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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
After telling how Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan and tempted by the devil for 40 days in the wilderness, the divinely‑inspired St. Luke writes the following for both Theophilus and us:
Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about Him went out through all the surrounding country. And He taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all. (Luke 4:14-15)
Well, maybe St. Luke should have written “almost all”. For, between St. Luke’s statement that I just read and today’s Gospel Reading comes last week’s Gospel Reading (Luke 4:16-30). In last week’s Gospel Reading, the people of the synagogue in Jesus’s hometown of Nazareth, after hearing the gracious words that were coming from His mouth, hardly glorified Jesus: they tried to kill Him. In today’s Gospel Reading, however, people of the synagogue in Capernaum were astounded at His teaching, for His word possessed authority. They were amazed at His authority and power commanding unclean spirits, and St. Luke again says tjat “reports about Him went out into every place in the surrounding region.” Last week we heard Jesus in Nazareth proclaim Himself to be the Messiah but be rejected, and this week Jesus in Capernaum shows His Messiah‑ship true, by performing a series of miracles on a Sabbath Day and the night following. The people there sought Him and came to Him and tried to keep Him from leaving them. But, He said it was necessary for Him to “preach the Good News of the Kingdom of God” to other towns, and then, St. Luke tells us, Jesus was preaching elsewhere.
In our time, one can find any number of different things going on in churches around our city, state, and country: church services that more-resemble concerts, video-recorded testimonials played back on projection screens, and a wide assortment of programs to meet the various needs felt by those of different demographics in attendance. In many cases, we probably could not fault the intentions of those churches so attempting to reach people with “the Good News of the Kingdom of God”, even if their emphasized method for doing so is not the preaching exemplified by our Lord, as emphasized by St. Luke.
One might claim different methods produce different results, but comparing last week’s Gospel Reading with this week’s Gospel Reading indicates that even the same method can produce different results. What varies between the two Readings is the hearers. But, there seems to be no shortage of hearers in either place. The synagogues may well have been full on a given Sabbath Day anyway, but twice in a few verses St. Luke says that reports about Jesus were going out into every place in the surrounding region, so people may have been especially drawn to the synagogues when Jesus was there, just as they were drawn to Simon’s house when Jesus was there.
Here at Pilgrim Lutheran Church in Kilgore, there is no concert, projection screen, or wide assortment of programs. Rather, as exemplified by our Lord, as emphasized by St. Luke, we strive to “preach the Good News of the Kingdom of God”, and, as the Church has done for millennia, we preach the Good News in the context of the historic liturgy and hymns. Ultimately, we need focus only on being faithful in that method, not on its results. For, the results neither prove nor disprove the message or the method. We believe, teach, and confess that God creates faith when and where He pleases in those who hear the Good News of the Kingdom of God. And, God’s desire to so create faith did not differ between Nazareth and Capernaum, nor does His desire to so create faith differ from place to place in our time. The difference then was the rejection in the hearts of the hearers, their failure to repent and believe. We are blessed with “the Good News of the Kingdom of God”, but where are the repenting and believing people now, those coming in from our reports about Jesus? Or, are we, by word and deed, even telling people at all?
The people around us in our lives, in our workplaces and in our schools (and maybe even in our families) are by nature as we are: poor miserable sinners, whose sins and iniquities offend God and justly deserve punishment now and forever. Since our first parents’ fall into sin, all creation is subject to such bondage to sin, soul and body. Today’s Gospel Reading witnesses to the bondage of the soul with the demon possessions, as it witnesses to the bondage of the body with those who were sick with various diseases. Such are manifestations of the devil’s work of sin in the world, but Jesus was made manifest to destroy the devil’s work (1 John 3:8). In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus rebuked both demons and a fever. Elsewhere in St. Luke’s account, rebuking is a call to repentance (Luke 17:3). God calls you and me to repent of our sin—our sin perhaps of not trusting His method of preaching “the Good News of the Kingdom of God”, our sin of not telling others about Him, or our sin of not inviting them here. God calls you and me to turn in sorrow from all our sin, to trust Him to forgive all our sin, and to want to do better. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin, whatever our sin might be. He forgives our sin through faith by grace on account of Jesus.
In the Gospel Reading, the demons get it. The demons know that the man Jesus is “the Holy One of God”, “the Son of God”, “the Christ”. And, the demons know that Jesus has been made manifest in order to destroy them—to die on the cross and to rise from the grave and so to conquer them and to set us free in the greatest conflict of all time. Jesus’s suffering, death, and resurrection for us were necessary to fulfill the will of God, the will of God clearly expressed in Holy Scripture and perfectly fulfilled by Jesus. So also Jesus’s preaching “the Good News of the Kingdom of God” was necessary. For that preaching, God the Father sent Jesus with His authority, and, in turn, Jesus Himself sent others with His authority in order for them to preach “the Good News of the Kingdom of God”. (Jeremiah in today’s Old Testament Reading [Jeremiah 1:4-10] was similarly sent.)
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus’s teaching, word, and preaching all refer to the same thing, and they are all noted for their authority, as they all are also noted for their power, bringing about exactly what they said. Strikingly, Jesus does not say that it was necessary for Him to perform miracles in other towns but only for Him to preach. Then, His miracles attested to the authority of His word, but now His Word really does not need that same attestation. You and I may wrongly look for some earth-shattering experience or extra-ordinary miracle and miss the somewhat‑ordinary miracles that Jesus still performs in our time, that He performs with His word preached and administered by those He sends. In Holy Baptism, with simple water comprehended in God’s command and connected with God’s Word by those He sends, Jesus drives out the devil and cleanses us of our sin. In individual Holy Absolution, those Jesus sends lay their hands on those who privately confess the sins they know and feel in their hearts, and those Jesus sends forgive those sins as validly and certainly as if Christ, our dear Lord, dealt with us Himself. In Holy Communion, Jesus feeds us the greatest holy-day meal, bread that is His body and wine that is His blood, given and shed for us. As Jesus was in the synagogues and Simon’s house, so Jesus is here, present on this altar, distributed by those He sends, and received by you and me for us to receive forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. To whom do we report these somewhat‑ordinary miracles but miracles nonetheless?
Such somewhat-ordinary miracles but miracles nonetheless create and sustain faith and also bring forth the fruits of faith in our lives. Remember, Jesus’s word in all its forms has authority and power, it brings about exactly what it says. Today’s Epistle Reading describes the kind of love that God first has for us in Christ Jesus our Lord and the kind of love that we, in turn, then have for God. Yet, we do not simply love in the abstract, but we love Him concretely, in our neighbors, according to our vocations, vocations such as that of husband and wife (as the Reading is often used at weddings). The people of our circuit of the Texas District of the Missouri Synod had the opportunity yesterday to hear an excellent presentation on family vocations, and I was glad that I and several others made the trip to Palestine, Texas, to hear it.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Simon Peter’s mother-in-law exemplifies that kind of response of love for the blessing of healing she had received from Jesus: St. Luke tells us that the fever “left her, and immediately she rose and began to serve them” (likely to serve them the Sabbath Day meal). The preaching of “the Good News of the Kingdom of God” blesses us better than by sparing our temporal life for a time. Rather, the preaching of “the Good News of the Kingdom of God” in both Word and Sacrament, blesses us with eternal life. Our response of love should be far greater! Granted, our response of love will not be perfect in this lifetime, for even we who are redeemed saints still remain fallen sinners, and so we live daily in the forgiveness of sins. And, we may never know what, if any, difference our response of love in deed alone (or couples with words) makes in the lives of those with whom God brings us in contact. Yet, we nevertheless pray, as we did in the Hymn of the Day:
As You, Lord, have lived for others, / So may we for others live.
Freely have Your gifts been granted; / Freely may Your servants give.
(Lutheran Worship 394:2)
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +