Sermon for the Feast of St. Luke, October 18, 2015

Text: Isaiah 35:5-8 and Luke 10:1-9

            Beloved in Christ: Doctors! Who needs them? You go and sit in the waiting room until they get back from their golf game. Then you are invited back to a room where you are told to put on this gown you can’t quite tie in the back. Meanwhile, the staff turns down the thermostat to 55 degrees. Then in walks the doctor with a stethoscope that has been in the freezer for the last 24 hours. They place it on your chest and tell you to breathe—as if you needed any incentive after feeling the cold metal on your chest. They draw blood and tap your knees. Then at the end of the visit they hand you a list of prescriptions that you can ill afford. So who needs doctors?

            We might feel the same about the spiritual medicine practiced by Luke as he doubles as a physicians of the soul as well as of the body. At least Luke wasn’t out on the golf course while his patients were waiting. But in his writings (Luke and Acts) he uses the law to poke and prod our souls, which makes us uncomfortable. We are diagnosed with a horrible spiritual condition, for we are selfish people who rebel against God and think little about our neighbors and their needs. The only salve that can cure our condition is beyond our ability to afford. So what good is it to have someone give this diagnosis?

            But a good diagnosis is important. Yes, there must also be a cure, and we’ll get to it soon enough, but we need to welcome the diagnosis for what it is: a valuable insight in how we are really functioning so that we can deal with reality rather than fantasy. And there’s a lot of denial out there. People talk about the world getting better all the time. Well, in many ways our lives are more comfortable than they were a half century ago. But in other ways we haven’t improved at all and in fact have gotten worse. Therefore, we have to learn to confess that we are broken and ill—and live in a broken and ill world.

            How bad is it? Look at how Isaiah describes it in today’s Old Testament reading. We live in a world where people suffer from debilitating conditions such as blindness, deafness, and paralysis—and even far worse medical conditions. In the physical world around us we see uninhabitable wildernesses and otherwise beautiful places scarred by drought. We try to build beautiful cities and make something of ourselves, only to see that eventually they become “the haunt of jackals” and wild beasts. Even worse, wickedness flourishes. Wickedness even wants to travel on the Highway of Holiness, and in this world often seems to do so successfully, as hypocrisy reigns.

            But what’s worse is the fact that the problem isn’t just “out there.” It is “in here,” too. We bear in our bodies all sorts of frailties. Even those of us who are in relatively good health now have to acknowledge the injuries and diseases we’ve had over the years. And once you get out of your twenties you start seeing that the body doesn’t bounce back quite the way it once did. You start developing chronic conditions, even if you learn how to live with them. You see that it isn’t just the people out there who are wicked, but that you too have a heart that goes astray. You are a cesspool of envy, anger, greed, lust, pride, and any other selfish attitude that you can muster. If one of those vices doesn’t appeal to you, another one most certainly will. And so in body and soul we are sick, and so is the whole creation.

            Furthermore, this was not the way it was meant to be. We just assume that getting older means suffering more pain or at least wearing out. But that is not the case. God created a beautiful world and designed people to live forever. We are the ones who have messed it up beyond repair.

            Well, that is the diagnosis. What about the cure? Well, there is one, but you cannot afford it, and you wouldn’t be able to endure the treatment. You see, if we suffered in hell, we could make up the damage we have done to ourselves, others, and all creation. But, unfortunately, people who suffer in hell just get more and more obstinate, more and more defiant against God, and so they don’t get better in the long run. If anything, they get worse. (That explains why hell lasts for eternity.) So we are not able to afford the cure on our own or endure the treatment.

            Fortunately, we have a Great Physician, who has come to heal us in body and soul and at His own expense rather than ours. He started the healing process by taking on our human flesh Himself. He wasn’t tainted by our sin, but in every other respect He was like us. He grew tired, became hungry, and experienced every other frailty of humanity that we are likely to encounter. Then, when He began His earthly ministry, He made a point of healing many people and bringing order to a disorderly creation. He made the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and the paralyzed to walk. He even raised the dead. He calmed the winds and the waves and was undeterred by the wild beasts when He was in the wilderness. Granted, those victories over death, disease, and disorder were temporary. Eventually, the people whom He healed or raised would succumb to some other disease or to plain old age and die. But already in His earthly ministry He wanted people to get a taste of what He was about.

            Then He submitted Himself to the greatest injuries and frailties a human being could know: He was beaten and then crucified, all while bearing the guilt of mankind. He experienced Himself being ripped apart, as He was torn from fellowship with His Father and His body and soul were sundered. But because He bore our sins and paid their penalty and because He went into death and the grave, He was able to deal with these worst enemies of mankind. Then He rose from the dead so that He could impart life where death reigned, healing where disease held sway, and forgiveness where sin and guilt had dominated.

            We have to wait until the Day of Resurrection to experience that healing in full. Only then will Isaiah’s vision be completely true. But already the basis for that resurrection life has been established. Our sins even now have been completely forgiven. We know the troubles we have gotten into because of our bitter and broken heart, but God has forgiven those sins that flow from it. More than that, He puts a real heart in us that knows God and His love. Even if the rest of the world around us remains the same, we have been given a new heart—a heart where the forgiveness of sins is what we see life as being all about. We begin to delight in fellowship with God, even if we are not yet quite as holy as we will be when we go to be with the Lord. And that new heart makes a difference in the way we handle other people and the world that God created.

            All this comes free of charge. It is a cure that we cannot obtain on our own, but one that is offered freely to us. But what good is a cure if nobody knows about it or is offered it? Think of how in the Third World there are dozens of diseases—from rickets to malaria, from cleft palates to tetanus—that can be easily treated or prevented by modern medicine. But there are still millions of people around the world who suffer from these conditions because they don’t have access to these treatments. That is why there are all sorts of charitable organizations that try to bring the healing power of modern medicine to those who need it. In the same way, the gospel is a very simple yet powerful cure for what ails us most. But how is it going to reach those who need it most?

            Christ commissioned first His twelve apostles and then seventy-two other disciples to bring the healing message of the gospel to every place in Galilee and Judea that they could get to. He still commissions pastors to preach this word and He sends out every Christian to their neighbors to bring the good news of Christ to those who need to hear it. These people are all spiritual physicians under the Great Physician, our Lord Jesus Christ.

            And so we come back to considering Luke. He was a physician by training, but was used by God to write a little over a quarter of the New Testament. The blurb about Luke in today’s bulletin suggests that he was one of the seventy-two. That is the first time I encountered that idea. Usually people suggest that he came from Antioch in Syria or was the Macedonian man that Paul saw in his vision before heading to Europe. And so I am a bit dubious that he was one of the seventy-two. Nonetheless, he was like the seventy-two in this respect: he was not an apostle and yet was called to carry out a similar evangelistic task. I am sure that he still used his medical craft to heal people in their bodies, but he saw that he had an additional calling, namely, to care for people’s souls and heal them with the gospel.

            Consequently, we shouldn’t dismiss Luke as one more quack, but honor him as a wise doctor—of the soul as well as of the body. We should hear his message of hope and healing. We should enjoy the new creation that God brings about in us through the gospel preached by Luke and others. And we should be quick to point others to our Great Physician, by whom alone we have perfect healing. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for Pentecost 5B, February 8, 2015

Text: Mark 1:29-39

            Beloved in Christ, last Sunday we saw our Lord expelling a demon. We heard that this was what His preaching was intended to do: to destroy the kingdom of the devil and to establish His own. Even now, Christ still triumphs over the devil and the forces of evil wherever His word is preached. Now this week we see that Christ also healed. We learn that wherever Christ came, He preached His Word and undertook His ministry so that He could bring healing to this broken world.

            It is at this point that the hard-boiled skeptic objects. They don’t mind us talking about God and demons, since they think that either such things don’t exist or are metaphors that may be useful for some. But when it comes to health and disease, they think they know it all. Disease is a matter of the body, and a spiritual teacher such as Christ has no business meddling in it. Disease is caused by pathogens or the wear and tear of the body. It is purely a mechanical process and it is fixed by mechanical processes—things such as antibiotics, medicines, exercises, and the like.

            But what fools our skeptics are! Of course, it is useful to rely on the vast knowledge that the medical sciences have acquired over the centuries. We Christians as a rule appreciate the advances of science in general and we want to enjoy the comforts that the latest technologies give us. But we know a deeper truth than the skeptics do: “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.” Now people knew back then how to build sturdy buildings that would last centuries. They knew how to stand guard and protect a city. But God’s faithful people knew that it took more than just knowledge. Even the best of human plans fall apart, sometimes for the smallest of reasons.

            Now we do not neglect modern medicine any more than an ancient bricklayer or stonemason would have ignored his art and relied on his piety alone. Instead, we expect our physicians to ply their trades diligently, even as we pour forth our prayers for healing to Almighty God. The builders must still labor, the watchman must still stand guard, and the doctor must still apply medicine. But all is for naught unless the LORD helps.

