Quinquagesima Sunday – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: St. Luke 18:31-43
In Christ Jesus, who is patient and kind, ever ready to show mercy in our suffering and helplessness, dear fellow redeemed:
How can you tell if you love someone, and how can you tell if they love you? Is it by how they look? This might be the reason for an initial attraction. A girl thinks a boy is handsome, or a boy thinks a girl is pretty. That could be the beginning of a crush—what is sometimes called “love at first sight”—, but that’s not exactly love. Love is much deeper than physical appearance or a feeling of attraction. And love is more than romantic or flattering words.
Today’s Epistle Lesson from 1 Corinthians 13 describes love as selfless action: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth” (vv. 4-6). “Love at first sight” is more about what you could do for me. Love that flows from Jesus is about what I can do for you.
And what did Jesus say He would do for others? He said, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For He will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging Him, they will kill Him, and on the third day He will rise.” The disciples did not hear this as love. They heard it as suffering and especially as loss—their loss. They had big plans for Jesus and for themselves as His closest associates. Those plans did not include Jesus’ suffering and death.
Instead of letting Jesus’ plan and promise “sink into [their] ears” (Luk. 9:44), they insisted on their own way. And if they had gotten their way, they might have enjoyed more earthly glory, but neither they nor we would have a Savior. Jesus’ love for sinners compelled Him toward suffering and the cross. Nobody forced Him to go to Jerusalem; He went willingly.
That’s another quality of godly love—it can’t be forced. When love is a “have to,” it is motivated by the Law. When love is a “get to,” it is motivated by the Gospel. The Law says, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, and mind… and your neighbor as yourself” (Mat. 22:37,39). But only the Gospel can move our hearts to show this love gladly and freely. Only when we have been brought to faith by the Holy Spirit, can we bear the fruit of love toward others.
Jesus was acting out of love when He explained what He would do in Jerusalem. He was going there to pay for the sins of all people of all time, even though He had never done any wrong. This was the ultimate act of love, accepting the eternal punishment that everyone else deserved. The disciples in their selfishness would have stopped Him from going to do this, but His love for them and us compelled Him forward.
As He made His way toward Jerusalem, a large crowd went with Him. It was shortly before this that Jesus had raised His friend Lazarus from the dead, and He continued to do other miracles besides. The reports of His miraculous power traveled in every direction, and they also reached the ears of a blind man who lived in or near the town of Jericho in Judea. He was begging by the road outside of town when the crowd passed by with Jesus. As soon as he learned that Jesus was near, he began to cry out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
The members of the crowd had referred to Him as “Jesus of Nazareth,” but the blind man called him “Jesus, Son of David.” This tells us that from the reports he heard about Jesus, he was convinced that Jesus was the Messiah, the Savior long-promised to Israel. Though he could not see physically, the blind man “saw” Jesus by faith. He believed what He had heard about Him. He is a wonderful example of what Jesus later said to His disciple Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (Joh. 20:29).
This man’s faith shines the more brightly when we think about his situation. He was blind and probably had been his whole life. He had no source of income, so he was forced to beg on the side of the road. If you were in his shoes (assuming he had any), would you be more likely to complain about what God wasn’t doing for you or cling to His promises? Trust Him to provide for you or turn away from Him?
Jesus heard the blind man’s cry for mercy, just as He hears yours. Psalm 34 says, “The eyes of the LORD are on the righteous, And His ears are open to their cry” (v. 15, NKJV). Perhaps no one else knows your particular struggle, your pain, how helpless you sometimes feel. But He does. For you, He was “mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon.” He was treated like the blind beggar on the side of the road that no one wanted to look at or listen to. “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3).
He endured all this trouble and suffering, so you would have hope in your trouble and suffering. Maybe you have been hurt or harmed by those who were supposed to love you. Maybe you feel like your efforts to love have been thrown back in your face. That is a lonely place to be in, like being stuck by yourself in the darkness.
Jesus does not leave you alone. He does not withhold His mercy from you. Look how personally He dealt with the blind man. “Bring him here to Me,” He said. Then He asked the blind man this grace-filled question: “What do you want Me to do for you?” This is how Jesus invites you to pray. He says, “ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Luk. 11:9). No problem is too big or too small for Him. No request is too hard. You don’t always know what is best for yourself, but He does, and He wants you to bring your petitions to Him.
The blind man said, “Lord, let me recover my sight.” He said this about his physical sight, but we say the same about our faith. The less we hear Jesus’ Word, the less clear His love for us is. The more we hear His Word, the clearer He is to our faith. Our sinful flesh and the temptations of the world and the devil cloud our faith. We get to thinking too much about human glory like the disciples did. We become bitter dwelling on what we should have received but didn’t. But getting exactly what we want when we want it is not the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus is.
