Sermon-Sunday-July 22, 2007

Eigth Sunday After Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Well, that’s it, there is need of only one thing. This is what your Lord tells you in the words of the Gospel lesson for today, and it’s what He tells you right now through the words of my mouth; that there is need of only one thing.
One thing, you ask, well how can that be? I have bills to pay. I have a family to feed. I have people depending on me, how can there possibly be only one thing I need? Well, all of your worldly responsibilities and duties, as important as they might seem at times, mean nothing in light of the one thing that is needed. And that one thing that you need, that one thing that outlasts all the worldly burdens that you place upon yourself, is of course faith in Christ Jesus your Lord.
And here He comes once again bursting forth in His Word claiming you, redeeming you, giving you new life, as He has done time and time again, daily. He comes to you in His word this morning, breaking through into your reality, bringing the eternal, into the temporal, bringing forgiveness where there is only sin, bringing new-life where there is only death. Bringing you the only thing that is needed.
And that is what happens when Christ Jesus bursts upon the scene. That is what happened when Jesus entered the home of Mary and Martha. He comes into their home and brings with Him all His forgiveness, new-life, and eternal promise, and Mary gets it. Mary appears to be completely humbled that Jesus would even enter her home. She is so stunned that all she can do is to sit at the feet of her Lord and listen to Him. Mary appears to recognize that Jesus brings with Him, not just a new message, but a new reality, an eternal reality with Her Lord. Of course, Mary had the good fortune of not having been distracted by busy-ness and other tasks.
But Martha, on the other hand, was distracted. She was very distracted. And before we condemn her too much for her actions, let us remember that as this passage opens we see that Martha is the one who had the good sense to welcome Jesus into their home. But, then upon doing that she allowed herself to become wrapped up in her role as hostess.
She allowed herself to become bound by the social customs and conventions of the day which would have actually dictated that Martha behave in the manner that she did. Notice that none of the disciples appear to be too bothered or put off by Martha’s actions. She was probably just doing what they would have expected of her.
But again, Jesus here is bringing forth a new reality; one that is not bound by social, political or even moral conventions and customs. He is continuing the work of bringing release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind. Martha was just still trapped in the blindness of her own distractions and her own busy-ness.
And so it is with you with, and all that you find yourself distracted with. Like Martha, you also find yourself distracted away from the One who claims you in baptism. In the midst of your daily life with all the distractions of the world that sin, death, and the devil will use to try to take your focus off the One who redeems you, you find yourself, like Martha, losing sight of the One Thing that you need, Christ Jesus.
And it is not just the task of hospitality that the devil will use to try to distract you. He will use whatever means he can. He will use the daily burdens that you impose upon yourself. He will use your pride to seduce you into thinking that you deserve everything that you have and even that you deserve more. He will use this same pride to instill jealousy in you over others. He will again use this same pride to instill resentment in you toward those who you think might not be pulling their own weight, and thus like Martha in today’s lesson you can become so obsessed with your own efforts, you start to convince yourself that you deserve this grace that comes to you in Christ because of all that you do for Him, and you lose sight of what He has done and continues to do for you.
But heed the words of the psalmist who asks "O Lord, who may abide in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy hill?" And the answer given back is those who walk blamelessly, and who do what is right, and speak the truth from their heart, and who do not slander with their tongue, and do no evil to their friends, nor take a reproach against their neighbors, in whose eyes the wicked are despised, but who honor those who fear the Lord and who stand by their oath even to their hurt.
And there is only One who fits that bill, and it’s not you. It is the One who claims you in baptism as His own. It is the One who comes to redeem you and pay the price for your sin. It is Christ Jesus your Lord, who took your sin with Him to the cross. It is the One who stood by His oath, not just to His hurt, but to His death on a cross.
Jesus did not leave Martha in her distractions. He would come to her again when her brother Lazarus was sick and eventually died. And later in Luke’s gospel we read that there was a group of women who followed Jesus to the cross. I think there is a pretty good chance that Martha might have been among those women, thus indicating that she eventually got it.
