Sent Out to Save Where He "Failed"

Pentecost 8

July 19, 2015

Mark 6:7-13

Sent Out to Save Where He "Failed"

In the name of the Father and of the ☩ Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus sent out the Twelve to save souls from sin and death, just after He had failed to do so Himself. He had just been rejected in His own hometown. It must have been humiliating to be pushed away by the people who grew up with Him and should have known Him.

And this is the time He chose to send out the Twelve to save souls?

From our point of view, there would been much better times to send them out:

after feeding the 5,000, for example, just after He had performed a powerful miracle. Or perhaps after He had walked on water.

But Jesus chose a moment when there could be no mistake about what save souls:

not His power, but His Word.

This helps to explain His instructions to those men going out two by two.

Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra tunic.

(Mark 6:8-9)

Don't take anything extra for the trip, Jesus said. Learn to depend on Me for everything that you need.

And so the disciples by God's grace listened and they went out with His Word. And when they returned, they had learned to rely simply on His Word. They healed the sick and cast out demons. And by God's Word souls were saved.

Today we have this same promise from Christ. He gives us all that we need for life. Try and think of something you have that He didn't give you.

And of all His gifts, His greatest treasure to you is His Word.

Just like Jesus after His humiliation in Nazareth, we often hear His Word most clearly after we have been brought low with grief or pain. We give thanks for the good days, but often it is the bad times that we are most aware of Christ's promise to forgive us and be near us.

If Jesus had sent out the Twelve right away after feeding the 5,000 or walking on water, what do you think the Twelve would have talked about most? Crosses and suffering? Or glory and food and miracles that defied the laws of nature?

Thanks be to Jesus that He used His own lowliness and humiliation to teach us that even where He seemed to fail, He still gives us His simple Word that breaks and kills our own hardest souls and leaves us with souls filled with joy and gladness.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. Alleluia! Amen!

Of All the People in the Whole World . . .

Pentecost 7

July 12, 2015

Mark 6:1-6

Of All the People in the Whole World . . .

☩

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

Of all the people in the whole world, they should have listened to Him. They had known Him their whole lives. He was a good son. He obeyed Mary and Joseph. He was a good man, respected and favored by those who knew Him. Luke tells us exactly that after the twelve-year old Jesus came home with Joseph and Mary:

Then He went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men. (Luke 2:51-52)

Of all the people in the whole world, they should have listened to Him. But they did the opposite: they were offended by Him and rejected Him. Why?

Because they only looked at the outside. They only looked at the things they could count and record and observe. He was a carpenter. He was from an ordinary family, perhaps even a poor lowly family. (His cousin was John the Forerunner, but he was far away and probably in jail by this time. And if people did know about John, they perhaps viewed him as a troublemaker.)

And this is all the mattered to them. They observed His wise words and said that He was wise. They acknowledged this. But that didn't matter. Just what was on the outside.

We look back and are offended by their collective rejection of Jesus. But consider that Jesus knew them all by name. He grew up with them and cared for them. Of all the people in the whole world, they should have listened to Him. But they plugged their ears instead.

And Jesus, who is truly and fully a man, is astonished at their unbelief.

We share His astonishment when those who should know Jesus best, plug up their ears. We know many who have grown up going to church and praying with their parents at home, who now abandon what Christ has given them.

And then there are the young people who walk away from Christ and His body and blood.

And then there is us, who all too often doubt Jesus and His promises. In our lives we all too often focus on the outward appearance of things. Astonishing, after all the gifts that Jesus gives us.

So where does this leave us? Well, He doesn't. It's almost funny how Mark concludes this incident by saying that Jesus didn't do any miracles there. But He did.

He could not do any miracles there, except lay His hands on a few sick people and heal them. (Mark 6:5)

All our doubt. All our unbelief. All our trust in what we can see. Jesus has compassion on us and remains with us. Where does He leave us? He leaves us with His Word.

He refused to do lots of miracles there, because His hometown crowd would have missed the point. They would have trusted in the power that they could see, and still refuse to trust Christ at His Word. So He refused to do miracles there (but in His mercy still healed some).

Of all the people in the whole world, the Nazarenes should have listened to Jesus and ignored what they could see, because they grew up with Him.

We grew up with Jesus, too. And like the Nazarenes, we are often ignore what He says to us and fixate only on what we can see. It is only by His grace through the Gospel Sacraments that we don't drive Him away. It is only by His grace that we are drawn again and again to receive His Word. Of all the people in the whole world, we are truly blessed.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. Alleluia! Amen!

