Sabbath Breakers Anonymous

Delivered June 26, 2011

Colossians 2:16-23; Matthew 12:1-14

My name is Marshall Davis, and I am a Sabbath-breaker. My guess is that all of you are Sabbath-breakers also. So welcome to Sabbath-breakers Anonymous! The Sabbath is the most ignored of the Ten Commandments, even more than taking the Lord’s name in vain. Every few years there will be a controversy somewhere in our country concerning the Ten Commandments. Recently a Virginia school board voted once again to post copies of the Ten Commandments in its schools. Earlier this month the Louisiana state House voted to approve placing a Ten Commandments monument on the state capitol grounds in Baton Rouge. Inevitably the ACLU gets involved and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and people get all riled up. And there are placards and demonstrations.  It is all a bunch of smoke and mirrors, because even those who fight the hardest to post the Ten Commandments don’t keep the Ten Commandments, especially number 4 “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.”

The command reads in Exodus 20:8-10 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work….” I say that we all break this commandment because the Sabbath is the seventh day, which is Saturday, not Sunday. To be technical, in the Bible the day starts at sundown, so it really begins Friday evening. Sunday was not considered the Sabbath by Christians until the 4^th century A.D. Nowhere in the NT does it authorize transferring the Sabbath to Sunday. Sunday is “the Lord’s Day,” the day the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, and that is why it was observed by Christians. It had nothing to do with the OT law.

But that did not keep generations of Christians, right up to the twentieth century and even into this century, from keeping Sunday as a Christian Sabbath.  Some strict Christians keep the Sabbath religiously today. One pastor of a very conservative congregation secretly went golfing on the Sabbath, although it was forbidden in his religion. The angel Gabriel saw him, and summoned God. "Lord!" said Gabriel, "We have a preacher golfing on the Sabbath. Strike him down with a lightning bolt." God said, "I've got a better idea." Just then, the preacher took a swing at the ball, and it drove 420 yards, bounced and rolled up onto the green and fell directly into the cup, a hole-in-one. The pastor was ecstatic, whooping it up. Gabriel says to God, "I thought you were going to punish him?" God says, "I did. Who's he going to tell?"

I grew up in Danvers, Massachusetts, which was originally part of Salem, the part of Salem where the witch trials took place. The Puritan heritage ran deep in my hometown, and in my family. My parents were Congregationalists, and kept the Sabbath, as much as anyone did back in the 1950’s. Of course you really didn’t have much choice back then with the Blue Laws. You couldn’t buy anything if you wanted to because all the stories were closed. But my parents went further, and said we could not watch TV on Sundays either. That continued until Bonanza appeared on Sunday nights at 9:00 PM. Then suddenly Michael Landon was more important than Moses. Sabbath was a big deal in Jesus’ time, and it has something to teach us today. Let’s look at the Sabbath under three categories.

I. First is the Law of the Sabbath. In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus was walking with his disciples one Sabbath day. They were walking through some grain fields, and they picked some heads of grain and separated the grain from the chaff with their hands to eat. You would think this is nothing more than eating a snack on the road. But to the Pharisees this was considered reaping and threshing, which was work, and therefore a violation of the Sabbath command. Verse 2 “And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, “Look, Your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath!”  The Pharisees were religious folks who took the Sabbath very seriously.

Many people still do today. Many keep a Saturday Sabbath. The Seventh Day Adventists keep the Sabbath on Saturday. There is also a group called the Seventh-Day Baptists. Judaism still keeps the Sabbath, especially orthodox Jews. When we were on Sabbatical in Israel, one of our clergy friends was walking through Mea Sherim, a Hasidic neighborhood in Jerusalem, and Hasidic Jews started throwing pebbles at him, apparently for no reason. Later he found out that they considered him to be breaking the Sabbath because he was carrying a pen in his shirt pocket. At the hotels in Israel there are Sabbath elevators. They stop at every floor on Saturday, so that observant Jews do not have to press a button in the elevator, because it is completing an electrical circuit, which is making fire, which is considered work, which is forbidden.

We might see this as legalism, but the observance of the Sabbath is a serious spiritual discipline for many Jews and Christians; it is seen as a blessing, not a burden. Perhaps you have seen the 1981 movie Chariots of Fire, which tells the true story of two athletes in the 1924 Olympics: Eric Liddell, a devout Scottish Christian, and Harold Abrahams, an English Jew. Liddell saw running as a way of glorifying God before going to China to work as a missionary. He says at one point in the film, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.” Liddell learns that the heat for his 100 meter race will be on a Sunday, and he refuses to run the race because his Christian convictions prevent him from running on the Sabbath. He refuses to compromise his religious convictions, despite strong pressure from the Prince of Wales and the British Olympic committee.  Eventually a teammate gave up his place in the 400 meter race on the following Thursday to Liddell, and Liddell wins. But it was his religious convictions in the face of national athletic pride – and not his gold medal - which made headlines. So let us not dismiss the spiritual discipline of the Sabbath too quickly. Many find that strict observance of the Sabbath can be a way of glorifying God.

But Jesus wanted to point beyond the law of the Sabbath. In Jesus’ time the Sabbath had become a stumbling block to true spirituality and a barrier to compassion. So Jesus intentionally broke the rules surrounding the Sabbath on many occasions, thereby winning the scorn of the Pharisees, which in part led to his arrest and death. Breaking the Sabbath law was serious offense back then. Exodus 31:15 says, “For six days work is to be done, but the seventh day is a day of sabbath rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day is to be put to death.” It was a capital offense.  So Jesus was doing and teaching something radical in his day. Jesus defended his actions by appealing to scripture. Verses 3-7.

