The Most Important Q& A Session, Ever - Mark 8:27-38

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

“Who do people say that I am?” I submit that is the greatest question ever asked among mankind. The answer is literally one of life or death – temporal, spiritual, and eternal.

If we were to go door to door in our community, asking that question, what answers might you get? How might our friends, neighbors, classmates and coworkers respond?

Most, if not all, will admit there was a man named Jesus – this is called the “historical Jesus” – He did exist. But from there, beliefs start to break down. They deny His Divinity. Prove it, they’ll demand. All He did was walk a lot and talk a lot…and die. It doesn’t take any great person to die. Others, much less generous, say this kind of foolish talk shows that He was literally crazy, demon-possessed, a liar, or even a heretic – anyone who claims to be God deserved the rotten ending He got.

Others will idolize Jesus as the ultimate pacifist, the predecessor to and patriarch of the 60’s with peace and love. He preached kindness, lived among the people, wore sandals and long hair, demonstrated compassion, and even when He was being tortured and killed, He spoke nothing but forgiveness to His tormenters and compassion to his friends and mother.

Some claim Jesus is as fictional a legend as King Arthur, Robin Hood, and Paul Bunyon. Instead of knights of a round table, He had disciples willing to follow Him everywhere. Although Jesus never stole from the rich, He spoke harshly against the wealthy and favorably to the poor, showing extraordinary compassion to the least in society. Instead of roping tornadoes, there are stories of Jesus calming storms and walking on water – tall tales of legendary proportions, to be sure.

People who consider themselves to be enlightened philosophers may give you that Jesus was a profound thinker, an inspiration to us all for forcing us to look inside ourselves to find truths that might not otherwise exist. They will label Him as a precursor to Ghandi or Marx, Norman Vincent Peale or Dale Carnegie, a great motivational leader of people who followed him for his wisdom and insights who also followed him and spread his teachings around the world.

And then there will be some that curse the very name of Jesus, calling Him the world’s greatest liar, the biggest hoax that the world has ever seen. The lie was so carefully crafted that even today, 2000 years later, people still risk everything, giving away money, property, even their very lives, deliberately calling themselves Christians in places where that title is a death sentence. Fools following a fool.

To be fair, out here, and maybe even in Victoria county and South Texas, the answers might skew toward the traditional, Christian answer – the answer of Peter, that Jesus is the Christ – but, then again, we might be sadly surprised by answers we get from neighbors, friends, classmates and coworkers. In an August 30, 2020 Newsweek article, author Benjamin Fearnow cites a Ligionier Ministries survey done earlier in the year.[1] The survey of 3,000 Americans, including 630 self-described evangelical Christians, discovered that over half of all surveyed, 52%, believe Jesus is not God. Let me restate that: 52% deny that Jesus is God. Surely, that number has to be better among the 630 evangelicals, right? No: a third of self-identifying evangelical Christians said the same thing, Jesus isn’t God, and two-thirds believe Jesus is the first and greatest piece of God’s creation. While 44% correctly believe Jesus was both God and Man, they incorrectly believe that because Jesus was a man He was, therefore, a sinful being just like you and me.

“Who do people say I am?” A wise man once told me, be careful when you ask a loaded question because you might not like the answers you hear.

With fewer and fewer around us able – or, perhaps willing – to confess Jesus as Christ, the question then become even more poignant and the answer becomes all the more vital when it is turned to you: “Who do you say that I am?”

To answer the question correctly, you must see Jesus where He is to be seen: at the cross. Peter did not want to do that. Peter wanted a cross-less Christ. He wanted a bloodless hero. He didn’t want to hear about Jesus’ suffering and rejection at the hands of the Jewish leaders. He didn’t want Jesus to talk about His death and dying. We can empathize: our culture does not like to talk about suffering and death and dying, either. We do anything and everything we can to prevent any or all of those things from happening. We helicopter parent our children so they don’t have to struggle. We expect our kids to be the star athlete, honors scholar, soloist, and featured artist and blame the coaches, teachers, directors, and other parents who say that they are, well, average. We expect above median salaries, bills to be magically paid, and dream vacations flourish. We slather our bodies with serums to prevent wrinkles, plump our lips to look more appealing, Botox our brows to avoid tired eyes, and spend hours in the gym trying to reshape ourselves into handsome dad and attractive mom bods while fighting hairlines that recede and greys that advance. We are always trying to mute a biological clock with wonder drugs that promise to work wonders against the last enemy to be defeated. No; we don’t want to talk about death and dying, either.

