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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. (Amen.)
“New and Improved”: According to one internet analysis, the expression “new and improved” is anachronistic, oxymoronic hucksterism—anachronistic because it is said to be an old term used by old people; oxymoronic because, if something has not existed before, then it cannot be improved; and hucksterism because such claims frequently are only hype (Coticchia). What is “new” is not always “better”. If you have ever suffered through something such as a software “up‑grade”, then you know that the change often can be, in fact, a “down‑grade”. In today’s Gospel Reading, when Jesus taught in a Capernaum synagogue, those in attendance were astonished at His teaching as One Who had authority, and when He cast-out an unclean spirit, those in attendance were amazed at what they called His new teaching with authority. Commentators today debate whether the people’s astonishment and amazement, and the resulting fame of Jesus that spread everywhere, was positive or negative. The unclean spirit had clearly identified Who Jesus was, but, nevertheless, the people were questioning among themselves (confer Beckwith, CLD III:180). Their calling Jesus’s teaching “new” could have been their calling it “strange”, and, still today, in theology, the general principle is that teaching that is “new” probably is teaching that is “false”. In many cases, at least at first, we are appropriately skeptical of things that we hear taught or preached that we have not heard taught or preached before.
Today’s Gospel Reading picks up where last week’s Gospel Reading left off (Mark 1:14‑20). In last week’s Gospel Reading, we heard Jesus preaching that the time was fulfilled and the kingdom of God was at hand, so people should both repent of their sin and believe the Gospel, and Jesus no doubt was teaching the same things in today’s Gospel Reading (Lenski, ad loc Mark 1:21, p.74). In a sense, there was nothing “New and Improved” in simply calling people to repent and believe, as God’s prophets long had both identified God’s people’s sin and pointed to faith in God as their only salvation. And, the Jewish leaders taught with authority that even Jesus recognized (for example, Matthew 23:2), and their disciples apparently also cast out demons (for example, Matthew 12:27), so there really was nothing “New and Improved” in those regards, either.
For us, whatever was “new” to the people in the Capernaum synagogue that day in today’s Gospel Reading, is already some two-thousand years old! And, God’s Old Testament teaching is, in terms of chronology, even older! Some people, maybe even you, might consider God’s law old and out of date. A couple’s living together outside of marriage, homosexuality, transgenderism—those cannot still be wrong in today’s day and age, can they? You may regard “doctrine”, that is, “teaching”, in some way to be “dirty word”, maybe blaming the teaching and its practice for the division that they bring between those who hold them to be true and those who hold them to be false. In today’s Gospel Reading, the unclean spirit obeyed Jesus’s rebuke, Jesus’s telling the spirit to be silent and to come out of the man. God’s Word has the same authority that God has, and you and I owe God’s Word the same obedience that the unclean spirit gave Jesus, and yet, all too often, we disobey. We are by nature sinful and unclean, and so on our own we cannot come into contact with our Holy God. Because of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, we deserve to be cast into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41). But, because of God’s great love for us, He calls and thereby enables us to repent and believe and so be saved for Jesus’s sake.
There may not have been anything “New and Improved” in the simple call to repent and to believe, but what surely was “New and Improved” in Jesus’s calling people to repent and to believe were His not merely repeating what God the Father had told Him to say, as previous prophets had done (though compare John 12:50), but instead His speaking with the personal authority of the Son of God (Rengstorf, TDNT 2:140), His pointing to Himself as the fulfillment of what those previous prophets had said (for example, Luke 4:21), and so His personally enacting the deeds that they had prophesied that the Savior would do. There may have been a perception that there no longer were any prophets (Foerster, TDNT 2:569), and Jesus was the Prophet like Moses promised in today’s Old Testament Reading (Deuteronomy 18:15-20), but Jesus was more than like Moses. As the unclean spirit in today’s Gospel Reading said, Jesus was the Holy One of God, as the Holy Spirit had come upon the Virgin Mary and the power of the Most High had overshadowed her (Luke 1:35l; confer John 6:69). Jesus no doubt taught with authority that the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8), an enmity that essentially goes back to the beginning (Genesis 3:15; confer Marcus, ad loc Mark 1:24, p.187). Jesus’s casting‑out the unclean spirit anticipates Jesus’s defeating the devil on the cross. The unclean spirit knew Who Jesus was, but that knowledge alone did not help him. When we are sorry for our sins and trust God to forgive us because Jesus died on the cross for us, then God does forgive us. God forgives us our sinful nature, our sins of previously disregarding His Word and disobeying its authority, and all of our other actual sins, whatever our actual sins might be. As we sang in today’s Psalm (Psalm 111:1‑10; antiphon v.3), the fear of, or “faith in”, the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. We believe, teach, and confess that Jesus Christ has, among other things, purchased and won us from the power of the devil with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death (Small Catechism II:4).
In today’s Gospel Reading, the people in the Capernaum synagogue on the Sabbath likely were remembering the Sabbath, keeping it holy by letting God, through His Word, work in them in order to make them holy, and truly Jesus came in might and mercy, at least drawing them into fellowship with Him in His Kingdom as He overcame the power opposed to His Kingdom (Franzmann, Word of the Lord Grows, 186). Likewise, we come seeking and receiving God’s forgiveness of sins in the ways that He promises to give them to us, namely, through His Means of Grace, His Word and His Sacraments. In Holy Baptism, by the Word and water, unclean spirits are made to depart and make room for the Holy Spirit, as we are rescued from the devil. In Holy Absolution, by the Word and the pastor’s touch, the authority that God gave to men in order to forgive our sins is exercised for us (John 20:21-23), doubted by people then and now (for example, Matthew 9:1-8), and seemingly despised by others by their non-use. And, in the Holy Supper, by the Word with bread and wine we receive the Body of Christ given for us and the Blood of Christ shed for us—the new testament in His blood (confer Jeremiah 31:31-34).
By His Word and Sacraments, God transforms us. The people in the Capernaum synagogue may have been questioning among themselves, but we do not need to do so. God enables us at least to want to have the right regard for His Word and obey its authority. When, at first, we have been appropriately skeptical of things that we have heard taught or preached that we had not heard taught or preached before, we judge the teaching or preaching by Holy Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions in order to see whether the teaching or preaching is true or whether what we personally think and believe is true, and we adopt or adapt our personal beliefs as necessary. As St. Paul described in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Corinthians 8:1-13), we take care that our right as Christians does not somehow become, for our weaker brothers or sisters in Christ, something that causes them to fall either into sin or from faith. We speak and act in such ways that Jesus’s true fame spreads everywhere. And, when we fail in these or in other ways, as we will fail, with daily sorrow over our sin and trust in God to forgive us for Jesus’s sake, we live in His forgiveness of sins.
Whether or not the expression “New and Improved” is, as was suggested, anachronistic, oxymoronic hucksterism, the Lord Jesus’s teaching that day in the Capernaum synagogue in today’s Gospel Reading was in some sense “New and Improved”, both for the people then and for us today. As we sang in today’s Psalm, the Lord has caused His wondrous works to be remembered; the works of His hands are faithful and just; the works of the Lord are great, studied by all who delight in them; full of splendor and majesty is His work, and His righteousness endures forever.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +