Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 8B)

June 27, 2021

Text: Mark 5:21-43

            Last week we learned that, in the Hebrew mind, the sea is the place of chaos and death, the very haunt of demons.  But the disciples in the boat are kept safe from all this, even as the storm rages, because Jesus is in the boat with them.  The Church is the boat, the ark, and you are safe from all the chaos and death and demons of the swirling sea, why?  Because here is Jesus, the Creator of wind and wave, the Savior of the world, in the boat, with us.  Now, where do we find Jesus in our Holy Gospel this morning?  He is beside the sea.  I like how the King James puts it: “nigh unto the sea” (Mark 5:21; KJV).  That is, when the chaos threatens to engulf you, when death touches you, wherever the demons afflict you, there is Jesus, nigh unto you.  He is not far off, leaving you to whatever fate awaits you at the hands of evil.  He is not unable or unwilling to help and save.  He is right there with you.  That is why He came.

            Jairus had been touched by death.  Not his own.  That would have been far better, as any father will tell you.  But this was his precious little girl.  Twelve years old.  She hadn’t died yet, but that is where this is headed if Jesus doesn’t hurry up.  “Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live” (v. 23; ESV).  Every sickness, from the common cold to terminal cancer, is a symptom of death.  That is why when someone you love is sick, no matter how seriously, you pray.  You ask Jesus to come and make the person well and give them life.  And this is especially true of moms and dads.  You know the great anxiety that afflicts you as you care for a sick child.  “Lord Jesus, help him.  Make her well.  Give my children life.”  Well, here Jairus knows this sickness is not just a rough night of holding the bowl by the bedside.  His daughter’s illness is very serious.  She is at the point of death (v. 23).  Come, Lord Jesus, raise her out of that.  And what does Jesus do?  He immediately goes.  Now, you know what will happen, the great crisis and the great miracle about to unfold for the girl, but remember, at this point, Jairus does not know, and here it is sufficient to point out that when you pray, for yourself or for others, when you ask Jesus to come, that is what He does.  Immediately.  You can be sure of that.  “(C)all upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me” (Ps. 50:15).  Our table prayer, “Come, Lord Jesus,” is always more than simply asking Him to bless food.  It is a prayer for His presence now and always, and especially in times of sorrow and affliction.

            So they go to Jairus’ house, and a great crowd follows them.  But along the way, there is a woman who is suffering a discharge of blood.  A feminine issue, unrelenting, for twelve long years (incidentally, as many years as Jairus’ little girl has been living).  And it makes her unclean.  Time does not permit a detailed explanation of the Levitical purity laws at the moment, but suffice it to say, in the Old Testament, when bodily fluids exit the body, they become unclean.  And in some sense, we still have this today.  For example, blood doesn’t gross you out when it’s inside you, flowing through your veins.  But when you see blood, or someone bleeding, you may start to feel faint, and those treating the bleeding person put on rubber gloves and use personal protective equipment so the blood doesn’t get on them.  And so it is with every bodily fluid.

            But here it is more than that.  The blood makes this dear Jewish woman ritually unclean, and so separates her from God and the community.  She can’t be around people.  She can’t attend Synagogue.  She can’t be around her family.  She can’t approach God’s presence in the Temple.  She is an outcast.  And the doctors, who were not the medical professionals we have today, took advantage of her.  They took all her money and she wasn’t any better for it. 

            Now here comes Jesus.  The chaos is swirling all around Him.  He is in the midst of it, on His way to the place where death has touched Jairus and his home.  The woman has heard about this Jesus.  She knows if she could just get near Him, even just touch His garments, she would be made well.  What is going on with those garments?  Well, we know from Matthew and Luke just what part of His garments she touches.  It is the “fringe” of His garment (Matt. 9:20; Luke 8:44).  This could well be one of the tassels Jewish men wore on the four corners of their robes to remind them of God’s Commandments, and that they belonged to God.  In other words, in touching that tassel belonging to One who had perfectly kept God’s Commandments, and who belonged to God as His very Son, she would be cleansed of her uncleanness, restored, and made well.  Touching the tassel was a confession of faith. 

