Text: Mark 5:21-43
To
Him who loves us and has washed us from our sins by His blood and made us a
kingdom, priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever
and ever. Amen.
It
should not surprise us that Jairus came to Jesus for help, for his daughter was
gravely ill. That’s what good and sane fathers
do when their daughters are in trouble; they try to fix things or at least find
someone who can.
It
also should not alarm us the way in which Jairus came to Jesus; he came and
fell at Jesus’ feet and begged him for a divine intervention, for his daughter
was at the point of death.
This
makes sense. We can all relate to this,
even agonize with the fear, worry, and desperation of this father.
All
this stated, imagine with me if Jairus did nothing, if he did not show concern
about the illness of his daughter, and if he even denied the reality that she
was sick in the first place.
Can
you imagine?
“Jairus,
your daughter is about to die, it is rather serious. She needs a physician or something more!”
“Nah,
she is perfectly healthy. She is normal,
whole, and complete. Stop judging her as
ill and sick you ruthless hateful bigot.”
To
this we would cry, “Outrage! She is not
normal, standard, and whole, but rather she is dying. Do you not see, if you do not do something
quickly, she will be a motionless and helpless corpse! For goodness’ sake, your very own flesh and
blood—your daughter—is dying!”
And
yet, we are all guilty of diminishing the seriousness of death—that is sin—while
covering it with a fragrant perfume, saying all is well. Otherwise stated, we are no better off than
the Pharisees or the Tax Collectors, for we all—in our own ways—attempt to
standardize and normalize our pet sins.
We take that which is contrary to God’s Law—sin—and attempt to write it
off as o.k.. By doing this, we are
actually attempting to take ourselves off of the death bed of sin and put
ourselves in agreement with God’s Holy Word.
We take whatever iniquity we cherish and we attempt to remove it from
the category of sin and place it into the category of normal, whole, and true. Furthermore,
if we can get enough people around us to agree that we aren’t dead in sin, then
we can at least feel a sense of vitality, even though we are really numb. If we can get the national government to pass
laws that tell us that we are not guilty but justified, well then, we must be o.k.
Let’s
face it, as humans we are all under the compulsion to justify ourselves. “We are forced to justify ourselves, and as
we do so, we usually want to be right.”[1] We don’t want to be a
needy helpless corpse of sin sprawled out on a stretcher, but rather, we want
to be independently alive and free from judgment. “We want constant recognition of ourselves
because it is vitally necessary. We need its confirmation and renewal. If it is
lacking, we try to regain it or even to coerce it.”[2] That is to say, we attempt
to justify our departures from the standard of God’s divine Law. We attempt to
diminish our violation of what the Lord says is good, right, and true.
And
so it goes, we look at our surroundings, popular opinions, government laws,
Supreme Court Justice Decisions, and so forth to paint the self-portrait that
we are normal and that our sins are typical.
We will even accumulate pastors for ourselves that will tickle our ears
and suit our own fancy.
All
along though, we have this heart of sin that is buried underneath all our
attempts of self-justification, a heart that daily spews forth the sickness of
evil thoughts, murder, adultery, lust, unnatural fornication, theft, lies,
coveting, gluttony, and slander.
“Although [we] keep up a good appearance to people in church, [our]
co-workers, [our] friends, and maybe even [our] family, inside there is
jealously, greed, malice, and every form of evil. And even if [we] are able to avoid gross,
outward sins, even if [we] keep [our] darkest fantasies hidden away in [our]
minds, they cannot be hidden from the eyes of the almighty judge. [We] are not nearly as good as [we] think
[we] are, or as [we would] like people to think.”[3]
Repent
dear friends. Acknowledge this day that
according to your sinful nature that you are dead in your sins. Confess that you have tried to not only deny
and diminish the stench of your sinful heart, but have actually tried to
normalize it by sprinkling potpourri over it.
I say this with compassion to you and to me, quit lying to yourself; stretch
out on that bed beside Jairus’ twelve year old daughter and die with her.[4] Yes, die with her.
But
what happens to us poor miserable sinners when we lie in death with Jairus’
daughter? What happens when we are
exposed and unmasked? What will the Lord
do with broken, destroyed, hurt, crippled, wrecked, collapsed, and torn down
sinners on a stretcher? Will Christ be
troubled by this? Will He be
bothered? Will He come to the
rescue? Will Christ even care?
