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“The Way of Fear, The Way of Joy”

Mark 10:46-52

 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

            “What do you want Me to do for you?” Jesus asked the blind beggar, Bartimaeus (Mark 10:51; cf. 10:36).  What do you want Jesus to do for you?  Do you want Him to heal you of some affliction?  Do you want Him to give you some benefit or blessing?  Will you follow Him whether or not this life brings either healing or blessing?  Will you follow Him with fear?  Will you follow Him with joy?  Will you try to hold onto earthly wealth on the way we are walking?  Will you try to hold onto anything on this way?  Will you walk like little children holding their Father’s hand?  Will you ask the Lord for the positions of glory, in which others might serve you?  Will you beg from the Lord simply the sight by which you can see the way in front of you, even if it leads to the cross?  These are the questions that Jesus puts to each one of us and all of us through St. Mark.  And all these questions come to a single point through the prism of Jesus’ question, “What do you want Me to do for you?”  James and John are two of Jesus’ hand-picked Twelve, following Him on the way to Jerusalem.  They answer one way: “Give to us that we may sit one at Your right and one at Your left in Your glory” (Mark 10:37).  Bartimaeus is a blind beggar sitting beside the way (10:46).  He answers differently: “Rabboni, that I might regain sight” (Mark 10:51).  Jesus calls the Twelve, “Come after Me, and I will make you to become fishers of people.  And immediately, leaving the nets, they followed Him” (Mark 1:17).    Jesus tells Bartimaeus, “‘Go, your faith has healed you.’  And immediately, he regained sight and followed Him on the way” (10:52).  But again and again it is the disciples who are blind to the way of God, and they find themselves opposing Jesus.  Bartimaeus may not know that the way will lead to death, but he does not care.  All he can see is Jesus; all he knows is that he is following the Son of David to Jerusalem where he will bless the coming of David’s eternal Reign (Mark 11:10).  Throughout the Gospel of Mark, it is the disciples who oppose Jesus and His work.  And yet, Jesus drags them along the way and teaches them again and again: “[M]any who are first will be last, and the last first” (10:31); the Kingdom of God consists of little children and blind beggars and the servants of all. 

The Word of Jesus calling sinners to repentance will remain until the stars fall from the sky and this world is remade by fire, because sin and its consequences remain.  Bartimaeus asked Jesus to give him sight, and Jesus removed not only sin’s collateral damage of blindness, but sin itself.  That is what the Word of Jesus does.  When Jesus calls the disciples, they leave everything immediately.  When Jesus heals Bartimaeus, Bartimaeus follows Him immediately.  But the disciples, who had seen Jesus for who He is, still stumbled along the way.  They forgot, and denied, and misunderstood, and interrupted, and interfered.  What, though, do we know about Bartimaeus?  Did his faith, which sprang up so readily from the seed of the Word, grow strong with the nourishment of the Holy Spirit?  Or was it planted in shallow, rocky soil, so that it died soon after in the heat of crucifixion and persecution?  Perhaps the fact that Mark records his name suggests he was known to the early Church, and so his faith was commended for the benefit of all Christians.  Whatever the case, there is no Christian who does not experience the lapses into blindness that the disciples had.  There is no Christian who does not, at times, follow the Lord with fear and trembling, as the disciples did (10: 32).  But there is also no Christian who does not experience the joy of Bartimaeus, the light of Christ shining brightly on the way, even through death into the resurrection. 

            The Gospel of Mark sets out the way of the Christian in this world.  We are very often like the Twelve in their stumbling, fumbling blindness as they struggle to follow Jesus on the way.  We deny, and forget, and misunderstand, and interrupt, and interfere.  But Jesus is the patience of God.  He does not leave us to ourselves, or to the world and its wolves.  He continues to stop and call us through His Word.  He continues to stop when we are hungry and thirsty and tired.  He stops so that we, like blind men, can follow the sound of His voice.  He stops so that we, like little children, can catch up, and He puts His nail-scarred hands on our heads and blesses us beyond what we deserve, or could even ask.  He calls us to His Supper, and we are refreshed on the way with His Body and Blood—His inexhaustible life.  He calls us to rest in Him, in grace that will not let us go.  Beloved, “The commandment of the Lord shines clearly, enlightening the eyes.  Receive Christ, receive power to see, receive your light, that you may plainly recognize both God and man.  More delightful than gold and precious stones, more desirable than honey and the honeycomb is the Word that has enlightened us.  How could he not be desirable, who illumined minds buried in darkness, and endowed with clear vision ‘the light-bearing eyes’ of the soul? …  Sing his praises, then, Lord, and make known to me your Father, who is God.  Your Word will save me, your song instruct me.  I have gone astray in my search for God; but now that you light my path, Lord, I find God through you, and receive the Father from you, I become co-heir with you, since you were not ashamed to own me as your brother.  Let us, then, shake off forgetfulness of truth, shake off the mist of ignorance and darkness that dims our eyes, and contemplate the true God, after first raising this song of praise to him: ‘All hail, O light!’  For upon us buried in darkness, imprisoned in the shadow of death, a heavenly light has shone, a light of clarity surpassing the sun’s, and of a sweetness exceeding any this earthly life can offer” (St. Clement of Alexandria, Mark, ACCS, 145).

            So follow Jesus on the way, like St. Bartimaeus.  You cannot know where He leads you in this life, whether over rough road or smooth.  You can only know this: Jesus’ way leads to the cross, to death, but it leads inevitably and without a doubt to resurrection.  So it does for you.  In the midst of your joy and your fear, take heart, because Jesus calls you again and again to Himself.  And, hearing His voice, go on your way after Him; your faith, placed firmly in His life, death, resurrection, and ascension for you, will not only save you, but it will heal your body completely and finally.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, ESV).  Amen.

                      – Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 10/21/09

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“The Goodness of God”
Mark 10:17-22

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

            You there, running and falling on your knees.  For what are you really asking?  Who do you think Jesus is?  You call Him good, but is it only insofar as a man can be good?  Perhaps Jesus is just one more teacher of a way of salvation, none of which are right to the exclusion of the others, and none of which are wrong.  Perhaps you have been asking the same question of all the teachers you can find: “Good teacher, what shall I do in order to inherit eternal life?” (Mark 10:17).  You ask some and they say, “Eternal life?  That’s just a distraction.  Focus on living your best life now.”  You ask others, and they say, “Find the way of thinking with which you are most comfortable.  If it works for you, do it.  If it doesn’t, find something else.  There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to eternal life.”  You ask still others and they say, “Be as good as you can be, and God will not condemn you for your little mistakes.  You haven’t murdered anyone.  You haven’t committed adultery.  You haven’t stolen.  You’ve never lied in a courtroom.  You’ve never defrauded anyone.  You’ve honored your father and mother.  Surely that’s worth something?  No one’s perfect, after all.”    But which of those “good” teachers ever said, “Go, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow after Me” (Mark 10:21)?  That’s fine and good that you’ve kept the commandments.  Your neighbor appreciates it.  But Jesus isn’t interested in your best effort or your sincere intentions.  He wants you; all of you.  It seems strange for Jesus to require exactly that thing which the man could not do.  What good teacher would send away an honest seeker?  This man honestly wants Jesus to teach him the way of salvation. 

            But that is the problem.  Jesus is not a teacher of salvation.  He teaches, but His teaching is not an outline of a life plan, or a series of actions, or a five-step-program for salvation.  Every other teacher who claims to have some insight into God and every seller of self-sufficient spirituality is teaching a path of salvation, or some secret knowledge which, once you know it, will enable you to be saved or free or at peace.  Jesus is not like those good teachers.  He does not teach how to attain salvation; He does your salvation.  He does not teach you what you must do to inherit eternal life; He gives eternal life.  He is not a good teacher, but the one and only good God.  Jesus will not allow people to consider Him a good teacher among good teachers.  If He was a good teacher, it would not matter if He was alive or dead: the teaching would remain.  But He says, “If I am not alive, then it will do no good to follow My teaching.  If I am not alive, it is a waste of time to listen to Me.”  He says, “Do not call Me good unless you mean that I am the living God who is Goodness itself.”  Jesus will not allow any idolatrous nonsense that He is one among many, or that as long as you acknowledge Him as a good man, as a teacher of good advice, you can go on with your worship of other gods.  All the man wanted was something he could do in order to ensure that he would have eternal life.  All he wanted was the one Command that would tie all the other commandments into a nice package he could carry around like a golden salvation ticket.  So Jesus gives it to him.  “One thing you lack.  Go, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow Me.”  Kill that idol that still holds you in its grip.  Follow Me, and I will give you eternal life.  But for this man, as for you and me, the one thing he lacked turned out to be everything.  So he went away sorrowful.     

             Maybe he argued back and forth with himself: what good are possessions if this Man really can give eternal life?  But how can I know?  How can I be sure that Jesus is who He says He is?  I can’t see eternal life.  But if there was some concrete action I could do to inherit it, then I could at least see the guarantee of eternal life.  But giving everything up to follow a man, even a good man?  Not a wise decision, based on the evidence.  I can handle a teaching; you can hold a teaching in your mind and control it and do it insofar as you understand it and it works for you.  But a Man who is God is different.  You cannot own and control such a Man.  You cannot take what you like and what works for you and leave the rest.  This Man is what He says and He says what He is.  The simple fact is that Jesus has no teaching at all outside of what He does.  You cannot go and keep a commandment in order to inherit eternal life, as if eternal life has no connection to the Man who says, “Follow Me.”  The simple fact is that there is no commandment outside of the Man who is the fulfillment of all the commandments.  There are not those who keep the commandments and those who don’t.  There are only those who cling to Christ and those who do not. 

            False gods will always cling to those who do not cling to Christ.  The tragedy of this man whom Christ loved is not that he could not sell his possessions but that he turns his back on One who had no possessions, though all of creation is His.  If only his response had not been to leave in shock and sorrow.  If only his response had been falling down in confession: “I cannot give it up.  I cannot sell it.  My things and my stuff hold me too tightly.  I despise what God has given me and I want what He has given someone else.  I am a poor, miserable sinner.  Lord, have mercy!”  Which is exactly what we should say as well.  The One who calls us to destroy our idols, to have no other gods before Him, to give to those in need—He gave up His treasure in heaven to enter our poverty.  He went from the glorious presence of the Father, sold all that He had into the hands of poor sinners, and we trampled His treasure like pigs at the trough.  He was despised and rejected and everything He had was taken from Him, even life itself.  But He rose again, and now all of that is for your good; He does, after all, have mercy on us, who carry around a multiplicity of idols in our hearts; on us, who fear, love, and trust everything but Him who is truly God and truly Good.  And there is nothing to do but confess it.  It will not help to try harder to do the things by which you might inherit eternal life.  That will only lead to shock and sorrow.  It will lead to despair if you are honest with yourself and with God.  So come and fall at the pierced feet of Jesus.  Bring your idols so that He can smash them; He gives you God.  Bring your sorrow so that He can transform it; He gives you a joy unconnected to the wealth of this world.  Bring everything that you thought was treasure; it is only a chain that binds you to this life, that is, to death.  And the One who loves you, who speaks to you and feeds you under seemingly poor words, and poor bread, and poor wine, will give you everything: He gives you Himself. 

            Do not go away sorrowful.  Do not turn your back on Him.  Do not go back to things and stuff and cling to them.  Eventually they will be taken from you, willingly or unwillingly.  And if you know that you are unwilling to part with everything you hold dear, bring that to Jesus also.  He will give you Himself, and the more He gives you Himself, the more everything else will fall back into its true worth.  The more He strengthens His grip on you, the more He will loosen your grip on things for the sake of your neighbor, and the grip of things on you.  And when He comes in all His glory and everyone sees the full and severe goodness of God, He will bring you to the promised inheritance of all those who followed after Christ, no matter what it cost.  “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every [fatherhood] in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:14-19, ESV). 

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, ESV).  Amen.

                      — Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 10/6/09

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“Cut Off”

Mark 9:38-50

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

How seriously do we take Jesus?  Do we react with horror at His commands in our Gospel reading?  Or do we hear Him and, after a moment of awkward silence, laugh uncomfortably, shake our heads, and walk away, untouched and unaffected?  What do we do with a Jesus who threatens Hell and suggests self-mutilation or drowning by millstone?  Some would neuter His teaching, saying that He never really talked about Hell.  That was added later by over-zealous disciples.  He didn’t really mean that stuff about a donkey-size millstone—unless, of course, it’s my “righteous” anger that’s been aroused.  He wasn’t serious about cutting off your hand and your foot and putting out your eye; that’s just too morbid.  Or maybe it is we who are not being serious—serious about our sin, that is; serious about the sins we love so much that we have convinced ourselves they are not really sin, no matter what the Word of God says; serious about the sin into which we lead others, and the sin into which we ourselves willingly go.  To cause to sin is to scandalize; the true scandal is not a politician accepting too many campaign contributions, but anything that causes one of Christ’s little ones to be separated from Him.  Even the smallest sin cuts a person off from Jesus in this world, which will, unrepented, lead to being cut off eternally: in the place called in Greek Gehenna, where “their worm does not end and the fire is not extinguished” (Mark 9:48; Isaiah 66:24).

Gehenna, understand, was not made for you or any human; it was made for the devil and his angels.  Nevertheless, humans who are in league with Satan will receive the punishment reserved for him.  So it would be literally and infinitely better to cut off a hand, or a foot, or gouge out an eye, and enter life under the Reign of God crippled, than to enter Gehenna whole.  It would be better to be drowned with a large millstone around your neck, than to cause someone else to enter Gehenna.  Jesus is not joking; He is not speaking metaphorically.  He means it: do not cause yourself to sin, and do not cause others to sin.  Be careful, little hands, what you touch: Do not handle anything that will cause you to sin, even if everyone else is doing it.  Be careful, little feet, where you go: Do not walk into any place that will cause you to sin, and do not walk around with people who will cause you to sin.  It is better to enter life never having touched something or never having gone somewhere than to be thrown into Gehenna with a full bundle of life experiences.  Be careful, little eyes, what you see: Do not look at your computer or your TV if it will cause you to sin, even if it’s only in your mind.  If it will cause you to lust or to covet, shut it off.  Failing that, throw it away.  It is better to enter life with no TV and no computer than to be thrown into Gehenna with high-definition, high-speed, surround-sound access.  Jesus says that, when it comes to sin and death, hands and feet and eyes are not as necessary as we think they are, and that physical death is nothing compared to eternal death.  For the sake of the Name we bear, the Name He has given to us and put on us, He is relentless in the pursuit of sinners and in the pursuit of their sin, to cut it out and kill it.  Because sin is never harmless.  Even if you do not lose your salvation because of some particular sin, it always wounds, always hardens, always numbs.  Sin always puts something between you and your God; there is no exception.  And sin unconfessed will put an eternal something between you and God.  So, no, Jesus will not take it easy.  He will not lighten up.  He will not give either the Twelve or us a break.

But what if we take Him as seriously as He takes our sin?  I don’t recommend it, but let’s say, for the sake of seriousness, that you were to cut off your hand if you stole something, or your foot when you walked “in the counsel of the wicked” (Psalm 1:1), or took out your eye when you saw something that planted sinful thoughts or intentions or desires into your mind?  Okay.  What then?  How long until the other hand, or the other foot, or the other eye did or saw something requiring amputation?  Then, handless, footless, and blind, how long until your ears brought you to sin and, like van Gogh, you put a knife to them?  But, unfortunately for us, we know that everything is in the firing synapses in our brains, so off with our heads.  But say we still lived as headless torsos; our hearts are deceitful above all things, so, just to be safe, we should take them out as well.  But even if we were completely cut off, it could not atone for the sin we have and the sins we’ve done.  So Jesus was; Jesus was completely cut off.  Cut off from His friends, cut off from His family, cut off from His Father, the source of Life itself.  Cut off from life so He could cut us off from death.  Cut off by our sin so He could cut us off from our sin.  Jesus become a scandal in His flesh, the scandal of God dying, so that we, for whom He died, would not be a scandal in our cross-marked flesh.  He was the eternal sacrifice, salted with the fire of Hell, in order to make us living sacrifices, salted like burnt offerings for the sake of the little ones we serve.  And we are all the little ones, as many as trust the Jesus of whom the Scriptures testify.

So we all serve each other, our lives lived like salt in the midst of a decaying world.  We all serve each other, our congregations a demonstration of the peace which the world cannot give and does not know, a peace created by the presence of Jesus in our midst, as He speaks to us and feeds us with His own body and blood.  If anyone bears the same Name we bear, if anyone confesses the same cross and resurrection, we welcome that one as belonging to Christ.  If anyone does a mighty work in the Name of Jesus, we rejoice in the Lord who has worked it.  If the Lord has entrusted to us the little ones of all ages, we will not cut them off from the means of their salvation.  We will invite them to hear the Word with us, and when the Word has created a living faith, we will invite them to the Supper of their Lord and ours.  And we will pray together for the mercy of God in Jesus for our failures: for hindering God’s work through someone else, though they did it in the true Name and power of Jesus.  For not giving even the minimum assistance to those who belong to Christ.  For causing sin to grow in our little ones because we did not give them the Word to strengthen the faith of their baptism.  For all of this, we deserve millstones and mutilation and Gehenna.  And so did the Twelve.  But Jesus did not cut them off, in spite of their hard-heartedness; He chose them and forgave them.  By His Spirit He preserved them and still preserves them, until the day when they will receive their reward in full.  And neither will He cut you off from Himself.  He chose you, and put His Name on you; “In this Christian church [the Spirit] daily and richly forgives” your sins and the sins of all believers.  By that Spirit He preserves you, as you are poured out for the sake of Christ and His chosen ones.  He will preserve you as His living sacrifice in the place He has put you, serving those who belong to Christ, so that you will surely not lose your reward.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, ESV).  Amen.

– Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 9/22/09

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“What Can Jesus Do?”

Mark 9:14-29

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

What can Jesus do?  We have seen miracles the past few weeks: five thousand, and then four thousand, fed; Jesus walking on the water; Jesus healing the sick, especially the deaf and mute, and the blind, and today we hear about Jesus casting out a particularly resistant spirit from a young man.  Jesus, Peter, James, and John have just come down from the mountain where Jesus was transfigured; where the Father said, “This is My Son, the Beloved; hear Him” (Mark 9:7).  They come down from the mountain and as they approach the other disciples, they hear an argument: lawyers of the Law disputing with the disciples in the middle of a large crowd.  Then the crowd gets excited, because they are about to get their money’s worth: Jesus is coming.  Maybe He can cast this demon out.  But maybe not; His disciples could not.  “Teacher, I brought my son, who has a speechless spirit, to You.  And whenever it seizes [him], it throws him down, and he foams at the mouth and he grinds [his] teeth and becomes rigid.  And I brought [him] to your disciples in order that they might cast it out, but they were not strong [enough]” (Mark 9:18).  “If you can do anything, come to our aid and have compassion upon us” (Mark 9:22).  Can Jesus do anything?  That’s the question, isn’t it?  Jesus has cast out demons before, but can He cast out this demon?  Jesus has healed people, but can He heal this person?  Jesus has fed people, but can He feed us?  Of course, we don’t think in terms of demons; ours are far too subtle to make themselves known by thrashing and gnashing and foaming at the mouth!  And healing?  “If you could do something, Lord, that would be great.”  This is always a troublesome point.  I may know people who have seen healings or have been healed themselves.  But I’ve never seen it, and so I tend to hold my prayers at arm’s length: Yeah, healing would be great, but, you know, “Thy will be done” and all that.  Which is sometimes a way to get out of believing that Jesus can really heal, because it relieves me of the responsibility of actually praying for healing.  If God’s will is God’s will is God’s will, and since I haven’t seen any miracles lately, it’s probably God’s will that I not be healed…  How do you know?  Whether He chooses to heal at this time or not, Jesus says, “Ask.”  And the faith that asks does not depend on what is seen; otherwise, what would we believe about God?  Rather, what we see depends on what we believe.

“All things are possible to the believing one,” Jesus says (Mark 9:23).  But who is the believing one in our text?  It is not the disciples.  It is not the father.  It is not the crowd.  In fact, there is only one Believer in this text, and it is Jesus.  It sounds strange to call Jesus a “believer,” since we normally think of people who “believe in Jesus.”  But here the only one for whom all things are possible, even casting out obstinate, epileptic spirits, is Jesus, God-in-the-flesh.  “O faithless generation!  How long will I be with you?  How long must I bear with you?” (Mark 9:19).  This is why the disciples were not strong enough to cast it out: because they thought that they were.  They did not trust that all their power to cast out unclean spirits was really God’s power.  To trust God is to pray, and to pray is to trust that God will see and act.  Jesus is constantly praying.  He knows that the Father does see and will act; that the Father is acting in the Son.  And how does the Father act in the Son here?  “Jesus, seeing that the crowd was running together, rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, ‘You speechless and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter into him [again].’  And crying out and convulsing, it came out” (Mark 9:25-26a).  Darkness seemed to reign.  Mute, deaf, and blind spirits were everywhere.  But Jesus opens mouths and ears and eyes.  He throws open the doors and windows of darkness and shines the light of His Word into every corner.  There is no room for demons to hide; they must flee.  They have no choice.  Yes, Jesus can do something.

But maybe you’ve got your own obstinate spirits.  You’ve got the devil whispering in your ear, muting your tongue, and trying to shut your ears to the Word of Jesus.  What spirit is it?  Is it the spirit of depression that presses on your chest and darkens your bedroom?  Is it the spirit of apathy that drains your joy and makes the days indistinguishable?  Is it the spirit of absence that withers your faith and makes God seem distant?  Whatever it is, it is all the spirit of the Evil One, who seeks your life.  It is all infected with the stench of death.  How long has it been like this?  Since childhood, since birth, since conception.  It is all built in from the time we were conceived in the wombs of our mothers, and that is why death is the only option.  And the question is, can Jesus do anything for you here and now?  Notice what happens when the unclean spirit leaves the man’s son: “He became as a corpse, so that most [people] said, ‘He died’” (Mark 9:26b).  This is what healing looks like?  The demon is cast out, only to leave the son dead?  I’m not sure the father wouldn’t rather have a possessed son than a dead one.  But that’s not the end:  “Jesus took his hand and raised him, and he rose” (Mark 9:27).  The sign Jesus worked in this son is the sign of the greater Son.  “Jesus, when He had uttered a loud cry, breathed out [His spirit]” (Mark 15:37).  And He became a corpse, so that everyone said, “He’s dead.”  This is what God looks like?  The centurion said, “Truly this man was the Son of God,” only for the Son to die and be buried?  I’m not sure we wouldn’t rather have no savior than a dead one.  But that was not the end.  “And when they had come to the tomb, they saw a young man, and they were amazed.  And he said to them, ‘Do not be amazed.  You seek Jesus the Nazarene, the crucified one.  He was raised, He is not here.  See the place where they put Him’” (Mark 16:5-6).

“[I]f we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He is not able to deny Himself” (2 Timothy 2:13).  This is what healing looks like.  It looks like death at first.  It looks like drowning and burial, as you were buried with Christ by baptism into death (Romans 6:4).  But then you were raised with the risen Christ; only resurrection can kill death.  And that resurrection has also killed everything that goes along with death: all those spirits that oppress and deceive you.  They know they are on death row.  That’s why they fight so hard: they have only a short time to live, and they do not rule you.  They do not reign.  Christ reigns, and He reigns over you and your life, because He paid for it with His blood.  He brought you under His reign at that font, and in the power of His baptismal promise, He raises you to new life day after day after day, until the Day when there is no more death, only life.  When He will take your hand and raise you up, and you will rise.  Hear the Word of the Lord: the unclean spirits, even yours, are on their way out.  They have no power over you; you are forgiven; you’ve been raised from those old, spirit-infested graves.  Jesus is able, and what’s more, He is willing.  He is here this morning to feed you with His resurrected Body and to give you His resurrected Blood to drink.  Because only His resurrection life can kill the death in you and in me.  As often as you feel those spirits oppressing and whispering and pulling the darkness down on you, as often as you are deaf and speechless, so that your only words are “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief!”; Jesus says: “Bring him to Me.  Bring her to Me.  You speechless and deaf spirit, I command you, come out and never enter in again.”  He is your faithful Lord.  He has authority over all things.  He sees and He acts.  He has acted.  And there is nothing that can separate you from the love of God in Jesus Christ.  Hold to Him; cling to Him in spite of what you see and feel; and the faith that is placed in Him can do all things, even conquer death.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, ESV).  Amen.

– Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 9/9/09

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“He Does All Things Well”

Mark 7:31-37

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

It happened in the area of the Ten Cities, the Decapolis: “They brought to Him a [man who was] deaf and [had] a speech impediment and they begged Him to put [His] hand on him” (Mark 7:32).  What, I wonder, is that man thinking?  He can’t hear; he can’t make himself understood.  Does he even know that they’re taking him to see Jesus?  What sign did they make to tell him that?  But it doesn’t really matter, does it?  They brought him to Jesus and Jesus healed him.  It happened again in Bethsaida: “They brought to Him a blind [man] and they begged Him to touch him” (Mark 8:22).  He did, and He healed him.  As we’ve said before, Jesus is not a magician.  He is not a traveling miracle worker, seeking rapt audiences for whom He can perform.  In fact, when He went to the region of Tyre “he entered a house and did not want anyone to know” (Mark 7:24, ESV).  And in both these miracles, Jesus takes the person away from any audience.  Jesus takes the deaf man away from the crowd by himself (7:33), and the blind man He takes by the hand and leads him out of the village (8:23).  And He has compassion on both of them, though neither of them ask to be healed.  They are both brought by others who beg Jesus to heal them.  So He presses His fingers into the ears of the deaf man, and spits on His fingers and puts them on his bound tongue.  “And looking up into heaven, he groaned and said to him, ‘Ephphatha!’ which is, ‘Be opened!’  And immediately his ears were opened and the bond of his tongue was loosed and he spoke rightly” (Mark 7:34-35).  Later, Jesus spits on the eyes of the blind man and lays His hands on him.  But this time the healing is not immediate; there seem to be some technical difficulties: “[W]hen [Jesus] had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, ‘Do you see anything?’  And, looking around, he said, ‘I see people, [but] I see them as trees walking around.’  Then He again laid [His] hand upon his eyes, and [the man] opened his eyes [wide] and he was restored and he saw everything clearly” (Mark 8:23-25).  These men are Jesus’ creation, and He is remaking them.  He brings to each of them individually a sign of His reign over creation.  See!  He has done all things well.  “He even makes the deaf to hear and the unspeaking to speak” (Mark 7:37).

Fingers and hands and spit: opened ears, loosed tongue, clear sight.  In between these miracles, even after the feeding of four thousand more people, it is the disciples whose ears and eyes remain closed: “Do you not yet perceive or understand?  Are your hearts hardened?  Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear?” (Mark 8:17-18, ESV).  Jesus is fulfilling Isaiah 35 right in front of them and they are talking about other things, like not having bread (Mark 8:16-17).  They are deaf to the words of Jesus, and half-blind to His works.  Because they are deaf, they are unable to speak of Him; and half-blind, they are unable to call others to see.  Disciples, will you ever learn?  How is it possible to see the signs of Jesus’ reign that you have seen and to hear what you have heard, and still wander around in a fog?  How is it possible to confess Jesus to be the Anointed One of God, and still do the work of Satan (Mark 8:29, 33)?  Opened ears keep closing, tongues keep tightening into silence, and clear sight blurs.  How often my ears close against His Word; how often my tongue keeps silent when it should speak (and vice-versa); and my sight gets clouded by all of my concerns and worries.  Will we ever learn?  How is it possible to see the signs of Jesus’ reign here and hear what Jesus is saying now, and still wander through our lives as if those works and words have nothing to do with us?  How could Jesus have cried the “Ephphatha!” to us with water and the Word and, yet, we keep closing ourselves off to Him?  How could He have touched us with His own Body and Blood, and, yet, we walk around with eyes half-open to His work in and through us?  How is it possible to confess Jesus as the Anointed One of God, and still do the work of Satan?  Do we not yet perceive or understand?

But see the glory of Yahweh!  See the majesty of our God!  Be strong; fear not!  Behold, your God has come with vengeance—not on the deaf and mute and blind, but on the things that close ears and bind tongues and shut eyes.  He has come with vengeance on sin and death and the devil in order to save you.  It is a strange vengeance: He is killed.  He goes with a bound tongue to the slaughter (Isaiah 53:7).  The blind and deaf and mute spit on Him and blind Him with His own blood.  But He is not deaf even to them, nor to us: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34, ESV).  He sees clearly why He does what He does: through the pain and the blood and the sweat, He saw the joy set before Him and He endured the cross, despising its shame, and He is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God, resurrected and glorified (Hebrews 12:2).  Let us fix our eyes on that Jesus, the Jesus who did it all so that the eyes of the blind would be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; so the lame man would leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.  “For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water” (Isaiah 35:6-7, ESV).  This is His creation, and He is remaking it.  See!  He has done all things well.

So it is for you.  Have you been deaf to His Word?  Have you been blind to His work in and through you?  Have you failed to sing for joy to the Lord who comes to save?  So have I.  But, beloved, your Lord is merciful: Ephphatha!  Be opened!  He speaks into deaf ears and opens them.  Because “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ” (Romans 10:17, ESV).  He spits on blind eyes and covers them with His hands and they see, because “[Yahweh] opens the eyes of the blind” (Psalm 146:8, ESV).  He touches dry and thirsty tongues with water from His own mouth, and those tongues speak in spite of themselves.  “For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved” (Romans 10:10, ESV).  It is contrary to all expectations: He must speak before deaf ears hear Him; He must act before blind eyes see His work; He must touch before mute tongues move in praise of Him.  It is true that ears will again be closed, tongues will again be silenced, and eyes will again be shut in death.  And even now, we must have them opened and loosed again and again by Jesus’ Word and the touch of His hands as He puts His Body and Blood into our mouths.  But, anxious hearts: be strong and do not fear; there will come a day when we will all have our eyes opened wide, our deaf ears unstopped for good, and our tongues will sing for joy forever.  Because you and I are His creation, and He is remaking us today.  See!  He does all things well.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, ESV).  Amen.

– Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 9/2/09

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“Hearts”
Mark 7:14-23

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Imagine that everything about you is turned inside out.  Literally!: imagine that the stuff on the outside is on the inside, and the stuff on the inside is on the outside.  And imagine that you really do carry your heart on your sleeve, and that everything that is normally invisible to the people around you is now visible.  All your thoughts become like those little cartoon word-bubbles, and everything’s out there for anyone to see.  If everyone could see and hear all the thoughts and intentions of everyone else’s heart and mind…well, we’d probably not have jobs, or be married, or have any friends.  But if that happened, we would quickly see what Jesus means when He says that what comes out of a person makes him unclean; it’s what comes from the heart of a person that defiles her.  Jesus takes the Pharisees’ question from last week—“Why do your disciples not walk in the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unclean hands?”—and uses it to teach the crowds.  If the Pharisees were around an unclean person, they washed.  If they might have been around an unclean person, they washed.  If there was any chance that an unclean person sat in the place they were going to sit, they washed that seat.  They had an okay idea with their ceremonial washings; they just forgot what the washing symbolized, and made the washing itself the point.  Sort of as if I told you that when you take a shower or a bath, you should recall that Jesus has washed all your sins away through baptism, but then you started thinking that your daily, symbolic baptizing—the shower or the bath—was more important than God’s baptism.  The Pharisees’ washing should have reminded them that they needed to be washed inwardly; instead, they focused on the outward tradition—the symbol, rather than the reality.  But there is nothing in this world that can go into your mouth from your hand—not food, or drink, or the uncleanness of other people—that can defile you before God, “because it does not go into [a person’s] heart, but into the belly, and out into the toilet” (Mark 7:19).  To think that what comes into you by your mouth makes you unclean is to have everything turned inside out: in fact, it is your heart, it’s my heart, that is unclean, and from the unclean heart comes everything evil: “sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, foolishness.  All of these evil things come from within and defile a person” (Mark 7:21-23).

This is nothing new.  In Genesis 6, “[Yahweh] saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (6:5, ESV).  It should be no surprise that people do horrible things to each other; it should be no surprise that humans exchange the truth of God for a lie; it should be no surprise that we would rather satisfy the fleeting desires of our hearts rather than enter the presence of God, who searches and judges hearts.  We are all hypocrites.  We are all hiding something.  We are all carrying secrets in our hearts that would condemn us before any human court, let alone in the court of God.  “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is very far from me” (Mark 7:6; cf. Isaiah 29:13).  God already sees our hearts and His Word easily cuts through our defenses and masks: “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.  And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:12-13, ESV).  Which is why I always tremble when I pray the words of Psalm 139:23: “Search me, O God, and know my heart!  Try me and know my thoughts!”  Actually, I’d prefer if you didn’t do that.  Who knows what all might be lurking in the dark corners and deep shadows.  But there it is.  I’m turned inside out, heart on my sleeve; the spotlight of the Law that is far too bright for comfort is shining in every nook and cranny.  And Jesus says, “You want to give Me this heart?  I’m not sure I want to be accepted into that.”  We act as if we’re doing God a favor by giving our hearts to Him.  But this isn’t cash for clunkers.  We should be paying Him to get it off our chest.

Well, someone has to pay.  Because hearts don’t just grow on trees.  Or maybe they do.  It was because of a tree that our hearts were turned from our Creator.  And it is because of a Tree that our hearts are turned back again; new hearts, actually.  Undivided hearts.  “Teach me your way, O [Yahweh], that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name” (Psalm 86:11, ESV).  “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10, ESV).  “Thus says the Lord [Yahweh]: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came….  [But] I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land.  I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.  And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.  And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules” (Ezekiel 36:22, 24-27, ESV).  That was the promise, and this is the promise kept: One whose heart was pure, who walked blamelessly and did what was right and spoke truth in His heart.  He alone could dwell on the holy hill of the Lord (Psalm 15:1-2), holy because it was covered with holy blood.  “Who shall ascend the hill of [Yahweh]?  And who shall stand in his holy place?  He who has clean hands and a pure heart…” (Psalm 24:3-4, ESV).  On the Hill of Calvary, on the Tree of the Cross, those clean hands were pierced with nails and that pure heart broke under the weight of everything that comes out of our hearts.  But at the intersection of death and new life, a new heart was fashioned from the flesh and blood of the Son of God.  It is that heart that was given to you and me in baptism, so that we now “draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water” (Hebrews 10:22, ESV).  We draw near to Jesus, who is living and active, and He puts His heart into us again and again—pierced with the sharp stabs of sin, but beating forever with the love of God.  The bread and the wine continue through our bodies, just as all food does; but His Body and Blood go right to the heart of our matter, answering our prayers and creating new hearts: undivided hearts, clean hearts, hearts and souls and minds that are completely spent in the love of God and the love of neighbor (Mark 12:30-31).  Hearts that do not need to fear being turned inside out before the Father, because they have been made new in the blood of Jesus.  Lift up your hearts!  Lift them to the Lord!  “Now…may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints” (1 Thessalonians 3:11-13, ESV).

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, ESV).  Amen.

– Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 8/25/09