Eyes to See the Savior

In Nomine Iesu
John 9
March 26, 2017
Lent 4A

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus~

There was a man blind from birth . . . and Jesus healed him. Jesus restored his sight, and that man was brought to faith in Jesus. “Lord, I believe,” he said. The healing of the blind is one of those miracles that the Messiah was supposed to be doing.

The Old Testament prophecies often declared that the blind receiving sight would be a surefire sign of the coming Messiah. And there’s probably no other miracle that Jesus performed more often, more regularly, than healing the blind. Perhaps seven times or more. But in John chapter 9 we have what is undoubtedly the longest, most detailed account of a blind man being healed.

The man had always been blind—blind from birth. And in the religious world of the first century, such a terrible disability was always believed to be the result of sin. “Who sinned,” the disciples wanted to know, “this man or his parents?” Religion for them was a matter of cause and effect. Bad things (like blindness) must happen to bad people. Sin now; pay later. Sin today; expect the worst tomorrow. Crime, and then punishment. There had to be a reason for this man’s blindness. Someone must’ve sinned big-time, right?

Even we enlightened, baptized children of God think that way sometimes. When tragedy strikes—when disability is diagnosed—when chronic pain becomes intense—when the condition has no cure—what’s the inevitable question? What did I do to deserve this? And even if that question isn’t being asked, it’s usually because we know perfectly well all that we have done to deserve the payback we’re now receiving. Either way, this attitude is one of the devil’s most effective tools. If he can lead you to self-pity or to self-justification, the end result is the same. You’re stuck seeing yourself, instead of seeing the Savior. Your eyes are on you—not on Jesus. And there’s no salvation when your sights are squarely set on the self.

Jesus quickly demolishes all our ideas about a religion of quid pro quos—of this, then that—of cause and effect. “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents,” Jesus said, “but so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” Sickness, suffering, and pain are the places where the Savior does some of His very best work. Jesus’ power is made perfect in our weakness. Do you believe that? By nature, we don’t. When tragedy strikes—when disabilities weigh heavily on our hearts—we always ask the wrong question: Why? The better question is this: Where? Where is Jesus as the darkness closes in? Where is my Savior in the midst of my suffering? That’s the question to ask. That’s the question Jesus wants to answer.


The blind man couldn’t see Jesus, of course; but Jesus “saw” him. The Savior’s eyes are always turned toward those who are lost and lowly, fearful and faithless. Jesus goes right to the blind man. And before even speaking one word to him, Jesus spits on the ground and makes a messy batch of mud. And Jesus applies this messy mud to the blind man’s eyes. It makes no sense, humanly speaking. The man can’t see and now he’s got mud in his eyes. But remember, this is Jesus-mud—Messiah mud—God-man mud. The same God who created man from mud in the beginning, He now applies a little bit of mud to fix what’s broken in this one man. Jesus then sends him off to wash in the pool of Siloam. So he went, and washed, and came back seeing.

But even while this one poor man was miraculously receiving the gift of sight and the blessing of vision, there was another group of men going blind. The Pharisees were ever more tightly shutting their eyes. They turned a blind eye to the plain evidence right in front of their faces. Dozens of people could testify to the truth that the man who had always been blind as a bat was now seeing everything with 20/20 clarity—without so much as contact lenses, lasik surgery, or a pair of cheaters from the end of the aisle at CVS. The whole episode spelled out in flashing neon letters: Jesus is the Messiah. But the Pharisees shut their eyes to all of that. What they saw—the thing that caught their eyes—was that Jesus had broken a rule. Jesus made mud on the Sabbath day—a day when no work (not even mud-making) was allowed.

These men were experts in the Law of God. They were zealous for the Law of God. And let’s be clear: The Law of God—as summarized in the Ten Commandments—is good and holy. But, the Law cannot make you good and holy. It doesn’t have that power. It has the power to instruct us, to curb our sin, to mirror our sin back to us, and to guide us. But it doesn’t have the power to make a sinner holy. It can’t make a bad tree bear good fruit. Only Jesus can do that. Only the Savior can change you and make you good and holy. Only He can make saints out of sinners by washing them and healing them, in the power of His death and resurrection. But those poor Pharisees, they couldn’t see it. Or, rather, they refused to see the wonderful good news that Christ Jesus came into the world—not to add more chapters to the rule book—but to save sinners.

Is that how you see yourself? By nature, we are just like that man born blind. We have sinned. Our parents have sinned. Their parents have sinned, all the way back to our first parents where the business of sin began. Sin is a hereditary condition. We are born spiritually blind, steeped in sin. It takes Jesus—it takes His anointing—to heal our blindness. Not an anointing with mud . . . but with blood, with the water and the word of holy baptism. In that cleansing splash Jesus gives forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation. There in that washing the sacrificial death of God’s own Son is applied to you. His sinless and holy life, applied to you. His Sonship, yours.