That’s another lesson the blind man teaches us. If you had been blind your whole life and could suddenly see, what would you do? Where would you go? This is what the formerly blind man did: he “followed [Jesus], glorifying God.” Whether physically blind or seeing, what mattered most was that this man believed in Jesus. Jesus said as much, “your faith has made you well.”
When we come to church, one of the first things we do is confess our sins. We acknowledge that our spiritual vision is not as sharp as it should be. Our love is lacking. Our faith is weak. As we confess, we say with the blind man, “Lord, let me recover my sight.” “Let Your mercy be upon me. Let me see Your love. Forgive me all my sins. Show me the light of Your grace.” And Jesus says through the mouth of the pastor, “I forgive you all your sins. Recover your sight; your faith has made you well.”
The faith that you have, that the Holy Spirit worked in you through the powerful Word, is what connects you to the love of God in Christ Jesus. Faith sees Jesus “mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon,” flogged, and nailed to a cross and says, “Jesus did that to redeem me.” Faith hears Jesus cry, “It is finished!” and says, “He finished the work for me to win my salvation.” Faith sees the empty tomb on Easter Sunday morning and declares, “Jesus conquered death for me.”
Jesus did more than tell you He loves you. He showed it. And He keeps showing it by calling you back to the grace of your Baptism by which He joined you to Him, by filling you with comfort through His Word of absolution, and by strengthening you through the Supper of His holy body and blood. He is not about to pass you by, especially in your times of greatest suffering and need. Whether you are in Jerico, Iowa, or Jericho in the Middle East, He comes to you in love through His Holy Word.
We won’t fully understand the extent of His love in this life. Our sinful flesh keeps us from seeing it in all its “breadth and length and height and depth” (Eph. 3:18). But the day will come when we will see Jesus as He is. Like the blind man who had the shadows lifted from his sight, we will look upon Jesus in His glory and see perfect love embodied in Him. 1 Corinthians 13, the great love chapter, describes how this will be: “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (v. 12).
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
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(picture from “Jesus Healing the Blind in Jericho,” Netherlands 1470s)
The Second Sunday of Easter – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Joshua 5:13-6:6
In Christ Jesus, who waits for just the right time to give just the right blessings, dear fellow redeemed:
The Lord’s apostle Thomas had a tough week. Mary Magdalene and the other women said, “We have seen the Lord!” The two Emmaus disciples said, “We have seen the Lord!” His fellow chosen disciples said, “We have seen the Lord!” Why did Thomas seem to be the only one who hadn’t seen the Lord that Easter Sunday? Why would Jesus leave him out? He couldn’t bear the thought; they must be mistaken.
So all week long, no matter who talked to him, and no matter what evidence they offered of Jesus’ resurrection, Thomas defiantly replied, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe” (Joh. 20:25). But did he also have some doubts about his firm position? As each day passed without the Lord appearing, did he wonder, “O Lord, what are You waiting for?” Or did the passing of each day without the Lord’s appearance make him more firm in his denials?
He asked for proof, real tangible evidence. He wanted to see it, or he said he would never believe it. This showed a misunderstanding of what it means to “believe.” It is not a decision that a person makes when the evidence is convincing enough. It is not a scientific process of gathering facts until there is no possible conclusion but one. To “believe” is to trust that something is so, or that something will be, even when there is no tangible evidence or logical basis to support it.
The Israelites were operating by faith as they marched around the walls of Jericho. They trusted that the LORD would give them the victory He promised. But we could understand if their faith wavered a bit. Like Thomas who had to wait a week before Jesus revealed Himself to him, the Israelites had to wait a week before the LORD delivered Jericho into their hands.
Each day for six days, they were directed to march one time all the way around the city. The only sound to be made was seven priests blowing seven rams’ horns. The men of war were to march in silence. As each day passed with nothing happening, did those Israelites wonder within themselves, “What are You waiting for?” What if nothing happened at all? They would be the laughing-stock of all the land of Canaan if they marched around a city for a week and nothing happened. Possibly while they marched they could hear the inhabitants of Jericho yelling down at them, taunting them, ridiculing them.
But as strange as it seemed to do what God said, they held onto His promise. They followed the LORD’s instructions. For six days, they marched around once, and on the seventh day, they marched around the city seven times in the same manner as before. Then the seven priests blew their trumpets. On their cue, the men of war sent up a great shout, and the walls of Jericho dropped straight down just like a skyscraper that is imploded.
