

Jesus says, “Which is easier to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say ‘Rise and walk.’”  Well in truth, this Gospel teaches that the easier thing to say is “rise and walk.”  If you say “rise and walk,” and it fails, it doesn’t happen, nobody’s mad, though you may look like a fool.  But if you say, “I forgive your sins,” then what happens?  They’re angry.  What is it that made them angry at our Lord in the Gospel?  It was not “rise and walk.”  It was rather when He exercised His real authority over death and the devil, when He forgave the man’s sins.  That made them angry, that caused them to get all up in arms.  So also today, there are those who bristle at the notion that a pastor would say, “I forgive you your sins,” even though it is done by the authority of Christ, or who think it is somehow medieval to practice private confession and absolution.  “Who does that guy think he is, hearing people’s confessions and forgiving their sins?”  Well hopefully, a pastor knows that he is the called and ordained servant of Jesus who put him there for that very purpose.

It is easier to say “rise and walk.”  The TV preachers, the spiritual charlatans do it all the time.  It’s easy to fake that, or on a legitimate level, to engage in medical health and healing enterprises, and no one gets upset.  Because those are the types of things we like to see the church doing.  Everyone likes to see the church engaged in human care, in works of mercy in the physical realm, because that fits.  No one’s ever bothered by that.  If you open up a soup kitchen or a food pantry, whether or not they like your doctrine, they like what you’re doing.  The world at some level recognizes and embraces good works.  They think that’s all the church should be about, fulfilling the Law of love, helping your neighbor, being nice.

However, what the people of this world do not like is a reminder that they are sinful and that they need Christ’s forgiveness or they’re going to hell.  That’s what will get people’s blood boiling.  The scribes certainly did not want to think in those terms.  They’d much rather rely on their own efforts and goodness than to be convicted of sin and to have to deal with the Jesus who pardons sin by the power of His bloody, paralyzing death for us.  Jesus did not take the easier way, but the way of the cross.  That’s the problem with those who think Christianity should be focused on something more than the forgiveness of sins.  The forgiveness of sins is everything. Everything comes back to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for us.

 So hear again Jesus’ words to you today: “Your sins are forgiven.”  That is no small thing.  For if the wages of sin is death, then the forgiveness of sins is life, life forever with God.  And in that there is the power for you to endure, to wait, to believe that whatever terrible things you may have to suffer, God still loves you.  You will have perfect health and wholeness in your soul, in your mind, in your body.  And you will walk–if not now, then you will walk on the Last Day, you will rise from the dead just as Jesus did in glory. Regarding the benefits of the Sacrament of the Altar, the Catechism puts it most simply when it says, “Where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation.”

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

(With thanks to the Rev. David Petersen)

Luke 7:11-17

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

I’m sure you’ve heard people making reference to “COVID fatigue.”  People are weary of hearing about and thinking about the pandemic and case counts and extensions of mask orders and all the politics that surround these things.  Add to this the demonstrations and riots and conflict, plus all the usual challenges of life, and most everyone is tired of it all.  We look for things that can divert and distract us and give us an escape.  Our minds and consciences can only take so much.

And then you come to church, and what do you hear about?  Sin and death.  Well how is that helpful?  Can’t we talk about something else besides death, pastor?  We’d prefer something more along the lines of a spiritual pep talk to help us “be the best version of ourselves”–or whatever the current cliche is.  Of course, our real, primary focus here in church is not sin and death but forgiveness and life and resurrection.  That’s what is preached here every week, the good news of Christ.  But that good news isn’t something that you will treasure and cling to unless you honestly grasp how serious and real the bad news is.

We must admit that we naturally ignore the realities of sin and death.  We engage in all sorts of things that help us to pretend that the grave is not waiting for us.  And the Bible says in Hebrews 2 that this is a form of spiritual slavery for us, that the fear of death holds us all in bondage, whether in a conscious or unconscious way.  It’s what drives so much of what we do as we cling to life in this fallen world.  Living in fear and denial of death, we enslave ourselves to things that pass away.

I’m sure that the widow in today’s Gospel wanted to escape the realities of death, that she was worn down and weary of it all as she carried her only-begotten son to the grave.  It seemed as though death had won.  It had already taken her husband.  How was she supposed to carry on and survive now that her son was gone?  If it was possible for this grieving mother to switch places with her son, she certainly would have done so.  His body lay there cold and lifeless in the casket.  And she was helpless to do anything about it.

It is not our place to make trades or deals with God, like the bargaining that can so often go on at someone’s sickbed.  And you cannot absorb someone else’s cancer or go back in time and change seats with the person who died in that accident.  It seems unjust that the young would die when the old are ready to go and would gladly take their place.  But this is not in our power; it’s not our choice.  All life is fragile and temporary.

But remember, this isn’t the whole story, not even close.  Death is the devil’s chariot, and he is a charlatan.  He tries to delude us, just as he deceived our mother Eve, with things that seem to be true and real but aren’t–with forbidden fruit that seems pleasing to the eye, with religions and  philosophies that seem so much more reasonable and fairer than Christianity, to make it seem as if evil wins, because death always has its day.