Redeeming Words Rebuke Our Reason

Pentecost 6

July 5, 2015

Mark 5:21-43

Redeeming Words Rebuke Our Reason

In the name of the Father and of † the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

It's not hard to understand Jairus' urgent advice to Jesus:

Mark 5:23

My little daughter is at the point of death; please come and lay Your hands on her, so that she will get well and live.

His daughter was near death and Jairus had heard that Jesus healed people. And since Jairus had never heard of Jesus raising the dead, he really wanted Jesus to get to her sickbed before it became a deathbed. Jairus was in a hurry.

Now you might run the red light at Kimberly and Elmore at 80 miles an hour if Jesus was in your back seat and your kid was at Trinity near death. But if Jesus suddenly asked you to stop the car so that He could talk to an old lady, you might be bewildered. And as the chat with the old lady dragged on, you might become frantic.

On His way with Jairus, Jesus did stop and talked to an old lady. This is the middle chunk of the incident that our reading earlier left out.

Mark 5:24-35

And He went off with him; and a large crowd was following Him and pressing in on Him. A woman who had had a hemorrhage for twelve years, and had endured much at the hands of many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was not helped at all, but rather had grown worse—after hearing about Jesus, she came up in the crowd behind Him and touched His cloak. For she thought, “If I just touch His garments, I will get well.” Immediately the flow of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction. Immediately Jesus, perceiving in Himself that the power proceeding from Him had gone forth, turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched My garments?” And His disciples said to Him, “You see the crowd pressing in on You, and You say, ‘Who touched Me?’” And He looked around to see the woman who had done this. But the woman fearing and trembling, aware of what had happened to her, came and fell down before Him and told Him the whole truth. And He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your affliction.” While He was still speaking,, they came from the house of the synagogue official, saying, “Your daughter has died; why trouble the Teacher anymore?”

And so goes the rest of the story. Jairus and the old woman desperately needed help, both for 12-year old problems. One for her 12 years of chronic bleeding; the other for his 12-year old daughter. Which one was more important? Which one was more important to Jesus?

They both were! Jesus takes His time with both of them.

In His compassion He allows Jairus to give Him advice on how to heal his daughter.

In His compassion He allows the woman to go on and tell Him the whole truth: 12 years of disappointment and loneliness and poverty. It probably took her a while to tell Him the whole story.

And what do you know? The very thing that Jairus was terrified of, happened. They took too much time and his daughter died. Why did He stop? Why did He take so much time? Why didn't Jesus treat this life-and-death situation seriously? Isn't my little girl more important than that old lady? Why didn't I leave earlier to find Jesus? Oh, why and what if?!

What did Jesus say to Jairus?

Mark 5:36

Do not be afraid any longer, only believe.

And Jesus went to the house and quietly got Jairus' daughter up from death to life.

Pay close to attention to what Jesus never said to Jairus both when they began their journey and then resumed it. He never promised Jairus that He would save his daughter. He simply said, "Only believe." Believe what?

And the answer is Himself, Christ Himself. Believe and trust Jesus Christ is the answer to suffering and death.

By God's grace the old woman believed. She had faith in Him and she lived, not just without bleeding, oh wonderful joy!, but with the Word of Christ.

By God's grace Jairus believed and witnessed a profound victory on that day, not just without his daughter, oh wonderful joy!, but with the Word of Christ.

Dear friends, some of our dearly beloved are dying today. Jesus may come and restore health to them, but He probably won't. But His promise comfort us in death and in life. He can raise a dead body to life more easily than a parent can roust a sleepy child from bed. He's that good. He's that powerful. He's that caring.

Even when our reason says that Jesus isn't any of those things, good, powerful, caring, His words redeem us every day. Honestly, our opinion of Jesus isn't important. Rather, we listen to our Redeemer and marvel at what He says and what He does. He says He cares for the lowly, and He listens to the lowly, and He heals the lowly in body and soul. The old woman and Jairus' daughter are so lowly we don't even know their names. But Jesus does. And He knows yours, too.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. Alleluia! Amen!

This preaching of Christ is indebted to the wisdom of Prof. Deutschlander's commentary on the Gospel of Mark. 
Please listen to his thoughts here: http://welswwd.weebly.com/deutschlander-seminars.html