So, while we may understand Peter not wanting Jesus to talk about the cross, that is where Jesus must go. You must allow Jesus to go to Jerusalem; must see the Christ at the Cross. Cross and Christ go together. No cross, no death. No death, no atonement. No atonement, no forgiveness. No forgiveness, no salvation. No salvation, no Christ. Christ, you remember, means “anointed.” Anointing happened in the Scriptures for prophets, priests and kings, and Christ fulfills them all. Christ is the perfect prophet, proclaiming that the Kingdom is here. He is the perfect priest, making the perfect sacrifice of Himself, the perfect Lamb of God. He is the perfect king, ruling from the throne of rough-hewn wood driven into the ground. His glory is in His death. He is anointed to die.

Anything that gets in His way is the work of the devil, satan, who is trying to stop the cross-focused Lord. Peter tries to get in the way, the devil’s roadblock. “Get behind me, satan. You are not setting your mind on the things of God but on the things of man.” Nothing can be in His way, not even a disciple. Jesus must go. He must go to the cross. He must go to die.

Jesus promises death. He promises He must die for the sins of the world. It was His anointing.

And, He promises your death, as well. This is life under the cross. We know this. All those things we do to try to convince ourselves to the contrary, unless Jesus comes first, we will one day die in this flesh. The wages of sin will be paid. But, they have already been paid fully and eternally by Christ. You’ve already died in Christ. In Christ, you are anointed – not with oil, but with baptismal water. Baptized into Christ Jesus, you are also baptized into His death. And, baptized into Christ, you are also baptized into new life in Christ for He, who went the way of the cross, also goes the way of the empty tomb. Christ promises that from death comes life.

So, if asked, “Who do you say Jesus is,” you have nothing to lose. You have already been lost and found in Christ and are placed under the cross. When asked, confess Jesus as the Christ, the anointed one. Confess that He went the way of the cross, dying a sinner’s death, sacrificing Himself for the sins of the world. Speak confidently that those who believe in Him might rise to eternal life with Him in the resurrection of all flesh. Proclaim boldly that you believe this: He is the Christ, crucified and risen, for you.

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[1] newsweek.com/52-percent-americans-say-jesus-isnt-not-god-was-great-teacher-survey-says-1528617

Faith Sees, Believes, God Will Provide the Lamb - Genesis 22:1-12

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Lamb, the Lamb, O Father, where’s the sacrifice?
Faith sees, believes, God will provide the Lamb of price! (LSB 547 v1)

I do not understand this morning’s Old Testament lesson. I don’t. I suspect you don’t either.

As a father, I cannot grasp my mind around the fact that Abraham is being called by God to sacrifice his son, his only son, the one for whom he had so long waited, the one whom God had long ago promised, the one that was missing when God said that Abraham’s descendants would number like the sand of the seashore and the stars of the sky. You have to start with one to have that many and Abraham had no boy of his own, just a boy of his servant, Elieazar, who wasn’t even his own blood. Abraham tried the whole surrogate mother thing with Hagar and Ishmael and that was a disaster – Sarai tried to kill the woman whose body could do what hers could not, forcing Abraham to send away his son, even if it wasn’t a son from his wife. There had been so much between the promise and the birth and now God wanted him to sacrifice his son? The flesh of his flesh, the one who brought great laughter to Sarah’s heart – first, in sheer incredulity that such a thing could happen; then, in child birth, that the Lord did, indeed, provide as He promised. That one? That son?

And, from a father’s perspective, having to take the son on a three-day journey to the place God identified, Moriah, and offer him as a sacrifice? I cannot imagine how quiet that trip was. What was he supposed to say? If he said too much, it might give away the true purpose of the journey. If he didn’t say enough, the son might figure out something is wrong. If he said the wrong thing, he might not be able to do what he knew he must do. Moses only records one simple verbal transaction – Isaac identifies two parts of the necessary trifecta, that they have fire and wood but no sacrifice. Abraham’s reply – maybe men were tougher then, maybe Abraham had a sterner disposition, maybe Abraham truly was so rich in faith that he could say it without breaking his voice – his reply is so strong in faith that I cannot begin to fathom it. “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son,” he said.

If faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, as Hebrews tells us, Abraham is a remarkable figure of faith.

He trusts God’s promise. “You will be blessed to be a blessing,” God said. It’s what he had been doing for the past ten chapters of Genesis. From the time God said pack up and leave your homeland and go to where I will tell you, to his journey to Egypt (which, by the way turned into a disaster of international proportions), to the whole Lot thing (another disaster; if you recall, when Mrs. Lot’s turning to look back crystallized her place in the history books for all time), to the promise of descendants…all Abraham had was God and His word of promise, spoken to him time and time and time again. It wasn’t perfect a perfect faith, to be sure, but it is faith that trusts the promise of God. The substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not yet seen.

It’s always about the Son. An heir. The Son of the promise. Every time, God, you bring Abraham back to the promise – it’s about the Son. The next generation, and the one after that. And the next. The stars, the sand - remember? So shall your offspring be. And Abraham believed. And that was counted righteousness. It’s about the Son.

God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. My son…my only son.

Abraham had faith…but where’s the understanding?

Abraham believed God and that was counted as righteousness. He had faith – he trusted God. He demonstrated it many times, so why this test? For that matter, why this text? Don't you see? Don't you get it? He had the faith, but where is the understanding? He trusted God before he ever had a son. But now this “Take your son your only son whom you love and go to the mountain of Moriah and their offer him up as a sacrifice,” just doesn’t make much sense. Abraham had proved his faith with or without understanding. He trusted God before he had the son, now he has to trust God after he has the son. When is enough faith enough faith?  

This story is about Abraham and faith and testing and proving and improving faith. It is perhaps the most poignant, and profound, and pain-staking-ly told narrative in all of Scripture, this Villa de la Rosa, this way of sorrows, journeyed by father and son together, heading towards the sacrifice, a three-day journey where God Himself will provide a substitute lamb.

Generally speaking, our English translations are very good. They are very trustworthy. When we say, “This is the Word of the Lord,” you do not have to wonder, “But, is it?” The translations are very good, but sometimes they miss the nuance – sometimes, it’s because of readability, sometimes because the nuance would really be awkward, sometimes because the nuance is so elaborate that it would be impossible to include without altering the text. This is one of those instances. Bear with me for a minute.

God tells Abraham to go to Moriah. In Hebrew, there are three possible root words behind this: to teach, to fear, to see. The end of the story is clear: God says that He now knows that Abraham fears God in not withholding his son, and then Abraham and Isaac see the ram. Abraham calls the name of the place “The Lord will see.” Now, here’s the thing – our translation says, “God will provide,” but that’s not what the verb means. It means to see. Some translations try to get around it by saying, “God will see to it,” but that is not the same thing. It means see.

Don’t you see? Even when I don’t understand, when you don’t understand, when we don’t understand, don’t you see? Yes, this is about Abraham, but only secondarily. Don’t you see – this story is about God. It’s His narrative, His story, His promise, His son, His sacrifice, His seeing so much more than we can ever possibly see. Even with eyes of faith and trust, we can only see by faith what God gives us to see – which, is oftentimes, unseen to unseen eyes. You see, faith is not about our sight. It’s about God’s vision, His sight, His seeing. Trust is not about us, but about God and His promises that never fail or fade. It’s not about our testing or worthiness or trusting. It’s about God’s trust worthiness. He sees. He knows. He provides the Lamb. And us? We receive. In faith, we receive His gifts and His blessing.

We even get to be part of the story; secondarily, to be sure. But, our story becomes God’s story and God’s story becomes our story because the Word was made flesh and took our story into His story, and gives His story to us to become our story. He gives His Christ to us, and His body into us, and we are made into His body.

Yes, God says to Abraham, “Because you have not withheld your son, your descendants will be as the stars in the sky in the sand on the shore,” but that was hardly Abraham’s doing. It wasn’t caused by his faith or by his proving his faith. God had told him back at the beginning, remember, to leave his past and his family and go to the land that He would show to Abraham.

God would cause Abraham to see it. We see because God gives us the sight. God saw the Lamb long before Abraham did. God saw the ram and the Lamb long before Abraham did. God saw the Son, His only Son long before and long after Abraham did.