But the truth of the matter is that things are not as they seem.  Death does not win.  For Jesus lives.  And man lives not by bread alone or solely by the latest pronouncements of doctors and scientists.  Man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.  Man lives by the Word of God made flesh, who died in the flesh on the cross, and rose again in the flesh from the tomb.  Man lives by the Word out of God’s mouth and into the waters stirred up in the church’s baptismal font.  Man lives by the Word out of the mouth of God and into your mouths under bread and wine.  That is how man lives, or man doesn’t live not at all, no matter how it might seem.

What we cannot do, Jesus has done. We cannot take the place of another.  But our Lord, Jesus Christ, can and did.  He was not invited to the funeral in Nain.  He did not even seem to know the young man.  Still, He rudely interrupted the procession.  He barged right in and touched the dead.  He broke the taboo.  Even today, we find it a bit uncomfortable for someone to touch a dead body, to touch the body in the casket.  In Jesus’ day that was even more the case; to do that would make you ceremonially unclean.  But Jesus did it anyway.  He broke the Law of Moses, and He paid the penalty for it.  For He who knew no sin became sin.  He was then unclean, and death was transferred, passed from the boy to our Lord.  Life passed from our Lord to the boy.  Jesus was infected; the boy was cleansed.  Life flowed to the boy and pulsed anew in his young veins.  And Jesus, the Lord and Giver of Life, traded places with him, fulfilling the wish and dream of his mother.  What she could not do, He did for her and for him.

Jesus spoke, and the boy arose.  “Young man, I say to you, arise!”  Some time later Pilate would sentence Jesus to the death He took away from this young man.  Jesus died because He touched our dead humanity and took that  mortality into Himself.

We sometimes forget that Joseph, the husband of Mary, had already died by the time Jesus began His ministry.  So there was yet another widow, the mother of Jesus, watching her Son die, holding His dead, bloody, nail-scarred body in her arms, just outside the city.  Yet this Son would not leave His widowed mother grieving.  She would see Him again alive when He left the grave behind, having put an end to the sting of death and the threats of the Law and the power of the devil.

But still, it might seem as though the resurrection in Nain was only temporary, simply a brief respite from death.  That famous boy from Nain is no longer with us, of course.  He died again.  It would seem as though death was merely delayed, that death always wins and always gets its prize.  Even if he lived on this earth another fifty or sixty years, death still came.  The flesh has long been off of his buried bones.  But again, that is only how it seems.

For when Nain’s famous son laid down in death for a second time, he was given back to his mother for the second time.  He had certainly buried his mother before he died the second time.  So when he died again, he was again given back to her in heaven, and this time, he was with her for good.  This time, he would never be taken away, never again separated from her or his father, or from Abraham and Moses and all of the saints who had gone on before them.  For they were all with their Lord.  And if the people in Nain were filled with joy and the fear of God at the resurrection on that day, you can imagine the joy in heaven when that boy saw his mother and his Savior again.

Death only seems to win and take its prize when it comes to the faithful.  But those who believe in Jesus never die.  They are ever alive in Him.  St. Paul says they fall asleep.  They are not dead.  Their souls go to heaven. Their bodies sleep in the grave awaiting the awakening, the resurrection on the Last Day.  For that’s how it was with Jesus.  When He was on the cross and died, it is written that Jesus gave up His spirit, His soul.  And His body went into the grave to wait for the resurrection on Easter Sunday.

So it is that all Christians die like Jesus.  We are not dead; we live.  For our God is the God of the living.  Our living souls go with Jesus to the Father, and our bodies go into the grave to wait for the resurrection at the final Easter.  Our souls will then be rejoined with our bodies, perfect and immortal and glorified.  And then we will live fully before God as we were created to live.  For Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life, and the one who believes in Him will live again, even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in Him will never die.

So remember, when we bring up death here in church, we’re not being negative.  Rather we bring it up so that we can make fun of our defeated enemy.  It’s sort of like me bringing up the Minnesota Vikings and how they’ve never won a Super Bowl.  We bring up death to taunt it, to mock it, to declare its defeat in Christ.  You see, as Christians we don’t live in denial of reality, enslaved by our fear of death.  Rather, we face it head on, just as Jesus did with this funeral procession.  For we know that in Him death is neutered and toothless and vanquished.  

So as the hymn says, “laugh to scorn the gloomy grave.”  Say to it, “We bury our dead only to mock you, not because they are dead, but because they live, because they are with Jesus, and their bodies sleep.  We bury our dead because they have been sanctified and sealed for the resurrection through the risen body and blood of Jesus given into their bodies in Holy Communion.  They go into you, O grave, only so that they might follow Jesus out of you and humiliate you and defeat you.”  Let us join in the Scriptural taunt, “‘O death, where is your victory? O Hades, where is your sting?’ . . . Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:55,57).

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

(With thanks to the Rev. David Petersen)

Matthew 6:24-34

✠ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

Death always seems to get the last word.  But if death really was ruling and reigning with ultimate power, then there would be no lilies of the field, no colorful birds, nothing beautiful left.  This world would be as barren as a lunar landscape.  However, God did not abandon us when we fell into sin.  In the good that He allows us to experience in this sin-cursed world, we see the signs of His mercy that rescues us from death.  Even though Adam and Eve had betrayed Him, He still loved them.  He walked in the garden after their sin, despite their rebellion and fear.  He came to them in bodily form, foreshadowing that He would take up our form permanently as a real man and pay our price, die our death, that He would stand between us and the devil and perform the duty in which Adam had failed.

So consider the lilies.  They still exist in our broken and fallen world.  They live alongside thorns and thistles that seek to choke them out, with insects, molds, and various diseases, trampled by children and dogs and eaten by deer and rabbits.  Consider the fragility of lilies in this violent world.  And consider also their beauty.

Though it is fleeting, the lilies have a glory from God.  They adorn the earth.  Not everything in this fallen creation is red in tooth and claw.  Not everything is suffering and sorrow.  Consider the lilies.  Consider also chocolate, laughter, music, and good books.  They are signs that God is still at work to free us, to deliver us.

Death does not reign; it is not king.  God walked in the garden with Adam and Eve.  He came where He was needed.  He walked also in the garden of Gethsemane, where He was betrayed again. They came with clubs and swords to take Him away.  They had their way with Him outside the city, in the place of the skull.  He gave Himself over to their evil desires.  Then it was finished.  He was laid to rest, like a kernel of wheat, like the bulb of a lily beneath the ground, in the garden of the dead.  And He rose on Easter morning, sprouting to life unconquerable and immortal, the Victor over death, back out of the grave, undoing what sin had done.  He gave his tomb back, as good as new. Death is not in charge.  The lilies come forth each spring in glory.  Death is dead.  For Jesus lives.

Therefore, since this is so: do not be anxious.  Jesus lives for you.  Jesus loves you.  You may now be suffering many things in this fallen life.  The devil tempts you to waste your energy and effort, to compound your sorrow with worry about various things.  The devil would have you worry about money and how you will pay your bills or how you will retire well.  He would have you be obsessed with fear of viruses and social unrest and political chaos.  He doesn’t want you to focus on the peace you have in Christ; he wants you rather to fret and be afraid of what might happen in this passing and unstable world.  He will fill the broadcast news with tragedies and crimes and disasters. He will fill your social media feed with distortions and propaganda and useless information.  He will try to wear you down, to overwhelm you with sadness, to bury you with the impossibility of it all.

But then Jesus says, “Do not be anxious about your life.”  Doing so only hurts yourself and those whom you love.  Jesus lives.  He will provide.  The lilies do not toil or spin.  The birds do not sow, reap, or gather.  Your Father takes care of them.  Your Father most certainly will take care of you.  He always has taken care of you, not because of your own merits, but because of His Fatherly goodness.  He causes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and He sends rain on the just and the unjust.  

Today certainly has its troubles.  There is no doubt of that.  The call not to worry is not a denial of the very real troubles that exist in your life.  The demands of school and work need to be dealt with.  That family member needs a phone call, your spouse needs an encouraging word.  Your country needs your prayers; your neighborhood needs your involvement.  But those needs are comparatively small,  nothing to be anxious about.  They are well within your talents and gifts.

You have been placed by the Lord precisely where you are. He has made you who you are. He has given you these particular duties, these particular children and spouses and co-workers and friends and even those who are over you in government.  Each day has enough trouble of its own.  Nothing is gained by obsessing about tomorrow or taking on yourself burdens that are not yours to bear, or giving way to envy, bitterness, or fear.  Sufficient for the day is its own troubles.  You are where He has placed you, like a lily in a field.  You simply are given to respond in your particular place, in your stations in life, as you are able.  Do not be anxious about today’s troubles, whether there is hope for our society and culture, whether your children will be OK, whether the climate is growing warmer or colder.  Do what you have been given to do, and ask for forgiveness for your failings. The Lord will provide. He has put you in place on purpose, deliberately, even if you yourself feel unworthy to the task or cannot understand all of His purposes.  Focus on today, not yesterday and not tomorrow.  Rest in the certainty that Jesus lives, that Jesus is providing, and will always provide. The lilies don’t know what they are doing either; they are just being lilies. That is sufficient.

Death does not reign; it is not king.  The lilies prove it.  They are not moved by the troubles of this fallen world.  They belong to the Lord.  He provides according to His promise.  He takes care of them.  And you are worth so much more to Him than they are.  You are worth more than lilies.  If He takes care of them, He will surely take care of you.  So let your heart be at rest. Let go of your anxiety. The Lord has claimed you in the waters of Holy Baptism.  He has sent His Son to die for you.  He is not going to quit on you.  He will provide. You do not need to attain some level of perfection in your life in order to get God to pay attention to you and care for you.  Your Father loved you and chose you as His own even before you were even conceived and born.  He will take care of you as surely as He takes care of the lilies.  In Jesus you are perfect right now.  And in Jesus you will be perfected in the resurrection of your bodies, reflecting the glory of God that is greater than Solomon, greater than the lilies, where there is no more sorrow or pain or death.

