Miracle of Presence [Trinity 15]

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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• 1 Kings 17:8-16

• Galatians 5:25-6:10

• St. Matthew 6:24-34

 

Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father's Son, in truth and love. (2 John)
 
Who speaks you this morning saying,
“But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?”
 
When Jesus says, “Behold I stand at the door and knock”, in Revelation 3, He is not dropping by for a spot of afternoon tea. Since He is there, physically at the door, that means this is the last day. He has returned. Times up. But what He has come to do, the verse goes on to tell us: “if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me”. That Jesus is present, to eat and drink, is key.
 
Take a moment to ponder the miracle taught to us from the Old Testament reading. It is quite amazing that the three (water, jar, and jug) did not run out of contents, feeding three people for many days in the middle of a three-year drought. Which tells us, of course, that something more amazing is happening than just a miracle of flour and oil.
 
Indeed, the widow only receives Elijah because he speaks God’s Word, saying “Thus saith the Lord” and then, “What have you against me, O man of God”, accusing Elijah of letting her son die in verse 18. Though harsh, she still acknowledges his authority as God’s presence in front of her. And finally, after her son’s resurrection, she says, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth” (1 Kings 17:24).
 
The widow’s belief from the beginning was that Elijah was God’s chosen and that what he spoke would come to pass. It was Elijah’s presence on the scene that made all the difference with the drought and with the son. It was God’s Word, present, by Elijah, literally visiting this widow, that was the real miracle.
 
Between Elijah being there and Elijah not being there is the difference between night and day. There just is no substitute for having a real person present to administer. You can send all the birthday presents and cards to your son you want, but if you aren’t at his party, it will never be enough.
 
Presence is extremely important. Unfortunately for Elijah, he is not omnipresent, can only save one widow and one son in one place, and will be taken away ending his career of miracles.
 
Later on in history, Jesus gets people’s hopes up, when He arrives on the scene. This is because He does similar work to Elijah. In St. Luke 7, Jesus also encounters a widow and raises her only son in the city called Nain (v. 11-17). Also similar to Zarephath, the people use just about the same response saying, “God has visited his people!”
 
In other words God is present in the midst His people. However, you must repent of the perilous sin of thinking that God is among us only in your heart, only in His spirit-ness, or only in the works you do. Was the widow’s heart going to bring her son back to life? Does your heart do that for you? Do spirits give us glory, food, or clothing? Do our works change anything about our faults and our faulty world?
 
We incorrectly hear Jesus in St. Luke 17:21 say, “behold, the kingdom of God is within you“ and begin to believe that faith is only a matter of the heart. That “Jesus dwells in me”, means that I can now produce the kingdom and righteousness of God by feeding myself, clothing myself, and not being anxious, utilizing self-help or self-medication.
 
Moses is our judge here as he recalls his argument with God in Exodus 33. At that part of history, the people had just received the commands from Moses’ hands, seen the fire and lightning on mount Sinai, and penitently drank water mixed with the remnants of the golden calf. This was a place of power and refuge. Why would they leave?
 
Moses expresses this in verse 15 saying, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here”. As if to say, God you must be one of those local spirit-gods, confined to one place. We should just build here, where you are. Sounds familiar: “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.”
 
The Lord disagrees. It is time for Him to go. Exodus 33:14 “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest” and Zechariah 2:11 “And I will dwell in your midst”.
 
The walks in the Garden of Eden, the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire, and Moses and the prophets. All were pointing forward to God’s intent of dwelling spiritually and bodily with His people. You do not need to make excuses for God’s apparent invisible dwelling with you. He has come to dwell in the flesh.
 
Jesus Christ has come to dwell in your hearts, in His own body! A body within a body. He is not messing around with dreams or emotions. He comes among His people as One with His own words, His own thoughts, and His own presence. And He is present just as He intends and just as He promises to be.
 
In the face of all our doubts, God was made man and dwelt among us. In spite of all our unrighteousness, our dead sons, and our mocking of God, Jesus takes His own reasonable body and soul. He does not wait for any of our sin to show up violently in our bodies neither does He wait for any of it to be resolved. 
 
He simply does what God does, that is be merciful, because He is merciful, and rescue sinners because of Christ’s atoning sacrifice. That’s it. No stipulations, no prerequisites, no goals to meet. All is done without you, yet all is done with you in mind. Indeed, your life and body are more than food and clothing. They also require rescue.
 