³ But He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: ⁴ how he entered the house of God and ate the showbread which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? ⁵ Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless? ⁶ Yet I say to you that in this place there is One greater than the temple. ⁷ But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’^[a] you would not have condemned the guiltless.

Jesus appeals to the example of King David, who broke the laws concerning the temple and priesthood. He also quotes the prophet Hosea, who said, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” Hosea was saying that there is something more important than religious observances. He is saying that following religious rules and laws can get in the way of following God. That is Jesus’ point, and it is an important point for us. Religion can lead us to God, or it can get in the way of our relationship with God. We need to be always vigilant to make sure that our religious practices foster true spirituality and not get in the way of it.

That is why Jesus healed on the Sabbath in our passage. Verse 9-14 “⁹ Now when He had departed from there, He went into their synagogue. ¹⁰ And behold, there was a man who had a withered hand. And they asked Him, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”— that they might accuse Him. ¹¹ Then He said to them, “What man is there among you who has one sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out? ¹² Of how much more value then is a man than a sheep? Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” ¹³ Then He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and it was restored as whole as the other. ¹⁴ Then the Pharisees went out and plotted against Him, how they might destroy Him.” Jesus went right into the Pharisees stronghold – the synagogue – and broke the Pharisees’ rules surrounding the Sabbath to show that their observance of the Sabbath, which was designed to honor God, was actually was violating the will of God, which is to do good on the Sabbath - to heal and set free. “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”

II. This leads into my second point, which is the Principle of the Sabbath. Very few Catholic, mainline Protestant or evangelical Christians keep a Sunday Sabbath any more in a strict sense. But the principle of a day of rest is still valuable. We all need rest. Jesus observes, “Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless?” Priests worked on the Sabbath. Preachers work on Sunday, but we still need a day of rest. My father-in-law, who is a retired Baptist pastor, boasts that in his forty years of ministry he never took a day off. That was not a good example to me as a young pastor starting in ministry. I need my day off, and I list my day off in the bulletin. I am grateful that you honor my day off – except of course for emergencies, when I want you to call me. In case of death or serious illness, I set aside the Sabbath – which is the example of Jesus. I can usually take my day off later in the week if I have to.

The law of the Sabbath points to a deeper principle of the Sabbath. Jesus broke the laws surrounding the Sabbath, but he did not break the spirit of the Sabbath. He really fulfilled the Sabbath – as he fulfilled all the Law - by cutting through the human rules surrounding it. But the principle of a day of rest remains valid. We all need rest. The land needs rest, and there was a law in the Bible that the fields lay fallow every seven years to recover. Professors and pastors take Sabbaticals to be reenergized. In fact the Sabbath law was based on the rhythms of creation. The Fourth Commandment reads: ⁸ “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. ⁹ Six days you shall labor and do all your work, ¹⁰ but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. ¹¹ For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”  The Sabbath is built into the order of creation. It says even God observed a day off!

The parallel list of the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy gives a different rationale for the Sabbath. ¹² “Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you. ¹³ Six days you shall labor and do all your work, ¹⁴ but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, …. ¹⁵ Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.” According to this version of the fourth commandment, the Sabbath is meant to show that we are not slaves to work. We are not just workers; we are not just consumers. We are not just economic creatures. We are spiritual creatures who need to be reminded of our spiritual core. That is the meaning of the Sabbath.

III. We have talked about the Law of the Sabbath and the Principle of the Sabbath. Third is the Lord of the Sabbath.  Jesus says, “⁸ For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” The phrase “Son of Man” was Jesus’ favorite way of referring to himself. The whole point of Jesus’ in-your-face confrontational approach to the Sabbath laws was to break open the whole concept. The Sabbath observance at that time was the symbol of religion, and Jesus came to break open the religion of his day. That is why he talked so much about the destruction of the temple, which really got him in trouble. That is why he cleansed the temple by driving out the money-changers.  Jesus said that one greater than the temple was here. One greater than the Sabbath was here. He – Jesus – was Lord of the Sabbath.

The Sabbath points to Jesus. He was the end and purpose of the Sabbath. Jesus was the fulfillment of the Sabbath. Jesus came to give true rest and peace. Jesus said, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” The Book of Hebrews goes into detail about the Sabbath rest and concludes, “There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. ¹⁰ For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.”  Jesus is the one that the Sabbath honors and points to. You could say that Jesus embodies the Sabbath.

For his first sermon in his hometown synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus chose to preach on a passage from Isaiah, proclaiming the Jubilee year. The OT proclaims a Sabbath year every seven years. Then after seven groups of seven – after the 49^th years, the 50^th year was a special super Sabbath – the Jubilee year. All slaves were freed, debts canceled, and land returned to the original owner. This is the passage that Jesus read in the synagogue and then he said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” He was saying that his ministry was a jubilee. He is freedom. He is healing. He is peace. He is the perfect rest for the people of God, and we are restless unless we find our rest in him – to paraphrase Augustine. The Sabbath points to the Lord of the Sabbath. We keep the Sabbath by resting in Him.

Healing Faith

Delivered June 19, 2011

I Corinthians 12:1-11; Mark 5:21-43

I have a friend who is a faith healer. He wasn’t always a faith healer. He used to be an ordinary Baptist pastor. We graduated from the same seminary at about the same time; our first churches after seminary were a few miles apart in Southern Illinois. We got to know each other well and became good friends. Over a period of four years, we had lunch together at least once a month, and we preached at each other’s churches. Then in 1982 I moved up here to NH to this church and after a few years we lost touch. Today he heads up a huge international healing ministry. Last month he was in Honduras and Mozambique. Soon he will be heading to Brazil, where he seems to spend a lot of time. This fall he will be going to South Africa, Australia and Sweden, as well as many places around this country. He travels the world leading large events of thousands of people, and his focus is on physical healing.

We had not talked in years, but recently we reconnected through Facebook, and he called me up – after arranging a time to talk through one of his assistants. We had a long conversation shortly before Easter, catching up on what has been happening in our lives, families and ministries. Near the end of our conversation I asked for prayers for my daughter who has chronic health problems. He called her up later and prayed with her. But I will be honest with you – I don’t know what to think about faith healing. If I didn’t have a friend who is a faith healer, I would probably think they are all charlatans and hucksters. But I know this man and he is no charlatan or huckster. He is an honest man of faith who believes in the power of prayer and the ability of God to heal. I also believe that God heals, but I might describe it in different terms than he does.

In a previous sermon, I explained that I do not understand miracles as God breaking or suspending the laws of nature or science. I don’t think God sets up the universe to operate according to certain natural laws and then breaks them on special occasions. I don’t think God makes exceptions to the laws of physics or biology. I see miracles as God using natural laws in ways we do not yet understand. In this manner I believe in what we would call miraculous healings. I have never personally witnessed an instantaneous physical healing. I am not saying it can’t happen; but I guess I need to see it to believe it. But I have witnessed a lot of people praying for people and many times those people get better. Maybe they would have gotten better anyway. The scientific studies I have read on the efficacy of prayer appear inconclusive. But I pray for people, and I believe that God answers prayers for healing. 

That is what our scripture lesson today is about. Jesus was a faith healer. I don’t think these healing stories are just myths or legends invented later. A verse in Luke’s gospel describes Jesus ministry in these words: “And the power of the Lord was present to heal them.” I believe that the power of God was present in Jesus to heal. I believe he still heals. I believe that God heals through the body’s natural healing process, through the physicians’ skills, and also in ways that physicians do not understand. Sometimes people get better when they shouldn’t according to medical science, and doctors do not understand how or why. They use terms like spontaneous healing, spontaneous remission or spontaneous regression. They may call it the placebo effect. People are healed today in ways that medical science does not understand. I think this is God healing, and I would use the term miraculous to describe it.

Our scripture lesson today includes two accounts of miraculous healings. Both happen in the context of faith. Jesus says to the woman with the bleeding, “Daughter, your faith has made you well.” What does that mean? He says to the father of the dead girl (according to ‘Luke’s account) “Do not be afraid; only believe, and she will be made well.” Today we are going to look at these accounts of healing and the role of faith in the stories.

1. First, faith drives us to our knees. Jesus had just arrived by boat from the other side of the Sea of Galilee, and he was ministering by the seashore. A man named Jairus, one of the leaders of the local synagogue approached him. Verses 22-23 say, “And when he saw Him, he fell at His feet and begged Him earnestly, saying, “My little daughter lies at the point of death. Come and lay Your hands on her, that she may be healed, and she will live.” Here is a religious leader prostrating himself before Jesus. This man is desperate. His little girl is at the point of death. When my daughter Sarah was an infant she had Grand Mal seizures. She still has them, but they are under control with medication. Back then we did not know what they were. All I knew is that my three-week-old daughter was in my arms stiff and not breathing and turning blue. I thought she was dying. As a father, that scares the heck out of you. That is what this father was feeling. His daughter was dying, and it scared the heck out of him. He fell on his knees before Christ.

2. Second, faith asks for help. Our text says, “he begged him earnestly.” The equivalent today of falling on your knees and begging Jesus is prayer. In my experience the chapel is the most unused room in a hospital. Often times it is even hard to find the chapel. It is often tucked away in some out-of-the-way corner. Many times it is no more than a closet and looks neglected. I am one of the few people who actually seeks out and uses hospital chapels. After visiting a patient in serious condition I will often go to the chapel to pray privately. I almost always have the whole room to myself. I can think of only a couple of times in my life that I have actually found another person in the chapel when I go in. Once I found a man sleeping in there, but that doesn’t count. You would think that a room dedicated to prayer for healing would be the busiest place in a hospital with all the seriously ill people, but the reality is that it does not get a lot of use.

Prayer is an acknowledgement that there is a limit to what humans can do by themselves. Prayer admits that we can’t handle things by ourselves. But prayer is more than that. A lot of people know things are beyond their control but they don’t pray. Prayer is an act of faith that things that are out of our control are in God’s control. Prayer is an acknowledgment that there is a Power greater than ourselves who cares and hears us when we call out. That is an act of faith. We can’t prove that is true. This might be just wishful thinking. Physicist Stephen Hawking made news recently by his remark that heaven is “a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.” Maybe prayer is no more than wishful thinking for people who are afraid of the dark. Or maybe it is seeing a light in the darkness that others cannot see. Hebrews describes faith as “seeing Him who is invisible.” This man in our story had faith that Jesus would be able to heal his daughter.

3. Faith is touching Jesus. In our story the scene shifts from the man begging for healing for his daughter to a woman wanting healing for herself. Jesus agrees to go to the home of Jairus, and on the way something happens. The story says, (v. 24-28) “²⁴ So Jesus went with him, and a great multitude followed Him and thronged Him.
²⁵ Now a certain woman had a flow of blood for twelve years, ²⁶ and had suffered many things from many physicians. She had spent all that she had and was no better, but rather grew worse. ²⁷ When she heard about Jesus, she came behind Him in the crowd and touched His garment. ²⁸ For she said, “If only I may touch His clothes, I shall be made well.” This woman’s faith caused her to reach out and touch Jesus. She believed that all she had to do was touch the hem of Jesus’ garment and she would be healed.

Of all the descriptions of faith in this story, this is my favorite. Faith is not just believing God; it is touching God. When we have faith it is as if heaven and earth touch.  It is like Michelangelo’s painting of the creation of man on the Sistine Chapel showing God and Adam touching fingertips. Faith is stretching and touching the fingertip of God. At that moment the power of God is present to bring healing and life.

4. Faith accesses the power of God. Faith connects us to that life-giving power which first brought life into this universe. In our story, the woman simply touches the hem of Jesus garment, and it says that power went out from Jesus. Verse 29-20 “Immediately the fountain of her blood was dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of the affliction. ³⁰ And Jesus, immediately knowing in Himself that power had gone out of Him, turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched My clothes?”  This is such an interesting miracle because Jesus did not intentionally heal the woman. He never even saw her; he did not even know who she was. But she touched him and was healed. By faith we can connect to the life-giving power of God.

5. Next, faith tells the truth. Jesus looks around for who touched him and it says, (v. 33) “But the woman, fearing and trembling, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell down before Him and told Him the whole truth.” Faith tells the truth. There is a lot of dishonesty in religion. There is a lot of faking. There is a lot of pretending. This is what Jesus hated the most about religion and he often calls the religious people of his day hypocrites. We need to be very careful to tell the truth to God and others about what we know and what we don’t know, what we are certain about and what we are not so certain about. It is all right not to know!

Faith is being honest and transparent to God – doubts and all. That is why the figure of the apostle Thomas is one of my favorite characters in the Bible. So many times the apostles faked it – saying they would never deny Jesus or betray him, arguing about who was the greatest and maneuvering to sit at Jesus right hand and left hand in the Kingdom of God. But Thomas is honest. I think we ought to call him “honest Tom” instead of “doubting Thomas.” He told the truth and the end result in his life was faith. Faith tells the truth about what we think and feel. That is why I love the Book of Job. He is the most honest guy in the Bible – arguing with God, fighting with his self-righteous friends, telling it as he saw it. Faith tells the truth.

6. Faith calms fears. The story shifts back to the synagogue ruler and his daughter. Jesus says to the woman, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your affliction.” Then it says, “³⁵ While He was still speaking, some came from the ruler of the synagogue’s house who said, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?” ³⁶ As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, He said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not be afraid; only believe.” He calms the woman’s fear and then he immediately calms the fears of Jairus when he hears the news that his daughter is dead.

Can you imagine what the father felt when he got this news? A sinking despairing hopeless feeling. His twelve year-old daughter had died. There was nothing more that could be done. When the situation seemed absolutely hopeless and lost, Jesus says tro him, “Do not be afraid; only believe.” These are amazing words under the circumstances! In the presence of death, Jesus tells the man not to fear but believe. Death of a close family member is one of the most traumatic experiences any of us will ever experience. At such a time as that Jesus invites us to transcend fear and believe. He doesn’t go into details here about exactly what to believe, but just to trust him. Likely the father did not even dream that it would end up the way it did. We are not invited to believe something, but to believe someone – Christ.

7. Seventh, faith brings life out of death.  This story ends in a most unbelievable miracle. It ends up with the girl alive and restored to her mother and father. What happened here? Was she dead? The family members said she was, but Jesus said she was only sleeping. Interpreters are divided here concerning the condition of the girl. Some think she was in a coma or close to death. Many think this was a Near Death Experience – that she was clinically dead for a few minutes. It happens today, and people are revived by physicians in the hospital. That is what I think happened. The girl was clinically dead for a short time, and Jesus the Great Physician brought her back to life. In any case the meaning is clear: Jesus brings life out of death. It has meaning far beyond Near Death experiences. It foreshadows Easter and life on the other side of death.

8. Eighth, faith amazes. Verse 42 says that after the girl was revived that all the people “were overcome with great amazement.” A few moments before, these people had been ridiculing Jesus for saying the child was just sleeping. Now they were overcome with amazement at what he had done. Faith is the most amazing thing in the universe. It is amazing because it puts us in contact with the amazing power of God. Jesus constantly surprises us. One thing about the spiritual life is that it is not boring. A lot of people think it is boring. They think religion is boring, Christianity is boring, church is boring. Unfortunately they are right a lot of the time. A lot of religion is boring! But God is not boring, and Christ is not boring. When we truly connect with the Holy Spirit, then the spiritual life is anything but boring. Just the opposite. It is amazing!

9. Finally, Faith is humble. Look at Jesus’ last words in the story. Verse 43 “But He commanded them strictly that no one should know it, and said that something should be given her to eat.”  This small detail about Jesus wanting to make sure the girl got something in her stomach is touching and realistic. But I want to call our attention to the other detail – that Jesus told them not to tell anyone about this miracle. Well, they didn’t listen to him. Somebody talked, because we have it in the NT; in fact we have three different forms of this story in Matthew, Mark and Luke. But it reveals that Jesus did not do this for the show – for self-aggrandizement – to make a name for himself. He did it out of compassion and love, and he would rather if no one knew. Jesus was humble.

People of true faith are humble. Some Christians aren’t so humble. We can be pretty arrogant and self-righteous sometimes, thinking we got it and others don’t. We are right and others are wrong. Faith doesn’t act like that. What the apostle Paul says about love in the famous Love chapter is equally true of faith: “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; ⁵ does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; ⁶ does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; ⁷ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things…. ¹³ And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”  The greatest of these may be love, but faith is right up there in the top three.

Strange Things

Delivered June 12, 2011

“We have seen strange things today!” Luke 5:26

Psalm 103; Luke 5:17-26

            This is one of the great stories of the gospels. Yet it has many puzzling elements. No matter how many times I read this story, it still causes me to scratch my head, wondering what is meant by some of the things said here. The story is told by three gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Matthew has an abbreviated form of it – without the whole process of lowering the paralyzed man through the roof.  I have chosen to read the longest and most complete version, but I will be drawing on the other accounts as well.

It happened early in Jesus’ ministry; earlier in this chapter Jesus had just called this twelve disciples. But already Jesus’ fame had spread. It says that Pharisees and teachers of the Law “had come out of every town of Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem.” (v. 17). This particular day he was in Capernaum, (Luke doesn’t tell us this but Mark does) which was the headquarters of his ministry. On this day a large crowd had gathered. Mark’s gospel describes it this way, “And again He entered Capernaum after some days, and it was heard that He was in the house. ² Immediately many gathered together, so that there was no longer room to receive them, not even near the door. And He preached the word to them.”  They couldn’t all fit in the house. It was like one of our recent funerals! We could not fit all the people in this Baptist Meetinghouse. All the people who wanted to hear Jesus could not fit in the house where he was preaching.

The story focuses on one particular man who came – a paralyzed man. It appears to be a young man because in Matthew’s and Mark’s gospels Jesus calls him, “son.” Jesus was only thirty years old himself so I see this guy as a teen or in his early twenties; probably all of them – the man and his four friends – are all young guys. Who but a bunch of young men would think of this solution and have the audacity to actually do it?  We are not told how this young man became paralyzed or how long he had been paralyzed. He was carried by his four buddies to Jesus hoping for a miracle. When they got to the house, they saw that there was no way they were going to squeeze inside, but they were determined that they were going to get their friend to the feet of Jesus. So they climbed up on the roof and pulled off the roofing tiles and lowered their friend down on a stretcher suspended by ropes.

This process must have taken some time. The people inside the house would have seen, heard and felt the roof coming apart, as debris fell on them. Especially picture the religious leaders sitting in the front row in their clerical robes, getting upset as debris showered down on them. That would have put them in a bad mood, which might explain their attitude later in the story. Jesus would have had to stop preaching. How can you preach when the roof is coming off? No one would be paying any attention to what he was saying any way, no matter how good a preacher he was. So picture the service stopping for a while until the roof is peeled away and a guy is let down on a stretcher in front of Jesus. This whole scene is strange enough, but it is only after the man makes it all the way to the floor that the really strange stuff happens.

I. First is a strange forgiveness. Verse 20 “When He saw their faith, He said to him, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.” Forgiveness of sins itself is not so strange. We are used to it, especially in the Christian tradition. And forgiveness of sins was a very important – I would say the central part – of Jewish religion at that time. The strange thing about forgiveness in this story is how it suddenly comes out of nowhere.  There was no mention of sin by the paralyzed man or his friends. Maybe Jesus was teaching about it before this man came crashing through the ceiling; but if he was preaching on the subject here, we have no knowledge of it and cannot presume it. In fact, if Jesus had been teaching on the subject in the house I would imagine the gospel writers would have mentioned it, but not one of them does. So we have to assume that Jesus introduces it here suddenly and unexpectedly.

         This is strange because we are used to hearing and thinking about forgiveness in the context of confession, repentance, sacrifices, atonement, restitution and things like that. But there is no mention of any of these here. The paralyzed man came for healing – physical healing. He – and his friends – expected Jesus to lay his hands on him or perhaps just speak some words to him and fix him so he could walk again. But instead the man hears Jesus say the words, “Son, your sins are forgiven you.”  He came for physical healing and what he got was spiritual healing.

I have spent a lot of time in hospitals. In my last church in Pennsylvania my church was only a few miles from the largest hospital in the county. I used to go at least every other day and some weeks I went every day. When I visit a patient in the hospital what is mostly on their minds is physical healing. There are emotional and spiritual issues raised by the illness, but mostly people are looking for physical healing. As a pastor I can’t offer that. I can pray for their healing, and I do. But I have never had anyone I prayed for suddenly jump up from their hospital bed instantly cured. I am a Doctor of Ministry not a Doctor of Medicine. One of my pastor friends with a Ph.D. told me how on one occasion he was introduced by a member of his church as “Dr. So-and-So” but she added, “But he is not a real doctor.” I guess a Doctor of Ministry would be considered even less a “real doctor.” I don’t heal people, but Jesus did.

This paralyzed man wanted a real physician. That was why he came to Jesus and why his friends took the dramatic action they did to get him to Jesus. But what Jesus offered was spiritual healing. “Son, your sins are forgiven you.” Jesus offered this man forgiveness without being asked for it, without any confession of sins from the man, without any repentance, without any sacrifices as atonement for sins being offered at the temple. Why did Jesus say this?

I think he saw into this man’s heart and saw his deepest need. There is evidence for this in the text. It says in the story that Jesus could look into the hearts of men, specifically the hearts of the scribes and Pharisees present. Verse 22 says, “But when Jesus perceived their thoughts, He answered and said to them, “Why are you reasoning in your hearts?” I can’t read minds or hearts. Some people seem to think I can. Some people expect me to know when someone is in the hospital without telling me. “Why didn’t you visit my wife or husband? He was in the hospital for a week!” The answer is, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know!” I was absent on the day they taught mind-minding in seminary.  I cannot know things unless people tell me. I can’t tell when someone’s feelings are hurt or they are upset about something unless they tell me. But apparently Jesus could know what was in people’s hearts and minds. At least that is what it says. I think he could tell that the real issue of this young paralyzed man was guilt.

It is amazing how often guilt comes up in relation to illness. People blame themselves for their own illness or their loved one’s illness. If only they had called the doctor sooner…. If only they had taken the symptoms more seriously… If only they had noticed the signs of depression earlier…. If only they had been paying closer attention…. If only they had not done this or that. If only they had done this or that … then he or she would not be so seriously ill. I think this paralyzed man was filled with guilt. I think Jesus could see it on his face. And that is why he said, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.”

Again notice that there were no conditions this man had to fulfill before Jesus forgave him. No confession or repentance. Nothing he had to believe or do.  This was unasked for unconditional forgiveness. Unless you count the faith of the friends as a condition. All three accounts point out the faith of the friends. Verse 20 “When He saw their faith, He said to him, ‘Man, your sins are forgiven you.’”  Since when can our sins be forgiven because of the faith of our friends? This just makes the whole story stranger. I wish I had an explanation for this. But the only answer I have is that it seems to be the grace of God. This is not the normal way we think about forgiveness, and yet it happened. I chalk it up to the inscrutable unpredictable grace of God in Jesus Christ.

II. I want to move on to another strange thing here in this passage. That is the strange orthodoxy of the religious leaders present at this healing. Jesus tells the man his sins are forgiven, and there is instant opposition from the religious leaders present. Verse 21 says, “And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”  What Jesus was saying and doing did not fit their understanding of how God worked. It did not fit into their theological scheme of things. Just like it doesn’t fit into ours. It was unorthodox. It was heretical. It was blasphemous.

The word orthodox literally means "correct thinking " or "right doctrine " or “correct worship." It means thinking and doing things the right way. And we all have our opinions when it comes to what is right and wrong in religion. It doesn’t matter if we are conservative or liberal, we have our opinion on what is correct and what is not, whether it has to do with the correct type of music and style of worship or holding the right position on the hot-button social issues of the day. We are right and “they” whoever “they” are, are most definitely wrong. Right? So when we are reading this story let’s not stigmatize these religious leaders too quickly. They are us. Even if you consider yourself the most tolerant unjudgmental person in the county, you are intolerant of intolerant people and judgmental of judgmental people. And you know exactly who those intolerant and judgmental people are and what groups they belong to. We are more like these scribes and Pharisees than we want to admit.

Like radio preacher Harold Camping who predicted Judgment Day and the Rapture to be May 21. We think ... and sometimes we say, “What a nut!” In my blog I called him a crazy old man.  That was not a very nice thing for me to say. It was judgmental of me. But we have our view on this matter, don’t we? And we think we are right and he is wrong. Right? It just so happens that our views are just not so easily and publicly disprovable as his were. And he will again be proven wrong when his new date of October 21 comes and goes with no rapture. Most of us are careful not to have our opinions so easily revealed as wrong. But that doesn’t mean our opinions are any more correct. We think we have “right thinking” on this matter. We are more like these scribes and Pharisees than we want to admit. “And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” 

III. Then we have Jesus’ strange response.  “²² But when Jesus perceived their thoughts, He answered and said to them, “Why are you reasoning in your hearts? ²³ Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise up and walk’? ²⁴ But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins”—He said to the man who was paralyzed, “I say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.” ²⁵ Immediately he rose up before them, took up what he had been lying on, and departed to his own house, glorifying God.”

Jesus said, “Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise up and walk’?” This has always puzzled me. It is seems to me that it is easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven you” than to say, “Rise up and walk.” I assure people their sins are forgiven, but I have never said to a paralyzed man, “Rise up and walk.” But Jesus seems to be saying just the opposite - that it is easier to tell a paralyzed man to walk than tell a guilty man that he is forgiven. This seems strange to me.

As I struggle with the strangeness of this statement, I think it must have to do with the fact that I do not really comprehend what a tremendous thing it is to be forgiven of sins. We take this far too lightly. It is no big deal for us. We think that God should forgive automatically… because he is God. That is who he is; he is in the forgiveness business, right? After all God is love; how could he not forgive. Therefore we take forgiveness for granted. We in the secular post-Christian West especially take it for granted. That is why we really don’t understand the Cross. We just don’t get it; we don’t see the need for the Cross. We don’t understand the gospel. We don’t understand Jesus. But the whole purpose of the Cross is to communicate how serious sin is and how costly forgiveness of sin is. But we still don’t get it. This whole bloody mess of the Cross sounds almost blasphemous (if we would even use such a word) to our spiritually sophisticated minds. We are much more like these scribes and Pharisees than we think. They didn’t get it either.

What they didn’t get was that this guy Jesus was God, and that is why he had the authority to forgive sins. How can a man be God? That just did not compute in their minds. And neither does it for us. We tend to go to either one extreme or the other – to say he was just human like us – or to say that we all are divine like him – all sons and daughters of God. But both of those solutions are just ways to avoid the uniqueness of Christ. When the scribes and Pharisees said the words, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?”  They were right; they just didn’t understand that God incarnate was standing there before them forgiving sins. And he is still here. Not in the flesh but in the Spirit, but it is still Christ. And he still forgives sins in the most strange and remarkable ways. And he still points us to faith.

Our story ends with the words, “And they were all amazed, and they glorified God and were filled with fear, saying, “We have seen strange things today!” I hope you are amazed by these strange things we have seen in this story today. If you aren’t, then I haven’t told the story well enough, for this is a most amazing tale – and the healing is not the most amazing part of it. The most amazing part is that Jesus has the power on earth to forgive sins. The people who saw what happened that day were filled with awe (which is a better translation than fear) and they glorified God for the strange things they saw. May we glorify God for the amazing forgiveness of sins and inner healing he does through Jesus Christ.

The Tempest

Delivered June 5, 2011

Psalm 107:23-32; Matthew 8:23-34

         I have been pondering what I am going to preach about during this summer. I considered different ideas. I thought about doing a series on the life of the OT patriarch Jacob or a series on the Holy Spirit. I might do those later, but I have decided that this summer I am going to preach on the “Stories of Jesus” - not stories that Jesus told, but stories about Jesus. So for the next three months I am going to be picking out some stories in the gospels from the life of Christ.

Today I am going to tell two stories. Many of the stories of Jesus come in pairs or threes in the gospels. These stories about Jesus are told by the gospel writers who are themselves storytellers. They group certain stories together for a reason. The stories found together often complement each other. They often illustrate and interpret each other. This is the case with the two stories we will look at today. One is about stilling a storm on the Sea of Galilee; the other is about Jesus healing two demoniacs – demon possessed men. In both cases Jesus uses his authority to bring peace and calm into the lives of people. They are two tempests, if you will – one meteorological and the other psychological – but both spiritual.

I. First is the Physical Tempest – the outer tempest - the stilling of the storm found in Matthew 8:23-27. There are different forms of this story in the gospels, but we are looking at Matthew’s account here today. Jesus got into a boat with his disciples and set out from Capernaum on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee and set out for Gergesa on the eastern shore. Jesus used the journey to take a nap. The verses immediately preceding this tell us that Jesus had been surrounded by “great multitudes” (v. 18) coming for healing and for teaching.  Jesus was exhausted and used the time in the boat to take a power nap.

While he was sleeping, a storm arose on the Sea of Galilee. Weather came into Galille from the Mediterranean in the west and blew through a narrow pass (called the Horns of Hattin where a great battle took place between the Crusaders and Saladin in the 12^th century) in the mountains that bordered the Sea of Galilee, picking up velocity in the process. So storms can arise very quickly and powerfully.

Our passage says that the boat was quickly covered with waves. The disciples panicked and cried out to Jesus, waking him up, saying, “Lord, save us. We are perishing!” Jesus responds, “Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?” Then He arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. ²⁷ So the men marveled, saying, “Who can this be, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?” That is the story. What does it teach us?

It tells us of the peace of Christ. Jesus was sleeping during the storm, and it seems like he would have slept right through it if he hadn’t been woken up. This picture of Jesus sleeping peacefully in the middle of a tempest is symbolic. It communicates the peace of God, which is with us in all the storms of life. There is a hymn that says: “There is a place of quiet rest, Near to the heart of God, A place where sin cannot molest, Near to the heart of God. O Jesus, blest Redeemer, Sent from the heart of God, Hold us, who wait before Thee, Near to the heart of God.” As Christians we believe that the Holy Spirit of God dwells within us. The divine Spirit of peace is at the very heart of us. As I said in my sermon last Sunday, I picture the human spirit as a space at the center of our being in which dwells the Spirit of God, who is also called in the NT the Spirit of Jesus. No matter what is happening on the outside, there is a place of quiet rest in our innermost being near to the heart of God.

In the story Jesus awakes and calms the storm. The peace which was inside Christ – which is Christ – came to the outside. “Then He arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.” Inner peace is externalized in outer peace in the stilling of the storm in the story. Contrast this peace with the attitude of the disciples. In the words of Jesus, they were fearful and faithless. He says to them, “Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?” He seems to be saying that peace comes from faith, which in turn dispels fear.

The key is faith. Unfortunately faith is one of the most misunderstood concepts in Christianity. Faith is not believing something against available evidence. It is not ignoring the facts. It is not “blind faith,” as it is so often labeled. Faith is seeing clearly. It is seeing the world, the universe and our lives the way they really are. It is peeling back the veneer of appearances to see the presence of God – the Kingdom of God - in our midst in all circumstances. Faith is seeing, and seeing is believing.

In this situation Jesus had complete faith. He knows that God is in control. That is why he could sleep in the boat and why he was not afraid when he awoke and saw the storm. Faith is not ignoring the storm or saying it doesn’t exist. It is not Pollyannaish optimism. It is not thinking the storm is not dangerous. It is trusting in the power of God who is greater than the storm. It is knowing that you are in God’s hands, and therefore all is well. Even if the storm resulted in the boat sinking and the death of all on board. When it comes to faith in God it is not thinking that we are never going to die. I have news for you: we are all going to die. Faith is trusting that our life in Christ is more powerful than death. That we will not perish even in death. Faith is seeing storms in a wider context. It is viewing a whole different dimension of reality. It is seeing the kingdom of God in our midst, even in a tempest.

And Jesus was perfectly one with God and dramatically exercised the creative power of God to clam the storm. That is why the disciples exclaimed, “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obeys him?”  