And so the story moves on. We know how it ends, but it’s still going on: His song prolong - it is finished; and then comes Easter - He sighs, he dies…He rose, He rose, my heart with thanks now overflows. The lamb that was slain has begun his reign! The lamb is raining on his throne. We have seen the end but, in the wonderful mystery of God’s workmanship, it is only the beginning. Every day we begin anew, every day, Baptized into Christ, every Lent and Easter the story is new. We see it. We get it. We are part of it. Today, we celebrate anew the Lamb given and shed for the forgiveness of sins.

The fire and the wood. Where is the sacrifice? Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Amen

 

 

 

See Jesus Only! Mark 9:2-9

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Peter didn’t know what he was saying. I can’t say I blame him, honestly. One minute, he was alone with  James and John and Jesus, the next minute, they were joined by the two great Old Testament heroes: Moses, who led the people from Egypt and the deliverer of the Law; Elijah, prophet who stood against Jezebel and proclaimed the Word of the Lord. One minute, Jesus looked ordinary and unremarkable, the next He glowed brighter than any laundromat could bleach clothes. With an extremely, extra-ordinary, out-of-this-world, transfigured Jesus standing before them, and the sudden arrival of two Old Testament heroes of the faith, Peter is flabbergasted and his mouth takes off as if it has a mind of its own.

“It is good, Lord, to be here,” Peter said to Jesus. Then again, anything is better than down there. Down there is suffering and crucifixion and death and dying, all at the hands of the chief priests and elders and scribes – the religious leaders who refuse to admit and confess Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Those people want to do you harm, Jesus, so let’s stay up here, on the mountaintop where things are safe. In fact, let’s stay up here as long as we can; let’s stay with some comfort. The Zebedee boys and I can put together a couple tents, three tabernacles, for each of you, one for Elijah, one for Moses, and one for you, Jesus. We can stay here, happily ever after.

I said, I can’t say I blame Peter. If I were a 4^th disciple, and if I were able to at least gather my wits, I would probably be spouting nonsense as well. You would, too, I imagine. The glory of the Lord will do that to you.

But Peter wasn’t just awestruck. It was awe coupled with his own desires. He wasn’t ready for Jesus to descend, to go down into the valley of the shadow. Six days earlier, Jesus asked the disciples who do they think Jesus was. Peter, answering for the Twelve, said, “You are the Christ.” Other Gospel writers add, “the Son of the Living God.” His confession was true and correct and faithful to the word and promises of God. In fact, in his Gospel, St. Matthew records Jesus praising Peter, “You are Peter, and on this rock [this confession] I will build my church” (Matt 16:18). Unfortunately, immediately afterward when Jesus began speaking plainly and teaching that He would have to suffer many things and be rejected by the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, Peter quickly pulled Jesus to the side, and rebuked Jesus by telling Him just what He could and could not do, and this suffering and dying talk was simply not going to fly. No, sir. It’s as if Peter knows better than Jesus what the Christ must do, what He will undergo, what glory looks like. No one becomes King by dying; He becomes king by conquering everyone else. So, Jesus, stop this cross-talk, this death-talk immediately. We have other things to do.

I have often wondered what Jesus’ voice sounded like when He, in turn, rebuked Peter. Was it sharp and harsh? Was it soft and sad? Was it flat with disappointment? “Get behind me, satan. You do not have in mind the things of God but of man.”

Were Peter’s feelings still stinging, six days later? Was he still trying to figure out a way to derail Jesus’ cross-focused plan? Was he simply overwhelmed with Jesus standing next to Moses and Elijah? Perhaps Peter was thinking, maybe these guys can talk some sense into the Master.

They weren’t there to talk “sense” into Jesus. We don’t know the words that were spoken by the two. Perhaps the visit was deeply theological: that Jesus was there to fulfill the Law on behalf of sinful man, that He was the completion of all that had been prophesied since the days of Abraham, that He would be the ultimate, once-for-all conclusion of the countless sacrifices made for the people of Israel, that all of this was His purpose as the Son of God. Perhaps it was more visceral, what it is to have your own reject you and continue doing what they want to do, regardless the message. Perhaps it was quite somber, having to face death at the hands of sinful people who want nothing more than the destruction of God’s chosen one. Perhaps it was a physical encouragement from men who, too, had themselves seen some of the glory of God on their own mountaintop moment. Perhaps it was an admixture of all the above, plus even more that we cannot begin to assume. Whatever else may have been said, they were there to encourage Him as He prepared for His downward journey toward His death.