Regardless, we know that she was not left in her distractions. Jesus would come walking victoriously out of the tomb, and He would appear once again, except this time it would be after He had defeated sin, death and the devil. It would be after He had ushered in the new reality.
And so, today and everyday He comes to you in the midst of your daily life, refusing to leave you in your distractions, refusing to leave you in bondage to sin, refusing to leave you in death, He comes bursting forth to you in His word bringing you forgiveness, bringing you redemption and reconciliation and bringing you new life.
He comes to you in the sacraments reminding you once again of the claim that He has made on you in the waters of baptism. He comes to you in fellowship with each other reminding you that you are a beloved part of the body of Christ. And He comes to you in the still, small moments of solitude as you sit at His feet, simply to say to you that you are His.
And that is the only thing that you are in need of, and Christ Jesus promises that it will never be taken away from you.
Now what is there left for you to do but to sit at the feet of Christ, to cling to Him, knowing that you have been freed from sin, death, and the devil and all the distractions that come with them, and then to know that you have also been freed to take the focus off yourself, and put it on your neighbor so that you can live out your calling to share the love of Christ with them.
Amen

Sermon-Sunday-July 15, 2007

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Who is my neighbor?? This is the question that Jesus is asked after confirming for this lawyer, that the way to inherit eternal life is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and to love your neighbor as yourself. That’s it. It’s that simple. Love God, love your neighbor, and you got it.
That’s it, that’s all you got to do. And the lawyer then wants to know who his neighbor is because he wants to be able to go out there and start justifying himself. But you see there is a problem with the lawyer’s first question. At first he asks what he can do to inherit eternal life. Well an inheritance is a gift. You get an inheritance because someone loved you and thought enough of you to put you in their will. You don’t earn an inheritance, it is a gift.
And yet, in spite of the problematic nature of the question that Jesus is asked, He answers the question. Jesus doesn’t point out the contrary nature of the lawyer’s question. He answers it. He confirms for the lawyer that he is right in thinking that the only thing that you can do to inherit eternal life is to love God with all your, heart, soul, strength, and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.
Well that doesn’t sound too hard right? You can do that right? It’s just two things that you have to do to inherit eternal life; love God, love your neighbor. But there is the problem. You see, as soon as you start thinking of Jesus’ commands here as a means by which you can make yourself righteous before God, or a way to earn God’s love, grace and forgiveness, then you have already failed before you have even got out of the gate. You fail, because before you begin you are already thinking of yourself more than you are of your neighbor.
The lawyer’s question of who the neighbor was shows that. He wanted to know who his neighbor was so he could know who he needed to love. He just wanted to make sure he was loving the right people. Now if Jesus had said, everyone is your neighbor then maybe he would have gone out and tried to love everyone. But the point is, in his mind the possibility existed that there might actually be some whom he is not called to love, and, like the priest and the Levite in the parable that Jesus told, this lawyer wasn’t going to waste his time on those he didn’t think he had to care for, because, after all, that wasn’t going to earn him any points with God. So why bother???
And so it is with you. Be it through doubt or pride or whatever means the devil thinks he can exploit, you convince yourself that not only can you take this task on yourself, but you must. You convince yourself that you must do your part. And, maybe. you start to feel proud of yourself, or maybe you go the other way and you start to think that your just not doing enough, and you find yourself face-to-face with your complete inability to fulfill this task on your own.
So then why would Jesus answer the lawyer’s question in that way? Doesn’t He realize that He has essentially just set the lawyer off on an impossible task? Well, the answer to why Jesus would set this lawyer us off on an impossible task like that lies of course in the parable of the good Samaritan which He tells this lawyer.
Now, it’s probably in your nature and has been your tendency, to think that, with this parable, Jesus is saying that we must strive to become like the Samaritan who was so merciful. I don't think that really gets to the heart of what's going on here. It is probably also in your nature to see a little bit of yourself in the humble and merciful Samaritan. But by thinking so highly of yourself, you show that you are probably more like the priest and the Levite who walked right past the man in the ditch and didn’t feel that they should defile themselves by messing with someone who had been beaten and left for dead.
It would have been absolutely unheard of for a Samaritan to show mercy to an Israelite. Samaritans were considered half-breeds. They were part Jewish but it was believed that they distorted the Jewish religious practices. They interpreted the Torah differently, and as such they were looked down upon by the "real Jews." They were literally considered to be enemies of the "real Jews." And, it is presumed that the man in the ditch was a Jew. So A Samaritan showing mercy to a Jew would have defied just about every social and moral convention of the day.
They were enemies. The Jew in the ditch and the merciful Samaritan were enemies. They were enemies of each other, and we are enemies of God. Through sin, we are enemies of God. There is something to learn from every player in this parable, but first and foremost we are to identify with and learn from the helpless man in the ditch. We are to identify with the idea of receiving mercy from One whom we have made our enemy.
The problem is, we don’t see that we have made God our enemy. The lesson from Deuteronomy reminds us that the Word is very near to us, and in our mouths and in our hearts for us to observe. But we won’t have it. We ignore it, or we try to define it on our own terms.
We ignore God’s Word because it confronts us with who we really are. In the midst of the delusional images that we portray of ourselves, God’s Word confronts us with who we really are; helpless sinners and enemies of God. We lie helpless in the ditch of sin, pride, and selfishness. We are the ones who need to be rescued, and before we can be rescued, we need to know that we are in need of being rescued.
But along comes One who refuses to leave us in the ditch. And it is Christ Jesus, the very One whom we make an enemy with our sin. The very One whom we condemn and crucify with our sin is the one who comes to us in the ditch. That is how you come to the font, regardless of how old or young you were, you come to the baptismal font lying helpless in the ditch of sin and the law. And in those waters, the despised and rejected One comes to you and claims you as His own, in spite of the fact that you reject and crucify Him and make Him your enemy.
In Romans 5, Paul writes that when we were God’s enemies we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son. In sin we make ourselves enemies of God, but in Christ Jesus, our Lord refuses to remain an enemy and He refuses to leave us as enemies. He is bound to do whatever it takes to break down the barriers of sin and the law that we place between ourselves and our Lord, even, as we would find out, to the point of death on a cross, where He took your sin upon Himself.
And He continues to come to you in His Word bearing fruit, bringing to you the promise of the gospel; and He comes to you in the sacraments as He will in a few minutes when you come forward; coming to you once again in the bread and the wine, bringing you forgiveness, lifting you out of the ditch, giving you new life.
Christ Jesus came not to give you a pathway by which you could follow so you could justify yourself, rather He came to be your justification. In Christ Jesus you have been transferred from the ditch of the power of darkness to the kingdom of God’s beloved Son. In the mercy of Christ, you see that He meant it when He said that He came to bring release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind.
So who is your neighbor? You no longer have to ask that, because Christ Jesus has rescued you from the ditch and He has given you new and eternal life and He has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light, and it is no longer you who live but Christ who lives in you. And we know that Christ Jesus shows mercy to, and treats as neighbors, even those who condemn and crucify Him, and now you have been freed to go and do likewise.
Amen

Sermon-Sunday-July 8, 2007

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus promises a harvest that is plentiful. So how does that sound to you today? Many of you of course are in anticipation of a soon to be arriving harvest. How do Jesus’ words of promise of a plentiful harvest sound to you today?? Perhaps, in light of the storm that we were hit with this week Jesus’ promise of a plentiful harvest might sound like empty words that have little meaning.
Perhaps in light of whatever storms the world might be throwing at you; be it disease, depression, anxiety, financial burdens, addiction, or jealousy or envy or pride or lust that just seems to have an overpowering grip on you and it won’t let go. Perhaps in light of all that, these words seem empty. But fear not, for that is nothing but the devil himself telling you that there is no plentiful harvest for you.
It is nothing but the devil coming and attacking you through sin and accusing you through the law in the way that he does. But Jesus never denies that you would face this. In fact He comes to you today in His Word and tells you that, as one who has been claimed by Him in the waters of baptism, He sends you out into the world like lambs into the midst of wolves.
And even though the fate of the devil has been sealed, he continues to go down his path of deception, filled as it is with meaningless accusations and empty promises. He continues with his attempts to convince you that the plentiful harvest which Christ Jesus promises is not for you, or he tries to seduce you with empty promises of another harvest that can only lead to destruction.
The pathway that the devil tries to seduce you with can only lead to destruction the likes of which, the towns of Chorazin and Bethsaida faced in verses 12-15 of today’s gospel lesson, in light of their rejection of the forgiveness and redemption that can only come through Christ Jesus. The devil had worked on them the deception that he daily tries to work on you, and the end result was destruction.
But Christ Jesus was on a different path. He was on a path that would lead to His death. He was on a path that would lead to His laying down His life for you. He was on a path that would lead to the cross, where He bore the burden of your sin. He was on a path that would lead to a tomb that He would walk victoriously out of. And it was because of this path that He knew the fate of the very one who attacks you with empty promises and accusations and our Lord Jesus speaks of this fate in today’s Gospel lesson when He says that He watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.
Like a flash of lightning, Satan was defeated. Like the lightning that we saw earlier this week, Satan was defeated. Satan will continue to attack you, but he will attack you through this world. After all he is, as it states in Ephesians, the ruler of the kingdom of the air. But his attacks are in vain, because Christ Jesus comes to you a sinner, dead in your transgressions and claims you as His own, and He gives you new and eternal life in Him.
By His rich love and abounding mercy Christ Jesus has seen fit to rescue you from vulnerability to Satan’s attacks, and Christ Jesus has seated you with Him in the heavenly realms, as it says in the second chapter of Ephesians. In the rich and unconditional grace of God in Christ Jesus you have been freed from sin, death, and the devil. And none of this is by your own doing, but is all the work of the One who claims you in baptism and who takes your sin and death with Him to the cross.
In light of that we are reminded in today’s second lesson that we are never to boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Other translations use the word glory instead of boast. However it is translated, the key issue here is that in whatever way Satan continues to attack you and tries to tear down the hope that you have in Christ, you are to cling not to what you do, but to what Christ has done for you. It is not in your personal accomplishments that you find hope, but in the cross of Christ.
Luther says that the cross of Christ signifies much more than a piece of wood, but in fact it signifies all the afflictions of the church, which it suffers for Christ. This means that when Satan tries to attack, deceive, and afflict you, all you need to do is to look to the Cross of Christ and you see the very defeat of those attacks.
As children of God, the world has been crucified to you and you have been crucified to the world. Essentially what this means is that the world condemns you and that you condemn the world. This is not a call to go around condemning those who don’t share your Christian faith. Rather, this is to say, it is in the nature of the world to reject Christ and thus to condemn Christ. But through faith in Christ, you condemn the world as rejecters and crucifiers of Christ. Again, this is also not of our own doing. Even your best and most pious efforts don’t even come close to giving you the authority to judge or condemn anyone.
But praise be to God, it is no longer you who live but Christ who lives in you and it is through Christ living in you, raising you to new life, making of you a new creation that the world is condemned.
Left merely to your own devices and your own abilities you would remain crucifiers and rejecters of Christ yourselves. But again, fear not for the Lord does not leave you to your own devices. He does not leave you in the temporary futility of this world that condemns you, but rather He claims you as one of His own and has placed you in His Kingdom.
And He sends you out like lambs into the midst of wolves to proclaim the arrival of that very Kingdom that He has brought you into. And yes, He promises that the world that condemns and crucifies Him will reject you, and when you are rejected, Christ is rejected. But Christ Jesus has given you His eternal word of promise. He has given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy and He promises that nothing will hurt you.
In whatever way Satan and his snakes and scorpions attack you they are not able to touch the eternal hope that you have in Christ Jesus. Indeed as the seventy disciples returned to Jesus they tell Him that in His name, the demons submit to them. And the same is true for you. Through Christ living in you, through the new creation that Christ Jesus is making in you, the demons submit to you.
Heed the words of Paul in our second lesson for today through which Christ Jesus urges you to bear one another’s burdens and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. The snakes and the scorpions will continue to attack you and try to deceive you, and in the midst of that you have been given to each other, to bear one another’s burdens.
You have been given to each other to be servants to each other, and Christ lives in each and every one of you. Christ lives in each and every one of you and in you Christ continues His work of proclaiming that the Kingdom of God has come near. The storms of this world and the attacks of the devil will continue, and in Christ you have been given the authority to stand defiantly in the face of those attacks and tell the devil to bring it on, because the One living in you has already sealed the devil’s fate, and your place in the Heavenly realms has been secured.
And none of this is of your own doing. As the work of proclaiming the Kingdom of God is continued in you, those who listen to you, listen to Christ, those who reject you, reject Christ. Boast of nothing except the cross of Christ, and rejoice not that the Spirit submits to you, but that your name is written in Heaven where there is indeed a plentiful harvest and you have a claim in it.
Amen

Sermon-Sunday-July 1, 2007

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
So how do you stand up in light of everything that takes place in our Gospel text this morning? I mean in this lesson what you have is a set of events that show that Jesus would not allow anything to get in the way of His journey to the cross. They go to a Samaritan village and the villagers do not receive Jesus because His face was set to Jerusalem.
James and John wanted to command fire from heaven that would consume the villagers. After all they had rejected Jesus, the Son of God. Who do they think they are? They had rejected the gospel that led these disciples to walking away from their homes and families so they could follow Jesus. And yet Jesus does not rebuke the Samaritans who rejected Him but the disciples who wanted to seek revenge on the villagers.
How would you have done? How do you feel when you see the faith that you confess mocked and belittled? When you hear people refer to the Bible as a "book of fairytales" as some call it, are you able to simply ignore that and move forward like Jesus, or do you get angry like James and John?
Then you have a man who says that he would follow Jesus wherever He goes. Jesus responds by telling the man that the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head. In other words Jesus makes it clear that pleasure would not be a part of His travels, and so thus neither would it be for His followers. After all Jesus was headed to the cross. He was clearly not overly concerned about His creature comforts. We don’t really know how this man responded, but would there have been any hesitation if he knew where Jesus was going, if he knew that Jesus was essentially walking straight on into His death?
So how do you stack up?? Would you have gone? Would you have been willing to follow Jesus wherever He went even if it meant not having a place to rest your head? When you leave to go on a trip, be it on a plane, a train, or a car, do you take a pillow with you? Could you give up your car or your cellphone or your television, or coffee for a month? Would you be willing to live without the certainty of a roof over your head for a month?
Finally Jesus sees two men, one to whom Jesus actually says, "Follow me" and another who says that he will follow Jesus. The first man responds to Jesus’ call by simply asking Jesus if he could go and bury his father. The second man puts a condition on his following Jesus when he says that he would like to say farewell to those at his home.
Jesus denies the request of the man who wanted to bury his father when He tells the man to let the dead bury their own dead, and that he should be concerned about proclaiming the kingdom of God. But what is so wrong with what this man asked to do? I mean he just wanted to go bury his father. One could make an argument that he was simply showing due obedience to the commandment to honor your father and mother. And yet, here is Jesus telling him to leave that behind, to let the dead bury their own.
But that is the radical nature of the call of discipleship. The claim that Christ Jesus makes on you takes priority over not just the worst of human relationships, but also those that we would consider to be the best. Jesus doesn’t even allow the other man who simply wanted to go say farewell to his family to do that. How would you have done? Would you have been able to leave it all behind to follow Jesus? Your family, your friends, your occupation.
Jesus essentially says at the end of today’s gospel lesson, that anyone who looks back instead of always looking forward is not fit for the Kingdom of God. The call to follow Jesus is a call to prioritize our faithfulness to Jesus over anything and everything that might get in the way of that. We are called to place our discipleship to Jesus as more important than family, professional and social obligations, anything.
Truth be told, we all fail to make the cut. Jesus says that no one who looks back on the past is fit for the Kingdom of God. Well that’s us. We are not fit for the kingdom of God, and we show it when we dwell on mistakes of the past or hold grudges or when we look back with probably delusional fondness at "the good old days." We frequently place our desires for luxury and creature comforts over our call to discipleship and thus show that we are unfit for the kingdom of God.
But praise be to God, in the midst of all that was distracting the disciples and the would-be disciples, Jesus kept His focus. He continued forward without looking back. He kept His face set toward Jerusalem, and the cross, where He bore the penalty for your sin.
When Jesus tells you not to look to the past, He is not speaking merely of the events of your past but of who you once were. In the third chapter of Philippians Paul writes of how none of us should have any confidence in the works of the flesh. And he says that if anyone has any reason to be confident in works of the flesh, it’s him; Paul. Looking back on his days as a Pharisee, he describes himself as being a Hebrew of Hebrews and faultless when it came to legalistic righteousness.
But he now considers all of that loss for the sake of Christ Jesus. He considers every aspect of his past life of seeking righteousness through the law as rubbish when compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus his Lord for whom Paul has lost all things. He seeks a righteousness that comes not of his own which comes from the law, but an imputed righteousness that comes purely through faith in Christ.
See it’s not just a matter of being called to not look to the past events of your life, but it’s a matter of having been freed from bondage to the past of who you once were. The past is bondage and death in the law and the flesh, the present and the future is liberty and life in Christ.
As Paul writes in our second lesson for today, it is for freedom that Christ has set you free. Later this week we will celebrate Independence Day and the freedom that we have as Americans, but the freedom that Paul speaks of here is much different and much more meaningful. Martin Luther says of the freedom we have in Christ Jesus that it frees us not from earthly bondage or tyranny but from God’s everlasting wrath. Luther refers to this as inestimable liberty and says that in comparison to this, civil and carnal liberty are both like a drop of water compared to the whole sea.
Paul writes in our second lesson that we are called to use our freedom in Christ not as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another and that the law is summed up in a single commandment; love your neighbor as yourself.
When we go after our own self-indulgent desires then we are not truly living in the freedom that has been given to us in Christ but rather, in the words of Martin Luther, we become "bondslaves of the devil." But when we take the focus off of ourselves and put it on our neighbor, proclaiming to them the good news of Christ Jesus in word and deed, then we live by the Spirit, and the Spirit gives life.
And how do we know if we are living by the Spirit? Again, Luther makes it simple. When we cleave unto Christ we are led by the Spirit and free from the law. As you do battle with the flesh and the law, you find victory not in your own efforts, but only through faith in the promise of forgiveness and redemption in Christ Jesus. Clinging to that promise, the law can not terrify, or accuse you or drive you to desperation. You are freed from God’s wrath. You no longer need to look back. You have been freed to keep looking forward and toward your neighbor whom you are called to love as yourself and be about the business of proclaiming the Kingdom of God with.
Amen.

Sermon-Sunday-June 24, 2007

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
"What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” This is the question that Jesus is confronted with as He enters the town of Gerasene in today’s Gospel lesson. Jesus is approached by a man who had been taken captive by demons. These demons had taken such firm control of this man that it says that for a long time he wore no clothes and did not live in a house but in the tombs. It says that many times the demons had seized him, he was kept under guard and bound with shackles, and he would break the bonds and then the demon would drive him back into the wilds.
He had been so enslaved by these demons that he was no longer even seen as a man but as a demoniac. And when this man sees Jesus he is scared. The demoniac immediately begs Jesus not to torment him. Jesus commands the unclean spirit to come out of the man, and asks the unclean spirit his name. The Spirit says his name is Legion; for many demons had entered him. The word “legion” back then would have referred to a military unit consisting of 6000 soldiers. That’s a lot of voices to be contending with.
Jesus asks for the spirit’s name and the spirit immediately gives it to Jesus. It is believed that as soon as one can name an unclean spirit, they have power over them. Jesus doesn’t know the name initially but He simply demands the name and He receives it. Jesus immediately seizes control of the situation with His word. And the unclean spirit and all its demons are subdued, and the formerly demon-possessed man is brought back into his right mind.
And so now hear you sit, with all your demons that you wrestle with. Here you sit with all your doubts and jealousy and pride and envy and lust, and whatever other slings and arrows the devil might be throwing at you. Here you sit bound by your own unclean spirit with your own demons. Here you sit once again with Jesus coming toward you in His Word and all you can do is ask the question "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?”
All the while, the devil whispers in your ear, “He didn’t come for you.” “Not, you with all your petty insecurities and weakness and pride.” “Not with your repeated failures to love your neighbor as yourself.” And so you push Jesus away, and you say “Don’t torment me Jesus, not today I am not in the mood. I have work to do.”
Or maybe you’re like the townspeople, who also wanted nothing to do with Jesus even after seeing what He had done for the man who had been so enslaved by these demons. When they find the man clothed and in his right mind sitting at the foot of Jesus, do they praise God that this man had been rescued from these demons? No, they are afraid.
Jesus had come and He had upset the apple-cart of their lives. They were under the delusion that they were doing a fine job of keeping the demons at bay. They thought that they were the ones that had been able to keep this demon-possessed man away from them and in the tombs and the wild. They really had no interest in helping this man, they just wanted to keep him, with all his demons, away.
But now Jesus bursts upon the scene with the unthwartable power of His Word and He subdues the unclean spirit by demanding the spirit’s name and then simply gives the demons what they want by releasing them into the swine which were sitting nearby who proceeded to simply jump off the bank and into the lake where they drown.
And again, upon seeing this, the townspeople were not filled with great joy, they were scared, and they pushed Jesus away. But even still after all that, when Jesus would have been perfectly justified in leaving them in their delusions of grandeur, He does not leave them on their own.
It might appear as if He does, because He gets in the boat and leaves. But it was no matter, because He had left them with His Word as it would be proclaimed to them by this formerly demon-possessed man, who wanted to leave with Jesus. And who could blame him. After all that time, after all that that these people had put him through, now Jesus tells him to go back home and declare what God had done for him, to them. But it seems that he doesn’t really put up much resistance. He went throughout the city proclaiming what Jesus had done for him.
What the townspeople didn’t realize though, when they pushed Jesus away, was that Jesus had already made His claim on them just as He had made His claim on the formerly-possessed man. He had made His claim on them and now He would continue to come to them through this man’s testimony and proclamation. They had pushed Jesus away and He came back by sending them a disciple who would be a living, breathing testimony of both God’s grace, and their need for God’s grace.
What these people didn’t realize was that the more you push Jesus away the more surely and clearly He comes back to you. The more we try to get rid of Him the more He comes after us with His abundant and ever-flowing grace.
We tried to push Him away, we pushed Him all the way to the cross, we killed Him and then put Him in the tomb and sealed the tomb and then He came back three days later, having defeated sin, death, and the devil, and now we can’t ever get rid of Him.
But then as if that wasn’t enough He sends another one a comforter, an advocate and He promises that He will never leave us. You try to push Jesus away by placing yourself right back into bondage under the law. You push Jesus away by convincing yourself that you must play your part in your own redemption. You push Him away and He continues to keep coming back to you.
He comes back to you in His Word, and in the sacraments and in each other and reminds you that He has claimed you and there is nothing you can do about it. In our second lesson Paul writes that before Christ came the law served as our disciplinarian so that we might be justified by faith.
Well faith has arrived in Christ Jesus. Faith has arrived and you have been freed and you are no longer subject to a disciplinarian in the law. You are no longer subject to the devil or your own delusions of grandeur What has Jesus to do with you?? In baptism you have been clothed with Christ, you have been placed among Abraham’s offspring, an heir according to the promise. In baptism Jesus comes to free you from the legion of demons that the devil brings out to attack you.
And now the demons attack and all they see is Christ whom you have been clothed in. What is left for you, but to trust in the promise of Christ Jesus, to trust that the demons have been banished, to trust that you have been made an heir according to the promise, and to now go out and declare what Jesus has done for you. Tell your neighbor of the claim that Christ Jesus had made on them through you.
Amen