            Or, perhaps, whether intuitively or explicitly, she understood that Jesus is her true High Priest.  In the Old Testament, the priests were made holy by partaking of the holy sacrifices, by eating them.  The people were made holy and thus given access to God by touching the priests’ garments.  Jesus is not only the Priest, He is the Sacrifice.  To touch His garment is to receive His holiness.  It takes away what is unclean.  It cleanses and restores. 

            In any case, even with all the people in the crowd touching Him and rubbing elbows with Him, He knows when someone has touched Him in faith.  And there He is where death and demonic chaos have touched this woman.  He feels the power go out of Him, and He calls her on it.  He turns and evokes from her a confession of that faith.  And when she falls down before Him in fear and trembling, confessing the whole truth, what does He say to her?  You wicked sinner!  Those who are unclean cannot touch me or even be in my presence!  Go away until you can figure out how to cleanse yourself.  Then I might receive you!  No, that is not what He says.  “Daughter”… and think already about the significance of that one word for a woman who had been excluded from fellowship with God and all other people for the last twelve years: You belong to God as His own Child… “Daughter, your faith has made you well,” or, also a possible translation, has saved you… “go in peace, and be healed of your disease” (Mark 5:34).  Now, this is not to say that if you do your part of having enough faith, Jesus will do His part of healing you.  That would be a misunderstanding of what is going on here.  It is simply to say this: Faith, which is given by God in the Word (the woman had “heard the reports about Jesus” [v. 27]), knows that cleansing, health, and life are found in Jesus Christ alone.  Faith trusts this Word of God.  It believes Christ.  Faith receives what Christ has to give.  Because it lives in relation to God as a child to the Father.  “Daughter,” Jesus calls her.  And so she is freed from her burden, and restored to God and to people.

            Well, this is all wonderful, isn’t it, what Jesus has done?  But in the meantime, during the delay, the poor child dies.  And what can Jesus possibly do now, in the face of death? 

            Remember what Jesus said to the dear woman, prostrate before Him in fear?  Your faith has made you well.  Your faith has saved you.  Now He bids Jairus, “Do not fear, only believe” (v. 36).  And He kicks out the crowds and the professional mourners, and it is a beautiful scene there with Mom and Dad, and Peter, James, and John.  Jesus takes the little girl by the hand, and remember, death is unclean.  Jesus grabs the unclean corpse.  And He says to her, “Talitha cumi,” which is Aramaic for, “Little girl, I say to you, arise” (v. 41).  And she does.  She gets up, and walks around, very much alive, and Jesus even tells them to give her something to eat, because, after all, being dead is hard work, and, more to the point, Jesus will eat after He rises from the dead, proving He is no ghost, but a living, breathing, food digesting Man of flesh and blood.  Resurrection is nothing less than this real, tangible, bodily reality.

            So there is Jesus, nigh unto the sea, so to speak, and He is present right where the chaos and death and demons afflict you.  But there is something else important here that you must not miss, and I’m going to warn you, it will touch you right where it hurts.  Yes, Jesus always comes when you pray for His presence, and truth be told, He is always present with you, even when you forget to pray.  Yes, Jesus always takes away your uncleanness by forgiving your sins, and He restores you to community and Communion with God and with your fellow believers here in the holy Church.  Faith receives that always from Jesus.  Sometimes He even heals your temporal afflictions.  So never be afraid to pray for healing, for yourself and for others, and always, when you are healed, praise Jesus, your Great Physician of body and soul.  When you are healed, He is the One who did it.

            But, notice, Jesus didn’t prevent the death of the girl.  That is not the Promise here.  The death of a child is the greatest pain in all the world, and there are a number of you here present who know that pain, and suffer deeply.  In any case, every one of you knows the pain of death stealing away a loved one… and if you don’t, some of you young ones… you will.  Death touches us all.  But what is the Promise?  Where there is death, Jesus is nigh unto it.  “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints” (Ps. 116:15).  Where there is death, He wraps His hand around it, and robs it of its teeth.  And then?  Talitha cumi!  Little girl, I say to you, arise!  Lazarus, come out (John 11:43)!  What is the Promise?  Resurrection!  Jesus will restore your children and your loved ones to you, and you to them, on that Day.

            For Jesus does not just take death by the hand.  He gives it a full-body embrace, arms outstretched on the cross.  For you.  For them.  For all.  And on the Third Day, He rises.  There is His authority to heal, restore, and give life.  Arise!  Daughter, Son, your faith has saved you.  Fear not.  Go in peace.  Healed.  Restored.  Whole.  Alive.

            For now, the sea continues to rage.  In this fallen life, there is chaos, death, and demons.  It is what it is.  But Jesus is nigh unto it, and that is enough.  Do not fear.  Only believe.  And now come forward and touch the Sacrifice, your High Priest, under the garment of bread and wine.  Eat and drink.  Being dead is hard work, but here you are, alive again.  Partake of the Sacrifice.  And so be holy, and so be healed.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.         

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 7B)

June 20, 2021

Text: Mark 4:35-41

            “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:41; ESV).

            This is the One by whom all things were made, the wind, the sea, and all creation.  This is the Word God spoke, and so it was.  He was there when the earth’s foundations were laid (Job 38:4).  He “shut in the sea with doors” (v. 8).  He “made clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band” (v. 9).  He “prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed’” (vv. 10-11).

            This is the One who drowned the wicked world in the Great Flood, bringing Noah and his family, eight souls in all, safely through the water (1 Peter 3:20; Gen. 6-9).    

            This is the One who “rebuked the Red Sea, and it became dry land,” who led the Children of Israel “through the deep as through a desert” (Ps. 106:9).  This is the One who brought the waters “back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen” (Ex. 14:26), thus saving Israel from their hand (v. 30), so that “Israel saw the great power that the LORD used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the LORD, and they believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses” (v. 31), and “Moses and the people of Israel sang this song… ‘I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea’” (15:1). 

            This is the One who repeated the miracle for Joshua and the next generation, leading the nation through the Jordan on dry ground into the Promised Land (Josh. 3), and so Elijah (2 Kings 2:8), and so Elisha (v. 14).  As the Prophet Nahum preaches, “He rebukes the sea and makes it dry; he dries up all the rivers” (Nahum 1:4).

            And this is the One who sent Jonah to preach.  “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me” (Jonah 1:2).  But he would not preach.  He fled in a ship from the presence of the LORD, from this One who sent him.  So, this is the One who “hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up” (v. 4).  And the only salvation, the only help, the only thing that would still the LORD’s wrath and bring peace and calm, was to throw God’s man overboard to be swallowed up.  The only answer was, as it were, Jonah’s death.  The belly of the fish.  Three days, three nights (v. 17).  And this is the One who carried Jonah through, who heard his repentant prayer, who “spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land” (2:10), God’s man, raised from the dead.    

            The Sea of Galilee is 700 feet below sea level.  30 miles to the Northeast sits Mt. Hermon, 9,200 feet above sea level.  When the wind blows down from the tops of the mountains and collides with the warm sea air, it creates sudden and spectacular storms, like that encountered by the little boat in our text.  But this is “the one who by his strength established the mountains, being girded with might; who stills the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, the tumult of the peoples” (Ps. 65:6-7). 

            And so He does in our Gospel.  “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” (Mark 4:38).  So He awakes, and He rebukes the wind and the sea, this One.  “Peace!  Be still!” (v. 39), and there is a great calm.  Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey?  What clearer answer could be given?  Creation.  Flood.  The parting of the waters.  Salvation for God’s people.  Death and resurrection.  This man, Jesus of Nazareth, is God.  He is the Savior of the world. 

            So that is who He is.  Who then are you, to be so afraid?  “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge” (Job 38:2)?  Have you still no faith?

            The disciples thought He didn’t care as the wind howled, and the waves broke over the boat and began to fill it.  In the Hebrew mind, the sea is the place of chaos and death, the haunt of demons.  The disciples were in a fight for their lives.  And where was Jesus?  There He was, sleeping on a pillow, ignoring their mortal plight.  And they actually believed that He couldn’t care less.  That is you, isn’t it?  When you are suffering?  When you are in danger?  When your life is out of control, and your world comes crashing down, and all is hopeless, and you are helpless?  You cry out to God: Where are You?  Do You not care?  Are You asleep?  Can You not hear me?  Do You even exist?  Or are You out to get me?  My God, my God, why?  How long, O Lord, how long? 

            But remember who He is.  Creator.  God.  Savior.  And remember what He said.  The disciples forgot.  He said, “Let us go across to the other side” (Mark 4:35).   He spoke.  That is what would be.  He did not say, “Let us be drowned, like Pharaoh’s host, in the depths of the sea.”  Remember, you are Israel.  The LORD will bring you through.  Through the water.  Through the Red Sea.  Through the Flood.  “Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you,” says Peter (1 Peter 3:21), who was with Him in the boat that day.  In Baptism, this Lord spoke to you: “Let us go across to the other side.”  “Let your enemies, the devil, the world, your own sinful nature, be thrown into the sea and die.  I have triumphed gloriously.  And I will bring you through.  Through the water.  Through the valley of the shadow.  Through death, and into life.  Into the Promised Land.  Heaven.  Resurrection.  New Creation.”  He does not say, “Let me now abandon you to the evil forces that overwhelm you.”  He may be asleep on the cushion, undisturbed.  But don’t let appearances deceive you.  He has all things in His pierced hand.

            And He is with you in the boat!  Do you see?  The Church is the boat.  This is where God in the flesh rests with His people, with you.  We call the place where you are sitting the nave, as in Navy, because this is the ship, the ark, the boat where Jesus is with you, to save you.  And no matter how turbulent the waters get, no matter the storms to be weathered, even when the boat appears to be sinking, you have Jesus.  Always.  And He will do what He says.  He will bring you to the other side. 

            “Peace!  Be still!” He says, and of course, we know who He is to say that.  Not only is He God.  He is God’s Man, who, to still God’s wrath, was thrown overboard to be swallowed up by death.  Three days in the belly of the earth.  The Father carried Him through.  He spoke, and the tomb vomited Jesus out on Easter morn.  Jesus is our greater Jonah, accomplishing our eternal salvation.  And now He comes preaching, and He sends His men, the Apostles, the pastors, as well as your fellow Christians, to call out against sinners and sin, to bring you to repentance, to bring you into the boat, to show you your gracious Lord who loves you, forgives you, and cares about your every trial and tribulation, that you believe in Him, and go with Him, to the other side.  He sends them to announce His peace.  Be still.  The Lord is on your side.  He is risen.  And He is in the boat.

            “Some went down to the sea in ships,” the Psalmist prays, “doing business on the great waters; they saw the deeds of the LORD, his wondrous works in the deep.  For he commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea.  They mounted up to heaven; they went down to the depths; their courage melted away in their evil plight; they reeled and staggered like drunken men and were at their wits end.  Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.  He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed.  Then they were glad that the waters were quiet, and he brought them to their desired haven.  Let them thank the LORD for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man!  Let them extol him in the congregation of the people, and praise him in the assembly of the elders” (Ps. 107:23-32). 

            Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. 

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

             

Third Sunday after Pentecost

Third Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 6B)

June 13, 2021

Text: Mark 426-34

            The Seed is the Word of God.  The ground is the world.  The farmer is the one sowing the Word, originally the Apostles and all the disciples of Jesus.  It is the pastor who preaches, the Christian who confesses.  And this is how it works.  The Seed of the Word is scattered in proclamation.  And then you go to bed and let it do its thing.  You trust God.  You trust in His Word.  The Seed sprouts and grows, you know not how.  The earth produces by itself, αὐτομάτη in Greek, automatic.  That is to say, it is gift.  It is not your work.  The Seed has the power within itself to sprout and grow.  The Word has the power within itself to do the work of bringing people to faith in Christ.  You are called to scatter the Seed, to confess Christ.  The Church is called to preach the Word.  We are not called to be clever or cute.  No gimmicks.  No bait and switch advertising.  It doesn’t depend on you, or me, or our efforts.  The Spirit is in the Word.  He does it.  We’ve been given the Word.  Just speak the Word.  Then say your prayers and go to sleep and let God worry about it. 

            And what happens?  The Word of the Lord grows.  First, there is the blade.  Faith is born.  A baby is baptized into Christ.  A man or woman hears the Gospel and realizes that their sins really are forgiven in Christ.  God really does love them and wants them as part of His Family.  Then the ear… faith matures and grows stronger as it is nourished in the Divine Service from the Pulpit and at the Altar, in Bible Study, in devotions, and in Christian fellowship.  It grows through trials: pruning, fertilizer, manure, repentance.  And then the full grain in the ear… the fruit of faith: Complete dependance upon Christ and His gifts, prayer, Christian love, generosity, humility, self-sacrifice, the desire and effort to live according to God’s order.  And so the Kingdom grows, plant by plant, one by one, in this time of grace, as long as the world turns.  But then the harvest, when the grain is ripe, when the Lord knows that all who are appointed to eternal life have come to faith in Christ.  Then He puts in the sickle.  Then comes the gathering and the Judgment.  The wheat is safely gathered in.  The chaff is piled up and burned. 

            It sounds so easy.  And really, it is, in this sense: It all depends on God.  Relax.  The pressure is off.  You can’t make anyone believe in Christ.  You can’t make the Kingdom grow.  You can only give what you’ve been given, and that is the Word.  Luther famously said of the Reformation: “I simply taught, preached and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.”[1]

            What makes it hard is our impatience.  We want to see results, and we want to seem them now.  Plant that seed, and we ought to be harvesting fruit.  But when is the harvest?  At the End.  And we have a severely limited perspective.  We cannot see God’s grand, eternal plan as it unfolds.  We can only see here and now, this little snapshot of the Church.  Maybe worldwide Christianity at this moment in time, although let’s be honest, none of us really keeps a thumb on the Church’s pulse in all the other nations of the world.  Our Church body, the Missouri Synod?  Okay, maybe.  Mostly just our little congregation.  And it’s beautiful, but it looks awfully small and insignificant.  We don’t know what God will do with it.  Will it always be this tiny gathering of believers, or will we outgrow our current circumstances?  Will we ever have a building?  Will we even make budget?  And those are all legitimate concerns, and believe me, I share them.  But look how small they are compared with God’s grand, eternal, cosmic plan for His Kingdom.  See, we are not given to know how we fit into that, what our part in it is.  We are simply given to know and rejoice that we do fit into it, that we do have a part in it.  But only God sees all that clearly.  What do we see?  Just the Word.  Sinners gathered around the Word, to be forgiven, cleansed, and healed.  A little part of the vast field at various stages of growth, awaiting the harvest, the Lord only knows when.

            And the Kingdom always appears this way.  Small and insignificant.  Weak and on the brink of death.  When the Church appears to be thriving and wildly successful, that is the exception rather than the rule.  Because the Church is ever and always under the cross.  It is like a grain of mustard seed.  The mustard seed was the proverbial Hebrew expression for something really small.  As a modern equivalent, we might say the tip of a pencil or the head of a pin.  That is the Seed as it is sown.  That is the Kingdom as the Word has been planted.  We can’t believe anything will come of it.  But this is the Promise, and it is totally unexpected.  That tiny Seed will grow and become larger than all the garden plants.  And while there are some mustard bushes that get pretty large, this is where the parable is clearly not “an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.”  Because this mustard Seed grows into a tree that fills the whole world, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade. 

            And this imagery is not without precedent.  In the ancient world, including in the Prophets, great nations and empires were described as trees that overshadow the earth.  In Ezekiel 31, Assyria is described as a cedar with its top among the clouds, towering high above all trees, the birds making nests in its boughs, and all nations living under its shadow.  In Daniel 4, Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, dreams that he is a great tree providing food and shelter for all, but which would be chopped down to its stump and roots, referring to Nebuchadnezzar’s humiliation, living like an animal in the wild.  We see how this is an appropriate image for great empires, growing and spreading their branches over the nations they have conquered.  One might even compare the United States to such a tree, spreading the branches of our influence, protection, and aid to many nations.

            But what is the purpose of this image with regard to the Kingdom of God?  Compared to these mighty empires and this great earthly power, the Kingdom of God looks as small as a mustard seed.  But don’t let appearances deceive you.  These empires have their day, but the Kingdom of God continues to grow, and on that Day, when the sickle is lowered and the harvest comes, all will see that the Tree of God’s Kingdom overshadows all the nations of the earth.  This will be devasting for all who have rejected Christ.  But for those in whom the Seed of the Word has taken deep root and grown into full and fruitful faith, they will find shelter under its branches and live eternally secure as God’s own beloved children.

            Ezekiel captures this in our Old Testament, doesn’t he (Ez. 17:22-24)?  The little sprig, lopped off the top of the mighty cedar (reminding us that God’s people will come back from Assyria and Babylon), God plants on the high and lofty mountain, undoubtedly Mt. Zion.  And in spite of all appearances, and against every expectation, it grows, and becomes itself a mighty cedar, and it produces fruit (do cedar trees produce fruit?).  And again, the image: “under it will dwell every kind of bird; in the shade of its branches birds of every sort will nest” (Ez. 17:23; ESV).  In the Kingdom of God you find abundant food and shelter.  In other words, a home.  And it is the LORD Himself who does it.  Not you.  Not the pastor.  Not Synod bureaucrats or clever Church growth experts.  The LORD does.  He brings low the high tree, Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon, Assyria, the rulers of the earth.  And He brings high the low tree, the Kingdom of Heaven, the Church, you.  And how does He do it?  The Word.  “I am the LORD; I have spoken, and I will do it” (v. 24). 

            And, of course, is this not just like our LORD to plant a tree and bring about a great reversal?  For what else is the cross but the apparent bringing to nothing of all that is Christ and belongs to Him?  “Kingdom of God?!  What do you mean?  God is put to death there on the Tree!”  The LORD plants it, the instrument of defeat and utter destruction, near the garden on a hill outside Jerusalem, Mt. Zion, high and lifted up.  And there, what is smallest and least, and even accursed, grows up into the mightiest of trees, and it fills the whole earth.  Jesus sleeps and rises, and the Kingdom grows.  His Word is preached.  The Seed is cast.  The branches of the Tree spread over the whole earth.  It may be difficult for you to see, here, and now, in this place and time.  But you will see it on that Day.  In the meantime, simply believe.  Trust.  Take shelter here, in this little corner under the Kingdom’s boughs.  Eat of its fruit and remain under its protection.  Sow the Word.  Confess the faith.  Drink Wittenberg beer, or something like that, with your friends, and then go to sleep without a care.  The LORD still speaks, and He still does it.  The Seed is the Word and the Tree is the Kingdom.  And it is all in God’s merciful hands.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.           

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[1] LW 51:77.

Second Sunday after Pentecost

Second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 5B)

June 6, 2021

Text: Mark 3:20-35

            We all know family issues can be the most difficult waters to navigate.  If we are honest, we must admit that the ideal Christian family, where everyone is devoted to Jesus, and everybody thinks, speaks, and behaves the way they ought to, is nonexistent.  The Church hasn’t always been helpful in this regard.  While we should hold up the family ideal according to God’s order in the preaching of God’s Law, we must never paint a picture of the families in our fellowship as though they are immune from the struggles and brokenness of fallen people living in a fallen world, as though they aren’t real sinners with real sins that need real forgiveness and mercy from Christ.  When Churches paint that false image, it leads people in the real world to conclude that the Church must not be for them.  Or, people join the Church in the hope that this is the golden ticket that will make all their problems go away, and when it doesn’t work as advertised, they despair.  Or, again leading to despair, a Christian mother or father or son or daughter compares their own family to the other families in the Church, and they wonder why their family can’t get it together like it seems to be the case with everybody else.  Or, worst of all, it can lead to spiritual pride among Christians who appear to have it all together.  But it’s façade.  If you look closely, you will see the cracks, the fault lines.  Now, this is not to paint a hopeless picture of Christian families, either.  Christ is the medicine for all that ails us.  He is the Physician who binds up what is broken, restores what is shattered, heals what is diseased, and even raises the dead.  Nor is this to say that we shouldn’t order our families according to God’s Word.  Of course we should.  Things will go better for everyone.  We’ll be happier.  We’ll be healthier.  And where we fall, we’ll repent, and we’ll live joyfully in the forgiveness of sins.  But this is simply to say what we all know deep down to be true.  The brokenness touches us all, and we shouldn’t paint the family picture any other way.   

            Anyway, the Bible doesn’t paint families that way.  Cain murdered his brother Abel.  Jacob cheated his brother and had to flee from Esau’s lethal intentions.  Laban gave Jacob some of his own medicine.  Joseph’s brothers were jealous, thought about murdering him, and ultimately sold him into slavery.  What is Genesis but the continuing saga of messed-up family relations?  A messed-up family that was God’s chosen people, from whom would come the Savior of the whole world.  And so through the rest of the Scriptures.  Moses’ siblings resented his special relationship with God and office as God’s spokesman.  David’s brothers reviled the little twerp who came to watch the battle and ended up in mortal combat with Goliath.  Never mind David’s sons, one of whom raped his sister, another of whom murdered the offender, and then attempted a coup against his father.  Our Lord’s own family was not immune from these issues.  Frankly, they thought Jesus was insane.  Though they would come around after His resurrection, Jesus’ brothers were initially hostile unbelievers.  And yes, even the Blessed Virgin Mary had her sins of unfaithfulness.  Jesus was embarrassing the family.  She and His brothers wanted to get Him away from the crowd and back home where they could keep Him quiet.  It is no accident that Jesus was born into a family of sinners.  He comes precisely for sinners, to redeem sinners, to redeem the broken, individuals, families, you, and yours. 

            Admit it, you’ve got problems, sins to be confessed and absolved, and your family is as broken as anybody else’s.  The devil has done his worst to divide and isolate you from your spouse, your children, your parents, your brothers and sisters.  Every God-given relationship is a target for his poison darts.  And your sinful flesh is complicit.  You hang on to petty grievances, jealousies, and pride.  Repent.  Satan harnesses these things to put asunder what God has joined together.  And the world, of whom he is prince, is in an all-out war against the family, against marriage as God’s holy institution, against the reservation and preservation of conjugal intimacy within the holy union of man and wife, against children whom we slaughter by the millions in the name of autonomy and sexual freedom, and against our right to resist these things in preaching and Christian confession.  The devil, by the way, is against marriage, because from marriage comes children.  And he is against children because by a Child comes the redemption of the world and Satan’s ultimate defeat.

            So that Child comes into the world, the Son of Mary, the Son of God, to bind the strong man, Satan, and plunder His goods.  And that is to say, you.  To rescue you.  To deliver you.  To bring you out of bondage to Satan and into God’s Kingdom as a forgiven and beloved Child of the heavenly Father.  So He casts out demons and heals diseases.  He touches outcasts and cleanses lepers.  He eats and drinks with sinners and He raises the dead.  And all of the sin, all of the brokenness, all that separates you and I from God and from one another, He takes into Himself.  He takes it off of us and absorbs it into His flesh.  And He sheds His blood all over it.  He is crucified for it.  He dies for it.  To forgive it all.  To forgive you.  To cleanse you.  To heal you.  To justify you.  And He is risen, and that means that in Him, you have new life.  You are baptized into Christ.  You died with Christ.  You have been raised with Christ.  You live in Christ. 

