Trinity
21 – October 15th and 16th, 2016 – John
4:46-54
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit +
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit +
We
don’t get the fullness of who Christ is and what He does. Our old
sinful flesh just has a hard time comprehending this. But thankfully
our lack doesn’t undercut Jesus. This is what we see in our text
today. “So [Jesus] came again to Cana in
Galilee, where He had made the water wine. And at Capernaum there
was an official whose son was ill. When this man heard that Jesus
had come from Judea to Galilee, he went down to Him and asked Him to
come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.”
Jesus had been wandering around, He’s been in Jerusalem, Samaria,
but now He’s back in Galilee. So this official from Capernaum
hears that Jesus is back in the area, and he goes to Jesus and begs
Him to come to his house and heal his son. Seems pretty good so far,
doesn’t it? Except Jesus’ reply is sort of curt to this man. So
Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not
believe.” Well, why would Jesus say
that to this fellow? He obviously believes. . . I mean, he came to
Jesus to ask for healing, he wants Jesus to come. Why would Jesus
say that unless there are signs there won’t be belief?
Here
is why. This fellow understands that Jesus is holy, that He has
power – but he doesn’t get it. What does this official ask
Jesus? Come, come and heal my son. I want to see you lay hands on
him, I want to hear you cry out with a loud voice, I want You to heal
him thusly. He’s still thinking of Jesus like He's some mere
wonder worker. The thing is… does Jesus need to walk up to this
boy to heal him? Nope. But the man is insistent – “The
official said to him, ‘Sir, come down before my child dies.’”
We are wasting time with talking Jesus, when we should be walking.
Let’s get a move on it, before my kid dies. Snap to it! What this
fellow completely overlooks is that Jesus doesn’t need to go with
him to heal the kid, Jesus can heal him right there. The guy doesn’t
fully understand just how powerful Christ is, and so he tries to boss
Jesus around. I hate to sound so critical of this guy, but while
there is good, while it’s good that he knows to go to Jesus –
he’s trying to micromanage Jesus, he’s selling Jesus short, and
we need to be critical of things like this, we need to be wary of
this sort of attitude, especially in ourselves.
One of
the dangers in modern America is a tendency to almost quietly sell
Jesus short, to undercut His power, and substitute our own. To think
that He can’t do things that He says He does. We had an infant
baptism here today/yesterday – yet many would deride this – it's
no good unless they decide for themselves – oh, so God can't bring
life and salvation unless I act? Kind of makes God out to be sort of
powerless. Or there are those who deny that Christ's Body in Blood
is really present in the Supper. “He's up in heaven, He can't be
down here on the altar!” Or maybe we could stop telling the Word
of God that He can't do what He says, hmmm? Or even think about
what we hear about prayer. Oh, if you just say this prayer the right
way God’s gonna give you all blessings that you desire. Am I in
charge of God? Do I get to tell God, “You must bless me and in
this way”? Do you see how over and over sinful man wants to tell
God how to do His job, what He can and can't do? And this is where
the man in our lesson errs. Please heal my son – great. You need
to come down and heal him in this way – not so great.
“Jesus
said to him, ‘Go, your son will live.’ The man believed the word
that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way.”
Now, I will praise this man. Jesus doesn’t give the man precisely
what he asked, what he demanded. Jesus doesn’t go to Capernaum.
He does something better. Jesus speaks a word of life. Go, your son
will live. And hearing, the man believes – the man gets it. If
Jesus says something, it’s going to be, it will be true. And so in
faith, he heads home. His plans of dragging Jesus along with him are
dashed – but as he walks home, he goes trusting in Christ Jesus and
His Word. And that trust proves true – the servants come running
to meet him – Your son lives. And what do you know – the son is
healed at the very hour when Jesus said, “Go, your son will live.”
“This was now the second sign that Jesus
did when He had come from Judea to Galilee.”
The proof is in the pudding, as they say. Who is this Jesus –
well, let’s see, He speaks, and then there is life. Hmm, can we
think of Someone who speaks, and then there is life, say life
springing up from the ground? This is a God thing that Jesus does –
this shows that He is God, that He is the Word of God by Whom all
things were made. This is what Jesus does – He restores life. If
you want to know who Jesus is, He is the God who gives life, and He
gives it by His Word. What Jesus says, is. And this truth is
revealed, is shown to us by this miracle – it is the proof of who
Jesus is, it is His credentials. This Man Jesus is God come down to
save us.
