READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
1 Samuel 16:1-13
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
- St. Luke 18:31-43
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. (Phil 1)
Who speaks to you on this day from His Gospel heard, saying:
“And Jesus said to
him, ‘Recover your sight; your faith has saved you.’”
Thus far the Word of God, caused to be written for our
learning, because the Lord wants us to see. He wants us to see His Great Work
of Salvation, the path He blazed for us, and Faith alone that puts and keeps us
on it. Faith Alone is pleasing to God, Faith Alone saves, and Faith alone leads
us to Jesus in Word and Sacrament.
There are those who preach and teach that Faith Alone is a
contract with God, a covenant, where if you do your thing, then God will do His
thing, without a Word from God and without a sacrament from God. It is truly
Christian, they say, to solve national problems with prayer. That if a nation
turns to the Lord, He will restore their fortunes.
And that is the sum of Faith Alone, for them. You turn to
God, He turns to you. And what is the result of this contract? Yes, you are
forgiven, but mainly your fortunes are restored. Christian Nationalists love to
quote Jeremiah and his fortunes to prove this. From 33:11, “as they bring
thank offerings to the house of the Lord: ‘Give thanks to the Lord of hosts,
for the Lord is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!’ For I will
restore the fortunes of the land as at first, says the Lord.”
Just like our blind man in the Gospel today, right? I mean,
he did the whole shebang. The turning and the praying and the faithing. He does
his thing, turns to Jesus for mercy, and then Jesus does His thing. First the
man cries out to God, then God answers him and restores his fortunes.
That of being able to see, apparently. And you don’t even
have to be blind to receive these fortunes. They are whatever you tell God they
are! For this man it was his sight. For you it could be work, or relationships,
or whatever. That’s what the Bible says! Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in
the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” “Bring me your
Christmas lists and I’ll do one better than your parents!”
Maybe…
Perhaps, we should turn to Scripture Alone to discover what
the fortunes of Judah and Israel actually are. Our first stop is Job. Here is
the classic, biblical example where God restores fortunes. Job 42:10 in English
reads, “And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job”. Unfortunately, that
is not how it is read in the greek or the hebrew.
What Jesus actually says to Job is, “And the Lord turned
back his captivity.”
Well, that’s different. What does that even have to do with
fortune and where was Job a captive that he had to be freed?
Turns out, this is biblical fortune, if you will. Job’s
captivity was devilish as he was subject to loss and suffering. In his release,
he is not just restored, but set free and set free in abundance, Scripture
says. The Lord gives him double, in this increase.
This should remind us of Isaiah and his Advent readings we
hear on the Third Sunday, “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak
tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her
iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all
her sins” (40:1-2).
Do we find something different in Jeremiah? Of course not.
When the Lord promises restoration to the nation, it is not fortune, but a
“turned back captivity”. It is no coincidence, then, that Jesus describes
captivity as slavery and says, “Truly truly…whoever commits sin is a slave
of sin” (John 8:34).
And, true to covenant form, God attaches a condition for His
return or restoration. That is, if you “utter what is precious and not
worthless” (Jer 15:19), if you “bring the full tithe into the storehouse
of His House” (Mal 3:10), and if you “return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;” (Joel 2:12).
Repent! There is never enough room in your heart, so we
believe God plays the lip service game. Because, even before those who preach
falsely in the Church, are the wicked who always seem to prosper and do not
love God. Their fortunes are always taken care of. We believe our experience
which says that God is simply here to restore our material fortunes, because
that is the only way we experience His love, at least that’s the limit of our
thinking in sin.
Why is it that Faith Alone always means, “our private faith
and nothing else” and never “I’m going to gather where God is communing and
inviting all to sit at His Table? Why is faith alone always “what I can
accomplish” rather than “what God has accomplished for me”?
It is because we are captives, slaves to sin. More than
that, our captivity in sin includes blindness, rebellion, and death.
Back to our blind man from the Gospel Reading, his “restored
fortunes” is not his sight. Well, its part of it. But his fortunes go on as the
Gospel goes on. His sight is not only restored, but his entire being, for he
doesn’t go on to fame and fortune. He followed Jesus.
He followed Jesus, glorifying God. What the man’s restored
sight does for him is point him to his true fortunes. The true fortune that his
captivity has been turned back. His blindness was only a symptom. He was held
in sin. He was bound to death. He was a slave to the devil. Age, sickness, and
actual sins would have confirmed this.
But it was Jesus Who reveals it. And He reveals it by
setting the prisoners free, first. And He must. There is no way for a prisoner,
who doesn’t know they’re imprisoned, to realize they are in captivity. That
blindness only freedom can cure.
This is what Fath Alone means. Not that you have been given
power to save yourself or get rid of your sin, but that you have been freed.
You have been freed to follow. Follow where? Follow where the Lord leads. The
Blind man followed Jesus, all right, followed Him to the place He said at the
beginning of the Gospel reading. Where, “everything that is written about
the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished…delivered over to the
Gentiles…mocked…shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they
will kill him, and on the third day he will rise” (Lk 18:31-33).
The first part of Faith Alone means that only Christ has
kept God’s Law and His fortunes are His sufferings and cross. Only Christ is
the One Who can see. Only Christ utters precious Words of God, has the full
tithe, and has the heart that is God’s own. Faith Alone believes that for
Christ’s sake alone, we are saved.
The second part of Faith Alone is following Jesus. For the
true meaning of this, we turn to the blind man’s glorifying of God. We turn to
the word of St. Jeremiah in chapter 31 where he records, “Once more they
shall use these words in the land of Judah and in its cities, when I restore
their fortunes: ‘The Lord bless you, O habitation of righteousness, O holy
hill!’” (31:23)
There is no other place the Lord is glorified; there is no
other place where the Habitation of Righteousness dwells; there is no other
place where the Word is kept: “you shall see Me no more till you say,
‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’” (Mt 23:39), than in His
Church.
That is, Faith Alone follows Jesus to His crucifixion,
death, and resurrection, as our Church Year does. Faith Alone follows Jesus to
His prophets, Apostles, and Church, as the Word does. Faith Alone follows Jesus
as He accomplishes all things for us in His Word and Sacraments, as the Liturgy
does.
For the restored fortunes of Jesus is to suffer and die on
the cross, having been charged with our sin, and crediting us with His
righteousness. We do not get to claim the fortunes as our own, simply because
we have been given them. The revelation of faith drives us to our knees. We do
not deserve to be here.
Yet, Christ in His mercy, has united His fortunes with us.
Where He has died, rose again, and lives forevermore, such will be our fortune.
In sin, our fortune was death. But now with His clean heart, His full tithe in
God’s House, and His Word in our hearts and on our lips, our captivity is
turned back and are baptized into His death and resurrection.
The true power of Faith Alone, is Christ for us. The true
power of Faith alone is to strengthen our inner being such that Christ may
dwell in our hearts through faith alone (Eph 3:16-17). Faith Alone is not your
ticket to tell God how He should get things done, but it is a gift of sight to
see how He has already accomplished them, continues to distribute them, and
will complete them in the end, for you.
Faith Alone is: God has done it and it is marvelous in our
sight (Ps 118:23).
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