I.N.I.
A sermon to be preached at Our Savior Lutheran Church, Arlington, VA on the 11th Sunday after Pentecost, also called 8 August 2010, and based on the Holy Gospel for the Day, St. Luke 12:22-34, especially verses 31 and 32
Grace, mercy, and peace be yours in Christ Jesus our Lord,
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
In my experience preaching in various congregations from the assigned lessons for each Sunday, I find some Sundays that either the lessons don't seem to fit together so well or that it's hard to find a really sweet nugget in them to bring into the pulpit with me. This isn't one of those Sundays. All three of our lessons fit together well and are chock full of wonderful words of God for us to chew on and enjoy. The struggle this week was more a case of having to decide what to leave out for another time. This explains why I am not focusing on Abram, and God's really big promises to him; or Abram's belief in God that the Lord credited to him as righteousness. It explains why I am not picking up the echo of our Genesis lesson that we have in Hebrews 11, where we hear the beginning of that great exposition on faith as the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen, ending in the middle of the chapter but with again the story of Abram's faith.
And it explains why I settled on the two verses from Luke 12 that I am calling our attention to this morning. 'Seek first the Kingdom of God – strive for – his kingdom, and all these things (I'll touch on what things later on) will be added unto you as well. Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom – He wants to, and He will.'
This all sounds fine. Maybe you've sung some of these words in songs or hymns. They're probably familiar words. But at second thought, it might appear that they don't sound too Lutheran. Lutheran Christians have a kind of automatic response against if-then, work-reward passages. And that's what this passage could sound like. It's as if Jesus is telling us that once we get out our compass and maps, fire up the GPS unit, pack our bags and set off to hunt up the Kingdom of God – once we work hard to find it and get into it – then the Father will let us in or something (that little detail seems lacking in our text) and will also give us earthly blessings, especially food and clothing. And that sort of talk about rewarding our hard work of going out and hunting for God doesn't sound properly orthodox to us, it doesn't sound like good Lutheran teaching. Well, it isn't, really. But that's not what the text is saying.
What the text is saying is significantly different. Let's unwrap the meaning so that we can get to the point where we will see that all Christian people will eagerly seek first the Kingdom of God. A very good place to start is with the a-b-c of God's abundant blessed caring for each of His creatures, for you and for me. God's abundant blessed caring for us should be where we start and end our every prayer about earthly things. God's care for us overflows more than we could ever think to ask for. God's care for us blesses us in more ways than we can imagine or count. Yet we sometimes, perhaps often, don't really believe in it. Sometimes we use some other standard and think we've been left out of God's blessings. Or perhaps we let greed and covetousness run our day-to-day lives. Maybe we get jealous of what other people have. In those cases we show a lack of faith in God. And that always gets us in trouble.
We should, instead, seek first the Kingdom of God. What is this word “seek”? One translation has “strive for”. Others say “continue to be eager for” or “set your mind upon,” “set your hearts on,” “be concerned about.” It's as if the translators are struggling to capture the sense of Jesus's original word. For good reason. The dictionaries point out that the word He used has two senses: one is “seeking” in the sense of a shepherd searching for a lost sheep (Matthew 18:12) or a woman seeking a lost coin (Luke 15:8); the other sense is in a holy 'demand' by God who expects fruit from a tree (Luke 13:6) or faithfulness from a servant (1 Corinthians 4:2). So there are 2 sides to “seeking.” There is looking for what belongs to you; and there is a patient, hopeful expectation of what is due.
And neither of these senses of the word “seek” indicate working hard to get something that isn't already given to you. In other words, that picture of getting out a map and hunting for God's Kingdom, and then pounding on the door to be let in, is all wrong. The Kingdom of God is already ours. It has already been given to us. It's just that, in our sin and self-centeredness, we've lost sight of it. So we should patiently search for what we already have by the grace of God. We should look as the good shepherd searches for the one lost sheep. We should sweep the house looking for where we dropped the valuable coin like the woman. We should wait patiently and expectantly, looking down the road like the father of the Prodigal Son. We should keep returning to the fig tree year after year looking for fruit. What we are seeking is already ours. God has already given it to us.
Jesus gave us another way to remember this process. In the Lord's Prayer, He told us to pray “Thy Kingdom come.” Now, we believe that God's Kingdom comes whether we pray for it or not, but in this petition of the Prayer we pray that it comes also to us. We pray that God's Kingdom may prevail among us, so that we may be a part of those among whom God's name is hallowed. We are praying for the flowering of what is already planted in our hearts. We are seeking the Kingdom of God in all the various ways and places it already is.
So, what IS the Kingdom of God? Simply, it's what we confess regularly in the creeds: that God sent his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, into the world to redeem us from sin, death and the Devil, and to bring us to Himself and rule us as our king of righteousness, life and salvation. To carry this out, God gave us His Holy Spirit to teach us through the Word, to call us through the Gospel, to enlighten us with His gifts, to strengthen and keep us in the one, true faith. THAT is “the Kingdom of God.”
When we “seek first the Kingdom of God” what we are doing is praying that all this may be realized in us, and that God's name may be praised through His holy Word and in our lives. So we are seeking to remain faithful to what was begun in us at Baptism, and to grow in faith through leading holy lives. And we pray that , led by the same Holy Spirit, many others may come into the Kingdom and become our brothers and sisters in the faith.
God's Kingdom comes to us in two ways as we seek it. First, it comes here and now through the Word and faith; and second, it comes in eternity through the Second Coming of Jesus. Seeking it, we pray that it may come to those who are not yet in it, and that it may come by daily growth in us all both now and in eternity when we go home to Heaven. As we are strengthened in the faith, God's Kingdom comes to us. As we live Christian lives, God's Kingdom comes. As we extend the outreach of His Church, we seek God's Kingdom. That's how we seek the Kingdom of God. That's how we set our hearts and minds on it. That's how we concern ourselves with it. That's how we focus our attention on the Kingdom.
And did you notice that we're NOT focusing our attention and prayers upon? It's often hard to see what isn't there until someone points it out. Let me point it out. We are not focusing our attention and prayers on a crust of bread or a shred of cloth. We aren't looking for food and clothing. We aren't looking for earthly, temporal, temporary blessings. Leap back to St. Luke 12:22-23 where Jesus says “I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you are to eat or about your body, what you are to wear. For life is ore than food, and the body more than clothing.”
You and I have a direct connection with almighty God, the creator of the Universe through Jesus Christ, His Son, our Lord. He has given us an eternal, priceless treasure by forgiving us our sins and giving us eternal life in Heaven. That's something way, way more than any of us would have ever thought to ask for on our own. Yet that's what God has given us. And because He is God, he claims the honor of giving us far more abundantly and liberally than anyone can comprehend. Like a deep, eternal, inexhaustible fountain that flows with more and more and more cold water on even the hottest day of the driest month, God keeps on giving to His children. He wants us to ask many and great things of Him. And He wants us to ask confidently.
Imagine, if you will, a rich and powerful person who calls to and invites a homeless beggar to ask for anything he wants. Imagine that the rich person is willing and ready to give lavishly. And imagine that the beggar only asks for some loose change to help make up the price of a cup of coffee. Would the rich person be indignant, upset, even angry? If you are the beggar, and don't ask the rich person for some substantial gift, then shame on you! Because God is the rich person in this little story and we are the beggars.
God's joy and purpose is to see to our blessing and comfort. Asking him merely for a little food and some clothing is a kind of insult to God's generosity. He has promised and is intent on giving us so much, so many blessings, we would be despising His gifts to barely croak out a petition for a morsel of bread.
The fault in this case lies wholly in our unbelief which does not look to God even for enough to satisfy our bodies, let along expect, without doubting, eternal blessings from God. Therefore we must strengthen ourselves against unbelief and seek first the Kingdom of God. Then, surely, we will have all the other things in abundance, as Christ teaches here in Luke's Gospel.
How do we strengthen our faith? By relying on God's grace which brought us that faith in the first place. His powerful grace comes to us in His Word, and in the Sacraments. We hear the Law and the Gospel in the words of the Holy Bible as we see how our sin is condemned, but how we are forgiven because of the death of Jesus. What a relief! What a source of inspiration and power! We are baptized people and therefore rely on the promises wrapped up in that cleansing whenever sin gets the upper hand again. We use the promises of God to fight off the attacks of Satan. We've been baptized! The evil one has no power over us any longer! And we are nourished in this life, both as we fight off the evil foe and as we carry out our God-given mission in life, by coming regularly to the Sacrament of the Altar, Holy Communion, the Lord's Supper. The “altar” reminds us that it is because of Christ's sacrificial death that we are here. The communion reminds us that we gather with other believers who are going through similar struggles, and finding the same godly assurances and love that we seek. The supper reminds us that what we have here was instituted by Jesus Himself as a way to feed us His true body and blood, strengthening and preserving us in the one true faith unto life everlasting.
We're in a great position. We have a loving and powerful God Who forgives us our sins and wants to sustain us in our earthly lives as well. He gives us the directions and means to approach Him, seeking His blessings. He has already promised to clothe us more gloriously than Solomon or the lilies of the field, and to feed us more regularly and fully than He feeds to birds who don't know how to farm and grow their own food. “Don't be afraid, little flock, for it is God's good pleasure – His delight! – to give you the Kingdom.”
So let's eagerly seek first the Kingdom of God. It turns out, as we've seen, that it's a very Lutheran thing to do – as, of course, it should be because it's a very Christian thing to do, because it comes from the lips of Jesus and is recorded in the Bible. Let's seek out the Kingdom like a shepherd searching for a lost sheep that he wants to rescue. Let's longingly search for it like the Prodigal Son's father looked down the road for his returning child. Let's keep checking like the farmer stopping in regularly, expectantly, hopefully, faithfully to see whether there's ripe fruit on the tree. We know the Kingdom of God is there for us with all its attendant blessings. Let's seek it out. Let's find it.
Amen.
And may the peace of God that passes all human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
S.D.G.
(which blog includes stuff about hiking, backpacking, The Appalachian Trail, and The Long Trail, as well random photos, jottings, scribblings, scraps of writing, miscellanea, facetiae, addresses, sermons, essays, journal entries, notes, memoranda, und so weiter. Sort of an online personal archive.)
Sunday, August 08, 2010
Sunday, June 20, 2010
The Crazy Man and the Pigs
I.N.I.
A sermon to be preached at Our Savior Lutheran Church, Arlington, Virginia on 20 June 2010, that is, the 4th Sunday after Pentecost, and based on the Holy Gospel for the Day, St. Luke 8:26-39, the healing of the Gadarene demoniac
Grace, mercy, and peace be yours in Christ Jesus, our Lord!
Dear Friends in Christ,
One of the ways to study stories from the Bible, and to develop a deeper sense of how these stories are meaningful to each of us today, is to work your way through the story thinking of yourself as one character, then another. What would the miracle at Cana have meant if I were the groom or the bride's father, for example. Or if I were one of Noah's sons, how would the whole story about the ark and 40 days of rain have affected me? Maybe we could try something like that with this story from Luke's Gospel.
We could, of course, think of ourselves as one of the disciples safely on shore at last after the wild, windy trip across the Sea of Galilee during which we woke up Jesus and He calmed the storm with just His words. Or maybe we could imagine ourselves as the villagers who came out to see what happened, after it all happened, and then asked Jesus to please leave town. (Have we ever politely asked Jesus to leave?) Or what would it have been like to be one of the local pig farmers who saw their entire flock suddenly rush down the steep bank like lemmings and drown? (Jesus can turn our world upside down, but is this the kind of thing that means?) Or what would it have been like to be the pigs in the story?
Or what would it have been like to be the naked crazy man who lived in the cemetery? Has your life ever gotten that far out of control? Have you ever felt like you've been losing touch with reality enough that you might as well be this guy? Have things ever gotten wild enough, overwhelming enough, stressful enough that you have thought “You know, maybe it wouldn't be so bad just to let everything go, cut all my ties with society, check out of normalcy.”?
We can learn some good lessons from this poor man's experiences. Even if we've been in control enough that we've never felt pushed to or over that edge, we can learn some things for our good from his story. Let's see what there is in this story for us.
First of all, the core of this passage from Luke's Gospel is also found in Matthew and Mark. It seems that God wanted to be sure we listened to this story, so he had three of His evangelists record it, not just one. And, as often happens, each of the writers includes details that the others leave out, maybe simply because they got the story from a different witness. Matthew, an eyewitness himself, tells us that there were actually two demon-possessed men there who “were so fierce that no one could pass that way” (Matt. 8:28). Mark tells us that the man “was always howling and bruising himself with stones” (Mark 5:5) and that there were about 2,000 pigs in the flock. Luke tells us that after the healing the man was seen “sitting at the feet of Jesus” (Luke 8:35).
Next, we know, I suppose, that the central point of this story is the same as of every story in the Bible: the story tells us about our need to be close to God, and how that comes about through Jesus our Savior. So why do we need to hear that lesson again? Why is it again the central point of a Scripture lesson and sermon that we are in need to salvation and that Jesus is our one and only Savior? Simply because we keep coming up with new ways of fomenting rebellion against Him and inventive ways to slip away from God. Here's how it is illustrated here in Luke chapter 8:
The naked man is one side of this coin, and the villagers are the other. And I think that they actually can be said to alternate the ways in which they show us separation from God. What they are teaching us in the end is that we – you and I – can live closer to Jesus, both healed of our craziness and un-distracted by non-essentials. We don't know just why this man was tormented with these demons who proudly named themselves “Legion.” We don't know whether maybe he invited them in, believing that he could control them and use their strength to gain money or power. There are certainly lots of examples in history and literature and the daily newspapers for us of people who make bargains with the Devil and end up polluting themselves and those around them with destructive drugs or dissipating habits, with wasteful living, with – in short – sinful intent. Oh, yeah, they may start out saying, I'm going to be different from everyone else; I'm going to control this habit; I'll do good with this stolen money; I'll help people with this excess power. But it's always a bargain that breaks the people who try to keep it. And this man in the tombs was certainly being broken by the demons in his life.
It could be that the demons weren't invited into his life, but invaded one day when his defenses were down. It didn't matter to the Legion, because they were enjoying themselves terrorizing the man and the villagers and people who tried to pass by. Satan's long-term goal is chaos and destruction, and he had the demons taking this man and those around him further down that road day by day. They delight in rebellion against the Creator. They enjoy, in their own twisted ways, taking people away from God.
The villagers were, I said, the other half of the picture. How were they siding against God? Well think about it: here's someone they knew, someone related to a lot of them surely, someone it great need, a man who who could most use a helping hand, and what had they done? They made sure he stayed away. When he came near, they tried to keep him in chains. This is no way to care for the helpless. This is no way to treat the poor and needy. This is not how the least of these is to be treated. It isn't how we say we would treat Jesus.
And then, later in the story, these villagers come rushing out to the cemetery to see for themselves what the pig farmers had told them. I mean, who could believe that there were actually 2,000 pigs floating upside down in the lake? Disasters always attract nosy people who aren't going to lend a hand. That's what was going on here. These are the people who tie up traffic on the interstate trying to get a look at the accident on the other side of the median. And what happened here? They got out to the spot, saw Jesus teaching the man (this is the significance of Luke's mention that the man was “sitting at the feet of Jesus” ... disciples sat at the feet of their Masters; this man had already become a disciple of Jesus!). So did they naturally join in? Did they sit down, too, to enjoy a “Sermon in the Cemetery”? No. These villagers were so distracted by the non-essentials that they just up and asked Jesus to leave them. They wanted to see dead pigs. They wanted to see the crazy naked man. They wanted some kind of excitement. But all they had was Jesus teaching “the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.” (Luke 8:35) The villagers were afraid, Luke tells us. Some of the eyewitnesses tried to tell them how the healing took place, but with one voice “all the people of the surrounding country ... asked Jesus to leave.” So they missed out on their one great chance to be with the Savior. They thought it was better to slip away from Jesus, to get a great distance between Him and themselves. It was really a quiet rebellion against God.
Our own lives sometimes follow these patterns. We, too, rebel. We, too, invite in demons or demon-like things that take us away from God. We, too, get distracted from God by things that simply are not essential. We, too, try to slip away or to send Jesus quietly packing. Do we abuse our bodies with things or practices that hurt them? Do we abuse our relationships with force or control or demands or legalism? Do we abuse our world that God has given us? Then do we go looking for things that appear bright and shiny, but simply serve to distract us from important spiritual matters? Do we seek out people, places and things that just don't make us stronger disciples? Do we collect the earthly things that are temporary and unimportant instead of storing up treasure in Heaven?
These are the ways of the naked crazy man and of the villagers. But, as we've heard, there is a better way.
If our goal is indeed to live closer to Jesus, both healed of our craziness and un-distracted by non-essentials, then the way to get there is to listen to the voice of Jesus, to His words of healing and His teaching. In this Bible text, the demon-possessed man is the only one who did so. So he turns out to be the character in the story that we should be seeing ourselves in. This nameless man is the one who was completely turned around and entranced by the words of Jesus. The 12 disciples just disappear out of the narrative for some reason, probably so that we focus on the one convert. The swineherds witnessed the healing and immediately left the scene. The villagers heard the story from the swineherds, but instead of letting their story be a saving Gospel story, they had it become a sensationalist news story. It is only the healed man who heard the Savior's call and became a disciple.
And like all true disciples this man fervently wanted to be with Jesus. He begged Jesus to let him come back to the western side of the Sea of Galilee. 'Jesus, I need you so much. Stay with me. Let me come with you. Just don't send me away. I've been so lonely without you, Jesus. Life has been so hard. People have been so cruel.' But Jesus had a special plan for this man. His story of healing, a vibrant and exciting story of redemption and grace, a story of Law and Gospel, a story of God's love breaking into a man's sin-darkened world, a story of renewal and of forgiveness and of a new unexpected beginning ... this man's story simply had to be heard. There were people in the village there who needed to hear it again and again. There were people in the other Ten Towns (the Decapolis) who had to hear.
So this brand new disciple is sent out to share the Gospel with the distracted people on the wrong side of the Sea of Galilee. “He went away,” Luke records, “proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.” (Luke 8:39) And then he fades from history. Sort of.
The Bible never tells us his name (it's not important). And it doesn't really tell us anything much about his lay ministry activities. Except this: back in Mark's Gospel this story is recorded in chapter 5 where it ends with the words that the man “went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed.”. (Mark 5:20) Then in Mark chapter 7 there's this: after Jesus healed the daughter of the nameless Syro-Phonecian woman, “He returned from the region of Type, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis” (Mark 7:31). There the crowds – crowds, mind you! – brought Him a deaf man to be healed. The parallel in Matthew's Gospel says that “Great crowds came to Him, bringing with them the lame, the maimed, the mute and many others. They put them at His feet and He cured them.” (Matt. 15:30).
Now, how do you suppose the people in these Gentile mountain towns on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee, away from the places Jesus spent so much of His ministry, how do you suppose these crowds knew about Jesus and the fact that God's healing power flowed through Him? Do you suppose that just maybe the words of one man, formerly known as the naked crazy man who lived in the cemetery, had made a difference in this territory? I have to admit that the Bible doesn't tell us, but it's an awfully attractive explanation for the instant recognition and popularity of Jesus in this foreign land.
Whether or not this man's words were the earthly explanation for the later spread of Jesus's ministry there, for changing the hearts of villagers and swineherds and others into hearts ready to listen to Jesus, we do know this: Jesus changes hearts. The evidence is here in this healing story recorded in three of the four Gospels. And the evidence is here in our world today. People's lives are changed for the better when they listen to the calling voice of Jesus. People escape the clutches of their demons. People are forgiven by God. Our sins are washed away because Jesus took the punishment we deserved when He died in our places on the cross outside Jerusalem. We are clothed in the righteousness of God and we are set right, just as the man in the tombs was clothed and returned to his right mind. This happens today. It has happened to you as followers of Jesus, even if the demons you have been released from were not as dramatic as this man's Legion of demons. Maybe, instead, you were called away from the distractions of this world where you were looking for floating pigs and other disasters rather than a gentle Savior to learn from.
Either way, God has changed lives right here. And He calls us first to discipleship, and then to telling others about this change in our lives. As God's dearest children we are all chosen to live ever closer to Jesus even if, yes, for a time we have to leave His side to carry out His business preparing His way. We have all been healed of our craziness. We have all been pulled away from the meaningless distractions. Recognizing this fact helps us focus on how we are to live as Christians. The Holy Spirit comes to us in the means of grace (God's Word and Sacraments) giving us the power and focus to be God's children in a hostile world. And we are empowered to be His witnesses wherever we are. Let us so live. Amen.
May the peace of God that passes all human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
S.D.G.
A sermon to be preached at Our Savior Lutheran Church, Arlington, Virginia on 20 June 2010, that is, the 4th Sunday after Pentecost, and based on the Holy Gospel for the Day, St. Luke 8:26-39, the healing of the Gadarene demoniac
Grace, mercy, and peace be yours in Christ Jesus, our Lord!
Dear Friends in Christ,
One of the ways to study stories from the Bible, and to develop a deeper sense of how these stories are meaningful to each of us today, is to work your way through the story thinking of yourself as one character, then another. What would the miracle at Cana have meant if I were the groom or the bride's father, for example. Or if I were one of Noah's sons, how would the whole story about the ark and 40 days of rain have affected me? Maybe we could try something like that with this story from Luke's Gospel.
We could, of course, think of ourselves as one of the disciples safely on shore at last after the wild, windy trip across the Sea of Galilee during which we woke up Jesus and He calmed the storm with just His words. Or maybe we could imagine ourselves as the villagers who came out to see what happened, after it all happened, and then asked Jesus to please leave town. (Have we ever politely asked Jesus to leave?) Or what would it have been like to be one of the local pig farmers who saw their entire flock suddenly rush down the steep bank like lemmings and drown? (Jesus can turn our world upside down, but is this the kind of thing that means?) Or what would it have been like to be the pigs in the story?
Or what would it have been like to be the naked crazy man who lived in the cemetery? Has your life ever gotten that far out of control? Have you ever felt like you've been losing touch with reality enough that you might as well be this guy? Have things ever gotten wild enough, overwhelming enough, stressful enough that you have thought “You know, maybe it wouldn't be so bad just to let everything go, cut all my ties with society, check out of normalcy.”?
We can learn some good lessons from this poor man's experiences. Even if we've been in control enough that we've never felt pushed to or over that edge, we can learn some things for our good from his story. Let's see what there is in this story for us.
First of all, the core of this passage from Luke's Gospel is also found in Matthew and Mark. It seems that God wanted to be sure we listened to this story, so he had three of His evangelists record it, not just one. And, as often happens, each of the writers includes details that the others leave out, maybe simply because they got the story from a different witness. Matthew, an eyewitness himself, tells us that there were actually two demon-possessed men there who “were so fierce that no one could pass that way” (Matt. 8:28). Mark tells us that the man “was always howling and bruising himself with stones” (Mark 5:5) and that there were about 2,000 pigs in the flock. Luke tells us that after the healing the man was seen “sitting at the feet of Jesus” (Luke 8:35).
Next, we know, I suppose, that the central point of this story is the same as of every story in the Bible: the story tells us about our need to be close to God, and how that comes about through Jesus our Savior. So why do we need to hear that lesson again? Why is it again the central point of a Scripture lesson and sermon that we are in need to salvation and that Jesus is our one and only Savior? Simply because we keep coming up with new ways of fomenting rebellion against Him and inventive ways to slip away from God. Here's how it is illustrated here in Luke chapter 8:
The naked man is one side of this coin, and the villagers are the other. And I think that they actually can be said to alternate the ways in which they show us separation from God. What they are teaching us in the end is that we – you and I – can live closer to Jesus, both healed of our craziness and un-distracted by non-essentials. We don't know just why this man was tormented with these demons who proudly named themselves “Legion.” We don't know whether maybe he invited them in, believing that he could control them and use their strength to gain money or power. There are certainly lots of examples in history and literature and the daily newspapers for us of people who make bargains with the Devil and end up polluting themselves and those around them with destructive drugs or dissipating habits, with wasteful living, with – in short – sinful intent. Oh, yeah, they may start out saying, I'm going to be different from everyone else; I'm going to control this habit; I'll do good with this stolen money; I'll help people with this excess power. But it's always a bargain that breaks the people who try to keep it. And this man in the tombs was certainly being broken by the demons in his life.
It could be that the demons weren't invited into his life, but invaded one day when his defenses were down. It didn't matter to the Legion, because they were enjoying themselves terrorizing the man and the villagers and people who tried to pass by. Satan's long-term goal is chaos and destruction, and he had the demons taking this man and those around him further down that road day by day. They delight in rebellion against the Creator. They enjoy, in their own twisted ways, taking people away from God.
The villagers were, I said, the other half of the picture. How were they siding against God? Well think about it: here's someone they knew, someone related to a lot of them surely, someone it great need, a man who who could most use a helping hand, and what had they done? They made sure he stayed away. When he came near, they tried to keep him in chains. This is no way to care for the helpless. This is no way to treat the poor and needy. This is not how the least of these is to be treated. It isn't how we say we would treat Jesus.
And then, later in the story, these villagers come rushing out to the cemetery to see for themselves what the pig farmers had told them. I mean, who could believe that there were actually 2,000 pigs floating upside down in the lake? Disasters always attract nosy people who aren't going to lend a hand. That's what was going on here. These are the people who tie up traffic on the interstate trying to get a look at the accident on the other side of the median. And what happened here? They got out to the spot, saw Jesus teaching the man (this is the significance of Luke's mention that the man was “sitting at the feet of Jesus” ... disciples sat at the feet of their Masters; this man had already become a disciple of Jesus!). So did they naturally join in? Did they sit down, too, to enjoy a “Sermon in the Cemetery”? No. These villagers were so distracted by the non-essentials that they just up and asked Jesus to leave them. They wanted to see dead pigs. They wanted to see the crazy naked man. They wanted some kind of excitement. But all they had was Jesus teaching “the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.” (Luke 8:35) The villagers were afraid, Luke tells us. Some of the eyewitnesses tried to tell them how the healing took place, but with one voice “all the people of the surrounding country ... asked Jesus to leave.” So they missed out on their one great chance to be with the Savior. They thought it was better to slip away from Jesus, to get a great distance between Him and themselves. It was really a quiet rebellion against God.
Our own lives sometimes follow these patterns. We, too, rebel. We, too, invite in demons or demon-like things that take us away from God. We, too, get distracted from God by things that simply are not essential. We, too, try to slip away or to send Jesus quietly packing. Do we abuse our bodies with things or practices that hurt them? Do we abuse our relationships with force or control or demands or legalism? Do we abuse our world that God has given us? Then do we go looking for things that appear bright and shiny, but simply serve to distract us from important spiritual matters? Do we seek out people, places and things that just don't make us stronger disciples? Do we collect the earthly things that are temporary and unimportant instead of storing up treasure in Heaven?
These are the ways of the naked crazy man and of the villagers. But, as we've heard, there is a better way.
If our goal is indeed to live closer to Jesus, both healed of our craziness and un-distracted by non-essentials, then the way to get there is to listen to the voice of Jesus, to His words of healing and His teaching. In this Bible text, the demon-possessed man is the only one who did so. So he turns out to be the character in the story that we should be seeing ourselves in. This nameless man is the one who was completely turned around and entranced by the words of Jesus. The 12 disciples just disappear out of the narrative for some reason, probably so that we focus on the one convert. The swineherds witnessed the healing and immediately left the scene. The villagers heard the story from the swineherds, but instead of letting their story be a saving Gospel story, they had it become a sensationalist news story. It is only the healed man who heard the Savior's call and became a disciple.
And like all true disciples this man fervently wanted to be with Jesus. He begged Jesus to let him come back to the western side of the Sea of Galilee. 'Jesus, I need you so much. Stay with me. Let me come with you. Just don't send me away. I've been so lonely without you, Jesus. Life has been so hard. People have been so cruel.' But Jesus had a special plan for this man. His story of healing, a vibrant and exciting story of redemption and grace, a story of Law and Gospel, a story of God's love breaking into a man's sin-darkened world, a story of renewal and of forgiveness and of a new unexpected beginning ... this man's story simply had to be heard. There were people in the village there who needed to hear it again and again. There were people in the other Ten Towns (the Decapolis) who had to hear.
So this brand new disciple is sent out to share the Gospel with the distracted people on the wrong side of the Sea of Galilee. “He went away,” Luke records, “proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.” (Luke 8:39) And then he fades from history. Sort of.
The Bible never tells us his name (it's not important). And it doesn't really tell us anything much about his lay ministry activities. Except this: back in Mark's Gospel this story is recorded in chapter 5 where it ends with the words that the man “went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed.”. (Mark 5:20) Then in Mark chapter 7 there's this: after Jesus healed the daughter of the nameless Syro-Phonecian woman, “He returned from the region of Type, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis” (Mark 7:31). There the crowds – crowds, mind you! – brought Him a deaf man to be healed. The parallel in Matthew's Gospel says that “Great crowds came to Him, bringing with them the lame, the maimed, the mute and many others. They put them at His feet and He cured them.” (Matt. 15:30).
Now, how do you suppose the people in these Gentile mountain towns on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee, away from the places Jesus spent so much of His ministry, how do you suppose these crowds knew about Jesus and the fact that God's healing power flowed through Him? Do you suppose that just maybe the words of one man, formerly known as the naked crazy man who lived in the cemetery, had made a difference in this territory? I have to admit that the Bible doesn't tell us, but it's an awfully attractive explanation for the instant recognition and popularity of Jesus in this foreign land.
Whether or not this man's words were the earthly explanation for the later spread of Jesus's ministry there, for changing the hearts of villagers and swineherds and others into hearts ready to listen to Jesus, we do know this: Jesus changes hearts. The evidence is here in this healing story recorded in three of the four Gospels. And the evidence is here in our world today. People's lives are changed for the better when they listen to the calling voice of Jesus. People escape the clutches of their demons. People are forgiven by God. Our sins are washed away because Jesus took the punishment we deserved when He died in our places on the cross outside Jerusalem. We are clothed in the righteousness of God and we are set right, just as the man in the tombs was clothed and returned to his right mind. This happens today. It has happened to you as followers of Jesus, even if the demons you have been released from were not as dramatic as this man's Legion of demons. Maybe, instead, you were called away from the distractions of this world where you were looking for floating pigs and other disasters rather than a gentle Savior to learn from.
Either way, God has changed lives right here. And He calls us first to discipleship, and then to telling others about this change in our lives. As God's dearest children we are all chosen to live ever closer to Jesus even if, yes, for a time we have to leave His side to carry out His business preparing His way. We have all been healed of our craziness. We have all been pulled away from the meaningless distractions. Recognizing this fact helps us focus on how we are to live as Christians. The Holy Spirit comes to us in the means of grace (God's Word and Sacraments) giving us the power and focus to be God's children in a hostile world. And we are empowered to be His witnesses wherever we are. Let us so live. Amen.
May the peace of God that passes all human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
S.D.G.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Jonah, but Not the Whale
I.N.I.
A sermon to be preached at St. Paul Lutheran Church, Columbia, PA on Ash Wednesday 2010, a.k.a. 17 February 2010, and based on the theme text for the evening, Jonah 1:1-3, as well as taken extensively from the sermon provided with the worship materials, one written by the Rev. Prof. Reed Lessing.
Grace, mercy, and peace be yours in Christ Jesus our Lord.
[text is Jonah 1:1-3]
Dear Friends in Christ,
Jonah had a problem. At root, it was the same basic problem that each of us has: a problem with our relationship with the Lord. Our Lenten Wednesday evening services this year will draw much from the Old Testament book of Jonah, leading us from our problem to the Solution, that is, to our Savior. At least one part of the story of Jonah is probably familiar to us all: the business with him being swallowed by the whale, or 'big fish.' But there is good biblical material for us to work through both before and after the whale events. Tonight we're going to begin at the beginning.
The narrative of Jonah actually begins in 2 Kings 14:23-27. That passage gives us part of the historical setting for the more familiar events from the book with Jonah's name on it. In 2nd Kings we read: “In the fifteenth year of King Amaziah son of Joash of Judah, King Jereboam son of Joash of Israel began to reign in Samaria; he reigned forty-one years. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord; he did not depart from all the sins of Jereboam son of Nebat, which he caused Israel to sin. He restored the border of Israel from Lebo-hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet, who was from Gath-hepher. For the Lord saw that the distress of Israel was very bitter; there was no one left, bond or free, and no one to help Israel. But the Lord had not said that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, so he saved them by the hand of Jereboam son of Joash.”
From this passage, we find that even in Israel, a sinful nation in the sight of God – a nation under the reign of an unfaithful king, Jereboam, who (we just read) “did what was evil in the sight of the Lord” -- the prophet Jonah was successful. God did not destroy unfaithful Israel while his prophet Jonah was speaking the word of God among them.
In the book bearing his name, Jonah was also a successful prophet. The people of Nineveh (once Jonah finally got there) heard and heeded the word of God. They repented.
Yet Jonah, son of Amittai (and his father's name means 'faithful' or 'true,' so Jonah was 'the son of faithfulness' or 'the child of truth') ...yet Jonah, while successful, proves to be anything but faithful. He turns tail and runs the other direction when God calls him to this particular mission. And then, as we'll hear in the weeks to come, even when Jonah does tell the truth, preaching the word of God in Nineveh, he does so begrudgingly, like a sulking teenager. Deep down Jonah doesn't seem to want those nasty outsiders to know God's truth. And even despite that kind of delivery, God's powerful word, His faithful and true word, succeeds there.
Jonah must have been successful as a prophet in his native Israel. That is, successful in more than the theological terms we heard from 2nd Kings. He had to have been earning a living at his work, because when the book of Jonah opens he was able to hire sailors and pay for the use of a ship to take him away from Nineveh. The opening sentences of Jonah have him not only paying his own fare, but in fact hiring the entire ship and crew, which meant he was spending a lot of money trying to get away from God.
Other Israelites had been called to go beyond their homeland. Abram was sent away from home. Jacob and his sons left their home to go to Egypt. Moses led God's people away from their home in Egypt to wander in the desert. Others were also called by God to go to and speak his Word to people outside the ranks of the chosen Israelites. But while Jonah surely knew his people's history, he didn't want to follow in their footsteps. Nineveh was known as a sinful place. Other prophets wrote about it. Pick the worst parts of the cities with the worst reputation you can think of, mix them together, and that would have been Nineveh.
And this was the place God was calling Jonah to go to. This was one call Jonah would rather have not gotten. Someone has likened it to asking a Jew in 1942 to move from New York to Berlin. Not the place he or she would want to go! It would be understandable for that person to head the other direction. And that's just what Jonah tried to do. He hung up on God, grabbed his hat, and darted out the back door, hoping he wasn't being watched.
So what kind of prophet would hang up on God? One like Jonah. While his father's name meant 'faithful' or 'true,' Jonah's own name meant 'dove.' To the ancient Hebrews, a 'dove' didn't mean 'peace' or 'Holy Spirit' like it does to us; to them it meant 'flighty, brainless, unreliable.' And that's just what our Jonah was when God called.
He chartered this ship and headed for Tarshish, a city that would years later be known as Tarsus and be the birthplace of St. Paul, but at that time was known for being a rich, pleasant place to be. Situated on important trade routes, Tarshish would have been able to hide Jonah in comfort had he gotten there. God had other plans.
Almost as soon as the ship set sail, it ran into problems. The weather turned against them. Winds and waves conspired to halt their progress and to bring the ship to the brink of sinking. Our text says that Jonah “went down to Joppa” to get his ship ... and down he continued to go. He continued to go down, down, down toward his death. Away from God, away from God's blessings.
That's a great picture of what happens when we run from God's call in our own lives. Our gracious God calls each of us to do particular things and be particular kinds of people. Using biblical language, the person who “runs away from the Lord” or “flees from the presence of the Lord” is the one who is refusing to serve God, even though he or she knows what God's Word says. As a prophet, Jonah should have longed to stand in the Lord's presence, but Jonah tried to hide from God's presence, going down into the bottom of the ship during the storm. Where we go and how we act both reveal something about our reaction to God's call on our lives.
God's Word eventually won the day in Jonah's life. Jonah was finally convinced to carry through with his missionary work in Nineveh. God's Word works toward that same end in our lives, no matter how long we try to head the other direction, heading down and away from God in our own ways.
God's Word is alive for us in Jesus, our Savior. He crossed ever so many boundaries to come down to us. Before His death He constantly went beyond the traditional and expected boundaries in meaningful ways. He met with a Samaritan woman at a well. He healed the son of a Roman soldier. He touched lepers. It shouldn't be any surprise that He did those things, considering that Jesus traveled past His boundaries in Heaven to be born, to live and die among us, a sinful and rebellious people. Jesus is not a Jonah, flighty and unreliable. Jesus is squarely focused on spreading His message of love, forgiveness, and salvation. He answered God's call because he IS the living Word of God.
And God is still calling. He is calling us to confess our sin. He is calling us to confess the name of Jesus. He is “calling young and old to rest, calling the souls of those distressed, longing for life everlasting.” (Built on the Rock, LW 291)
God is calling us to do the work He has appointed for us to do while it is day, before the night comes when no one can work. And God is calling us home to His side. We can take a lesson from the story of Jonah and invest in the journey there, rather than in a doomed voyage away from God. Jesus is our hope for survival during and at the end of that voyage.
S.D.G.
A sermon to be preached at St. Paul Lutheran Church, Columbia, PA on Ash Wednesday 2010, a.k.a. 17 February 2010, and based on the theme text for the evening, Jonah 1:1-3, as well as taken extensively from the sermon provided with the worship materials, one written by the Rev. Prof. Reed Lessing.
Grace, mercy, and peace be yours in Christ Jesus our Lord.
[text is Jonah 1:1-3]
Dear Friends in Christ,
Jonah had a problem. At root, it was the same basic problem that each of us has: a problem with our relationship with the Lord. Our Lenten Wednesday evening services this year will draw much from the Old Testament book of Jonah, leading us from our problem to the Solution, that is, to our Savior. At least one part of the story of Jonah is probably familiar to us all: the business with him being swallowed by the whale, or 'big fish.' But there is good biblical material for us to work through both before and after the whale events. Tonight we're going to begin at the beginning.
The narrative of Jonah actually begins in 2 Kings 14:23-27. That passage gives us part of the historical setting for the more familiar events from the book with Jonah's name on it. In 2nd Kings we read: “In the fifteenth year of King Amaziah son of Joash of Judah, King Jereboam son of Joash of Israel began to reign in Samaria; he reigned forty-one years. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord; he did not depart from all the sins of Jereboam son of Nebat, which he caused Israel to sin. He restored the border of Israel from Lebo-hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet, who was from Gath-hepher. For the Lord saw that the distress of Israel was very bitter; there was no one left, bond or free, and no one to help Israel. But the Lord had not said that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, so he saved them by the hand of Jereboam son of Joash.”
From this passage, we find that even in Israel, a sinful nation in the sight of God – a nation under the reign of an unfaithful king, Jereboam, who (we just read) “did what was evil in the sight of the Lord” -- the prophet Jonah was successful. God did not destroy unfaithful Israel while his prophet Jonah was speaking the word of God among them.
In the book bearing his name, Jonah was also a successful prophet. The people of Nineveh (once Jonah finally got there) heard and heeded the word of God. They repented.
