Sermon for Pentecost 8 (Proper 11B), July 19, 2015

Text: Mark 6:30-44

            Beloved in Christ, the events of the Bible are as foundational for us Christians as our nation’s events are for us and our fellow citizens. Everybody recognizes that you can’t truly understand what it means to be an American today if you don’t know about 1776 and the Declaration of Independence, the Civil War and the Gettysburg Address, Pearl Harbor, and the like. Those events may have happened decades or even centuries ago, but they still make us who we are today. Even recent immigrants, whose forebears never participated in those things, still are shaped and molded by them. In the same way, biblical history shapes us as Christians. And so I would like to take you on a brief tour of some biblical events from the Old Testament first and then come around to today’s Gospel.

Tissot, The Gathering of the Manna

            Genesis explains the origin of the world and of humanity. It then goes on to explain how one man, Abraham, was called to be the father of God’s people. Genesis traces Abraham’s line for four generations, but by the end of that first book of the Bible God’s people were simple a few dozen individuals who had wandered in Canaan before settling in Egypt. It is in the next four books of the Bible (Exodus through Deuteronomy) that we see them really becoming a nation—and more than a nation, God’s people. Several events take place in those books. God called His people. They heard His voice through the prophet Moses and so they ran to a desolate area, the Wilderness of Sinai. There they were taught intensely by God, as He gave them His Ten Commandments and other laws at Mount Sinai. They were transformed from idol-worshipping heathen into the people of God. In the wilderness they had nothing to eat, but were fed miraculously with manna that fell from the sky every morning. When they neared the Promised Land and Moses died, God did not want them to be “sheep without a shepherd,” and so He raised up a man named Joshua to guide them into the land of Canaan.

            And that is where Deuteronomy ends. By the time we finish with the fifth book of the Bible, we see that Israel had everything they needed to be God’s people. They had been called to be a nation of His priests and kings. They had been taught everything that God wanted them to know. They had been fed with manna in the wilderness and were then blessed with a fertile land once they had settled into Canaan, a land repeatedly described as a “land flowing with milk and honey.” All their physical needs had been taken care of. And He had also guided them amid their spiritual needs, too. He had established a priesthood in order to bring His holiness into their midst. He had promised that He would also raise up prophets and anoint kings to provide further guidance. Israel had everything they needed by the end of Deuteronomy, and the rest of Old Testament history—indeed, human history—should have been a tale of one spiritual triumph after another.

            But that is not how the story went. You read the next twelve books of the Bible after Deuteronomy and you see how Israel failed again and again, growing ever more rebellious and stubbornly unrepentant. Far from being a glorious tale, it is a story of going from one spiritual defeat to another. Israel spiraled downward, with each generation becoming more wicked than the previous one. Then you read the last seventeen books of the Old Testament, the books of the prophets, and you see the prophets denouncing negligent and wicked priests, kings who put more trust in politics than in God, and false prophets who are quick to lie to support evil priests and kings. (We see an example of that in today’s reading from Jeremiah.) The Old Testament ends with Israel being scattered and in exile. A few people eventually returned to Judah, but not as many as should have.

            Now I suppose you could say that there were already hints in the first five books of the Bible that the story would turn out this way. The early Israelites showed themselves to be a “stiff-necked people” already in the wilderness. Their children simply followed in their ways. It was as if the original Israelites had started the rut, and each generation deepened the groove until it had become a ditch. And that is the way the situation was until our Lord Jesus Christ came onto the scene.

            So what do we see in today’s Gospel? We see God calling His people once again. It isn’t through a mere prophet like Moses that God calls, but through His own Son in the flesh. When they hear His voice, they run into a desolate area in the outlying region of Galilee. There they are taught intensely by God, as Christ teaches them with “grace and truth.” They are transformed from being lapsed Israelites into God’s faithful people. In the wilderness they have nothing to eat, but are fed miraculously with five slices of bread and two fish. This is because God is leading them into a new Promised Land that will be given to us fully in the resurrection. Because God did not want them to be “sheep without a shepherd,” He raised up a man named Joshua to be their leader and guide into their heavenly rest. Of course, we tend not to call this Joshua by His Hebrew name, but His Greek name: Jesus.

