The Responsibility of God [Trinity 12]

READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Isaiah 29:17-24

• 2 Corinthians 3:4-11

• St. Mark 7:31-37

 

Grace to you all and Peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus, the Christ.

 

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

“And looking up to heaven, He sighed deeply and said to him, ‘Ephphatha!’ which means, “Be opened!”

 

When we see something wrong in the world, the very first thing we say is, “Who did that”. When you find milk spilled in the kitchen or the toilet paper all over the floor, you shout, “Alright who did this”. When Jesus walked through Eden and found death all over and the rank of sin heavy in the air, He asked, “Who did this” or “Who’s fault is this”.

 

Though unlike in my house, there were only two people in Eden, so the answer was pretty easy. This is why the Lord said, “Adam where are you” instead. 

 

For us to have to face this deaf and speech-impeded man today in our Gospel reading, we find the roles reversed. It is not the Creator asking, but the creature: “who did this”. Why is this man born this way? Why must he face life with such handicaps? 

 

The disciples asked this same question in St. John 9:2, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Notice how they only try to blame people, as if trying to blame God for something is unthinkable. God would never cause sorrow or sadness, so there must be some other reason, right Jesus?

 

Jesus says, Nope. “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him” (Jn 9:3). Now, I don’t know about you, but that sure sounds like Jesus just said, “Its God’s fault” to me. Or at least, God didn’t care enough to change things, in order that He would be able to show His might.

 

That’s hoodwinking, that is. To create the problem just so you can sell the solution is bearing-false-witness to the highest degree, as is common in our country today. Is that what God is doing here, making people sick just so He can swoop in like the hero and save them?

 

God did not create death. God did not create sin. But He did create responsibility and someone must be responsible. Someone must hold the key to at least understand what is happening. 

 

They say that if you put too many keys on your keychain, you can end up destroying your car’s ignition cylinder and switch, over time: or a person. How many keys do you have? House keys, car keys, office keys, other people’s house keys. What about emotional keys? Family? Marriage? Community? Job? 

 

It is not unheard of, especially in our days, to hear of mental breakdowns and an ever increasing reliance on pharmaceuticals to deal with alleged “mental health”. It seems to be only a matter of time before we all break down. Is it because we are living in harder times?

 

In a way, yes. Harder because the strain on us is not physical, but mental. It is the world overburdening us with “keys” we have no business holding or caring about. The world’s cares are not our business, but the media wants them to be. Our country’s emotional and moral strife is out of your reach, but the internet wants it in front of your face, constantly.

 

Why is that? It is for the same reason this deaf and speech-impeded man is thrown in Jesus’s face. The devil, the world, and our sinful nature want to see what He will do. We can’t even handle our own family business and we think we can solve the world’s problem with Dominion voting machines? What can this Jesus do in the face of actual incurable handicaps?

 

Jesus takes responsibility. The Lord owns up to the fact that He is in charge and things are a mess. “In order that the Word of God might be revealed as Him.” Might be “epiphanied” as Him. Because He is in the flesh, suffering as we do, we can know that He is not just giving trials to see if we “measure up”. God does send us sorrow and sadness and He lays the cross heavy on our shoulders such that we break underneath it. 

 

Not us, but that sin and death in us would break, which make the cross we bear too heavy, in the first place. For the true epiphany, the true “showing” in this act of Jesus, today, is God made manifest. True God is Jesus, in the flesh. Not alien flesh, but our flesh. The same flesh susceptible to sin and death. The same flesh that bears the ailments and handicaps of this life. God lowers Himself even beneath our burdens, in order to carry all burdens.

 

This is Jesus’s cross He joyfully bears. He picks up the too-heavy key chain and the broken cylinder as His own. In this man’s suffering, we see part of our Lord’s suffering. 

 

Yet, in revealing Himself as Jesus, we run into another problem. That of His hiddenness. Why must we suffer here? Why can’t God just get rid of all suffering with a snap of His fingers? It is the hidden will of God that says, this is the way. That He has chosen to make salvation in this way: the way of the cross. 

 

Does the power of handicaps, cap the love of God? No. Does the strength and weight of your “keys” deny you access to the favor of God? No. For if Jesus can return sight and speech to this man, indeed, if He is able to be made man, suffer and die and rise again to glory, then what can stand in His way? Nothing.

 

Thus, if He promises you a cross to bear, it will be His cross that He already bore for you. And if He promises a death like His and a resurrection like His, and eternal glory like His, what is to say that He is hiding something or playing tricks? 

 

We may be born blind or mute or with too-heavy of burdens, but that corruption is not God’s doing, neither is His sitting still in light of it. He has thrown Himself into it, flesh and blood. It is no business of ours what God does with what He has created. If one suffers and another does not, who are we to say we could do it better?

 

This is the Lord’s impenetrable will. We are not allowed to peek there. He has, however, His Revealed Will, which is shown partially in today’s blind and speech-impeded man, and fully in Christ on the cross. That He has come to take responsibility, though it is our own fault. He has come to bear the burdens too heavy for our sin-filled bodies.

 

He bears them and He crucifies them, along with Himself. Jesus opens this man’s eyes and mouth to speak of Him. Jesus opens heaven to all believers. He has but one, singular will: that all repent and live in Him.

 

They say that the devil’s greatest trick he played on the world was convincing everyone he doesn’t exist. That’s only half-right. He convinces us that he doesn’t exist, while existing to convince us of this. He, sin, and the world give us a double-mind, able to believe two contradicting things at once. That lies can coexist with truth. That light can remain with darkness or even needs it. 

 

Such is the satanic twist that now we go about our lives, looking at suffering, and thinking double thoughts. See, Jesus is just doing the same thing. How can there be suffering, yet healing promised by God? How can there be healing promised by God when I have yet to experience it?

 

The difference is not that one is healed and another is not. The difference is, one has faith in the Resurrection of all flesh, and another does not. In satan’s kingdom, suffering is meaningless and so he is double-minded about it. In the Kingdom of the heavens, suffering produces hope in the Resurrection.

 

It is with the Resurrection of Jesus and His promise made to us in Baptism, that we then can see suffering and healing, not as contradicting, but as the narrow way. The narrow way of hope that God knows what He is doing.

 

That He can bring salvation even out of suffering. That He can conquer this world with His death and resurrection. And that He can grant kingdom-expanding faith in Word, water, body, and blood.

 

Because that’s the real fear, right? That God is not responsible enough to be able to encompass all my fear and all my suffering and all my doubt in His plan. There must be a gap. There must be more than His Church, because its not working. But Jesus doesn’t ask for a clean heart, He gives it. He doesn’t ask for a right spirit, He gives it.

 

He doesn’t ask for you to have the key to life, only He has that. From Revelation 3:7, “These are the words of Him Who is Holy and True, Who holds the Key of David. What He opens no one can shut, and what He shuts no one can open”.

He asks simply as He asks another blind man, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”, in John 9. The answer, as always, is: “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).