Yet Jonah, son of Amittai (and his father's name means 'faithful' or 'true,' so Jonah was 'the son of faithfulness' or 'the child of truth') ...yet Jonah, while successful, proves to be anything but faithful. He turns tail and runs the other direction when God calls him to this particular mission. And then, as we'll hear in the weeks to come, even when Jonah does tell the truth, preaching the word of God in Nineveh, he does so begrudgingly, like a sulking teenager. Deep down Jonah doesn't seem to want those nasty outsiders to know God's truth. And even despite that kind of delivery, God's powerful word, His faithful and true word, succeeds there.
Jonah must have been successful as a prophet in his native Israel. That is, successful in more than the theological terms we heard from 2nd Kings. He had to have been earning a living at his work, because when the book of Jonah opens he was able to hire sailors and pay for the use of a ship to take him away from Nineveh. The opening sentences of Jonah have him not only paying his own fare, but in fact hiring the entire ship and crew, which meant he was spending a lot of money trying to get away from God.
Other Israelites had been called to go beyond their homeland. Abram was sent away from home. Jacob and his sons left their home to go to Egypt. Moses led God's people away from their home in Egypt to wander in the desert. Others were also called by God to go to and speak his Word to people outside the ranks of the chosen Israelites. But while Jonah surely knew his people's history, he didn't want to follow in their footsteps. Nineveh was known as a sinful place. Other prophets wrote about it. Pick the worst parts of the cities with the worst reputation you can think of, mix them together, and that would have been Nineveh.
And this was the place God was calling Jonah to go to. This was one call Jonah would rather have not gotten. Someone has likened it to asking a Jew in 1942 to move from New York to Berlin. Not the place he or she would want to go! It would be understandable for that person to head the other direction. And that's just what Jonah tried to do. He hung up on God, grabbed his hat, and darted out the back door, hoping he wasn't being watched.
So what kind of prophet would hang up on God? One like Jonah. While his father's name meant 'faithful' or 'true,' Jonah's own name meant 'dove.' To the ancient Hebrews, a 'dove' didn't mean 'peace' or 'Holy Spirit' like it does to us; to them it meant 'flighty, brainless, unreliable.' And that's just what our Jonah was when God called.
He chartered this ship and headed for Tarshish, a city that would years later be known as Tarsus and be the birthplace of St. Paul, but at that time was known for being a rich, pleasant place to be. Situated on important trade routes, Tarshish would have been able to hide Jonah in comfort had he gotten there. God had other plans.
Almost as soon as the ship set sail, it ran into problems. The weather turned against them. Winds and waves conspired to halt their progress and to bring the ship to the brink of sinking. Our text says that Jonah “went down to Joppa” to get his ship ... and down he continued to go. He continued to go down, down, down toward his death. Away from God, away from God's blessings.
That's a great picture of what happens when we run from God's call in our own lives. Our gracious God calls each of us to do particular things and be particular kinds of people. Using biblical language, the person who “runs away from the Lord” or “flees from the presence of the Lord” is the one who is refusing to serve God, even though he or she knows what God's Word says. As a prophet, Jonah should have longed to stand in the Lord's presence, but Jonah tried to hide from God's presence, going down into the bottom of the ship during the storm. Where we go and how we act both reveal something about our reaction to God's call on our lives.
God's Word eventually won the day in Jonah's life. Jonah was finally convinced to carry through with his missionary work in Nineveh. God's Word works toward that same end in our lives, no matter how long we try to head the other direction, heading down and away from God in our own ways.
God's Word is alive for us in Jesus, our Savior. He crossed ever so many boundaries to come down to us. Before His death He constantly went beyond the traditional and expected boundaries in meaningful ways. He met with a Samaritan woman at a well. He healed the son of a Roman soldier. He touched lepers. It shouldn't be any surprise that He did those things, considering that Jesus traveled past His boundaries in Heaven to be born, to live and die among us, a sinful and rebellious people. Jesus is not a Jonah, flighty and unreliable. Jesus is squarely focused on spreading His message of love, forgiveness, and salvation. He answered God's call because he IS the living Word of God.
And God is still calling. He is calling us to confess our sin. He is calling us to confess the name of Jesus. He is “calling young and old to rest, calling the souls of those distressed, longing for life everlasting.” (Built on the Rock, LW 291)
God is calling us to do the work He has appointed for us to do while it is day, before the night comes when no one can work. And God is calling us home to His side. We can take a lesson from the story of Jonah and invest in the journey there, rather than in a doomed voyage away from God. Jesus is our hope for survival during and at the end of that voyage.
S.D.G.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Having an Epiphany
I.N.I.
A sermon to be preached on the 2nd Sunday after the Epiphany, or 17 January 2010, and based on the Gospel for the day, St. John 2:1-11, the story of the Wedding at Cana, at Our Savior Lutheran Church, Arlington, Virginia
Grace, mercy, and peace be yours in Christ Jesus our Lord,
[text]
Dear Friends in Christ,
Well, here we are in the season of Epiphany, on the second Sunday after the Epiphany. The Wise Men have come and gone. And we've got a whole lot of Epiphany left before it's over. What should we do with it? And what do our lessons have to say about it?
One of the traditional emphases of the Church during this time of year is the revelation of the Gospel of Christ to the whole world. That is, we often talk about missions during this season. Well, that's all find and good, but today's Gospel is about a wedding reception in the Jewish city of Cana. Not much mission work there. Not much “to the whole world,” either. Or is there? While the words 'sin' and 'forgiveness' don't appear in this Gospel Lesson, if we look again at the text we can find some helpful things for our faith and life in it. We can discover a number of epiphanies in this text, that is, spots where God became apparent to different people when – if this were drawn as a cartoon – there would be a lightbulb turning on over their heads.
I. an epiphany for Mary
II. an epiphany for the servants and steward
III. an epiphany for the disciples
IV. an epiphany for you and me
First of all, we can look at the mother of Jesus and think about how this event may have been an epiphany for her. Over the years people have wished that Mary had sat down to write a Gospel account of her own. What a wonderful set of stories she would have been able to tell about Jesus during his childhood and youth. And then, too, what an interesting light she would have shed on the stories of Jesus as an adult that are so familiar to us from the New Testament. In the story of this miracle at the wedding in Cana, wouldn't you like to know just what Mary had in mind when she said to Jesus “They have no wine”? And wouldn't you like to know what her reaction was when Jesus answered her?
Since we don't have a canonical Gospel by Mary, perhaps the best we can do is to imagine ourselves in her place, and meditate on what our own motivations and reactions might have been. We're probably quite safe in assuming that Mary knew her Son was different from other women's sons. There was the whole background of the miraculous conception while she was a virgin. There were the angelic messages, the shepherds, the wise men. And as the sinless Son of God, Jesus must have been different from other boys. So now, as an adult, Mary must have known that Jesus was different from other men.
Yet He was still her Son. She likely still had expectations about how they would relate to and interact with each other. Their whole Middle Eastern Jewish first century culture filled the air with these expectations. So when the wine at this wedding reception gave out Mary went and told Jesus. She didn't ask anything of Him. She didn't tell Him what to do. She just made a simple statement, understanding that He would know what she meant. Maybe some of you have done this? Anyone here ever just simply announced “The trash can's full” or “The clothes dryer is done” or “The grass is getting pretty long” and expected that the person hearing that would understand that you wanted him or her to take out the trash, empty the dryer and fold the clothes, or start the lawn mower and cut the grass? Mary could have been making the same kind of announcement to Jesus, thinking it was obvious what He should do in dealing with it.
But lest you think Mary was ordering around Jesus, you ought to know that this wedding reception wasn't one of the quickie 4 or 5 hour-long receptions we have after weddings. The party to celebrate a marriage back then would have been quick at 4 or 5 days. They were huge affairs that probably involved the whole village, or certainly a large segment of it. Weddings were big social events with days of eating and drinking, and to cut it short by running out of wine would have been a blunder of tragic proportions. I even read on place that doing that could possibly have been grounds for a legal suit by the guests because it would have appeared as if the offending host was trying to get off easy rather than holding a wedding feast equivalent to the ones his neighbors had held and at which he had feasted and drank in the past. So running out of wine before the multi-day feast was over would have been an embarrassment, an insult, a bad omen, poor manners, an economic disaster, and even possible legal trouble all at once. Mary was hinting strongly that Jesus might be able to do something about preventing all this from happening for a family that were certainly friends, and very possibly even relatives.