At the base of the Mount of Transfiguration stood another mountain. More a hill, really; a hill named Golgatha, or Calvary – the place of the skull. It was a place of death of the worst sort, crucifixion, reserved for murderers, insurrectionists, and the vilest of criminals. That was Jesus’ ministry destination. He was to be the perfect sacrifice for the sins of the world.

The group is suddenly swallowed by a cloud. Throughout the Scriptures, clouds are symbols of and even manifestations of the glory of God. Where moments earlier, Jesus face shown with the radiance of His glory, they are now overwhelmed by an even greater glory. If there is any doubt of what is taking place, the voice of the Father in heaven shatters the moment. “This is my beloved son. Listen to Him.”

Those words echo Jesus’ baptism where the Father spoke to Jesus, “You are my beloved Son.” Jesus’ transfiguring, Moses and Elijah appearing, the Father speaking: these re-focus the entire purpose of Jesus life and ministry. Jesus did not come to gloriously dwell in a tent built on top of a mountaintop. His purpose in ministry wasn’t to hide up in the clouds with two heroes of old and three disciples in training and live in blissful abandon. Jesus must go down the Mount of Transfiguration and then up the mountain of Zion, where Jerusalem sits, the city that murders the prophets. There the cross is waiting for Him. The cross: that was where Jesus would demonstrate His glory for the entire world – not in radiant splendor, but in deepest of shame and humility, stripped and beaten and hung, naked, crucified by Rome as a warning for passers by of what happens when someone dare crosses the emperor; dying in substitute to satisfy the Father’s judgement for the sins of the world.

We are about to enter the season of Lent. It is a somber season, intended to be one of penitential reflection as we consider our own mortality and our own sinfulness. We will hear Jesus speak of His coming passion. We will see tensions rise between Him and His enemies and they will plot to kill him. We will ponder this incredible story of love once again, the perfectly sinless Son of God who becomes our substitute. The hymns become heavier, both in tone and in the theology they carry, and we will set aside the use of the word alleluia. Alleluia is a word of praise and celebration; Lent is not a time for that word, so we will “bury” it until Easter morning when we will mark it’s own resurrection with the Easter cry “Christ is risen, He is risen indeed, Alleluia!”

But we are not there, yet. We are heading down into the valley of the shadow. With Jesus we will descend the Mount of Transfiguration. We will journey with Jesus to the cross. But more than that, know that Jesus journeys with you as you carry your own cross this Lententide.

Your cross is where you struggle in life because of faith. Your cross might be a coworker or neighbor who mocks you endlessly for openly sharing your faith. It might be a classmate who laughs at you because you treat your body as a gift of God and not a laboratory for pharmaceuticals or for sex. It might be confessing Christ against those who openly use His name as nothing more than an expletive or a verbal space filler. It might be not understanding why God doesn’t seem to answer your prayers for help and aid. It might be memories of your own troubled past that you know are forgiven by Jesus, but they just won’t go away. It might be a body that is failing or a mind that is hurting or a conscience that is burdened. We’ll wrestle with Lenten cross-bearing during the Wednesday evening services using the book of Job. Job…now there’s someone who knows what it is to be at the base of the mountain and looking back up, longingly, at the highs that were left behind. It’s tempting to do just that – but, instead, we continue to move forward, with the cross Christ gives us, following always in His own footsteps.

After the voice spoke, the cloud left. When Peter, James and John looked, all they saw was Jesus only. To see Jesus only. In these grey and latter days, may we see Jesus only! Jesus, crucified; Jesus risen; Jesus, ascended and glorified; Jesus who promises to be with us as we journey under the cross in this world, and who will return to raise us to our own glorious transfiguration from these lowly bodies to a glorious, resurrected body.  Raised in glory, our bodies – whole and complete, holy and glorified – will also shine like Christ’s, never to die again. With Moses and Elijah and all the faithful, we will enjoy the blessed joy of eternity in the presence of the Father who declares you His beloved and that with you He is pleased.