Rescue, but not without your life and certainly not without your body. Rescue in your life and in your body. Just as with Elijah, it is not the miracle that is important, but that someone is there to perform the miracle. So now, in our time, it is no different. In order to seek first the kingdom of God, it has to be in a place that is able to be sought.
 
Jesus saying, “Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near” in Isaiah 55:6 is unfair if He is invisible or just a spirit or only in our hearts, cuz I can’t go into your heart to find Him. This is why St. Luke doesn’t say, “the kingdom of God is within you”, but “the kingdom of God is in your midst”. Jesus is in your midst. In Christ, “Seek the Lord while He may be found” means “whoever believes and is baptized will be saved”.
 
The presence of Jesus’s Body and Spirit are necessary to fulfill and win God’s Righteousness, for you. In Word and Sacrament, you find the Lord. In Word and Sacrament, you find the kingdom. In Word and Sacrament, you serve God, not Mammon.
 
Ephesians 1 says, “In [Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses”. Christ is both God and man. Elijah and you, are just men. You could heal one son, but Jesus can raise them all. You can comfort one person, Jesus can comfort all.
 
You can only gather inside your own head, but Christ can gather all in His body, the Church. So you are gathered, unless you don’t believe. But there is no other place on earth where you can find God, find His righteousness, and find His Kingdom, for you. All is in the Son of God, given by the Holy Spirit in Word and Sacrament.
 
For this very reason, in our Collect of the Day, we prayed for the Church. We prayed for cleansing and defense. We prayed for safety and aid. We prayed for preservation, help, and goodness all through Jesus Christ in His Church.
 
And Jesus brings it. Here. He brings it all, but only in His Body. He does no work apart from His Body, just as the Spirit does no work outside His Word and just as the Father does no work outside His creation that pertains to your salvation. The Church is the only place to find God’s Righteousness and the Church is where that exact God-Man is gathered around. So y’all come!
 

Weak but Strong [Trinity 14]

 

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE

READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Proverbs 4:10-23

• Galatians 5:16-24

• St. Luke 17:11-19

Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father's Son, in truth and love. (2 John)
 
Who speaks you this morning saying,

“Rise and go your way; your faith has saved you.”

 
Dear Christians. I hate to break it to you, but your God is weak. He is so weak that He cannot change the hearts of 10 lepers. Sure He can heal them and He did, but it appears He failed in His primary objective of converting them to His side, saying, “Where are the nine?”
 
As if to say, “I healed them, yes, but I was trying to change their hearts. Why didn’t it work?”
 
Some more weak sauce we find in our Epistle reading. How can God close heaven to some of these mistakes? I can understand being upset that people commit some of these grievous acts, but “fits of anger”, “jealousy”? I mean how are we to fight that? We’re only human? Is being human a sin? 
 
Apparently God cannot find mercy and must stick to the rules. “Welcome to the pearly gates! Oh. Uh. Looks like you got angry that one time. Sorry. Not getting in. Next.”
 
What this looks like is that God seemingly cannot handle bodily acts. Or at least, our bodies are somehow able to overcome the works of God, and back Him into a corner where He has to choose Him being right over being merciful. 
 
What comes from this incorrect view of Scripture is what we can call a Dualistic Worldview. What that simply means is we firmly believe that there is a Spiritual realm and a material realm and these can never live in harmony. Good v Bad. Light v. Dark
 
Thus, when we read Holy Scripture, we find a cruel, corrupt world (bad) that must be escaped (good). We find an Old Testament God (bad) that seems to be the opposite of the New Testament God (good). We find men made subject to crippling and life-ruining diseases, such as leprosy (bad) and the only apparent relief is death (good). We investigate our fallen world and find no hope. 
 
But, should we expect to? Even Jesus says things like, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth…but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven…For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19-21) and “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Col 3:2).
 
The Lord points us away from the earthly to the heavenly. It is then no wonder that we divide God’s Creation into spirit and body, good and bad. God, angels and archangels, and everything good in one corner. The devil and his angels, human bodies, and everything bad in the other corner. 
 
Repent. It is also no surprise, when we are presented with God’s Word and Sacrament, that we interpret them in the same way. There is no way that the God Who speaks so ill of earthly things could in any way, shape, or form work out heavenly things through such weak objects.
 