Now,
what do we learn and take from this? Consider your own life, what
you see. How many of you see your bodies not working like they used
to? How many of you see signs of age and wear when you look in the
mirror? Oh, as a society we try to hide that today, don’t we? But
it’s there. Or how many of you, when you look at your lives see
things broken – broken friendships, broken families, broken people,
even yourself broken – just all those things that wear you down.
Some of these tails of woe I know, some I don’t. You know some of
mine, some you don’t. We all have them. We are sinful people
living in a sinful world – nasty horrible stuff happens and we all
get older and things start wearing down and dreams and plans don’t
work out right. This is reality. How do we respond?
The
world gives us a few answers. One answer the world gives is to
simply ignore these problems, pretend they don’t exist. Oh, you
could just go get drunk or high, that way you don’t have to face
reality. Or, you could do what is more “socially acceptable” –
live for stuff, whatever is the latest and greatest thingamabobber
that pops up in an ad. The world offers many ways for us to pretend
that the difficulties of life aren’t there – dab a little make-up
on and you’re just as young as you used to be, get the spiffy car
and you’ll feel footloose and fancy free, or just drink till you
forget. And of course, these are all lies – none of it is real,
none of it fixes the problem – but it seems appealing. It gives us
something we think we can do, something we think we can control –
when in reality these problems are often beyond us. Another answer
the world gives is the simple dour answer. What you see is what you
get. Everything is basically just cold math and random chance and
that’s all there is, so smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. Scrap,
fight, claw for whatever brief pleasure you can get, because that’s
the best it is.
That's
what the world can offer. But you know reality. You know what is
going on. Sinners in a sinful world. It’s all sin and death
attacking us. Change and decay in all around I see. Our bodies, they
break and die. Our friendships, they can break and die. Hopes –
they can break and die. But this isn’t just the way it is, this
isn’t just nature, the random chance of the universe. We are
fallen, we have sinned, and the life that we should have had is
tainted and fallen and broken, and we of ourselves can’t make it
right. We are less than we were created to be, that’s the reality
of life in a fallen world, and if left to our own devices, all the
toys, all the money, all the sex and drugs, all the ambition and
power won’t change that fact.
But
even as you see this, Jesus says to you, “Go, you will live.”
This is Christ’s message to you, “Go with confidence and peace,
face down anything you see in this life, for you will live.” When
Christ Jesus goes to the Cross, He is facing down all this junk and
trash we see in life, the stuff we don’t like to talk about. He
goes to the Cross to fix the fall – and Jesus stares it down, takes
it upon Himself, lets the world do it’s worst to Him, lets the
world kill Him most cruelly – takes the wages of our sin upon
Himself. Yet on the third day – He rises. He rises victoriously
over sin, death, the world – all this junk tried to destroy Him and
He just strides on out of the tomb. He is the Lord of Life, the God
who creates with a Word, the God who forgives with a Word, the God
who gives new life in Himself with a Word. And Jesus says to you a
wondrous Word, especially when you are feeling the weight of this
world upon you – Go, You will live.
Do you
feel your own body turning against you? Go, you will live. You will
live eternally, and even if you die here, you will live again, better
in the resurrection than now, because Christ’s Word of life to you
at your baptism will not be broken. Do you look around and see
friendships broken, relationships destroyed? Go, you will live. You
have been Baptized into Christ Jesus, made part of the Communion of
Saints, brought into a family that after the resurrection of the dead
on the last day will have no more problems, will not break, but will
be united with Christ forever. Do you see things wrong in this
world? Go, you will live. You will live eternally in the new
heavens and the new earth where moth and rust do not destroy, where
there is peace. Do you see your own sin, trying to drag you down?
Go, you will live. Christ Jesus has forgiven you, and your sin is
done away with, destroyed, and in the life of the world to come it
will not be remembered any more. And this is not random, this is not
mere chance. God has called you, planned for your salvation even
before the Creation.
This
is more than we expected, but God does more for us than we
anticipate. This is His great love for you. Go, you will live. + In
the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit +
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