II. Let’s go on to the second story – the story of the healing of the two demoniacs. This is a story of the inner tempest raging within human beings. There are connections between the two stories. In the first story, the storm on the sea is primary - echoed in the restless hearts of the disciples who are fearful and faithless. In the second story, the inner storm that can exist in the human soul is emphasized. The story says that after the storm on the sea was stilled, Jesus and the disciples arrived at the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. There they are immediately greeted by two demon-possessed men. “When He had come to the other side, to the country of the Gergesenes, there met Him two demon-possessed men, coming out of the tombs, exceedingly fierce, so that no one could pass that way.”

There are different ways to interpret demon possession in the Bible. Some see it as an ancient explanation for mental and emotional illness. Others see it as literal spiritual beings – fallen angels – that can actually enter into humans. I am not going to get into that discussion in a sermon. We can tackle issues like that in a Bible study, but it more than can be dealt with in this sermon. It is sufficient here to say that these men were in agony; they were in mental, emotional, spiritual turmoil. A tempest was raging in their hearts and souls and they were out of control.

In Mark’s telling of this story there was only one demon possessed man. It says of him, “And when He had come out of the boat, immediately there met Him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, ³ who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no one could bind him,^[b] not even with chains, ⁴ because he had often been bound with shackles and chains. And the chains had been pulled apart by him, and the shackles broken in pieces; neither could anyone tame him. ⁵ And always, night and day, he was in the mountains and in the tombs, crying out and cutting himself with stones.” In Luke’s retelling of the story, it is also one man, but he has a legion of demons. A Roman legion was a military unit of 6000 soldiers. This guy was being pulled in 6000 different directions. In our story in Matthew’s gospel there are two men, but when the evil spirits are cast out, they are cast into a herd of swine (Mark’s gospel says 2000 swine), which immediately run headlong into the sea.

This story is symbolic of the emotional, psychological, spiritual turmoil that human beings can go through. It is speaking about the self-destructiveness that is the heart of so many of our addictive behaviors. It is speaking about inner confusion. It speaks about every type of psychological and spiritual problem you can think of. We don’t have to be over the edge and out of control for this to apply to us. Our case might not be as extreme as these poor fellows, but we can still identify with them. Anyone who has been through depression or mental and emotional problems, or who has had loved ones who suffered these conditions, knows what I am talking about. This story is about us.

Jesus crosses over the sea through a storm and arrives at Gergesa, which sounds like the Land of the Lost. It almost feels mythological like going over the River Styx and entering Hades. For a Jew to go the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee was like going to a different country. The country of the Gergesenes (or the Gadarenes, depending on your translation) was a land of foreigners on the far side of the sea outside of the Holy Land. There they raised pigs, unclean animals that no Jew would have anything to do with. Jesus and his disciples descend into these men’s personal hell, where no Jew would go, to men living among the tombs, another unclean place. Jesus comes into hell and brings peace to these troubled souls.

He does it with a single word. He simply says, “Go!” and the spirits flee from their hosts into the herd of swine. The great Protestant Reformer Martin Luther was a man who believed in demons. There is a famous story about when he was beginning this translation of the Bible into German. A demon appeared to him and it was so real to him that Luther threw his inkwell at the evil spirit. The ink stain can still be viewed today on the wall where he stayed in Wartburg Castle in Germany. Luther wrote the famous hymn “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” In it he says, “And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us.  The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure,           for lo, his doom is sure; one little word shall fell him.”

In the gospel story Jesus uttered one little word, “Go.” And the devils fled from his presence “into the herd of swine. And suddenly the whole herd of swine ran violently down the steep place into the sea, and perished in the water.” Into the same waters of the Sea of Galilee that Jesus had traveled and calmed just a short time before.

The death of the swine reveals the spiritual meaning of these demonic forces. They are dark forces of self-destruction. There are forces of destruction in us. You look at some people’s lives and these forces seem to be close to the surface. Some people seem bent on self-destruction and the destruction of others around them. You can read about it in the daily newspapers and on the television news. People destroy their own lives and the lives of those around them. Sometimes with physical violence. Sometimes emotionally. Sometimes spiritually. We see it in abuse of various types. We see it in bullying. We see it in so many ways in our society.

And if we are honest we can get glimpses of that dark side of ourselves, and we whisper a prayer, “There but for the grace of God, go I.” This story of the demon-possessed men is the story of how the presence of Jesus brings peace to troubled souls … if we want it.  That is the lesson of this story. See how the people of that area who saw this healing respond to Jesus.  Do they invite him into their homes and lives? No, listen to the end of the story: “³³ Then those who kept them fled; and they went away into the city and told everything, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. ³⁴ And behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus. And when they saw Him, they begged Him to depart from their region.”

This is hard to comprehend. Why would they beg Jesus to leave? The obvious answer is that Jesus was responsible for the destruction of a herd of 2000 pigs, which was probably the town herd – the vast majority of the whole town’s wealth. They did not want Jesus destroying any more of their economy. But surely they saw how Jesus healed the two men. Wouldn’t they want him to do more healings in their city? Apparently not. At least not at that price. And that is what it comes down to once again, as we see so many times in the stories of Jesus. There is always a price to pay to have the peace of God and the power of God in your midst. And these people were not willing to pay the price.

The question then is whether we are willing to pay the price. We get so used to the way our lives are – comfortable with our darkness and sin – that we don’t want the change that would come if Christ really came into our lives with power. So we play at religion, and dabble at the spiritual life. We don’t mind a visit with Jesus once in a while on a Sunday. But it is a whole different matter to have him show up uninvited during the week changing our lives and costing us money. What would he do if he had free reign in our lives, our town, our homes… in our church? Who knows what it would cost us? These townspeople were not willing to pay the price. The question remains, are we?