Sermon for 6/30/24: Sixth Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 8b)

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Faith in the Midst of Suffering

Mark 5:21-43

 

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

 

 

Both Jairus and the woman who tried to get close to Jesus were in need. They were desperate. There was nothing they or anyone else could do for them. So they put themselves at the mercy of Jesus. They put their situation completely in His hands. They put their faith in Him. The faith of Jairus leads him to seek Jesus out of fatherly love for his daughter. There was nothing he could do for his precious child, so he put all his faith in Jesus. There was no way he could do anything to prevent his daughter from dying. So he left the matter completely in the hands of his God. And notice what leaving it completely in the Lord’s hands looks like: Jairus goes to God as He has made Himself known to us—namely, in Immanuel, God with us in human flesh, our Lord Jesus.

How could Jairus have possibly known that this Man, this Person who seems just like himself, could bring his dying daughter back to health? Well, the word that had gotten around that Jesus had performed many miracles and that He was a great teacher. But there’s a difference between hearing about miraculous things happening to others and believing they could happen for you. As hard as such a thing could be to imagine, the man went to Jesus with exactly that request.

What Jairus did is what we must do. We are in need. We are desperate. Illnesses and injuries ravage our lives, and we very much want deliverance from those things. But these are only symptoms of a greater disease. Whether you are struggling with severe illness or are in good health or you are anywhere between, you are wasting away in the disease that infects us all: original sin. And for this disease there is no human cure.

But there are no crowds thronging around Jesus anymore when we look to Him. He is all alone; everyone—even each one of us—has deserted him. When we look to Him in our need and our desperate state, we look to Him as He hung all alone on the cross. It’s what He has done that provides for us what we need. In the Collect of the Day we prayed, “Heavenly Father, during His earthly ministry Your Son Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead. By the healing medicine of the Word and Sacraments pour into our hearts such love toward You that we may live eternally.” That takes us back to our Introit from Psalm 121: “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” This is where we find our hope in the midst of hardship, our joy in the midst of suffering. This is where both Jairus and the woman who touched our Lord’s garment received their hope and joy.

During His earthly ministry, Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead. Here we are two thousand years later, facing the very same illnesses, unable to keep ourselves from death. That’s why our Lord worked for an even greater healing, even greater than temporarily raising the little girl from the dead. Jesus walked alone to the cross, and He was nailed to it. And nailed with Him to the cross was all the sins and illnesses, all the guilt and shame of humanity. It’s why the sinless Son of God died Himself. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” That’s what Jairus and the woman ended up coming to see in Jesus: the One who had given healing they had sought was the One who delivered them of all their sin. It’s why, as the language of our Collect says, He comes to us by the healing medicine of the Word and Sacraments and pours into our hearts such love toward Him that we may live eternally. Faith is hard. It is not easy to fully trust Him to do for you what you truly need.

The prayer we prayed in the Collect of the Day is a prayer of faith, asking our Father to give us what we need in the healing medicine of the Word and Sacraments and pour into our hearts such love toward Him that we may live eternally. We may want to be delivered from the pain we’re experiencing. We may want to be removed from the trials we are going through. What will your prayer be? Will it be the prayer of seeking what you want, or will it be what the prayer seeking you truly need? Will it be the prayer of your sinful nature, or will it be the prayer of faith? Will you trust your Lord enough to pray, “Thy will be done,” and then trust that His will is infinitely better than yours, even if His answer is not the answer you would choose? The patriarch Job prayed, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Can we pray that way?

Our Lord delivered these, His daughters, from earthly death for a time. That kind of power and love is truly amazing. But it gets even better, for this power and love points to the greater things Jesus did for them and for us. Our gracious Lord delivered them from their sins. He went to death Himself so that these daughters would be raised from death, so that Jairus would be raised from the dead, so that you would be raised from the dead—not merely for a time, but for all eternity. In the healing medicine of our Lord’s Word and gifts, He displays and exercises for you His great power and love: power over sin and death and love which gives you life in body and soul both now and forever. In the name of the Father and of the Son (+) and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.        

 

The peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus always.  Amen.

