Jesus speaks to you in His Word, saying,
While this sons lives, there may be hope. Hope for a cure.
Hope for a miracle. Hope for betterment. Once the son dies, however, there is
no longer any hope. Thus, the official somewhat misspeaks when he cries for
Jesus to hurry to his house, before his son dies.
Yet, we cannot blame this father, for in his young son’s draining
life, he sees the abyss and in the abyss he sees nothing. What he can not see
frightens him as it does you, yet this is exactly what Jesus is asking us to do
in today’s Gospel: trust even though we can not see.
Jesus is demanding the impossible and the people around Him
get it, because what they do is laugh at Him and we laugh with them. But I
would never, you say. There is more to laughing at Jesus than being there at
that time and more to laughing at Jesus than actually laughing out loud.
When we laugh at something in derision, it means we think
little of it and wish to demean and diminish it until it becomes unimportant.
In our diets, in our exercise, in our pharmaceuticals we laugh at death as if
it is such a small matter. Indeed we fool ourselves into thinking that, because
I am alive, death is a friend waiting for me or something I don’t have to worry
about.
But death can not be laughed off. We can not just shrug off
its fear for fear of losing our lives to its fear, because everywhere we look
we see death. Life is a constant journey towards death. All around us works are
ended because of death, efforts are halted, and dreams snuffed out. One after
another dies and the living must merely engage in the miserable business of
carrying one another to the grave.
Even the saints feel the fear of death. They were afraid of
death. Jesus prophesies to St. Peter saying, “Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress
yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch
out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want
to go.” (Jn. 21:18)
The place we do not wish to go is into the grave. Therefore
we should fear and tremble at death, even though we must pass through it, for
the fear of death is natural. It’s a penalty, therefore it is something sad.
According to the flesh, we fear this invisible thing called death, but trust
that it will come for us.
Jesus says, “Do not
fear, only believe.” (Mk. 5:36) Do not fear the unknown. Do not fear the
invisible. Just believe. What does belief allow you to do? Ask the father in
today’s Gospel.
He journeys from depths of woe and cries out to God. From
his home where his son is destined to die, he traverses an arduous road, in
melancholy and despair, to where Jesus is. He travels the dark road of God’s
absence alone, finding neither help nor comfort in his son’s fatal ailment.
When he finally reaches Jesus, he is tested even further.
Jesus does not give him a potion, or a pill, and neither does Jesus go to his
house. Jesus simply sends him away with a word: “Go”
If that was not disappointing enough, now the Official must
make the return trip. It is a trip just as dark and solitary as the first, for
now he must return to his son, who by this time is probably dead, but he
doesn’t make it that far.
Dear Christians, this journey the official undertakes is a
liturgical journey. He begins in death, both his own and his son’s. Jesus is
preaching and teaching throughout the land, calling out His doctrine with a
loud voice, awakening the official to new life, a life filled with the hope of
life for himself and his son.
He follows the voice, finds its speaker, and receives a
Word. A Word that is every bit as potent as the Word that said, “Let there be
light”. But he is sent away. He is sent back on his death-filled journey, but
he is not sent to death, but to servants. Servants who have now been
conscripted to God’s service for they bring good news: Your son lives.
The man is interrupted on his way to death, by the Word of
Life and he is not even home yet. Christians are on this same road. We walk
through this valley of the shadow of woe and death only to receive a word from
Jesus, sent back through only to end up at His Church where the Good News is
preached, then finally on to the Resurrection at the end.
That Good News? “You live”. Jesus has disrupted the cycle of
death forever by dying Himself. He stands at the peak of our journey only
because He has also stood at the bottom. Jesus has not only gone down before
this son had died, but He went into the very heart of death, first, tore it out,
that all who believe may live forever.
On the cross, God and man hanged and bled death to death.
There was nothing fear or death could do to stop it. In fear, death closed its
jaws around Jesus and in despair it bit into God, the Ever Living. As Jesus’
life blood flowed from Him, death’s own blood flowed out of it, for death could
not contain the Almighty.
Jesus tells all of us to not fear, but believe. Don’t fear
the invisible, because now that Christ as stepped up and stepped down from the
cross, He gives you an invisible weapon to fight an invisible foe: faith.
Faith is the glove that gets a grip on death. Faith is the
sword that pierces death. Faith is the trust to walk the long, dark road in
death’s shadow and make it to the Servants of the Lord in the Divine Service,
hearing the Word of the Gospel, and believing that it is yours.
Thus, we should fault no one for being full of despair about
this life, that they wage war against foe and friend alike. For, without faith
in Christ there is only this temporal existence and they must be unwilling to
lose it. There is no hope for them afterwards only eternal wrath and an
unwillingness to accept even that.
The Christian, however, knows death. We who have been redeemed
by the physical blood of Jesus should practice the art of despising death and
look upon it as a deep, sound, sweet sleep and consider the coffin nothing less
than our Lord’s bosom or Paradise and the
grave but a soft bed of ease and rest.
In our sin, we stray to the right in security where we
should have been fearful and to the left in fear, when we should have felt
secure. We find ourselves wholly inadequate to deal with death. But we do not
curl up and die because of this, but in the true Light of Christ, find that His
strength is made perfect in our weakness.
Therefore we enter His Church as well, to hear, to receive,
and to believe His Word of forgiveness of our own sins and His powerful word of
redemption against our own death. So that, when others who despair of life
enter, they find the promise waiting for them as well.
Those who know death best, must fight him the most. Jesus
fought and conquered. We are given that victory in order that we go out
proclaiming the good news to everyone we meet on the road to Capernaum
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