He
did for Jairus’ daughter. He worked His
way through the crying and wailing and grieving crowd to the dead girl. He then grabbed death by the hand and said, “little
girl, get up!”
Dear
friends, we need to keep in mind that the essence of the Gospel is neither a
fluffy abstract love feeling, nor the spirit of tolerance. Rather, what makes
the Gospel really good news is that the Gospel is for sinners only. It is for the spiritually dead. It is for you; it is for me. Yes, the Gospel is about the forgiveness of
sins.
The
personal application of the Gospel presupposes that one knows their sin
problem. Indeed, “one cannot know the magnitude of Christ’s grace unless we first
recognize our malady.”[5] Thus, good news comes to
the blessed dead.
In
light of this past week’s Supreme Court Decision, it is important to remember
that homosexuals need not to be singled out in this vast sea of sinners.
Rather, it is the other way around. Homosexuals
need to join, yes join: heterosexuals, males, females, children, elderly,
rebels, self-righteous narcissists, Democrats, Republicans, greedy executives,
church goers, thieves, teachers, plumbers, adulterers, IRS agents, white collar
workers, blue collar workers, uncompassionate jerks, truth compromisers, North
Americans, Africans, Europeans, Asians, and so forth, on the death bed of
confession saying, “There is no one who is righteous, not even one; that we are
by nature sinful and unclean and we are all in need of forgiveness and the
sufficiency of Christ Jesus’ blood.”
Dear
friends, contrary to popular opinion, there really is no such thing as different
classifications of people; rather there are those who live in the lie that they
are alive and those who “die with the truth—the truth that in of ourselves we
are dead as dust.”[6]
By
normalizing, standardizing, diminishing, and denying sin, no matter what that
sin may be, we are essentially denying our need of the Gospel and eroding the
very fundamental core of Christianity. As
Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician.”[7]
Repent;
do not deceive yourself. When you and I
say that we have no sin, the truth is not in us.
…
You,
who have ears, hear. You are the blessed
dead. Indeed, “The living are dead and
the dead are living. You [though] are dead.”[8]
You,
who have ears, hear. Blessed are you who
die with Jairus’ daughter, for “as Jesus took the daughter of Jairus by the hand
and said to her, ‘little girl, I say to you, arise,’ so also He takes you by
the heart and says, ‘Oh my child, I forgive you. I say to you arise. I love you.
You are mine. Come off the bed of
death, the bed of sin, and live again.
The worst of your sins, your darkest of desires, your pettiness and
self-love and greed and lust—they are no more.
They are gone. They are
destroyed. I have taken them into my
flesh. They were crucified with me. They have become nothing, that I might make
you to be everything in me. [You are baptized into My death and My
resurrection. You were dead, but are
alive in me, for I have claimed you and spoken life-giving faith into you.’]”[9]
This,
Baptized Saints, is the message that Zion Lutheran Church and the Christian
Church lives by: the message of Christ crucified for sinners.
Come
hell or high water, this message is our constant. Whether in season or out of season, Christ is
for sinners like you and me and our neighbors; drawing towards death, forgiving
sin, redeeming, and raising to life.
Do
not fear, our Savior is the one who makes His way through the crowds, the
noises, and the wailings of life, to touch you with water, bread, and wine
while saying, “Get up; your sins are forgiven, you are whole and alive in
Me.”
No voice
of man, no gavel of the courts, and no laughter of popular cultural can go back
into time and keep Christ from coming to mankind, coming to and for you.
Do
not fear: Jesus died; He is risen; He has reached out and taken you to Himself.
Do not fear, only believe.
The
peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in
Christ Jesus. Amen.
[1] Oswald
Bayer, Living By Faith: Justification and Sanctification (Grand Rapids, MI: WM.
B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2003), 1.
[2] Ibid, 2.
[3] Chad L.
Bird, Sermons and Meditations (Chad
Bird Copyright 2014), 97.
[4] Ibid, 98.
[5] Apology of
the Augsburg Confession, II:33.
[6] Chad L.
Bird, Sermons and Meditations (Chad
Bird Copyright 2014), 97.
[7] See Matthew
9:12.
[8]Steven D.
Paulson, Lutheran Theology: Doing
Theology (New York NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012), 158.
[9] Chad L.
Bird, Sermons and Meditations (Chad
Bird Copyright 2014), 98.
