The Seventh Sign

Jesu Juva

St. John 11:1-45                                                              

March 26, 2023

Lent 5A                                   

Dear saints of our Savior~

          In the Gospel according to St. John, Jesus performs seven “signs,” seven miracles.  After that, there are no more signs, save one—His own death and resurrection.  There’s something of a progression to these seven “signs.”  There’s a build-up here to something big.  His first sign was changing water into wine at a wedding in Cana.  Then He healed the official’s son at Capernaum with just a word.  He healed a lame man at the pool of Bethesda.  He multiplied bread and fish for five thousand in the wilderness.  He walked on the water at night to meet His disciples.  He healed the eyes of a man born blind with spit, mud, and water.  And in today’s Holy Gospel He raises His good friend Lazarus from the dead—the seventh sign.  After this, well, it’s on to Jerusalem and His own death and resurrection.

          It doesn’t take a theology degree to see that this seventh sign is different from all the others.  First of all, this involved Jesus’ best friends—Mary, Martha, and their brother Lazarus.  They lived in Bethany, outside Jerusalem.  Martha was the one who was busy cooking while Mary sat at Jesus’ feet listening.  And so it came to pass that Lazarus became ill.  The sisters sent word to Jesus, who was some distance away:  Lord, he whom you love is ill.

          You would think that Jesus would jump at the chance to come to the aid of His friend.  We’d expect that.  He’d done so much for so many He didn’t even know personally.  He fed five thousand strangers in the wilderness, for crying out loud.  You’d expect Jesus to make a beeline to Bethany to the bedside of His dear friend, Lazarus.  But Jesus didn’t do that.  He waited two extra days.  He let His best friend die.  And that death would become an object lesson:   It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.

          Remember this when you feel that the Lord is slow to respond—or when your prayers seem to go unanswered—when Jesus doesn’t seem to care about your sickness or your suffering.  Remember Lazarus.  Jesus knew what He was going to do.  He said, “This illness does not lead to death.”  But He let Lazarus die anyway so that He could go and “wake him up.”  This is how Jesus treats His friends.

          That might make us a bit uneasy; but it should greatly comfort us that, for Jesus, death is merely a sleep from which He awakens us.  To our reason and senses, death is the last word, the final exit, the grand finale.  It’s over.  Curtains.  You’re done for.  Pushing up daisies.  Dead and gone.  But Jesus says, “Lazarus is asleep, and I’m going to wake him up.”  Jesus lets Lazarus die.  No big deal.  He even says that He’s glad about it:  Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I’m glad that I wasn’t there, so that you may believe.

          Mary and Martha were definitely NOT glad that Jesus wasn’t there.  In fact, they were angry.  When Jesus finally arrives four days later, the sisters aren’t terribly happy with Jesus.  Martha met the Lord and said sadly:  If only you’d have come when we called you, our brother would not have died.  Why didn’t Jesus do anything?

          By now Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days.  He was, according to the terms of his day, really dead—dead as a doornail (as Dickens would say).  In fact there was concern when Jesus wanted to the stone rolled away.  Decay and decomposition would have set in.  Even the old King James translation can’t soft-pedal the pungent reality:  “He stinketh,” Martha was quick to point out.

          Mary and Martha were upset with Jesus, and we would have been too.  It’s the age old question:  Why does God allow suffering, evil, and death?  He has the power to do something about it.  He’s merciful, gracious, forgiving, loving.  Why does Lazarus die while a blind man sees?  Why does Lazarus die when a wedding at Cana gets wine overflowing?  Don’t ask “why.”  There’s no answer to that.  It’s so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.  That’s all you get.

          “Your brother will rise again,” Jesus tells Martha. Jesus meant on that day; but Martha thought He was speaking about the last day. “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Martha knows because she’s been paying attention. She’s learned her lessons well. But the question is not what she knows, but what she believes—who she believes.  Jesus then strums the chord of faith: “I AM the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.  Do you believe this,” Jesus asks?

          That’s the question. Do you believe this? Do you believe this in the face of your own, inevitable death? Do you believe this when the doctor says you have six months to live, when you see your friends dying left and right, when the world seems to be filled with nothing but death and despair? Do you believe that Jesus is the resurrection and Jesus is the life and that to live and believe in Him is to have life now and forever? You can know a lot of things. You can even know that the dead will rise on the last day. But that’s not the point. The point is not about the dead, but about the living Christ. He is the antidote to Death. He is the One who died and rose to conquer death. He is the resurrection and the life.  Do you believe this?

          Martha believes. Yes, Lord. I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world. That is the great confession—the confession of Peter and the woman at the well and Thomas and all who believe in Jesus as Lord and God and Christ.

          But back at the tomb, everyone was weeping; and Jesus wept too. It’s not clear whether He was weeping with them or weeping because of them—weeping over the unbelief of His friends.  It troubled Him in spirit and drove Him to tears. Our unbelief drives Him to tears as well. Our incessant demand for miracles, our constant questioning of His goodness, our attempts to twist His arm to do our will—it’s enough to drive even God to tears of grief. How many divine tears have you triggered with your own shallow, superficial faith?

          He weeps over us, and He weeps with us. His tears are humanity’s tears, the collected grief of humanity held captive to Sin and Death. It strikes at the very heart of the Son of God. He is the Man of Sorrows, acquainted with our suffering and grief. But His mourning turns our sorrow to gladness. He wipes away our tears by His weeping. He absorbs our grief into Himself and takes it all to the cross where all is answered with the words, “It is finished.”

          Jesus goes to the tomb of His friend. He cannot do otherwise. He asks

them to roll the stone away. He prays to His Father. He cries out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” And the dead man did what dead men do when they hear the Word of the Lord. He orders Lazarus unbound and to let him go. We never hear anything about Lazarus after that. I’d be kind of curious to know what he said. We do know that the religious officials began plotting to kill Lazarus, as well as Jesus, because people were following Jesus in droves because of this seventh sign. That’s what happens when Jesus raises you from the dead. The world wants to kill you. Remember that.

          So where does this leave all of us here today? We’ve all been Mary and Martha and will be again. We’ve buried loved ones, some of whom became sick and, even after many prayers, they still died. And we’re left wondering why. We’ve heard those words countless times, “I am the resurrection and the life,” and we believe in a Martha way. We know they’ll rise on the last day in the resurrection. And there is comfort in that. But if we only hear the fulfillment of those words in the far-off future tense, we miss the point. Jesus is the resurrection and the life—not only in the future but in the present. He is resurrection and life now. To live in Him and believe in Him, to be baptized into His death and life, is to have eternal life now, so that you live in spite of your death, and living and believing in Jesus, you will live forever.

          We will all be Lazarus one day too. Some sickness, some accident, some blood clot is going to get us. And God won’t stop it. He’ll just say, “Let her sleep. I’ll wake her up.” That’s how Jesus treats humanity’s greatest enemy, Death. It’s a sleep from which He will wake us up as surely as He Himself is risen from the dead.

          But here’s the bottom line.  Your descent into the valley of the shadow of death is a journey you do not make alone.  Jesus has been there before you.  He knows the way right through that dark and scary place. He has conquered, and in Him you too will conquer. And so there is nothing, in life or in death, that can separate us from the love of God in Christ. You don’t need a miracle, or a sign. You don’t need a miraculous healing of whatever ails you. You already have healing, forgiveness, life, and salvation in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

          Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life, and in Him, baptized and believing in Him, you, like Lazarus, have life, now and forever. And now—now you are nearly ready for palms and passion and hosannas. The time of signs and miracles is over. The hour of dying and rising is almost here.

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

 

Was Blind but Now I See

Jesu Juva

John 9                                                                            

 March 19, 2023

Lent 4A                                                 

 Dear saints of our Savior~

          There was a man blind from birth . . . and Jesus healed him; 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 perhaps 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.  Crime, 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—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.” Go figure. This man’s blindness would become a canvas on which the glory of Jesus would be painted in dazzling colors as the light of the world.  It turns out that our sickness, suffering, and pain—those are the places where the Savior displays 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—faith asks: 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 clay.  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.  Jesus makes him even blinder, in a sense.  But remember, this is Jesus-mud—Messiah mud—the clay of the Christ.  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 with water in the pool of Siloam.  So he went, and washed, and came back seeing.  (Baptism, anyone?)

          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 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.  The Pharisees had come up with 32 different kinds of work that were forbidden on the Sabbath, including the kneading of clay, lest some pottery accidentally be created.

          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.

          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, and 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 well, we’re more than willing to tout the smart strategies we’ve successfully employed.  And when things aren’t going well, 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—that our lives are a canvass on which the lively colors of the Christ will shine forever.  But 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 are 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, and hearing by the Word of Christ.  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 “worshipped” Jesus.  And what do you think that worship looked like?  Did he stand there casually chatting?  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.

The Lord of Living Water

 

Jesu Juva

St. John 4:5-26                                                                

March 12, 2023

Lent 3A                                   

 Dear saints of our Savior~

          She had three strikes against her.  First, (and most obviously) she was a woman; and according to the rules of Jesus’ day, men didn’t talk with women in public.  Second, she was a Samaritan; and according to the rules of Jesus’ day, Jews had no dealings with Samaritans.  And third, she was a five-time loser in the game of love and marriage, now living with number six who was not her husband; and according to the rules of Jesus’ day, no one would want anything to do with a woman like that.  No one, that is, except Jesus.

          Welcome to Jacob’s well, just outside the village of Sychar.  It’s high noon—the sixth hour.  Jesus is hot, tired, and thirsty.  The disciples had gone into town to buy some food.  The only one there with Jesus is a single, solitary, Samaritan woman.  “Give me a drink,” Jesus tells her—orders her, rather rudely, actually.  And thus begins another conversation with the Christ—another round of verbal chess, as Jesus leads this woman out of darkness and into His marvelous light.

          By the way, before I forget to mention it, Jesus never does get His drink of water.  Did you notice that?  In all the twists and turns of His conversation with the woman at the well, it’s easy to lose sight of what started it all.  Jesus was thirsty.  He asks for a drink.  It wasn’t a lot to ask from the lady.  Yet even at the end of the account, Jesus is still parched.  The Savior’s whistle is still not wet.  But that’s okay because Jesus is always more interested in giving than receiving.

          And what Jesus gives here is simply Himself.  “I know that Messiah is coming,” she says, “and when He comes, He will tell us all things.”  Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you, am he.”  Or, in other words:  “I’m the Messiah.”  Jesus never does that in the New Testament—never just gives away His true identity.  Yet, here, He spills all the beans on Himself with a Samaritan woman with a shady past and dozens of skeletons in her closet.  He hides Himself—cloaks Himself in secrecy—from the religious elite in Jerusalem; but He reveals Himself to a Samaritan woman at a well.  Well, well, well.

          It’s hard not to get distracted by all the subtle details of this account and go down some rabbit holes that lead nowhere:  Jewish/Samaritan relations, the role of men and women in society, marriage/divorce/cohabitation (was she divorced or widowed or both?), religion and the proper place and way to worship.  Those are all interesting topics; but they pull us away from the focal point of this account—which is water, or living water, and the Giver of living water, Jesus Himself.

          John’s Gospel is a very wet gospel.  In chapter one we have Jesus and John the Baptist on the banks of the Jordan River.  In chapter two Jesus changes water into wine at Cana. In chapter three Jesus discusses “water and the spirit” with Nicodemus—and, now in chapter four, Jacob’s well and a request for water from a sassy Samaritan woman. 

          This conversation boils down to the contrast between Jacob’s water and Jesus’ water—the water one gets from Jacob’s well and the water that comes from Jesus.  Well water and living water.  Water that doesn’t quench your thirst forever and water that does.  Water you work for versus water that works for you.  And if you’re starting to sense a slight baptismal undertow in all this water-talk, then you are on the right track.

          Jacob’s water is well water.  You work for it.  You earn it.  Well water is like the Law of God.  The work for this water is never done.  Every day you lug your empty vessel (or possibly two vessels balanced across your shoulders), you walk across the field that Jacob gave to Joseph, lower your vessels into the well, then draw them up and start the long trek back home—this time hauling perhaps thirty or forty extra pounds of water—all so that your family can cook and clean.  Really makes you appreciate tap water, doesn’t it?

          It’s hard work—thirsty work.  By the time you make it home, you need a drink of water and, perhaps that evening or certainly the next morning, you have to do it all over again.  There’s no end to the work or the thirst.  And so it is with the law of God.  It’s all work and it never ends.  It promises life but never quite delivers it.  It quenches your spiritual thirst for a while; but your thirst for righteousness returns the moment you realize how great a sinner you are even in your best moments.  You can work and work at commandment-keeping, but there’s always more to do—and you never do it very well.  Those commandments run deeper than Jacob’s well—death deep—going right the sinful heart from which flow all sorts of evil, sinful desires.

          The thirst for righteousness—the quest for holiness—is a thirst the Law cannot quite quench.  Commandment-keeping leaves you parched and dry.  Well water alone can’t slake that thirst.  You need living water—water that flows to you freely—water gushing and gurgling with grace.  Not the water of Jacob and Moses; but the water of Jesus.  Jesus gives a water that quenches the eternal thirst for righteousness.  It’s not a water you work for; but a water of grace that wells up in you to a spring of eternal life.

          In the wilderness there was no well and the Israelites were thirsty.  They were dying of thirst.  And God instructed Moses to strike a rock, and from that rock came fresh spring water for the Israelites to drink.  And that rock was Christ—it was Jesus—Paul says in 1 Corinthians.  Stricken rock with streaming side.  Rock of Ages cleft for me.  Jesus needs no bucket because He Himself is the source—the wellspring.  From His wounded side flows the stream of living water that quenches our thirst for righteousness and holiness and forgiveness.  It isn’t water you work for, but water that flows from Jesus’ wounded side to the font of your baptism.

          You and I are a lot like that Samaritan woman.  We are born outcasts—outsiders to the kingdom of God.  We are sinners to the core, rebels against God’s authority.  What we need first is the Law.  And in today’s text Jesus initially comes with the Law.  He tells the woman:  Give me a drink.  Sounds kind of harsh and demanding.  And then He holds up the mirror of the Law which reflects back to us just how broken and flawed we are:  You’ve had five husbands and the one you’re currently living with is not your husband.  Ouch!  He reflects that truth back into our faces and, frankly, it’s a truth we can’t handle.  It’s embarrassing to be with someone who knows you that well, that deeply—who can expose the wounds of your sin-stained soul.

          But Jesus—He doesn’t come to shame you or condemn you.  He doesn’t come to rub your nose in your past.  He wants to redeem your past, present, and future.  He wants to cover you with His righteousness and holiness.  He wants to rescue you from the riptide of sin and death that threatens to pull you out into a sea of darkness and misery.  He wants to rescue you from yourself and give you a whole new life that you could never achieve on your own.

          Through all the twists and turns of this wet conversation, Jesus drew the Samaritan woman to Himself.  He wants her to see Him.  He wants her to know that she wasn’t defined by her commandment-breaking, nor by her commandment-keeping.  She wasn’t defined by her nationality or by her pedigree.  She wasn’t defined by her sex or by her ethnicity.  Her life was now in the hands of Jesus.  The Messiah had come calling for her.

          The Messiah has come calling for you too.  He bled and died for you to rid your closets of all the skeletons you could never get rid of on your own.  He is the Christ—the Messiah.  And this morning He is speaking to you—in the words of absolution, in the words of this sermon.  He speaks through the living water of your baptism and in His holy Supper.  There He makes it clear that you are His.

          So don’t define yourself by your past, by your actions, by your ethnic origins, by your race or your sex or your politics—or by any of those divisive labels which our culture thinks are the most important things of all.  You belong to Jesus.  In Him you will live forever.

          Jesus never did get His drink of water.  But that’s how it goes for the Savior of sinners.  Jesus knows what it means to thirst.  Hanging from the cross, Jesus would say it for all to hear:  I thirst.  On that day the Man who brought living water to the world was dehydrating on Calvary’s cross.  He suffered thirst so that you might be hydrated with His healing—cleansed and washed from all the wounds of your sins.  Jesus never got His drink; but today you can drink deeply of His forgiveness and enjoy the sacred splash of living water.

Come to Calvary’s holy mountain,

Sinners ruined by the fall;

Here a pure and healing fountain

Flows for you, for me, for all,

In a full, perpetual tide,

Opened when our Savior died.

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