One epiphany Mary had was that Jesus didn't say “Sure, Mom” and jump in to lend a hand. He spoke to her as an adult to an adult, addressing her with the respectful “Woman” and saying “what concern is that to you and to me? My hour is not yet come.” Now, if you think about the different times in the Gospels when Mary appears in the story, it won't take you very long to recall the next time we hear Jesus speaking to His mother in the same way: it was when His hour had come, when He was hanging on the cross and said (in John 19:26) “Woman, here is your son” to give over the care of His mother to the disciple John.
For now, however, Mary simply told the servants there to do whatever Jesus might tell them to do. She expressed a simple faith is Jesus's ability to discern the dire needs of the wedding host family, and to act in a way that would meet their needs, maintain their dignity, protect their name, and in every way be the right thing to do. If, earlier on, Mary had ever just expected her Son to lend a hand, now she knew that He was an adult member of the community, able and expected to act independently. Perhaps this was another epiphany for her.
The servants and steward were the next in line for an epiphany. Maybe it is easy to picture these folks as the caterer and his tired college student part-time help; or perhaps the steward was more like today's best man at a wedding, keeping an eye on things so that the groom could enjoy the party. Well that would really be making the story a little too much something of our time, but maybe some of the relationships were the same. The servants were directed first to fill up these large stone jars with gallons and gallons of water. Perhaps so that they wouldn't have to lug more water any time soon, they filled the jars up to the brim. When that was done Jesus directed that they should take some to the steward, which they did.
And that's when amazement struck them all. More wine! Good wine!! Better wine than they had been serving earlier on!!! The epiphany for them all was that Jesus was somehow or other a miracle worker. He was not just a friend or relative of the wedding party. He was definitely something special.
Then there are the disciples. They don't play much of a part in this story, do they? They're only mentioned at the beginning and the end. At the beginning, John writes “Jesus and His disciples had also been invited to the wedding.” (John 2:2). And then they apparently disappear into the crowd. Until the last phrase of the last verse: “and His disciples believed in Him” (John 2:11). The implication clearly is that they had some sort of epiphany about Jesus as they witnessed “the first of His signs ... and revealed His glory” (John 2:11).
It is curious that these disciples apparently were disciples before they believed. A disciple is a learner, a follower, one being instructed. So perhaps their early discipleship consisted mostly of building up their intellectual foundation for faith. (And, admittedly, this “early discipleship” – if we can call it that – had stretched only 3 days for some of them, and only a couple days longer for others.) Still, it was after the working of this “sign” that the Scripture tells us they “believed in Him.” So there was now a deeper or maybe a different attachment to Jesus as their Master. They had seen the sign.
It is significant that John never uses the word “miracle” but rather calls these things “signs” or “works.”. In John's Gospel all these miraculous happenings point to something. They point to God. So when the disciples believed in Jesus after witnessing Him working in this way, they were just beginning their walk of faith. Those people who only believe because of miracles have much room to grow. And these first disciples were certainly in that situation at Cana. They had lots of room to grow, much need for growth. But at least they were pointed in the proper direction. The miracle of the wine at the wedding in Cana pointed the disciples to God.
Their epiphany that day was that Jesus was way more that a really intriguing Teacher. The first chapter of John's Gospel is full, very full, of titles for Jesus, including “Lamb of God,” “Son of God,” “Rabbi (which means Teacher),” “the Messiah (which is translated Anointed),” and “the King of Israel.” And those are just the things that His disciples called Him! Before Cana. Before the first of His signs. Before we are told that the disciples believed in Him. Somehow for them, the miracle wrapped up all the loose ends that they maybe had left sitting around when they first started to follow Jesus.
Now what has all this to do with us? I believe this passage of Scripture can also lead us to and through epiphanies, events where the light starts to dawn on us in the same way that it started to dawn for the actors in the story.
Suppose you ever thought of Jesus as simply another man, maybe one Who would do your bidding, going here or there when you asked simply because you asked, or because of your relative positions in society. Maybe you're a highly educated person, someone well off, someone with position, and power and possessions. Jesus of Nazareth had none of those things. If you were to meet Him on the street today you might not even notice Him, much less recognize Him. Should that be the case, then this miracle story can serve to call you to correction. Like Mary, you can begin to see that Jesus is so much more than the baby Jesus in the manger. You can begin to see Him as mire than Someone to do your bidding for you. He is a strong man, full of character and acting independently for our good whether we ask for His intervention or not. That's just the way God is. And we'd better get used to it.
If, like the servants and steward of the banquet, you are tempted to think that Jesus isn't all that special, then stand back! There is a miracle-worker in our midst. He takes the most ordinary things and uses them for the most extraordinary purposes. Jesus also takes the most ordinary people and uses them for the most extraordinary tasks. A few days ago there was a terrible earthquake in Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world, and certainly the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. You and I, just ordinary people, can do very extraordinary things for the victims of that earthquake because of our love for Jesus. When you respond to the appeals by Lutheran World Relief or other aid agencies, you extra money will literally save lives in Haiti once the aid workers can get into the country. These won't be miracles in the same sense that Jesus performed, but your gifts will still be signs pointing people to God.
And if, like the first disciples, it takes a miracle for you to believe in Jesus, then so be it. Just know that He is God and that as He reveals His glory to you more and more every day, you will more and more reflect that glory to the world. You yourselves will be turning from sin and pointing others to God. Yes, Jesus is a fascinating Teacher. Yes, He is the Lamb of God. Yes, He is the King of Israel. And, especially, yes, here's your miracle: He is our Savior.
It was on the cross that the glory of Jesus was fully revealed. It was to the cross that all his signs pointed. It was to that high point in history that our eyes turn when we believe in Jesus. With all of His disciples of all time, you and I join hands as sinners who have been bought back from death by the dieing and rising of Jesus. We walk together as forever new believers, washed clean each day, fed at the altar, strengthened in faith for life, drinking the new wine that is so much more beneficial than the legalistic ceremonies symbolized by water in stone pots.
The light has come on for each believer. We have had our epiphanies. And now we spread that light to others.
S.D.G.
A sermon to be preached on the 2nd Sunday after the Epiphany, or 17 January 2010, and based on the Gospel for the day, St. John 2:1-11, the story of the Wedding at Cana, at Our Savior Lutheran Church, Arlington, Virginia
Grace, mercy, and peace be yours in Christ Jesus our Lord,
[text]
Dear Friends in Christ,
Well, here we are in the season of Epiphany, on the second Sunday after the Epiphany. The Wise Men have come and gone. And we've got a whole lot of Epiphany left before it's over. What should we do with it? And what do our lessons have to say about it?
One of the traditional emphases of the Church during this time of year is the revelation of the Gospel of Christ to the whole world. That is, we often talk about missions during this season. Well, that's all find and good, but today's Gospel is about a wedding reception in the Jewish city of Cana. Not much mission work there. Not much “to the whole world,” either. Or is there? While the words 'sin' and 'forgiveness' don't appear in this Gospel Lesson, if we look again at the text we can find some helpful things for our faith and life in it. We can discover a number of epiphanies in this text, that is, spots where God became apparent to different people when – if this were drawn as a cartoon – there would be a lightbulb turning on over their heads.
I. an epiphany for Mary
II. an epiphany for the servants and steward
III. an epiphany for the disciples
IV. an epiphany for you and me
First of all, we can look at the mother of Jesus and think about how this event may have been an epiphany for her. Over the years people have wished that Mary had sat down to write a Gospel account of her own. What a wonderful set of stories she would have been able to tell about Jesus during his childhood and youth. And then, too, what an interesting light she would have shed on the stories of Jesus as an adult that are so familiar to us from the New Testament. In the story of this miracle at the wedding in Cana, wouldn't you like to know just what Mary had in mind when she said to Jesus “They have no wine”? And wouldn't you like to know what her reaction was when Jesus answered her?