In our experience it is a losing battle as well. Why waste time, we say, as we stare at the cemetery.
 
Yes indeed. Why waste time? Being born, being loved by many, going places with your family, making friends, even standing up for your beliefs such that you are crucified for them. Ain’t nobody got time fa dat. 
 
Except. Well, you know. Except the Lord of all creation. Who does waste time being born, being loved by many, going places with His family, making friends, and standing up for His beliefs which is basically standing up for Himself.
 
Point is, there is a problem. We see the world in this dualistic way. In Jesus, the dual goes away. In Jesus, the earthly becomes as important as the heavenly. In Jesus, all of creation is redeemed and worthy of God’s greatest work: salvation.
 
Yes sin is the problem. And its our problem when we hear God. We hear Him with sinful ears and so we place our own biases and prejudices into His Word that just aren’t there. Take the body, our bodies, for example. We have the opinion previously stated, but we have forgotten the opening chapters of the Bible.
 
The part where He says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them…And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen 1:28, 31).
 
The body is a created Good. Very good. So Good, that the same bodies that house you and me, house God. Jesus, God made man, has His own, unique, body. Unique as in, just as there will never be another “you”, so there will never be another Jesus. Yet, His body is not unique as in, in every way, it is just like yours.
 
Though it sounds as if God does not promise mercy and forgiveness in earthly things, if we were to go up into heaven and try to steal them from God, we would not find Him there, as He told us, “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me” (Jn 6:38). 
 
Not only has Jesus placed Himself in the earthly realm and at the mercy of the earthly realm, as evidenced by His suffering and death, but He promises as He continues in St. John 6: “And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day” (Jn 6:39).
 
In Christ, God is not on high, He is on earth. In Christ, God has taken on a body, sanctifying all others who have a body, you. In Christ, God is not satisfied with Creation being “very good”, but He will have it be the ultimate good; the Resurrected Good.
 
A giant part of salvation is that you make it. You. Body and soul. Not just part of you. Not just “spirit you”. You. For this reason, Jesus suffers, dies, and rises again from the dead with His Body. A recognizable body, as St. Thomas attests to after Easter saying, “My Lord and my God!” (Jn 20:28). It was Jesus, back from the dead, body and soul. No mistake.
 
In the weakness of God, He redeems all of humanity, in their bodies no less! As such, the 10 lepers take comfort in the weakness of their God, not because He cannot produce faith in 9 or heal every body in the world, but because He takes on all weakness and shows us that it can overcome sin, death, and the power of the devil.
 
God is the God of the weak, for they find perfect strength in His weakness. God is the God of the sick and of the helpless and of the lonely, because in His sin-sickness from your sin, helplessness on the cross, and lonely care for sinners, He rises again from the dead, never to die again. 
 
Perfect, heavenly healing is freely offered and freely given in the resurrection of the body. In order to be a part of the resurrection of the body you need to have a body. It doesn’t matter the condition of it. It doesn’t matter what type, or size, or constitution. Having a body guarantees a resurrection.
 
However, a guaranteed resurrection does not guarantee heaven for eternity. Every body will hear Jesus’s voice on the last Day and come out (John 5:28-29), but only some “will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Mt 25:46).
 
In the weakness of God, Jesus Christ has produced strength. He has created a righteousness that surpasses earthly righteousness, in that it can be given to even the most unworthy sinner. In His weakness on the cross, Jesus has purchased and won a healing that no body can resist, no matter if it is leprous or scattered to the winds.
 
Jesus, in the weakness of God made man, has secured a faith so enduring, so persistent, so invincible that it can withstand everything the world throws at it and come out the winner, in the end. 
 
Is God weak for only getting one healed leper to come back? No. He is strong for being able to pay for and forgive the sins of all 10. Is Jesus weak for not being able to heal the whole world or create human bodies that don’t suffer and die? No. He is strong to be able to defeat such things in the body and give hope to those who cannot overcome them on their own.
 
Dear Christians, rejoice in your weakness. For in it, you imitate your God and Lord, Who has stepped down to earth, saved you, and remains here with you to the end of the age. Celebrate your inability to comprehend God’s desire to save you by Word and Sacrament. For in such contemplations of weakness, you find Christ on the cross for you.
 
And such is the will and purpose of Him Who sent Jesus Christ Crucified.
 