 

Jesus: Physician of Body, Soul and Mind - Mark 1:29-39

 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

“My doctor says I am clinically depressed. I need some help.” I got ten words out before I broke down, weeping. That happened five years ago, this past week, the day I walked into my pastor’s office and spoke those two sentences to Pastor Sawhill. It had been a terrible, terrible weekend after a terrible, terrible week at the end of a terrible, terrible month. To say it was a “dark time” is an understatement. For months, I had been fighting ugly thoughts. Truth be told, looking back, I had been fighting depressive tendencies since I was a kid, but things had finally come to a head. Layer after layer of shame was weighing down on me. I saw myself as a failure-writ-large. Woulda, coulda, shoulda…those words echoed in judgement in my head. You remember the book, The Scarlet Letter, and how Hester Prynne wore that infamous A on her blouse with an admixture of pride and guilt. If she wore an A for adultery, I mentally emblazoned a giant F on my chest. F for failure.

All I could see in myself were the mistakes I had made as a parent, doubting that I had done enough to prepare them for life and remembering seemingly each and every mistake I made in rearing them. I perceived failure as a husband. My sins of omission and commission, both real and imagined, were magnified in my head. At church, attendance was down. Must be my fault, somehow, I thought. The budget was getting tight. There were some grumblings and I felt, truly or not, that they were about me, and I felt a growing pressure to change in both style and substance. There was tension between members after some tumultuous choices were made. Meetings were uncomfortable. I hated going to work, having to sit in the parking lot almost every morning, just to work up the chutzpa to go inside.

My inner voice became more and more corrupt. You know the voice I speak about. You have one. It’s the voice in your head that praises you for a job well done, that warns you about dangerous situations, that encourages you to be wise, that laughs at your dad jokes that make everyone else groan, that offers commentary on things around you, and calls out bad choices. That’s how your voice, your conscience is supposed to work – identifying how we, as children of God, are to live in the freedom God gives to love Him and our neighbors. But my voice was corrupted. It became an absolutely cruel, demanding and damning monster. I could never please, appease, or satisfy it. And, then, it doubled down. A good father, a good husband, a good pastor would know what to do, how to fix this, what direction to take, but you....you are so stupid, incompetent, a failure. I hated shaving and combing my hair. I could not look myself in the eye in the mirror.

This probably makes no sense to you – how I let myself get in that deep of a hole, what was going on in my head, why I felt this way – but I assure you, it was very, very ugly. Imagine the worst, most sadistic bully you had ever seen, like R. Lee Ermy as Sgt. Hartman in Full Metal Jacket, and you have an idea of what was going on. As bad as bullies are, and they are cruel, they are outside of you. The worst part was my bully was in my head using my voice, calling me the most unconscionable names you could possibly imagine. I was my own internal enemy.

I grew to hate Sunday mornings. I would preach of Christ’s atoning sacrifice for sinners, but my inner voice would say, “Except for you.” I would raise my hand and say, “I forgive you all your sins,” and see only the backside of a hand raised against me in judgement. I would speak of grace through faith and my voice would mock, “What faith? Good Christians, faithful Christians, Baptized Christians should not think this way. Such a disappointment.” And during the week, I would sit in the last pew – I couldn’t make myself get closer to the altar – and weep, huge tears running down my face, part of me praying no one would come in; part of me hoping someone would find me. I remember thinking of Jesus’ miraculous power and might and how the townspeople brought all their sick and their lame and their demon possessed for Him to heal. And He did! With a touch, the fever left Peter’s mother-in-law and she got up, not at all fatigued, but able to serve. The deaf could hear the voice of the one who made their ears come to life; the blind could see the one who brought light to their darkness; the lame could leap like the deer; lepers could return, whole and healed, into the community; and formerly demon-possessed souls could again give thanks to the Lord for He is good and His mercy endures, Amen! But, there I sat, alone in my misery. I would stare at the font and repeat over and over, out loud so to be heard over my inner voice, “I am baptized, I am baptized. I am God’s child and He won’t leave me in this. But, why isn’t he helping me?” I hung there in the tension: baptized but suffering terribly.  