            You see, we Christians understand that we live in a broken world. Buildings crumble. Empires fall. People get sick and die. We may take ever so much good care as we can, but it will not be enough. “What is crooked cannot be made straight,” no matter how much ingenuity and hard work we apply. It wasn’t supposed to have been this way. God created the world to be a good place where death was unknown and where health prevailed. But ever since we rebelled against God, we have been living in a broken world. Nothing works the way it really should. And, worst of all, that is the case with our bodies. Ultimately, our bodies will die. In the meantime throughout our life our bodies are made to endure several illnesses, which are miniature forms of death, you might say.

            And thus we bear within our bodies disease and death. That is true of all of us. Now we might like to make comparisons with one another and assume that people with graver afflictions are worse people than those who are healthy throughout their life. But that is a silly way of thinking, for we all end up dead. We all show that ultimate brokenness. Some of us may be better at concealing it longer than others, but we all have it.

            What good news it is then to see Christ healing Peter’s mother-in-law and many other people. We see that Christ intends to restore not only our souls, but also our bodies. Forgiveness is not just a word that calms our souls, but brings about a restoration of all creation, including our bodies. And so Christ healed the many people in today’s Gospel precisely because He cared for them in body and soul.

            In so doing He pointed forward to what He would do on the Last Day when He returns in glory. On that day He will raise up our lowly bodies and make them to be like the glorious body He has enjoyed especially after His resurrection from the dead. That will be our ultimate victory. We will be holy in our souls and whole in our bodies. We will be perfectly at peace inside and out—with God, with our fellow human beings, and with creation around us. No more will there will be disease or germs to wage war against us, just as no person will fight against us or we against them. Instead we will know only a lasting peace for all eternity.

            But now we are still in the midst of the fray. The war still rages on inside of us. We battle against our own evil impulses, as well as the temptations offered by other people and by the devil. We find our bodies to be a battlefield, where righteousness and wickedness duke it out to determine which will rule over us. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. In fact, we would soon give up altogether, were it not for the fact that Christ has already won the war for us and that He will continue to forgive us when we fall and strengthen us so that we can stand.

            Consequently, we are not surprised to see disease and even death fighting against us, too. Sometimes we’ll rout those forces, and other times they will overwhelm us. In fact, we know that as many times as we may defeat illness and injury, one day death will defeat us. Any victory we have in our health is only temporary, at least when we consider that we will die. But here the good news about Jesus Christ gets better. Our Lord did more than heal people temporarily so that they could enjoy a few good, healthy years before they died. He Himself went into the unhealthiest of all places for us: death itself. He was beaten, wounded, and crucified. He suffered an agony deeper than that of any illness we will undergo. He even died and was buried so that He could deal with the very worst enemy of all, death itself. And then He rose from the dead.

            And so through this life’s hard struggle to become healthy and to stay healthy we have the good news that death has been conquered and healing has entered the world. Even if we must wait until the resurrection to experience the healing and new life in its fullness, we still experience forgiveness, peace, joy, and spiritual healing in this life. Many times (although not always) we also experience physical healing here too. Even when our Lord makes us carry the burden of physical pain or disease, we find it easier to bear after we have come to know the Lord, for we know that He shares our burden. Therefore, whenever we are healed, we thank God rather than merely chalk it up to the medicine. And whenever healing is held back from us, we still thank God and implore Him to let His strength see us through.

            Well, once we understand this about healing, what follows next? Here it is useful to look at the final paragraph of our text. After spending the entire evening healing people, Jesus got up early and prayed. We might have celebrated our success, had we been Jesus. Or we might have said that we deserved to sleep in after such a long, exhausting evening. But Jesus didn’t do either. He knew the grave spiritual danger that confronted Him. The people of Capernaum would have been happy to have held on to our Lord for the rest of His ministry. They would bring Him sick person after sick person all day long. Whenever any one of them had the smallest sniffles, they would go to Christ and ask to be healed. And human nature, being what it is, would soon have paid more attention to the miracle than the giver of it. People would also seek bodily healing but ignore the deeper spiritual healing that Christ has come to bring. They would have been content with Christ as healer of temporary maladies, but would have stopped Him from redeeming the world of its sin. Indeed, that is what has happened in a broad swath of Christianity, such as in Pentecostalism. And so Christ understood very well that He couldn’t stay in Capernaum, but had to leave.

            Christ spent the remaining years of His ministry traveling throughout Galilee. He didn’t heal every last sick person in that region, but He did go to many places and heal many people so that all would have an understanding of what He was doing by His holy life, death, and resurrection. And in the same way He reaches out and heals us, not necessarily of every disease and in the quickest way possible, but still often enough so that we take His message to heart.

            Therefore, beloved in Christ, let us take to heart this message of healing for both body and soul. Relish the forgiveness of sins He gives you and the new life and spiritual healing that flows from it. And then give thanks to Him who throughout your life “heals all your diseases and redeems your life from the pit.” In Jesus’ name. Amen.