Third Day Samaritan [Trinity 13]

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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• 2 Chronicles 28:8-15
• Galatians 3:15-22
• St. Luke 10:23-37

 

Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father's Son, in truth and love. (2 John)

 

Who speaks to you today, from His Gospel heard in His Church, saying: 

“And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’”

 

When we are made to hear the Parable of the Good Samaritan, our teachers usually follow Jesus's apparent leading and talk about mercy. There is good morality to be learned there. But is the mercy you have or show the same mercy Jesus is talking about? So we will learn today how to read the Bible to find this mercy.

 

We are alive. So, we expect our God to be alive as well. But not alive, “just as we are”. Alive in a much more alive way. As in the most alive you can be. Our Samaritan needs such a God, because if His God is not Alive, then, half dead is going to turn into all dead.

 

Most especially when we find ourselves half-dead or moving towards all dead. At that point we wonder what it all was for or even if there is life after death, if only because we can’t see past that shadowy curtain we call death. For the Christian, then, three days becomes extremely important.

 

Why are three days important? Its not from us. Its Jesus. He says in St. Mark 8, “And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again” (v.31).

 

Jesus sets us off on this “three days” path, primarily to get us to His resurrection, secondarily so that when we read His Word and encounter “3 days” in it, we are reminded of His resurrection, and tertiarily so that we look for our own “three days” when we fall victim to the robbers of this world: sin, death and the devil.

 

First, Jesus’s resurrection is not a New Testament idea only. It was the plan from the beginning. Resurrection is literally and prophetically in the Old Testament. Literally, Elijah raises the widow’s son at Zarephath from the dead (1 Ki 17:17ff). Prophetically, Jonah sat in the depths, which always means death, for three days and brought out again.

 

Second, there was always going to be a resurrection of the dead, but how was it going to be accomplished? It was going to be by and through God’s Holy One, His chosen. Psalm 16:10, “For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption.”

 

And our favorite from Isaiah 53:10, “when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand”, teaching that after death, His days will be prolonged. How?

 

There was always to be a resurrection and Jesus was going be the first. 

 

For this reason, there are three days involved in the story of the Good Samaritan. The first day is the incident. The second day is the payment made to the Innkeeper. The Third Day is the “when I come back” day. Jesus admits that the two denarii paid is still insufficient to complete this healthcare. There must be a Third Day where complete payment can be made and perfect healing given.

 

This means that something more than just earthly healthcare and money is needed to show mercy to this unfortunate man from our Gospel reading. As in, understanding this parable means not stopping at you showing mercy to your neighbor in need, as if that’s all there is here to hear.

 

Repent. All of creation screams death and resurrection to you, but you still doubt. Day turns into night, only to turn into day again. Plants continually “die” and are “reborn”, and yet you still can’t quite come to terms with a bodily resurrection from the dead. Spiritual? Sure. Bodies? Won’t the worms have eaten them?

 

We trust in each and every thing, before we trust Jesus. He is our back up plan. When we make poor decisions and put our life in danger, then we seek Jesus. When we don’t think we’ll make it out of medical situations, then we seek Jesus. When we want to show off our mercy, then we seek Jesus to pat us on the back.

 

Psalm 3 says, “Arise, O Lord! Save me, O my God! For you strike all my enemies on the cheek; you break the teeth of the wicked.” We hear this “arise” cry all the time in the Bible and we think it just means, “get up and do something”. 

 

It does. But God’s “get up and do something” is “get up from the dead and do something”. It is working out His perfect mercy in and through His death and resurrection. When the men who wrote down God’s thoughts and words in Psalm 3, they were writing of Christ. 

 

In desiring mercy not sacrifice, Jesus teaches that in His sacrifice He will be the one to perform true mercy. He will show mercy to His enemies who hate Him and to those who oppose Him, by suffering for all sins of all people. His care will be medicine, doctors, nurses, and money to pay for it.

 

But that is just the first and second days. The third day will be resurrection day. It will be the cap on all suffering and inability to show mercy. For Jesus’s mercy on the cross extends beyond the earthly and moves into eternity.

 

The mercy needed to completely heal is the Mercy that lasts forever and in Christ, that is what is purchased and won on the cross. The third day is the day when there is no more need for medicine or care facilities. The third day is when the cause of all that is defeated.