Sermon for 6/9/24: Third Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 5b)

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The Stronger Man
Mark 3:20-35

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

 

It was early in our Lord’s public ministry. He had been traveling from place to place, proclaiming the Gospel, and miraculous signs accompanied His teaching. The news about Him had gone before Him, and He had become quite popular. But with popularity came criticism. The religious powers sent their representatives to keep an eye on Jesus. They wanted to know if He was going to be a problem. It didn’t take long for them to figure out that Jesus wasn’t their ally. Last week we heard that the Pharisees held counsel with the Herodians, seeking to destroy Him.

Today it’s the scribes who opposed Jesus. They claimed, “He is possessed by Beelzebul;” “by the prince of demons He casts out the demons.” The miracles of Jesus are so public, so well known, that His enemies cannot deny them. Instead, they try to discredit these wonders. They accuse Jesus of working His miracles in league with demons. They claim that Jesus is able to cast out demons because He Himself is demon possessed. But their accusations make no sense. Demons are surely evil, but they are not stupid. Why would they fight against themselves? Jesus said as much: “If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end.”

Jesus went on to teach about what it takes to defeat Satan. “No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house.” Satan is, indeed, very strong. Only the One who is stronger than Satan can plunder Satan’s household and rescue those held captive by him and his demons. That One is Jesus.

The plundering of Satan’s stronghold is important to each of us. As we hear in the rite of Holy Baptism: “The Word of God teaches that we are all conceived and born sinful and are under the power of the devil until Christ claims us as His own. We would be lost forever unless delivered from sin, death, and everlasting condemnation.” Sinners by nature belong to Satan. But the rite goes on: “But the Father of all mercy and grace has sent His Son Jesus Christ, who atoned for the sin of the whole world that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” Jesus Himself is the stronger One who binds Satan and delivers us from sin, death, and everlasting condemnation.

But how were we already under God’s condemnation even at conception? This morning we heard about Adam and Eve, about the results of their fall into sin. In tempting Eve to doubt God’s Word, Satan made sin look pleasurable. And then after the sin, he had laid on the burden of guilt. Adam and Eve now saw God differently. Before, God had been their beloved Creator. Now, He was the terrifying Judge. Adam and Eve had not merely cursed themselves with their sin; they had cursed all of creation.

Nevertheless, even as God announced the result of sin on the serpent, He also announced the hope of salvation. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her Offspring; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” With these words, God promised a Savior: a strong Man who would bind Satan and free us from our captivity. This promise of the head-crushing Seed was passed on from generation to generation: from Adam and Eve to Seth, down through the generations for thousands of years. And when the time was exactly right, God kept His promise by taking on human flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, who gave birth to the God-Man, Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the One who bruised the serpent’s head, a prophecy our Savior fulfilled on the cross. It seemed that Satan had the victory. When Jesus died, it appeared that the tempter had defeated the promised Seed. But then Jesus rose from the dead, proving that He won the victory, that He has crushed Satan forever. Jesus is the stronger Man who binds Satan in order to set us free. Jesus now plunders Satan’s stronghold in order to carry off those who belonged to God the first place, His own creatures. These sinners—you and me and all people of all times and places—He once again claims us as His own.

Sadly, there are slaves in the house of Satan who do not want to leave. They reject our Lord’s gift of eternal freedom. When Jesus binds Satan and offers to carry them to safety and freedom, they turn away from Him. For reasons that we cannot understand, they reject the work of the Holy Spirit. They reject the forgiveness that Jesus won for them. Some people wonder, “How can a loving God send people to hell?” But that’s the wrong question. The question should be, “Why would anyone reject God’s gift of eternal life? Why would anyone choose eternity in hell rather than eternity with a God who loves them?” The Bible does not tell us why some people reject God’s love, why some people reject God’s forgiveness, why some people choose eternal death when the Holy Spirit wants to give them eternal life.

But that condemnation is not for you. When Jesus suffered and died on the cross, He bound Satan for you. Now He plunders Satan’s stronghold in order to free you, to release all those who were enslaved to sin. He sends the Holy Spirit to work faith and to give you the forgiveness of sins. With the forgiveness of sins comes salvation and eternal life. You are redeemed! You belong to God in Christ. Our Lord Jesus has conquered Satan, and He freely shares His victory with you. In the name of the Father and of the Son (+) and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus always. Amen.