            Where are we in this story? Well, we are in the wilderness, too. We have not yet made it to the Promised Land. That is because we are going to a better place than the Land of Canaan. We are heading for the true Promised Land, where the New Jerusalem comes down from heaven in a restored and perfect heavens and earth. That will not take place until the Day or Resurrection. In the meantime, we are still stuck in this old world, where sin and death hold sway. We wander as in a foreign land, and we need sustenance if we are going to make it.

            And that is why we have something better than fish and loaves of bread. That was fine fare for people who were caught far from civilization and needed something to sustain them as they heard Christ preaching. But our Lord knew that we would need something even more substantial. And so He instituted the Lord’s Supper. In that supper He gives not only bread and wine, but His very body and blood. Eating the bread and fish did nothing spiritually for the people. But eating Christ’s body and blood in the sacrament forgives sins, if we embrace this gift in faith, as we ought. It is our traveler’s food as we journey through this life with eternity as our destination.

            Notice how God consistently gives better and better food over time. When the Israelites were in the wilderness, they were given manna. It sustained them, but that was about all that could be said. It could be boiled or baked or fried, but it was hard to have great variety with that manna. Nobody ever published a cookbook called “501 Delicious Manna Recipes Guaranteed to Satisfy Your Family.” The food that the people in today’s Gospel ate was better. The people were more than satisfied. It was a fine banquet. Moreover, whereas the manna was not permitted to be collected and held over for the next day, here Christ commanded that this be done. Twelve baskets were gathered up so that people could enjoy more of the feast the next day. And then there is the Lord’s Supper. It is not just a meal with Jesus, but a meal whereby we receive Jesus. He becomes as close to us as possible.

            I should add that with the greater gift comes greater responsibility. Anybody in the days of the exodus could have eaten the manna. Infants, toddlers, children, adults, and aged people all ate of it. The grumblers and the pious ate of it. All were invited to partake of it. It didn’t matter if you recognized the manna for the gift that it was. Then our Lord fed the 5,000 families. They all happened to be people who had gone to hear the Lord. It was no casual assembly, but was rather people who had showed some interest in the Lord. But even then our Lord was disappointed with their reaction. They wanted a repeat of the meal the next day, but Jesus scolded them and told them to be more heavenly-minded. That was what He said about earthly bread. How much more ought we prepare ourselves to receive His body and blood! Those who do not know what is going on in the Lord’s Supper—those who have never been taught or reject that teaching—are not to approach the Lord’s Table, lest they find there the Lord in judgment rather than in mercy and with the forgiveness of sins. The greater gift requires greater preparation.

            But if we have been taught our Lord’s Word, believe that what He says is true, confess our sins, and trust in Him alone for our salvation, we find ourselves given a great and abiding hope through this sacrament. Consider our hope and what the Israelites were looking forward to during the exodus. The Israelites entered the Promised Land and enjoyed it for a while, but in the end suffered disaster. But that is not going to be what happens when we go to be with the Lord in heaven and when He raises us on the Last Day and renews the heavens and the earth. Instead, this time it will work. That is because it will not depend upon our will power or our moral fortitude. Instead, God Himself will have established a new covenant. Unlike the old covenant that came into force through the sacrificial death of animals, the new covenant has come into force through the death and resurrection of the holy Son of God. Therefore, it has a staying power that the old covenant never could have had.

            And so, my fellow wanderers in the wilderness, let us embrace the food that our God has set before us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for Pentecost 7 (Proper 10B), July 12, 2015

Text: Mark 6:14-29

            Beloved in Christ, last week I urged you to be a strong disciple amid a skeptical world. Don’t wait for the world to come to faith in Christ. Don’t wait for the world to approve of your morality or your trust in God. Be a Christian anyway, “in season and out of season.” Understand that there have always been those who rejected Christ and His followers. Don’t let it bother you. Instead, be faithful and follow our Lord Jesus Christ.

            We can take this approach because we understand both the law and the gospel—and we delight in them. We understand that God’s law is so much deeper than a few platitudes about “keeping your hands off other people’s stuff.” We know that what it commands it does for our good. Nobody is helped by making themselves or their desires or their pleasures into something they worship. Nobody is better off for having misused God’s name or neglected His Word. Nobody can prosper when rebellious against authority, angry at the world, lecherous, greedy, or untruthful. Now it stings when we hear God forbid these things—not just the outward action but also the attitudes and thoughts that lead to actions. We are deeply flawed human beings who cannot live up to the standard that God has set. God’s law is absolute holiness and goodness, just as God is holy and good. We, though, are not. But we don’t set aside God’s law for that reason. As Christians, we always strive to do better and we confess our failings and we repent of our sins. In all of that, we do not set aside God’s law, but rather embrace it.

            But even more important than God’s law is the gospel, the good news that God has saved us by sending Christ into the world to live the holy life in our place that we never could have lived and to die the death we could not have endured in order to pay for our sins. Think about it. We have a God who loves us so much that He is willing to suffer and die to get us out of the mess we created for ourselves. We have a God who not only made us, but also got into the nitty-gritty of His creation rather than just cluck at us from afar. Therefore, Christianity is radically different from every other philosophy and religion. They teach people to improve themselves morally and make them more acceptable to God and perhaps society too. But Christianity is all about God giving us life and salvation in Christ Jesus. It is all about God pronouncing us righteous through the forgiveness of sins before we have done even the smallest thing. Now, of course, such a teaching does lead to our moral transformation, but it is all because God is at work.

            That in a nutshell is what we Christians teach and believe and what gives a foundation for our hope and our lives. But, as I noted last week, not everyone accepts that idea. We are called, therefore, to be “strong disciples amid a skeptical world,” as the banner in our bulletin reads. But this week our text talks about what it is like being “a skeptical world amid strong disciples.” For, just as being surrounded by an unbelieving and hostile world can cause consternation for faithful Christians, so the mere existence of Christians is enough to send an unbelieving world into fits. And that is exactly what happened with the people in today’s Gospel. Now you might ask, “Why should we even pay attention to what opponents of Christianity are saying or thinking?” Well, we certainly will not turn to them to figure out what is right and what is wrong. We’re not going to buy into the world’s ideologies. And yet it is useful to know what other people are thinking. How can we explain the Christian faith to others if we don’t know their preconceptions and misconceptions? For that matter, how can we be strong disciples who can navigate our way in an unbelieving world, if we don’t know what that unbelieving world is trying to get us to think?

            Today’s text introduces us to three individuals—Herodias, Salome, and Herod—who each had a different take on John the Baptist. Often we make the mistake of assuming that all people outside our household of faith all believe the same things or take the same attitude toward God or Christians. That is not the case. Herodias was extremely hostile to John. She couldn’t stand him and wanted him dead. Her daughter was Salome, as the historian Josephus tells us. It was Salome who was the one who actually asked for John’s head, but it wasn’t because she was rabidly opposed to him. Instead, she was manipulated by her mother to make that request. And then there was Herod. Herod actually admired John, listened to him, and wanted to protect him. Yes, he arrested John partly because he didn’t want him to preach boldly about Herod’s sins. But he also arrested John in part to protect him. If he was confined to a prison, he couldn’t be doing the sort of rabble-rousing that would make Herodias angry. It was his way of keeping John alive, and it worked until Herodias outsmarted him.

            I think it is useful for us to remember that these three types of opponents to Christianity are still to be found today. There are those who spit nails as soon as they hear the word “Jesus” or “Christian.” They find God’s law offensive and they detest the idea of God forgiving our sins for Christ’s sake. It’s hard to have a conversation with such people. But we can “let [our] reasonableness be known to everyone,” as the Scriptures tell us to do. We are people of joy and hope. We are not anxious about anything, but we bring everything to God in prayer. I think that this is extremely important to remember as our society shows itself less and less willing to countenance even a smidgeon of Christian morality in its midst. We could panic and, indeed, some Christians are. But I propose that instead we show who we truly are: reasonable people who have supreme confidence in Christ as the Lord who governs all history, even when things seem to be going against Him and us. Yes, the world is going to hell in a handbasket, but it’s being doing that for millennia. We will speak the truth in love because we don’t want the world to perish, but we know that it is not up to us to save the world. That’s Christ’s task. And so we try to persuade people like Herodias, but we don’t despair if we can’t get through to them.