The blindness that plagues us isn’t so much the lack of vision, but the lack of faith. In our blindness we are blind to God. We live most days as if He didn’t exist or matter. When things are going good, we’re more than willing to tout the smart strategies we’ve successfully employed. And when things aren’t going good, we see our sufferings as punishment. What have I done to deserve this? We don’t fear God, or love Him, or trust that His grace is sufficient—that His power is made perfect in our weakness—that He wants to display His mighty works in our lowly lives. By nature, we just don’t see it.

But something happened to you as you groped around in the darkness—Jesus reached out and grabbed you. He anointed you with the Holy Spirit in Baptism. Jesus reached out and gave you eyes to see Him, ears to hear Him, faith to receive His gifts with thanksgiving. You are just as much a “miracle” as the man healed in today’s text. The muddy fingerprints of Jesus can be found all over you. Jesus saw you and saved you. Not because you did your part. Not because you’re such a great rule-keeper. No, you were lost and Jesus found you. You were blind, but now you see. In the watery, wet Word of baptism the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, the poor hear good news, the dead are raised, sinners are justified for Jesus’s sake. In the watery, wet Word of baptism you were called out of darkness into the marvelous light of Christ. In His light, you see light.

It’s an interesting fact that once the blind man went and washed off the mud and began to see, Jesus was nowhere to be found. He had never laid his fully-functioning eyes on Jesus. Only after the man gets excommunicated from the synagogue does Jesus go and seek Him out a second time. Jesus asks him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Notice he doesn’t believe yet. Seeing—even seeing Jesus—is not the same thing as believing. He can see Jesus just fine with his newly-healed eyes, but he doesn’t yet believe. So Jesus speaks, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.” The Word is what makes faith. Faith comes by hearing. Not by seeing, not by miracles. By hearing. The Word of Christ is what creates and sustains faith. It’s why you’re here today.

Then, and only then, the man says to Jesus, “Lord, I believe.” And then, St. John records that the man “worshiped” Jesus. And what do you think that worship looked like? What does it look like when the blind are able to see that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God? Did he stand there casually praying, praising and giving thanks? No, he knelt—he knelt down low. The word for “worship” in the gospels almost always means that bodies are moving, that knees are bending, reflecting the reality of heaven—where every knee shall bow and every tongue confess (and every eye behold) that Jesus Christ is Lord. By His death He destroyed the power of death. And by His resurrection He has opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers. One day you will see it all with new and resurrected eyes, and the sight will be glorious. But for now you hear, and you believe.

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

Tempted for Us

In Nomine Iesu
Matthew 4:1-11
March 5, 2017
Lent 1A

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus~

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. That’s how this morning’s holy gospel begins. But it’s important to know what had happened just prior to that. Before the wilderness, before the temptations,

before going toe-to-toe with the devil—Jesus was baptized. Jesus was still dripping wet with Jordan River water when He was ushered immediately into the wilderness. First Jesus was baptized; and then Jesus was attacked.

You—the baptized—should learn from that. Your baptism is the most important event of your earthly life. There in water and the Word you were born again. There at the font your sins were forgiven. You were rescued from death and the devil. You became an heir of everlasting life. But among all the momentous and glorious ways you were blessed and changed by your baptism, one word of warning should be added. Your baptism—and the faith it brings—serve to make you a target—a target for temptation. The devil has you in his crosshairs. His goal is not merely to get you to break a few of God’s commandments. His goal is the destruction of everything good, especially your faith in Jesus Christ. So today—the first Sunday in Lent—we would do well to listen and learn from Jesus about temptation. He was tempted in every way, just as we are, yet without sin (Heb. 4:15).

In the wilderness Jesus was alone and isolated—and hungry from a forty-day fast. He is now a prime target for the devil. The devil, like any good predator, looks to attack the solitary, isolated, weakened sheep. He found a way to corner Eve in the garden. He seeks to isolate every baptized believer—at home, alone, away from other Christians, away from the church, separated from the Word of God and the Holy Supper.

This is why Luther never counseled troubled Christians to seek solitude. Solitude and silence were viewed as great spiritual achievements in Luther’s day—especially in convents and monasteries. But solitude was not a spiritual solution for Luther. He knew from his own experience how the devil seeks out the believer in isolation from other believers. Luther’s deepest doubts and anxieties swirled around him when he was alone and separated from others. That’s why his counsel was always to seek out the company of other lively Christians—to tell few jokes over a stein of good beer. Gemütlichkeit and fellowship are good for the soul and helpful for battling temptation.

So it is that the devil begins his assault against Jesus while the Lord is alone and weak and deliriously hungry. Not surprisingly, first temptation concerns the appetite. If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread. There were likely lots of stones there in the Judean wilderness. Turning them all into bread might have been like a trip to Breadsmiths on Silver Spring.

When it comes to hunger, there’s some little spot inside our brains that controls all our appetites. There’s a pleasure center deep within the gray matter that causes us to crave. Unfortunately, that pleasure center, like the rest of us, is corrupted by sin. It can turn our appetites—life’s little pleasures—into big addictions and idolatries. A trip to the casino for fun turns into an insatiable desire to wager larger and larger sums of money for the thrilling chance of winning more. A quick click through a few porn sites becomes a necessity—a gateway into darkness—an escapade into adultery—a despising of God’s gift of marriage. There’s the happy buzz of alcohol—the drug-induced high that leaves us feeling low and always needing more. Appetites become idols. They can dominate us. They can rule over us. They can ruin us. Yet how we hate to deny our appetites. Fasting? That’s a foreign concept for most of us.

Not so with Jesus. The Son of Man came not to be served—not to serve Himself—not to tend to His own appetite—but to serve you and give His life as a ransom for many. He came to deny Himself and take up His cross for every addicted, idolatrous sinner. Jesus subjects Himself to virtual starvation in the wilderness. But by His hunger, you are filled. As your sacred substitute, Jesus speaks the Word in your defense: Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Jesus turns back temptation number one. One small step for the God-man; one giant leap for mankind.

Temptation number two quickly followed: If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. And then, just to sweeten the deal, the devil quotes from the Bible. He knows the Bible better than any of us. He quotes a carefully selected snippet from Psalm 91: He will command his angels concerning you . . . they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. The devil is tempting Jesus to test God—to test His Word and promises. Is God true to His promises? Will God really do what He says? Let’s put Him to the test and find out. So take a flying leap, Jesus, and let’s see if the angels catch you!

But God’s Word can’t be tested and proved. That’s not the way of faith. God gives His Word and His promises; and all we can do is believe them. You can’t prove that God created the heavens and the earth in six days; you can only believe it. You can’t prove that you are a child of God; you can only believe it through the power of your baptism. You can’t prove the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. You can only believe it. You must simply take God at His Word. Don’t test it. Don’t twist it. Trust it. You shall not put the Lord your God to the test, says Jesus. One small step for the God-man; one giant leap for mankind.

But the devil doesn’t surrender. He takes Jesus to a mountaintop to show Him all the kingdoms of this world and their glory. This is the big prize—the big enchilada. This is what we all aspire to: power, riches, and glory. It can all be yours, Jesus. Never mind that messy business of the cross. You can have it all now—already today. Just worship me. It’s the temptation of idolatry. As bread is to the empty stomach, so are wealth and power to the empty soul. They promise everything: long life, peace, happiness, contentment, comfort. We’re willing to sacrifice most anything for power, wealth, or glory. Not only our lives, but the lives of others too. Even the unborn are sacrificed to wealth, power, and convenience. We will gladly bow down and worship whoever promises us the power and glory that we crave. But how reluctant we are to bend our knees and bow down to worship the one Man who willingly emptied Himself and made Himself nothing, so that He might give you everything.

There would be only one route by which Jesus would take His rightful place on the throne as king of kings and Lord of Lords. There would be only one very narrow way by which Jesus would indeed rule over all the kingdoms of this world. It would happen only as He would hang as a corpse on a cross—cursed and forsaken by God the Father—bearing the filth of your sin. Only by dying and rising would Jesus come to be in charge and in control, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow—in heaven, on earth, and under the earth—and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus refuses the devil’s deal for your sake. His worship is pure; and His purity is yours through faith. He refuses to fall down and worship anyone other than His Father. He refuses to be “superman,” but instead becomes the Man of Sorrows—the broken, bleeding, dying man who rules heaven and earth by crucifixion and resurrection. And all of it for you and for your salvation. One small step for the God-man; one giant leap for mankind.

As bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, Jesus conquered the devil. And in Jesus—through faith in Jesus—you conquer too. When it comes to the temptation of Jesus, you’re not a fan in the stands cheering as Jesus pounds the opposition. No, you, the baptized, you are in Christ. In Jesus, we ALL go toe-to-toe with the heavyweight champion of hell. When Jesus steps into the ring with the tempter in front of Him, you step in with Jesus. What you cannot do, Christ has done for you. Just as by Adam’s sin we all became dying sinners; so in the perfect obedience of the Second Adam you have become a holy and righteous child of God. Satan will not have the last word where you are concerned. And don’t you be tempted to think otherwise.

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