Since we don't have a canonical Gospel by Mary, perhaps the best we can do is to imagine ourselves in her place, and meditate on what our own motivations and reactions might have been. We're probably quite safe in assuming that Mary knew her Son was different from other women's sons. There was the whole background of the miraculous conception while she was a virgin. There were the angelic messages, the shepherds, the wise men. And as the sinless Son of God, Jesus must have been different from other boys. So now, as an adult, Mary must have known that Jesus was different from other men.
Yet He was still her Son. She likely still had expectations about how they would relate to and interact with each other. Their whole Middle Eastern Jewish first century culture filled the air with these expectations. So when the wine at this wedding reception gave out Mary went and told Jesus. She didn't ask anything of Him. She didn't tell Him what to do. She just made a simple statement, understanding that He would know what she meant. Maybe some of you have done this? Anyone here ever just simply announced “The trash can's full” or “The clothes dryer is done” or “The grass is getting pretty long” and expected that the person hearing that would understand that you wanted him or her to take out the trash, empty the dryer and fold the clothes, or start the lawn mower and cut the grass? Mary could have been making the same kind of announcement to Jesus, thinking it was obvious what He should do in dealing with it.
But lest you think Mary was ordering around Jesus, you ought to know that this wedding reception wasn't one of the quickie 4 or 5 hour-long receptions we have after weddings. The party to celebrate a marriage back then would have been quick at 4 or 5 days. They were huge affairs that probably involved the whole village, or certainly a large segment of it. Weddings were big social events with days of eating and drinking, and to cut it short by running out of wine would have been a blunder of tragic proportions. I even read on place that doing that could possibly have been grounds for a legal suit by the guests because it would have appeared as if the offending host was trying to get off easy rather than holding a wedding feast equivalent to the ones his neighbors had held and at which he had feasted and drank in the past. So running out of wine before the multi-day feast was over would have been an embarrassment, an insult, a bad omen, poor manners, an economic disaster, and even possible legal trouble all at once. Mary was hinting strongly that Jesus might be able to do something about preventing all this from happening for a family that were certainly friends, and very possibly even relatives.
One epiphany Mary had was that Jesus didn't say “Sure, Mom” and jump in to lend a hand. He spoke to her as an adult to an adult, addressing her with the respectful “Woman” and saying “what concern is that to you and to me? My hour is not yet come.” Now, if you think about the different times in the Gospels when Mary appears in the story, it won't take you very long to recall the next time we hear Jesus speaking to His mother in the same way: it was when His hour had come, when He was hanging on the cross and said (in John 19:26) “Woman, here is your son” to give over the care of His mother to the disciple John.
For now, however, Mary simply told the servants there to do whatever Jesus might tell them to do. She expressed a simple faith is Jesus's ability to discern the dire needs of the wedding host family, and to act in a way that would meet their needs, maintain their dignity, protect their name, and in every way be the right thing to do. If, earlier on, Mary had ever just expected her Son to lend a hand, now she knew that He was an adult member of the community, able and expected to act independently. Perhaps this was another epiphany for her.
The servants and steward were the next in line for an epiphany. Maybe it is easy to picture these folks as the caterer and his tired college student part-time help; or perhaps the steward was more like today's best man at a wedding, keeping an eye on things so that the groom could enjoy the party. Well that would really be making the story a little too much something of our time, but maybe some of the relationships were the same. The servants were directed first to fill up these large stone jars with gallons and gallons of water. Perhaps so that they wouldn't have to lug more water any time soon, they filled the jars up to the brim. When that was done Jesus directed that they should take some to the steward, which they did.
And that's when amazement struck them all. More wine! Good wine!! Better wine than they had been serving earlier on!!! The epiphany for them all was that Jesus was somehow or other a miracle worker. He was not just a friend or relative of the wedding party. He was definitely something special.
Then there are the disciples. They don't play much of a part in this story, do they? They're only mentioned at the beginning and the end. At the beginning, John writes “Jesus and His disciples had also been invited to the wedding.” (John 2:2). And then they apparently disappear into the crowd. Until the last phrase of the last verse: “and His disciples believed in Him” (John 2:11). The implication clearly is that they had some sort of epiphany about Jesus as they witnessed “the first of His signs ... and revealed His glory” (John 2:11).
It is curious that these disciples apparently were disciples before they believed. A disciple is a learner, a follower, one being instructed. So perhaps their early discipleship consisted mostly of building up their intellectual foundation for faith. (And, admittedly, this “early discipleship” – if we can call it that – had stretched only 3 days for some of them, and only a couple days longer for others.) Still, it was after the working of this “sign” that the Scripture tells us they “believed in Him.” So there was now a deeper or maybe a different attachment to Jesus as their Master. They had seen the sign.
It is significant that John never uses the word “miracle” but rather calls these things “signs” or “works.”. In John's Gospel all these miraculous happenings point to something. They point to God. So when the disciples believed in Jesus after witnessing Him working in this way, they were just beginning their walk of faith. Those people who only believe because of miracles have much room to grow. And these first disciples were certainly in that situation at Cana. They had lots of room to grow, much need for growth. But at least they were pointed in the proper direction. The miracle of the wine at the wedding in Cana pointed the disciples to God.
Their epiphany that day was that Jesus was way more that a really intriguing Teacher. The first chapter of John's Gospel is full, very full, of titles for Jesus, including “Lamb of God,” “Son of God,” “Rabbi (which means Teacher),” “the Messiah (which is translated Anointed),” and “the King of Israel.” And those are just the things that His disciples called Him! Before Cana. Before the first of His signs. Before we are told that the disciples believed in Him. Somehow for them, the miracle wrapped up all the loose ends that they maybe had left sitting around when they first started to follow Jesus.
Now what has all this to do with us? I believe this passage of Scripture can also lead us to and through epiphanies, events where the light starts to dawn on us in the same way that it started to dawn for the actors in the story.
Suppose you ever thought of Jesus as simply another man, maybe one Who would do your bidding, going here or there when you asked simply because you asked, or because of your relative positions in society. Maybe you're a highly educated person, someone well off, someone with position, and power and possessions. Jesus of Nazareth had none of those things. If you were to meet Him on the street today you might not even notice Him, much less recognize Him. Should that be the case, then this miracle story can serve to call you to correction. Like Mary, you can begin to see that Jesus is so much more than the baby Jesus in the manger. You can begin to see Him as mire than Someone to do your bidding for you. He is a strong man, full of character and acting independently for our good whether we ask for His intervention or not. That's just the way God is. And we'd better get used to it.
If, like the servants and steward of the banquet, you are tempted to think that Jesus isn't all that special, then stand back! There is a miracle-worker in our midst. He takes the most ordinary things and uses them for the most extraordinary purposes. Jesus also takes the most ordinary people and uses them for the most extraordinary tasks. A few days ago there was a terrible earthquake in Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world, and certainly the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. You and I, just ordinary people, can do very extraordinary things for the victims of that earthquake because of our love for Jesus. When you respond to the appeals by Lutheran World Relief or other aid agencies, you extra money will literally save lives in Haiti once the aid workers can get into the country. These won't be miracles in the same sense that Jesus performed, but your gifts will still be signs pointing people to God.
And if, like the first disciples, it takes a miracle for you to believe in Jesus, then so be it. Just know that He is God and that as He reveals His glory to you more and more every day, you will more and more reflect that glory to the world. You yourselves will be turning from sin and pointing others to God. Yes, Jesus is a fascinating Teacher. Yes, He is the Lamb of God. Yes, He is the King of Israel. And, especially, yes, here's your miracle: He is our Savior.
It was on the cross that the glory of Jesus was fully revealed. It was to the cross that all his signs pointed. It was to that high point in history that our eyes turn when we believe in Jesus. With all of His disciples of all time, you and I join hands as sinners who have been bought back from death by the dieing and rising of Jesus. We walk together as forever new believers, washed clean each day, fed at the altar, strengthened in faith for life, drinking the new wine that is so much more beneficial than the legalistic ceremonies symbolized by water in stone pots.
The light has come on for each believer. We have had our epiphanies. And now we spread that light to others.
S.D.G.
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