            Then there are the people like Salome. She wasn’t a follower of John, but then she wasn’t a hard-core opponent of him, either. She was a teenage girl who had teenage preoccupations. She was manipulated by her mother Herodias into asking for John’s head, but that is something that she wouldn’t have ever asked for on her own initiative. And so it is with many unbelievers today. They are often manipulated by vocal atheists and opponents of Christianity, but they don’t understand the issues. That’s why the Scripture tells us, “In your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” As we live a godly life, we will have occasion to explain to the unbelieving world why we do what we do. Of course we have to “do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience.” We don’t approach evangelism with a “take no prisoners” mentality. Again, we show that we are reasonable. The Scriptures tell us that if you act this way, “when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ [will] be put to shame.” The people like Salome may actually be persuaded if our good behavior can overcome the slander that they have heard about us and thus earn us a fair hearing.

            And then there are the people like Herod. They respect us. They are willing to dialogue with us. They are willing to call us “righteous and holy” people. They admire us for our charitable acts. They know that we are right in our criticism of ungodly behavior, even if they can’t bring themselves actually to do something about the problem. Like Herod, they are “greatly perplexed” when they hear us, “and yet” they hear us “gladly.” When they see us suffer persecution, they feel guilty about it, much as Herod felt guilty about being the cause of John’s death. So what do we do with people like Herod? We continue to talk with them, even as John did. Herod had many a conversation with John when the latter was in prison. If Herod was open to talking with John, John was more than happy to comply. Indeed, if we are willing to try to talk with a Herodias or a Salome, we should be very eager to talk with a Herod too.

            But what happens if we don’t win over these people? What if they never become Christians? What if, in fact, we lose our heads as John did? Well, our Gospel reminds us that that won’t be the end of God’s kingdom. We know that we will go to be with God when we die and that we will be raised on the Last Day. If our life is shortened by the tyrant’s sword, it won’t matter in the end. Furthermore, our opponents will still have to face the message of our Lord Jesus Christ. Herod thought that he had ended John’s influence on his life. But if anything, he was more haunted by John and his words after John’s death than when he was still alive. God’s Word remains, even if those who bear it die.

            And so, beloved in Christ, let us continue to be strong disciples of Christ amid a skeptical world, even if that skeptical world doesn’t know how to handle strong disciples of our Lord. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for Pentecost 6 (Proper 9B), July 5, 2015

Text: Mark 6:1-13

            Beloved in Christ, Jesus was so loved wherever He went. Everybody appreciated that He was trying to bring life and fellowship with God to them. Everybody in every village left their homes to greet Him when He came to town. Everybody welcomed His disciples when He sent them ahead to prepare the way for Him. It was easy to be a Christian during our Lord’s earthly ministry because everybody believed in Him and was eager to follow Him at all costs. Not.

            Yes, none of those statements above are true. Christianity was not popular when Christ Himself walked visibly in our midst. Christianity wasn’t even popular with the people who knew Christ best and should have been His most eager disciples. In fact, they badmouthed Him and refused to let Him do any miracles in their midst. They would rather suffer than acknowledge Jesus to be someone who could help them. They did their best to insult Him. They called Him “the son of Mary.” Now we Christians know that He was literally the son of Mary and had been conceived by the Holy Spirit in an extraordinary way so that He had no earthly father. But that is not what the crowd was getting at when they called Him “the son of Mary,” for He had been adopted by Joseph, who had raised Him as his own son. The crowd was implying that Jesus was a bastard and His mom was a loose woman—and thus He did not deserve to be heard in the least.

            If that is how people treated our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, who could do miracles that neither you nor I can do, how do you think people will treat His followers, including us? The Christian church has never had an easy time, and those who think that that is the case don’t know history. Yes, there have been times when the Christian church has had great influence on society. But such power has always been a two-edged sword, for then power-hungry people have gravitated toward the church and tried to take control of it so that they can wield power. That has meant that sincere Christians who tried to follow our Lord Jesus Christ have had a difficult time doing so, as bishops cared little for the flock of God and strove for political power. Real Christians suffered during those eras.