The grass of the field is thrown into the oven, the Gospel says.  But out of the oven, after the violence of reaping and thrashing, after the mixing and kneading and resting of the dough, after the refinery of fire, out of the oven comes bread for the day, food for the eater.  The Lord does provide.  He goes where He is needed, even to the hellishness of Calvary, for you.  He stopped death, conquering the grave.  Out of that oven tomb comes the Bread of Life for you, that you might partake of His Body and be one with Him.  He is needed here, by you today.  And so He comes to you.  This Jesus is the Living Bread from heaven, who comes to feed you with Himself, to clothe you with His righteousness, to calm your hearts, to give you peace.  Death does not reign.  Life reigns.  For Jesus lives.

✠ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

(With thanks to the Rev. David Petersen)

Luke 10:25-37 (Trinity 13)

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

 Imagine you were living centuries ago, in medieval times.  If you were to ask the question, “What shall I do to inherit the royal crown and become king?” most people would probably think you were being silly or foolish.  After all, there’s nothing you could do to gain that inheritance.  You’d have to be a member of the royal family.  No matter how good you are, how sincere you are, how hard you work, you cannot inherit the crown unless you have the right bloodline.  It’s something you’re born into.  

Unless, of course, you were planning treason and rebellion.  For there actually is one thing you could do to inherit the kingdom: go to war.  Kick out or kill the old ruler and make yourself king (or queen).  The kingdom and the crown can only change hands like that by violence and force.

This is why the lawyer’s question to Jesus in today’s Gospel is also quite silly and foolish, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?”  There’s nothing he can do to inherit.  It’s who you are and who your family is that matters with an inheritance.  The lawyer’s question seems pious, but in reality it betrays a treasonous and unbelieving heart.  For the only way you can gain the kingdom of God by your own doing is to try to kick God off of His throne and take over yourself.  And that’s what every attempt at earning eternal life by your own goodness is–it’s making war against God.  It’s a coup attempt that tries to replace His grace with your own righteousness.  Such revolts against the King of kings will not succeed.  His kingdom only comes to you as a freely given inheritance.  It is bestowed by God the Father on His royally born children, all those who believe and are baptized into Christ His Son.

The lawyer clearly doesn’t get this.  So since the lawyer is stuck on what he must do, Jesus turns the question around and asks him, “What is written in the Law?’ The Law is where you go to find out what you should do.   And to his credit the lawyer answers well, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”  That’s right. That’s true.  Love God; love one another. Simple and straightforward.

But then come these daunting words from Jesus, “Do this and you will live.”  That is a pretty unsettling statement.  For it implies, “Don’t do these commandments, and you will die.”  Will we really live eternally based on what we’ve done?  Do we who are obsessed with ourselves and our own dreams and self-preservation love God with every fiber of our being, always, above all things?  And do we love our neighbor selflessly, gladly, willingly, from the heart?  Or are we sometimes annoyed by their constant needs?  “Do this and you will live” is a dire threat.  The lawyer’s test has backfired.  He is dead, and he knows it.

 And so he does what lawyers often do.  He looks for a loophole. “And who is my neighbor?” he asks.  He still wants to argue his way out of damnation.  But he is not nearly as clever as he thinks. For every Sunday school student knows the answer to that question.  Who is my neighbor?  Everyone is your neighbor.  Every single person you come across.  You’re supposed to love all people as yourself.  There are no exceptions, no escape clauses, no one else to pass the blame onto.  The Law exposes you.  You have not fulfilled its demands.  You will not live.

Except, notice this: our Lord does not actually answer the lawyer’s question, “Who is my neighbor?”  We know the answer is everyone.  But Jesus uses the parable of the Good Samaritan to pose a new question, a very different question: “Who was neighbor to (the man)?”  The answer to that question is not everyone.  Everyone was not neighbor to the man in the ditch! Only One was. This points us to the Lord Jesus Himself.  He is the doer and the giver of inheritances.  He is the One who has mercy, who was neighbor to the man who fell among thieves. The Son of God did what the Law could not.

The priest and the Levite were powerless, bound by all the rules about not being clean if they touched blood or a dead person. They could not help, even though they should have.  But Jesus our Samaritan was full of mercy and compassion. He dirtied Himself with our fallen condition, coming in the likeness of sinful flesh.   He shared in our suffering and made our problems His own, to the point that He Himself would be beaten mercilessly and robbed of His clothing and left for dead on the cross.  He knew the cost to rescue us from sin and Satan, but He went down into the ditch of death anyway to make us clean.  He bound up our wounds in His own wounded flesh.  He poured on His own sacramental oil and wine.  He picked us up and carried our burdens.  He walked while we rode.  He paid for everything by His precious blood.  He sees to our ongoing care in the church while we heal.  And He is coming back.

Then Jesus says: “Go and do likewise.”  Now most people simply take that to mean that you should do like the Samaritan did.  And that is true; as Christians we are given to show forth the love of Christ and help our neighbor in need no matter who they are, especially within the stations of life where God has placed us.  But that’s not actually Jesus’ main point here.  Jesus’ main purpose is to move the lawyer and us away from trying to justify ourselves and thinking we can earn the inheritance.  For we heard in the Epistle, God gave His inheritance to Abraham not by the law but by promise.  Jesus is not just giving us a lesson in the Law here.  He is showing us Himself and how the kingdom of heaven comes to you by grace.