I tell you this story, not because I am vying for sympathy, but to do two things: one, to expose the lies that satan tries to tell us that something is wrong, that because you have sinned, or because you have been sinned against, or because you are being faith-tested, or because perhaps you are in the midst of your own Job-like moment that you have somehow hurled yourself outside God’s grace. Seventy times seven is for everyone else; you get one times one. Rubbish. He’s called accuser and father of lies for a reason. Christ has defeated satan and that is truth beyond all truths. And, two, when satan does attack you with his best – or his worst, as the case may be – the solution is not to go it alone in prideful arrogance like I tried to do, saying that it’ll all be OK, pretending to keep swimming, fake it ‘til you make it, blah blah blah. The solution is to seek help from outside you, from another Christian, another child of God, and preferably your pastor, so you can hear of Truth – with a Capitol T - that is outside yourself: the Truth of Jesus Christ crucified for you.

It's very easy to read this section from Mark 1, starting already with last week’s Gospel lesson, the ten verses previous, and think this is all the kind of Jesus you need – a miraculous, healing Jesus who drives out sickness and illness and demons and every other kind of force that works against us as human beings. Yes, He does these things, but remember: every one of those people whom Jesus healed would one day die. If that’s all Jesus is, just a miracle-working physician, something is missing – something eternal. I want you to notice something else: Jesus disappears, early in the morning, to pray. And, when the disciples find him, he doesn’t say, “Let’s go set up another Messianic clinic so I can miraculously heal.” He says, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.”  He comes to preach a Word that gives life, now and into eternity, to heal from the eternal sickness of our sins, to bring immortality to life amidst death.

“Preaching” is such a negative word in today’s vocabulary. A father is scolding his teenage daughter and she snaps at him, “Don’t preach at me!” When the boss is giving a presentation that everyone knows about already, we say he’s preaching to the choir. When we see Mom or Dad putting brother or sister in his or her place, really letting them have it, we smile at the parent and say, “Preach it!” It sounds so negative. But this is what Jesus comes to do: preach.

Preaching is proclamation. It is saying, “Thus saith the Lord” and “This is most certainly true!” When Jesus proclaims, it is to proclaim the Kingdom of God has arrived and is standing among the people. In Christ, God reigns. The Kingdom has come. And the only response to the Kingdom’s arrival is repentance. Lord, have mercy on me a sinner! He does! His purpose is to have mercy, to offer Himself as the vicarious atonement, the substitutionary sacrifice, for sinners. His preaching declares that: His coming is not only for repentance, but salvation. Even from the cross, the proclamation sounds forth in a great victory sermon: It is finished! Not His life, not His suffering, but Satan’s lying hold over God’s people.

Finally, the weekend of my 42^nd birthday, my façade broke. I knew I had no choice. Something was very, very wrong. I saw my physician. I made an appointment with Dr. Allain. And then I saw my pastor. My pastor stood in the stead of Jesus Christ and he preached, not to a church full of people, not to a congregation, but to me: a dying, hurting soul. Pastor Sawhill proclaimed to me that satan was a lying and defeated fool and that he was twisting my conscience. He spoke to me what I had spoken countless times for others. He assured me that, even in the midst of what I was going through, that my Baptismal covenant was secure. He proclaimed that it’s not the strength of my faith but the strength of the One in whom our Christian faith rests. He proclaimed Christ’s power is made perfect in our weakness, and His weakness is greater than our strength could ever be. He proclaimed that nothing – not even the prince of darkness – can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. And, he proclaimed there is now no condemnation for you in Christ Jesus our Lord. He placed his hands on my head and announced the absolution to me. And he prayed for the Lord to heal my soul, drive satan’s lies from me, and enable me to live free in Christ.

That day, a few days after my 42^nd birthday, this preacher was the preached-to with my pastor proclaiming the Good News of Jesus to me. That day, perhaps for the first time in a long time, I heard Jesus proclaimed in the clearest of words. I wish I could say there was miraculous healing of my illness, that those words of proclamation were all it took to rid me of my clinical depression. It wasn’t. It took medication, some very painful visits with a therapist, and some more visits with my pastor. It’s been an interesting time since then. God used a physician, a therapist, and a pastor as instruments of healing for me. I would never do it again, but I thank God for those dark days because that darkness let me hear, receive, and experience the power of the proclamation of the Good News of Jesus as never before. Remember, I said I used to see myself with a giant letter F for Failure? I was wrong. It’s not an F. It’s a cross, placed on my in my baptism by another pastor, as a servant of Christ, a cross in token that I have been redeemed by Christ the Crucified. And so have you. Receive the sign of the cross: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.