 

Sin. Death. The power of the devil. All of this moves towards one end: the end of faith in God. To that end, suffering and death are used against God’s people. Since that is the case, God chooses to use that against them. Suffering on the cross purchases infinite mercy and the death of Jesus Christ opens the door to eternal life.

 

Jesus rises from the dead to secure mercy for the time when bandages, oil and wine, and money will not do the job. Jesus will raise all the dead in a show of His victory over death and hell. He will then take me and all believers in Christ to live under Him in His kingdom forever.

 

Jesus raises Himself and in turn gives that resurrection to you. He baptizes you into His resurrection so that you get the right one and so that you are with Him and no one else. 

 

And proof of that is His own resurrected body: flesh and bone. Not something new, something old regenerated. A body powered by spirit instead of cursed biology. A body tempered for eternity with God. A body purchased and won by Mercy.

 

Jesus is so alive that death no longer has a hold on Him. He walks by you on His journeys. He comes to you, seeing you dead in your sin, waylaid. The Resurrected Christ carries you into His Church and hands you over to the pastor. The Word and Sacrament is paid for in Body and Blood and you are cared for.

 

You are shown mercy in Christ and His third day is brought to you today. Yes, you wait for His return as He promised you, but your waiting is done in the beginning of that promise. For you taste and see that His salvation is good today and in those signs, have faith and hope in the Third Day to come.

 

St. Irenaeus of the 2nd century teaches us, 

“Elijah, too, was caught up [when he was yet] in the substance of the [natural] form; thus exhibiting in prophecy the assumption of those who are spiritual, and that nothing stood in the way of their body being translated and caught up. For by means of the very same hands through which they were moulded at the beginning, did they receive this translation and assumption.” (Irenaeus V:V:1)

 

 

Blessed infirmity [Trinity 12]

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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Isaiah 29:17-24

• 2 Corinthians 3:4-11

• St. Mark 7:31-37

 

To you all, the Elect Exiles of the Dispersion; may Grace and Peace be multiplied to you (1 Pet)
 
Who speaks to you today, from His Gospel heard in His Church, saying: 

“And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him.”

 
Today, the Gospel presents to us a man who cannot hear or speak and in a way, this man was lucky. He was kept from hearing the evils of this world and was able to keep his tongue tamed, which no man can do, according to James 3:8.
 
But this guy did it! He fulfilled God’s Word. He obeyed perfectly, by being unable. A Blessing! A blessing from the Lord. God be praised.
 
What about his hearing? “Thus says the Lord of hosts”, in Jeremiah 23, “‘Do not listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you. They are leading you into futility; They speak a vision of their own imagination, Not from the mouth of the Lord’” (v. 16).
 
And “An evildoer listens to wicked lips, and a liar gives ear to a mischievous tongue” (Pro 17:4) and he is already a man of wicked lips, surrounded by a people of wicked lips. Thus, his tongue not working, he is in no danger of this grievous sin as well.
 
So when his buddies, I assume they're buddies, bring him to Jesus, they are doing him a disservice. They should leave him in his infirmity and he will be blessed according to the Word of God we just heard.
 
Indeed, if God had wanted a perfect world, He should have created all of us dead. Then we could at least find this blessing from Revelation 14, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on” (v. 13). No hearing. No seeing. No sinning. Heaven!
 
Where is the lie? Tell me.
 
Oh you don’t want to be deaf, dumb, or dead? Why? Because it’s not fun? Because it gets in the way of what you want to do? Because you should be able to live the life you want to, no matter what anyone tells you?
 
Well, you’re half-right. If you were all those things or dead, you would be breaking other charges from God such as “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17) and Psalm 71:15, “My mouth shall tell of Your righteousness and of Your salvation all day long; For I do not know the sum of them.”
 
Repent! How are you going to live your truth-filled and righteous life now? You cannot tell the difference between good and bad. God’s Word has spoken and you cannot tell which part of life He wants from you. Jesus further complicates matters in the Gospel reading by saying “tell no one” and these zealots don’t even listen, but kept on telling the story.
 
If you rely on the works of the Law of God, you are under this curse (Gal 3:10) and whoever “does the commandments shall live by them” (Rom 10:5). Live by them, perfectly, mind you. Not according to your standard of living, but God’s. 
 