            And that changes how you live toward one another.  Yes, you still live in a fallen world, a sinner in the midst of sinners, and you still sin.  You know that.  You live now in the paradox of the already/not yet, simul iustus et peccator, at the same time justified and a sinner.  But you know that all your sins are forgiven and that Christ’s new life is yours already.  And you know that your spouse’s sins, your childrens’ sins, your parents’ sins, your brothers’ and sisters’ sins, are all forgiven.  Christ died for them, and He is risen for them, and if He forgives them, who are you to hold their sins against them?  And that… that… is the secret for Christian families living together.  Not that there is no brokenness, but that the brokenness is forgiven.  By God in Christ.  By one another in Christ.  We live together with grace toward one another, with mercy toward each other, forgiving one another’s trespasses as God has forgiven ours, overlooking weaknesses, bearing with each other with the love of Christ that covers over a multitude of sins.

            Still, it is true, there isn’t always a happy ending for our families in this life, and many of you know that all-too-well.  Children leave the faith.  Spouses are unfaithful.  Parents neglect or abuse their children.  Not every family member receives the love and healing God wants to give them.  Some family members shun and reject us specifically because of our faith in Christ or our confession of His Word, as Jesus’ family tried to shut Him up when He was preaching.  We pray fervently and persistently for those family members, that God would turn their hearts by the preaching of His Word, bring them to repentance, to saving faith in Christ, and restoration to us.  It does happen, sometimes after years.  We should never lose heart.  Never give up on God’s gracious seeking of the lost.  But it doesn’t always happen.  And here we should say a word about the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit which Jesus says in our text, is the “eternal sin” that “never has forgiveness” (Mark 3:29; ESV).  What is that sin, and should we be worried we have committed it? 

            The blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is something very specific in our text.  The scribes, who were Jesus’ family members in a matter of speaking, the Jews, His own who did not receive Him (John 1:11), said that He was demonic, that He was possessed by Beelzebul, and by the prince of demons He cast out demons (Mark 3:22).  In other words, they were saying the Spirit within Jesus is the devil.  They were calling the Holy Spirit “Satan.”  That is blasphemy.  And it is not just that they thought the thought or uttered the words.  It is that they knew better, as Jesus points out in His rebuke.  Just as a house, a family, divided against itself cannot stand, so it would never work for Satan to cast out Satan.  The demons have their problems, but they’re pretty good at team work.  To cast out demons is nothing less than the work of God, as every scribe, every theologian, must know.  So the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the conscious, informed, intentional, and persistent rejection of His testimony that Christ is Lord and Savior.  It is to know that the Spirit’s testimony is true, and reject it anyway as evil, satanic, as we see so often in the world today when Christians leave the faith they know to be true for more socially acceptable belief systems.  And it is not that the sin is unforgiveable because it’s so evil, as though there could be any sin for which Christ’s death is insufficient atonement.  No, the reason it is never forgiven is that it is the nature of this sin to reject Christ’s forgiveness right up to death or the Day of Judgment, until it is too late.

            Sometimes Christians are worried they have committed the sin against the Holy Spirit because of some evil thing they said or did.  But the plain fact is, if you’re worried you committed this sin, you haven't, because those who reject the Spirit don’t worry about sinning against Him.  Repent of your sins and know that you are forgiven for Christ’s sake.  And never forget His promise: “whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (John 6:37). 

            In fact, what does He do?  He brings you in.  Into His House.  Into His Family.  Whatever problems you have in your own family, among your relatives, you always have a Family here with Jesus, in His Church, gathered around His Table.  “Who are my mother and my brothers?” (Mark 3:33).  It isn’t a rejection of Mary and the boys outside when Jesus says this.  But it is the testimony to the even greater reality.  “(L)ooking about at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers!  For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother’” (vv. 34-35).  The Church is Jesus’ Family, the congregation of believers, for the will of God is that you believe and be saved.  Baptized into Christ, you are children of the heavenly Father.  The Church is your mother.  Your brothers and sisters are all around you.  Yes, they have their faults, their casual weaknesses, their sins.  So do you.  That is why we’re here.  Here our Lord cleanses us and tends our wounds.  Here our Lord feeds us.  Here our Lord protects us and gives us life.  Outside, the battle rages, and our enemies threaten and malign us.  But here we are safe in the Father’s House.  And because He is our Father, and because Jesus is our Savior, and because the Holy Spirit possesses us, this House will not be divided.  It will stand, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.  Beloved in the Lord, welcome home.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.