Jesus is teaching you to see yourself as the one beaten up on the side of the road, and to seek mercy from Him, the only One who can truly help you.  He has changed the question from what you must do to what He has done for you.  Who has been neighbor to you?  Who fulfilled the Law entirely for you?  Jesus Himself and Jesus alone.  That’s true mercy.  That’s the inheritance of heaven given by promise.

In the end the Kingdom of God does come to you through violence, the violence of the cross.  However, in His death the Lord is not toppled from His throne.  The devil thought He could take the crown by killing Christ.  Instead Satan himself was conquered, and the risen Jesus has opened the kingdom to all believers.  God the Father has adopted you as His own through baptism.  You are brothers and sisters of Jesus.  He has given you the crown of life.  You truly are heirs of heaven.

So remember how the mercy of God is revealed here in the changing of the question from “Who is my neighbor?” to “Who was neighbor to (the man)?”  The focus is not on us but on Jesus.  He has done what you and the Law could not.  He was moved by His own compassion to come and help you who had been robbed by sin and Satan and left for dead.  You have been rescued by Christ and cared for and raised up by Him.  He is the One who has truly loved you as Himself all the way to the end.  Who was neighbor to the one who fell among thieves?  The One who had mercy, the One who was crucified with thieves for you.

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

(With thanks to the Rev. David Petersen for some of the above)

Mark 7:31-37

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

What is it that makes you sigh and groan?  You sigh when you’re burdened and worn out by something, when you’re struggling to keep on going, when you’re frustrated and just tired of it all.  It might be a nagging physical problem you’re dealing with.  It might be a nagging conscience that won’t let you forget foolish things you’ve done or said.  And it might be a nagging situation that is outside of your control–a pandemic with no apparent end in sight, tragic violence and senseless destruction like what occurred in Kenosha this week, people in your life who mistreat you or let you down.  Sometimes it’s all a little too much, and you sigh; you groan.  Sighing is a fruit of the curse.

And all of creation is affected.  Romans 8 says that “all creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.”   The recent Gulf hurricane and its aftermath is a living picture of that.  The whole creation is weighed down and broken.  Creation itself sighs and groans in its bondage to decay after the fall.

As we look up to heaven and sigh, it is most comforting to see our Lord Jesus in the Gospel doing the very same thing.  He really is one with us in our troubles.  He shares our burdens.  He too, sighs and groans.  But His sighing is different from ours.  He knows your pain to be sure.  And He feels your weariness.  But there’s more to it than that.  He knows that there’s a cure.  For He has come to be the cure Himself.  His sighs, His sufferings are the very thing that take your sin and your burden away from you.  His sighs breathe His words and His Spirit and His life into you.

Jesus took this deaf-mute aside from the multitude, away from the familiarity and the security of his friends and the people he knew.  That had to have been a little unsettling for him. There was only Jesus now to rely on.  The deaf-mute’s attention, his trust was to be entirely focused on Him.  So it is with you.  When Jesus deals with you, he calls you to find your security not ultimately in familiar people or the things in this world, not in getting things back to “normal,” whatever that means, but only in Him.  It may be unnerving not to have your usual safety blankets and crutches, but when Jesus heals and saves you, He calls you to trust and to be devoted to Him entirely.

But then even more importantly, Jesus invites you to see that He is devoted to you entirely.  Jesus calls this deaf-mute aside from the crowds because this wasn’t for show; He wasn’t going to use Him as a prop for political purposes.  Jesus was completely there just for this man, one on one.  Likewise with you; when Jesus deals with you, you’re not just a generic face in the crowd.  He cares about you individually.  He comes to you and helps you as someone uniquely created by Him.  

Of course, that doesn’t mean the ministry of the Great Physician will always be comfortable.  After all, Jesus put His fingers right into the deaf man's ears.  He spit and touched the deaf man’s tongue.  Imagine the immediate unhinged response He would get for doing that today.  Jesus touched this man right where his body was broken with a healing touch.  And He said, “Ephphatha.” “Be opened.  Be released.”  Even apart from the sanitary aspect of this, there was something almost over the line in Jesus’ actions.  He was invading this man’s space and right in his face when He talked.  It was uncomfortably close.

The Lord can heal with just a Word; that’s how He sometimes did it.  Why then fingers in the ears, and spit and hands upon the tongue?  Well, for one thing, this is what his friends had prayed for.  Remember they had begged Jesus to put His hand on him.  That prayer was being answered very concretely.  Be careful what you pray for.  You may receive what you asked, but not in the way you expected.  It may not come in the comfortable, simple way you were hoping for but in the Lord’s way that puts you out of your comfort zone, that teaches you not to trust in your prayers or your friends’ prayers, but only in the Lord who answers your petitions.  He may be invading your personal space, but it’s for your good.

Jesus heals in this hands-on way, too, because this is the very purpose for which he came, to be the medic who touches our broken flesh with His pure life-giving flesh.  He sticks His fingers in our ears through the preaching of His Word.  In the Bible, the “finger of God” is a reference to the Holy Spirit.  Only by the power of God’s Spirit-filled Word can our natural spiritual deafness be turned to a listening ear which understands and believes the things of God.  The Epistle reading said, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”  

Jesus also spits and touches our tongue in the Sacraments.  Isn’t baptism water and words from the mouth of God?  In baptism Jesus says His “Ephphatha” to you, releasing you from your bondage to death and unloosing your tongues to sing the praises of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.  We pray in the Psalms, “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.”  Only when the Holy Spirit has opened our ears and freed our tongues can we truly worship Him rightly.  It is written, “No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.”

And of course, our Lord Christ touches your tongue very literally in Holy Communion, where He places His body and blood right into your mouths for your forgiveness.   To the world it is a rather strange thing, especially in these times, that you would come forward and partake of this supper.  But you do so at the Lord’s Word.  For this is the Lord’s concrete, earthy way of touching you and giving you eternal healing.  

When Jesus sighed, He looked up to heaven.  For He knew well that the divinely required cost of our healing is His sacrificial death.  He would sigh and groan and cry out and be spitefully spit upon for us on the cross.  And yet through that death Jesus is not defeated but victorious.  For in so doing He has broken the power of sin’s curse.  Jesus has overcome all that makes you sigh and groan in this fallen world through the cross.  You have the victory in Him.

God the Father showed the victory of Jesus’ sacrifice for you on the third day.  This time the Father said “Ephphatha” to the tomb, “be opened,” and He raised Jesus to life in glory.  In the same way, Jesus will speak His “Ephphatha” to your graves on the Last Day, and raise you from the dead with glorified bodies to live with him forever in righteousness and holiness.

This is the light at the end of all tunnels for the Christian. This is the promise that no matter how bad the sighing gets, there really is a better day ahead.  No matter how deaf God appears to the sounds of our cry, in Jesus Christ, He hears, and He will answer you, and restore you, and give you an eternal blessing.  In the resurrection there will be no more deafness or disease or trouble or violence any more.  As it is written in Isaiah 51, “Sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”  The whole creation will rejoice with us as it, too, is released from its bondage.  We eagerly wait for the adoption, the redemption of our bodies.  Until then, the Spirit of Christ helps us in our weakness, aiding our prayers when we don’t know what to say, making intercession for us with groans too deep for words (Romans 8:26).

“In that day the deaf shall hear the words of the book” (Isaiah 29:18).  Thanks be to God that He has caused the living melody of the Gospel to sound in our ears, that He has breathed His Spirit and life into us.  Even in the midst of all the uncertainties of your life, let your confession of faith be like that of the multitude in the Gospel,  “He has done all things well.  He makes both the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

Luke 18:9-14

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

All of us know how to play the comparison game.  You see or hear about another person, perhaps something they’ve done or achieved, things that are going on in their life.  And then you line yourself up next to them to see who’s doing better.  In your heart you usually come up with one of two conclusions: either you’re proud and satisfied with yourself, or you despair and are depressed about yourself.  The comparison game is not a good game to play, but our sinful nature can’t seem to avoid it.  For the old Adam is always obsessed with the self, and he wrongly judges himself in terms of others rather than in terms of God and His Word.

Pride can rear its ugly head in the comparison game even in something as simple as watching or scrolling through the news.  We see rioters and looters and vandals, we see the corrupt politician or the hypocritical celebrity or the sexually deviant person, and we think, “Thank God I’m not like those people.  I’m certainly doing better than they are.” 

But notice how that’s the way the Pharisee talks.  He mentions God; He even seems to thank God for His good works, but not really.  For notice how it says that the Pharisee prayed with himself.  That’s the only safe way to pray if you’re playing the comparison game–with yourself and by yourself.  The name of God is used by the Pharisee just once; the word I is used four times.  God is not really the focus here; He’s just window dressing for the main attraction, the pious Pharisee.

Now, the Pharisee here seems to be a little bit of a caricature that we can easily make fun of.  But be careful, for as soon as you start thinking, “Thank God I’m not a self-righteous snob like the Pharisee,” then you’ve become the Pharisee yourself.  Then you’re the one looking down on others.  You don’t like it when people act all holier than thou, but the fact that you’ve got to go and point that out shows that you really think you’re better than them.  And so you’re caught.

Repent.  Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.  He who exalts Himself will be humbled.  Turn away from religion which is all about you and your spiritual self-improvement.  The Gospel is not “God helps those who help themselves.”  That statement is not in the Bible.  Do not trust in yourself to become good before God; it cannot be done.

But at the same time, do not give way to despair, either.  For that is the other side of the same coin in the comparison game.  People who know they haven’t measured up, who have botched things, compare themselves to others and say, “Look at how I’ve messed things up and sinned.  My life is full of mistakes and failings and regrets.  Nothing seems to be the way it should be.  I don’t see any great future for me, especially with God.  It’s hopeless.”  

Those who succumb to spiritual despair are really engaging in the very same sin as the Pharisee, oddly enough.  Both pride and despair are obsessed with the self.  The proud person looks at himself and thinks he sees good.  The despairing person looks at himself and sees bad.  But both are engaging in the exact same spiritual activity–narcissism, mirror watching.  It’s all about me.  Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves.  Both the proud and the despairing person think that it’s all about them and their efforts and what they do.  For one this is happy, for the other it’s sad.  But they both believe the same thing, and they’re both wrong.  That’s why they both end up despising others, as Jesus said.  The proud person looks down on those he thinks to be inferior to him.  And the despairing person despises those who are above him, those who have supposedly held him down and kept him from being able to become the person he was supposed to be.

Let go of all that comparing and instead embrace grace.  “By grace you have been saved.”  God’s grace and mercy alone.  There is no comparison to that.  Nothing can compare to what is freely given to you in Jesus Christ.  The tax collector’s worship is the right kind of worship, that of humble reverence before the Lord.  It’s right because his faith is not in himself in any way but in the Lord’s sacrificial compassion.  It all depends on that.  He doesn’t presume that he has the right to draw near to God on his own merits.  He stands afar off with his face not even lifted up to the King of kings.  He beats his chest in sorrow as if to say, “What have I done?”  And his only plea is, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

That may not be the kind of worship that draws crowds and makes you feel all tingly, but it is the kind of worship that Jesus seeks and that He praises here.  For Jesus says that it’s the tax collector who goes down to his house justified, right with God.  The tax collector comes before God with no illusions that he has some great virtue that he can offer to God.  No, it all hangs on the belief that the Lord is a God of mercy who will not forsake even him, who will forgive him and raise him up, even though he doesn’t deserve it.

That’s why he came to the temple to pray.  This is where the sacrifices were made that God had appointed and where blood was shed to atone for sin.  When the tax collector prays “God be merciful to me . . .” the word he uses for mercy has to do with those sacrifices, all of which pointed forward to the coming sacrifice on Good Friday.  So as the tax collector offers this prayer, God is already answering it for him there in the animals being offered on the altar.  The tax collector trusted in God’s promise of sacrificial mercy, and he longed for the day when the Messiah would come and bring all of these things to their fulfillment.

Let us also then learn the lesson of the tax collector and take our place with him.  Let us come before the Lord with humble reverence, with sincere repentance and true faith.  For it is written, “The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart and saves such as have a contrite spirit.”  If you know the burden of your fallen nature, if you’ve made some poor choices in life, if this world at times just wearies you to death, then the Lord Jesus is for you.  Pray the same prayer, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”  And He is, and He will be, and His mercy endures forever.  For He has made the sacrifice for you in the temple of Christ’s body on the altar of the cross.  Through the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, your sin has been fully atoned for.  You are released and forgiven.  You are released from all the religious score-keeping and comparison games that divide you from your neighbor.  You are free now simply to “rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.”  Through Jesus you are reconciled to God, and in Him you are reconciled to each other.  It is written, “You who once were far off (as the tax collector stood far off) have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”

Now you are given to lift up your eyes and see heaven opened through Jesus.  For He fulfilled His own words here, humbling Himself even to the point of death on a cross.  He didn’t say to His Father, “God, I thank You that I am not like other men”–even though He’s the One who actually could have said that.  Instead, He made Himself to be like us and shared in our death so that we would share in His life and His bodily resurrection.  God the Father has now exalted the risen Jesus to the highest place and given Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow.  And that is what you do, even at this altar rail, as the Lord comes to you with His mercy.

Here, then, is the good news–all of you are given to go down to your houses today justified and righteous.  “It is by grace you have been saved through faith” in Christ, who is your righteousness.  This Gospel casts out both pride and despair.  For the Epistle said, this is “not of yourselves,” from within you, “it is the gift of God” from outside of you, “not of works, lest anyone should boast.”  If there’s going to be any boasting, let it be boasting in the Lord.  For even your good works are ones that He has prepared beforehand for you to walk in.  It’s all from Him.

You have been turned from children of wrath to baptized children of grace.  You are justified, right with God in Christ.  Therefore, humble yourselves before the Lord, that He may lift you up in due time.

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

Luke 16:1-13

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

Today's parable has a surprise ending. You’ve heard the parable before, so perhaps it doesn’t seem so striking.  But imagine you’re hearing it for the first time.  There’s a manager who has been cooking the books. He’s been caught, and the CEO has told him to clean out his office. But instead, the manager quickly alters the records even more, so that the people who owe the company money get a big reduction. He’s hoping that the people he helps will in turn help him once he’s out on the street.

Now right at that moment, when the evil person has been exposed, many of Jesus’ parables will conclude with condemnation, something like, “Bind him and cast him into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth”; or, “Assuredly I say to you, that man will be cast into prison and not get out until he has repaid the last penny.”  We expect to hear an ending to the story that promises justice. But instead, Jesus surprises us with a radically different kind of ending: the embezzling, wasteful, dishonest manager gets praised. So what’s going on?

First, we have to remember that many of the things Jesus says are purposely surprising and strange. The strangeness is precisely where Jesus makes His point, that the kingdom of God doesn’t operate according to our expectations or rules. In the sayings of Jesus, camels go through the eyes of needles, armies go to war over snubbed dinner invitations, and bridesmaids get locked out of wedding receptions.