Jean Leon Gerrome Ferris, The Mayflower Compact
In public domain in the United States

            But often if you really look in history, you find that the Christian church has not been as powerful or influential as both its critics and admirers like to claim. For example, we know about the Pilgrims coming to this country in order to practice their religion freely. What we omit to say is that the Pilgrims were a minority on the Mayflower; moreover, most colonies (such as New York, Virginia, and the Carolinas) were not founded for religious reasons but for commercial reasons. Since then the strength of Christianity has waxed and waned. Right after independence we largely adopted the harsh secularism of our then French allies. Indeed, in 1800 only one in six Americans belonged to a church, and hardly a single Christian could be found in the elite universities of our country. Now today there is a growing secularism in our land, but it is nowhere as strong as it was in the early days of our republic. That is because the nineteenth century saw a strong renewal of the Christian church in our country. We’ve teetered back and forth since then, but have never become as anti-Christian as we were in our early days.

            So from both biblical history and church history we see that Christianity has not always been accepted by everybody or even the majority of people. Accordingly, it has always been difficult to be a Christian. In fact, you should expect that to be the case. Don’t assume that the world’s values will line up with yours. Don’t assume that whatever way of thinking is popular is automatically Christian. Being a disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ will always mean going against the grain. The world does not want to take God’s commandments seriously. The world doesn’t want to hear about a Savior saving it from God’s judgment. So don’t expect it to pat you on the back now.

            Well, how do we live in such an environment? Here consider the two things that Christ did. “He went about among the villages teaching.” And “He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two.” In other words, He continued His earthly ministry and brought in more people to do the work. It didn’t stop Him from doing His work and neither should it stop us. Just because some people didn’t want to hear Him and didn’t want His help, it didn’t follow that nobody wanted to hear His message. God’s kingdom was still advancing—maybe not in one town, but perhaps in the next.

            I think this helps us to understand how to be a Christian today. You’ve noticed that our bulletin always has the banner stating that we exist to “make strong disciples amid a skeptical world.” We are not starry-eyed people who think that being a Christian and being a good American will always line up. We are not so naïve to think that society’s values and beliefs will line up with our Christian faith. And so we don’t close up shop just because we discover that our faith doesn’t please everyone or even that it doesn’t please the majority of people. We are called to be God’s holy people, to embrace the salvation Christ offers, to live a godly life in gratitude for that salvation, and to share the good news about Jesus as we have opportunity to do so. And we are called to do that “in season and out of season,” whether it lines up with the way most people think or not.

            And so, like Jesus, we continue to proclaim God’s law and gospel and we ordain new men to do the same. The apostles were sent out without much support. They had to rely on the good will of the people who hosted them. In fact, our Lord told them not to take more than a staff for their journey. They wouldn’t have a spare tunic, as any well-to-do traveler would have had. They weren’t even to take bread or spending money along, but rely completely on their hosts to provide them with what they needed. Today pastors still rely on their congregations for their support. We don’t rely upon the government to give us our salary or to give us special authority.

            When I was in seminary many years ago, I remember talking with a pastor from the Church of Norway who was doing graduate studies at our seminary. The Church of Norway is nominally Lutheran, but any pastor there who takes the Lutheran faith seriously soon finds himself in hot water. And this pastor had endured quite a bit for being a faithful Christian pastor in a place where the church had given in to its very hedonistic and secular society. I remember asking him why he didn’t organize an independent Lutheran church there, something that others have done more recently. His reply was interesting: “Wherever I go in my village, I do so as an official of the king.” (He meant King Olav V, who was Norway’s king back then, not our Lord Jesus Christ.) But in the end how did that help? He had the same standing as the village postmaster—one more bureaucrat to be ignored. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t help him advance the gospel.

            So let us not look for the state or society at large to prop us up. As much as we love our country and as much as we pray for its leaders, we know that our hope and salvation do not lie there. Instead, we are going to have to take more seriously the notion that being a Christian is a counter-cultural undertaking.