The Israelites’ seven-day wait was rewarded with a complete victory over the city and its inhabitants. Their faith in the LORD’s promise was confirmed. The wait was definitely worth it. Because the LORD made them wait and made the walls of Jericho fall without anything touching them, the Israelites saw more clearly that the victory was the LORD’s.
The “sevens” in the account emphasize this. The number seven in the Bible is closely tied to God, so it represents His holiness or perfection. He directed seven priests to march for seven days carrying seven horns, with seven trips around the city on the seventh day. This was the work of the holy LORD; this was His doing out of love for His people.
The same holy LORD still works on your behalf, to give you blessings. But when you have to do something you don’t want to do, or when relief is taking longer than you want, it is easy to ask Him, “What are You waiting for?” You may have asked that when you were sick and didn’t seem to be getting better. You may have asked that when you were being mistreated by a classmate or co-worker or member of the community. You may have asked that when a close relationship was strained, when great troubles loomed in your future, when the questions kept piling up but no answers—“What Are You Waiting For?”
It is natural to ask this. We even have examples of wording like this in the Psalms of lament. But the psalmists don’t stop with that question. They go on to express their confidence that the LORD will act, that He will deliver them at the right time. We need to remember who is calling the shots, who has the Master plan. This is brought home to us by the first part of today’s reading, when Joshua comes face to face with a mysterious Man of war. Joshua asked Him, “Are You for us, or for our adversaries?” It’s a simple choice. We think the answer will be “I am for you.” But instead the Man replied, “No; but I am the commander of the army of the LORD. Now I have come.”
God is not interested in taking the side of sinners, as though He is just another weapon in our arsenal. He wants us to take His side, to put our trust in Him. This is instructive for when we wonder if we should pray for our favorite sports team, as though God is a fan like we are, or that our team is more righteous than another. God is above all this. He doesn’t want us to be so focused on sides in this life. He wants us to stay focused on His Word.
This is the crucial step when we ask Him, “What are You waiting for?” Instead of just staring up in the sky and waiting for something to happen, the LORD wants us to hear His holy Word. He wants us to review His promises, take them to heart, understand anew His love for us. He wants us to believe that He sent His only-begotten Son to take on flesh for us. He wants us to believe that Jesus satisfied the requirements of God’s holy Law in our place and died to make satisfaction for all our sin. He wants us to believe that Jesus rose on the third day in victory over death just as He said He would.
This was Thomas’ failing. He might have thought that His friends were playing a cruel trick on him, but he should not have rejected Jesus’ clear word. Before His death, Jesus told all twelve of the disciples, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day” (Mat. 20:18-19). Thomas heard those words, but like his fellow disciples, he did not believe them.
They did not believe until they saw Jesus, until they had tangible proof. And Jesus said to them, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (Joh. 20:29). Sometimes Christians will ask God for some special sign of His love, some evidence that will show them He is really present, that He really cares. And the LORD says to us, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
He calls you to trust His love even when it seems like He is angry with you, to rely on Him even when there appears to be no end to your troubles, to follow His Word even when you can’t see a “light at the end of the tunnel.” Because He is only waiting for the right time. He will not forget about you. Everything He does is for your good.
Day seven was the right time for the walls of Jericho to come crashing down just as the LORD promised they would. Seven days was the right time to hide Himself from Thomas, so Thomas would learn to trust Jesus’ Word and not his own reason. And however long you must wait for relief or help or deliverance is the right amount of time. Whatever you go through, Jesus is with you. Did you notice how He repeated Thomas’ words showing that He had seen all and heard all? Thomas didn’t know it, but Jesus was with Him the whole time.
And so He is with you always, even to the end of your life, even to the end of the age (Mat. 28:20). He is with you “where two or three are gathered in [His] name” (Mat. 18:20). He is with you when He brings forgiveness right to your heart in the absolution. He is with you when you come forward to His holy table. These are the means of His grace by which He makes the walls of your sin and doubt come crashing down. This is where He gives you strength for today and for tomorrow. This is where He turns your desire for proof of His love into the assurance that He loves you with a perfect love.
This is where He changes your impatient, “What are You waiting for?” into a faithful and eager waiting for His grace. We join the psalmist in this faithful waiting and say, “I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, And in His word I do hope. My soul waits for the Lord More than those who watch for the morning—Yes, more than those who watch for the morning. O Israel, hope in the LORD; For with the LORD there is mercy, And with Him is abundant redemption” (Psa. 130:5-7, NKJV).
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
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(woodcut from “Doubting Thomas” by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1794-1872)