Can this deaf and dumb man live such a life of perfection and un-cursed-ness? Yes, he can. But in order to do that, he needs the Ministry of Righteousness, which our Epistle taught us. He does not need glory, for the Ministry of the Law, of Death, had such glory that it was carved in stone by God’s finger, caused Moses’s face to shine brightly that the people couldn’t look at him, and came with miracles and wonders.
 
In Christ, however, there is no distinction. You could be perfectly able to fulfill all of God’s Laws and yet be on your way to hell in a handbasket. You could be perfectly miserable, with every disease and misfortune and yet be on your way to paradise and not know it. Or the opposite could be true. 
 
This confusion is only according to the covenant of the letter, the Law, which is 50/50 for you at the Judges’ bench. The covenant of the Spirit is 100%, gives life, and has a glory that far surpasses the Law.
 
This covenant is in Christ’s Body and Blood. Literally. It does not come through sincere effort or dedication, look at our deaf and dumb man! It comes the same way Jesus came to this man from our Gospel. First, it must be brought or you must be brought to it. There is no getting to it on your own, as we have already said.
 
Second, your brokenness, your curse of God’s Law, must be removed. Jesus must open and release you. He must create in you Faith in order that you be able to hear and believe His New Covenant. It is only after all that, that…
 
Thirdly, you then speak plainly. Not “plainly” as in “just like normal”, but plainly as in correct belief. Meaning, your speaking will not include the wickedness of lying lips, your hearing will reject evil, and your new life in Christ will give praise to God constantly and perfectly, according to His merits.
 
How? Because your sufficiency is from Jesus Christ and Him Crucified. Your competence to be ministers of this new covenant comes from the One Who became a curse for you and hung on a tree. Through Christ offering Himself upon the cross, that spotless life, you are redeemed from insufficiency. 
 
But that is just the beginning. Christ’s suffering and death purchased and won sufficiency for you, but now it is the Spirit Who Gives Life and will feed it to you. The benefits of the mercy and glory of God’s New Covenant are found in Word and Sacrament. 
 
Look at the Gospel again. What healed the man? Christ’s mighty word of creation, “Be opened”! From nothing He creates something. But that’s not all. Christ touched this man. Jesus includes His fingers and His spit, along with His voice, to accomplish this mighty work.
 
What heals you today? Nothing different. You must still hear, so your ears are opened when the Gospel is preached in its purity, and in it find that your sins are forgiven, regardless of your life, your state at the moment, or your opinion on the matter. 
 
You must also be touched. That is that you must come into contact with God Who heals you. And not in an abstract, self-induced hallucination way. The Way God wants you to, that is through the Body and Blood of His only Begotten Son. Just like the Gospel!!
 
And finally you must also speak. You must also be given the words of plain faith and belief. You must sing and pray and praise. Your words must be of Christ, our intercessor and mediator of this New Covenant. So His Church gives you those words. 
 
You sing them in every hymn, you confess them in every prayer, and you repeat them in every Creed. These important words-to-be-spoken are not left a mystery for you to uncover, somehow. They are freely given, plain as day. The Lord gives the Word. The Lord gives the means. You are cared for and blessed.
 
This man from the Gospel did not have to be healed in order to be made perfect in front of God. He could have spent the rest of his life as he was, because his sufficiency did not come from how great his life was, but from how great God is.
 
And not just any God, the God Who works wonders, yes, but the God Who chiefly works the wonder of being made man and suffering and dying on the cross. It is through this, His greatest wonder, that you are no more ashamed of or grow pale from what the world, the devil, and your sinful nature has done to you.
 
Dear Christians, you must now consider yourself as better than this deaf and dumb man. Not in a smug way, because truly you are worse than him according to your sins. But you are better than him in that you do not see and yet you believe. 
 
You are better because today you don’t just receive fingers and spit from Jesus, but Body and Blood. You are better because the Lord of the Universe comes today to sit at the Feast of Salvation and commune with you in His Church. 
 
And yet, you are brothers in faith. Equals! The same Faith that heals in the Gospel is the same faith that heals you today. The same Lord over all Who performs miracles, gives you that same power in the forgiveness of your sins in His Body and Blood given and shed for you.
 
Do not be fooled into thinking there is a better life for you if you would have only done things different, or not forgotten prayer, or just went to church that one time when you swore you would. Your best life ever is the one you have right now, for not only is it a gift from God, no matter what it looks like, but it is redeemed by God, renewed by God, and placed in the Ministry of the Spirit by the grace of God.