            Let me flesh that out just a bit. Christians have a different understanding of the law than does the average American. The average American says, “Is it legal? Then it’s okay to do it. Is it popular or at least approved by most people? Then by all means do it.” Christians have a different take. We understand that God’s law is much more encompassing than the laws of our country. At its best, those laws establish some rules to minimize chaos in society. We know those laws can’t keep society completely well behaved, since there aren’t enough police officers around to enforce perfect behavior, but the laws keep injustices to a minimum. But sometimes our laws don’t even do that. They punish the innocent and let the guilty go free. They set up a society that is at variance from what God would like. So be it. Let the world be the world. You be a faithful Christian.

            That means we don’t just look at some of the Ten Commandments, but all of them. It also means that we don’t just think of them in minimalistic ways. In other words, we should think that there is more to the commandment “You shall not commit adultery” than simply “Don’t cheat on your spouse.” Instead, we understand that every thought, word, or deed that goes against God’s intention of being chaste is wrong. Similarly, when we hear, “You shall not steal,” we know God is forbidding the little ways we take what is not ours, such as by wasting time while on the clock and everything else totally approved of in our culture.

            We will have to assume that our country is lackadaisical about morality and that we are called to a higher standard. But there’s more. We Christians are animated not by the law, but by the good news about Jesus Christ, our Savior. He is the Son of God who has taken on our human nature and rescued us from death and hell. He is the one who gives us hope, who heals us, who drives the demons away, and in short restores us. We take God’s law so seriously only because we take this message of good news even more seriously. Now many of our compatriots don’t like the gospel because it undercuts the notion that we are our own saviors, one of the basic premises of the American Dream. But for us who have found our salvation in Christ, we know that there is nothing more precious than to find out that God has done for us what we never could. It isn’t just a piece of good news, but the very message by which we live.

            Therefore, beloved in Christ, let’s not worry whether the world appreciate us or not. Let’s be Christians—strong Christians—amid a skeptical world. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for Pentecost 5 (Proper 8B), June 28, 2015

Text: Mark 5:21-43

            Beloved in Christ, you might be puzzled by the sermon title for today: “What Salvation Means.” It’s not that you’re against me talking about salvation. Rather, it’s just that today’s Gospel doesn’t seem to say much about salvation, and so you would expect me to address the topic of salvation on another Sunday when that is more the theme. But if we think that today’s text has nothing to say about salvation, it is because we have a much narrower view of salvation than the Scriptures do. In part, that is because the translators have chosen to use different words rather than “save” in today’s Gospel.

            I’m not faulting the translators. Every word in a language has a range of meaning, and those meanings rarely line up exactly with just one word in another language. And so when the translators came across the word in today’s Gospel that would mean “be saved” in other contexts, they chose instead to translate it as “be made well.” That’s because English draws a distinction between a “spiritual” salvation and a “physical” healing that the Greek language just doesn’t. It would sound odd in English to talk about being “saved” in this context, when our language would prefer to use another word to refer to healing. And translators try to make everything sound good in English. But, if we were to translate literally, we would hear Jairus ask Jesus, “Come and lay Your hands on her, so that she may be saved and live.” We would hear the woman thinking to herself, “If I touch even His garments, I will be saved.” And later we would heard Jesus tell that woman, “Daughter, your faith has saved you.”

            If we translate the word more literally, it may not sound as smooth in English, but it does help us to have a deeper and more biblical perspective on what salvation means. Often people use the phrase “salvation” or “being saved” to refer to some religious experience (usually in the past) when an individual got right with God. That is what people mean when they ask, “Have you been saved?” Other times people may think more of the future when they use those terms. They think very specifically of God receiving our soul at the moment of our death and bringing it to be with Him in heaven rather than casting it into hell to experience eternal torment. Now whether you are talking about the past or the future, the focus tends to be exclusively on something that happens to the soul, as the soul finds peace with God or enters into heaven. But, as you can see from today’s Gospel, the Bible doesn’t look at “salvation” in such narrow terms. It applies to the body as well as to the soul, and it relates to all sorts of things that happen in this life rather than just in the life to come. As we will see, the Bible is indeed concerned about the destiny of the soul, and we would never want to minimize that concern. But salvation is richer and deeper than we usually give it credit.