Jesus obviously isn’t endorsing cheating. So what is He teaching us with this strange parable? First, we have a problem with money.  Jesus doesn’t aim this parable at con-men and book-cookers. He aims it at you. You may say, “I’ve never embezzled money; and if the IRS audited me, they would find I’ve paid the taxes I owe.” But the parable isn’t really about cheating. It’s about the problem of having a life and a heart oriented toward the service of money.

Everything you have, no matter how hard you’ve worked for it, you wouldn’t have it unless God had given it you.  Even more, God has given you what you have for a purpose. He’s entrusted it to you to manage it for Him, and this parable teaches us that we need to be faithful to that trust. “If you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?” Mammon means wealth, property, food, provisions.  Jesus calls the mammon unrighteous not because it’s evil in itself, but because of the power it can hold over us. And He concludes by telling us we can only have one master. “You cannot serve God and mammon.” “No servant can serve two masters.”

So what has mastery over you?  What takes precedence over church and God’s Word in your life?  What is it that you wouldn’t be willing to give up if the Lord asked you to?  If you’re not willing to give it up, you’re not recognizing it as something that actually belongs to God.  You think it’s your own and not something He has given you to manage for your necessities and the good of others and His glory.

There’s actually something incredibly freeing about being a steward and not the Lord–and not just when it comes to money, but everything. We might sometimes prefer to live in a different time or different circumstances. But realizing that God has put you right where you are in just the situation you are in, then you can embrace your various vocations in life as callings from Him, even if they involve crosses or difficulties. You can say, quite truthfully, “God has put me here, in 2020, in this country, this church, this family, with these neighbors, with this work to do.”

When the unjust steward is called before the rich man, he’s told, “Give an account of your stewardship.” That’s the command that will be put to each one of us, too.  The Lord says, “I give you this money, this job, this spouse, these parents, these children. Do not worry about what some other person has; do not covet your neighbor’s house, or wife, or property. Be faithful where I have put you as a steward, a manager of the things I have entrusted to you.”

This call to give an account is a call to repentance for all of us, who have fallen short in our stewardship of God’s gifts.  Let us then, first of all, turn back again to doing what the Lord has given us to do in our callings.  Jesus says, “The sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light.”  In other words, worldly people are single-minded in achieving their goals.  If they can be so very passionate about things that will pass away, how much more should we be about eternal things!  So, Jesus says, “Make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail [and die], they may receive you into an everlasting home.”  The unjust steward, selfish though he was, lived with an eye toward the future.  That’s also how we should be, but in a selfless way, living with an eye toward the eternal dwelling place that God has already prepared for us purely by His grace in Christ. We are given to use the things of this world, we are to put unrighteous mammon to righteous purposes, for the good of Christ’s church and our fellow man.  This is how everlasting friends are made, those who believe and are baptized, the ones who will share our everlasting home.  You cannot serve God and mammon.  But can make your mammon serve God.

And then second of all, today’s Gospel is a call to faith.  It’s worth noting that this parable comes immediately after the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and they carry a similar message: “It’s time to come home. The Father forgives. He is merciful. Do not delay.”  That’s really the key point of this parable: God is lavishly generous. God’s character is mercy, love, generosity.

Think about it.  Isn’t it strange that the unjust steward is only losing his job? You’d expect him to be thrown into prison, humiliated. But he’s being treated gently. This tells us something about the rich man, that he’s merciful. And the steward knows this and uses it. The debtors quickly accept a reduction of their payments, a hundred measures of oil is cut to fifty; a hundred measures of wheat is cut to eighty. The steward is banking on the rich man honoring these deals, even though they’re unauthorized.  That’s how our God is.  He is generous toward us for the sake of Christ.  He authorizes all of our debts as having been paid for by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.  And He praises those who stake their whole lives and their whole future on His mercy in Jesus.  That’s true wisdom and shrewdness.  Both with the unjust steward and with us, the Lord praises faith in His generosity.

The steward in the parable is very much like the prodigal son.  They both wasted the possessions given to them.  They both put their trust in the mercy and grace of those whom they had wronged.  They both came to learn that the only way to live is to be to be generous, to be merciful, to forgive debts, to use what you have for the benefit of others instead of wasting it on yourself.

That’s who God is. He gives. He’s generous. Our Lord Jesus allowed Himself to be called to account before an unjust judge, Pontius Pilate.  He stood in our place and made sure that our debts were not just reduced by cancelled entirely.  He has taken responsibility for your messed up ledger, and in its place He has inscribed your name in the Book of Life.  And you know that because He has given Himself to you, His Holy Spirit in baptism, the body and blood of Christ in Holy Communion.  The oil and wheat of the sacraments are your true treasure.  These are the things that give you an eternal home.

So let us repent of our mismanagement of God’s gifts.  And let us especially turn back to Him who is patient and merciful toward you.  Believe His promises in Christ.  He is faithful, and He will keep them.

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

(With thanks to the Rev. Christopher Esget)