            You could say that salvation is all about bring life wherever death has left its mark. One of the fundamental truths that Christians teach is that we live in a dying world, a world where everything is destined to die. “No duh,” you might say to me. “How is that a revolutionary idea?” Well, we may sort of know that the world is marked by death, but we spend most of our time pretending that that is not the case. We pretend that we will be “Forever 21” or “Forever Young.” We keep looking for the magic pill that will make old age and disease go away. We think that we are invulnerable, and we are bewildered when we see that we aren’t. But Christian theology teaches that we live in a deadly world because we have sinned against God. By our sin we say that we are dead to God, and He has returned the favor by letting us live in our death-bearing ways. And so we see death in all sorts of dimensions. There is spiritual death, where we find ourselves dead to God. There is physical death, as well as all the diseases, injuries, accidents, and violence that eventually lead to our death. And then there is the dread prospect of eternal death, the fact that even physical death does not end this judgment of God upon us.

            Death is multi-faceted. So too is our salvation. Ultimately, we are looking for a complete reversal of death in all its dimensions. Yes, our souls need to be saved from their deadly ways. But our bodies too need to be rescued from the death that threatens them. And so we see that salvation breaking forth in today’s Gospel, as our Lord heals a woman and raises a girl. In each instance Christ shows that salvation is comprehensive, affecting the here-and-now as well as the future, the body as well as the soul.

            This salvation occurs only in, through, and because of Christ. He began His earthly ministry by doing all sorts of things—healing people, casting out demons, forgiving sins, and teaching—to show the life He intended to bring to people through His life, death, and resurrection. In the end, we will have perfect health, be untroubled by the devil and his minions, have complete peace with God through forgiveness, and know God fully as He wants to be known. Some of those gifts (such as complete pardon and forgiveness) we have now; others we will have fully only in the resurrection. Just as we had lived our lives under the mark of death, even if it didn’t exert its full power over us every day, so now we live our lives united with the life Christ gives, even if we have not yet received its full power. But something has happened. Salvation has begun. And we will experience it fully when Christ returns.

            So Christ brings life into our dying world. That is what we mean by “salvation.” We thank God for the healing that He allows to experience in this world, even as we look forward to experiencing the fullness of that healing in the resurrection. But there are some other dynamics of salvation that the Gospel points out. It isn’t just me in my body and soul that receives this salvation. Instead, we are knit together as brothers and sisters in Christ. Sickness separates us from one another, but healing brings us together. You see, when you are sick, people tend to isolate themselves from you. We fear getting what you have. But when you are restored, so too is your relationship with other people.

            This was all the more the case in the days of the Scriptures, especially the Old Testament. God had commanded His people to distinguish between clean and unclean. Those who were unclean could make others unclean if they came into physical contact. Numbers 5:2 tells us who would be at the top of the list of unclean people: “Everyone who is leprous or has a discharge and everyone who is unclean through contact with the dead.” Already in Mark 1 we had met a leper. Now we meet someone who “has a discharge” and someone who is “dead.” And so in a few short chapters we have met people of each category. But our Lord healed each of them and thus made them clean. And in so doing He restored them to fellowship. In the process He Himself became the outcast. To make us clean, He had to touch our uncleanness and bear it. He did that, even though it meant suffering its consequences on the cross. Salvation is free to us, but it came at a great cost for Him.

            There is one other aspect of salvation that we see in today’s text: it brings us into fellowship with Christ. The woman sought to be healed by touching Jesus anonymously. She didn’t want to bother Him; she just wanted to receive her gift of salvation quietly. But that is not how God operates. He doesn’t just give out His good gifts to nameless, faceless people. Instead, He deals with each of us as individuals. That is why He stopped and asked the woman to explain what she had done. He wanted to tell her directly and personally, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be saved from your disease.”

            That is what salvation means. It is far deeper and richer than we tend to believe. Therefore, let us cherish the God who does not act one-dimensionally, but comes to bring full salvation to us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.