JANUARY 31, 2010  SERMON ARCHIVE

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ!

In today’s Gospel, Jesus answers prayers in exactly the way the people want them answered. "They appealed to Him" on behalf of Simon’s mother- in-law, who "was ill with a high fever." Jesus healed her without hesitation. Soon "all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to Him, and He laid His hands ON EVERY ONE OF THEM and healed them."

Hearing this, are you tempted to say, "Why hasn’t Jesus done the same thing for me or for those whom I desperately want to keep healthy and alive?"

Dear friends, this Gospel is a wonderful Gospel for showing you that your personal experiences in life will give you VERY LITTLE HELP in understanding God’s Word and in benefitting from its promises.

Now don’t get me wrong. Experience is, for the most part, a wonderful teacher.

For example, as you become more experienced in reading books, you not only become a better reader, but you also gain a deeper awareness and understanding of the world around you.

The more experience you gain in your profession—butcher, baker or candlestick maker—the better you will be at your job. The more years you live and struggle and survive in this world, the wiser you grow to be at least in theory.

But there is one thing your personal experiences will not do for you: They will not help you understand the Word of God.

In fact, your personal experiences in life might prove detrimental and destructive to your reading of the Word. At the very least, your experiences will make you feel like you are on the outside looking in, so to speak, impossibly separated from the events written in God’s Word.

Your experiences will deceive you into thinking that God treats other people better than He treats you.

That is a lie, but it is a lie your life’s experiences will not hesitate to tell you over and over again. You might even begin to believe the lie.

Think about some of the many ways your personal experiences will lie to you about the Living Word of God and its rich promises:

.....If you have any regrets, and if your conscience feels weighted by guilt, your life experiences might make you wonder whether God’s promises of forgiveness are truly for you, and not just for other people who are holier than you.

Ignore your experiences and the recurring feelings of guilt they carry with them! Trust instead what God says to you so clearly in His Word: All your sins are forgiven in the shed blood of Jesus, and every scrap of blame has been removed from you eternally.

.....Perhaps you have lost important people in your life, or never had very many to begin with. Your personal experiences might make you think that you are alone in the world, that not many people to love you, or maybe that you are not too terribly lovable to begin with.

Force yourself to disregard your experiences, dear saints. Such experiences will blind your eyes wonderful family God your Father gave to you at your Baptism, when He made you part of His holy Christian Church.

"Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people" (1 Peter 2:9).

"The one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call [you] brothers" (Hebrews 2:11, NIV).

"You are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it" (1 Corinthians 12:27).

Some people have not had very good experiences at the hands of men in particular. Husbands, fathers, and brothers sometimes fail—frequently fail—in faithfully loving those who are entrusted to their care. If you have experienced a father’s heavy handedness, a husband’s inattention, or a brother’s contempt, you might not feel terribly impressed or comforted when you hear that our God is Father (Matthew 6:8) and Elder Brother (Romans 8:29) and Husband (Jeremiah 31:32, Ephesians 5:25) to us, His Church.

And it does not matter whether you are man, woman or child: Your personal experiences at the hands of the men in your life might skew the picture a bit. Such experiences must be categorically ignored for the sake of hearing and believing the Word; and in so believing, receiving its benefits.

Today’s Gospel will give you an equally bad time of things if you hear and understand these Words based on the lies your personal experiences in life will tell you:

Simon's mother-in-law was ill with a high fever, and they appealed to [Jesus] on her behalf. And He stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her, and immediately she rose and began to serve them. Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to Him, and He laid His hands on every one of them and healed them.

For anyone who has ever prayed for healing—and whose prayers were NOT answered in the manner they had hoped—this is a distressing and unsettling Gospel.

How is it possible for you not to feel jealous or even angry with God when He seems to fall over Himself healing as many people as possible in this Gospel, but has somehow not seen fit to heal you or the one whom you dearly love?

"He laid His hands on EVERY ONE OF THEM." It is not too hard to think that some of those who were healed did not even love Jesus all that much. They got their healing and went happily away while you have lovingly and faithfully stayed right here, begging for blessings you have been forbidden to receive.

If today’s Gospel would have you know anything, it would teach you that your Lord Jesus Christ is fully capable to heal every affliction of body and spirit.

By contrast, if your personal experiences in this world have anything to say about this Gospel, those experiences will lie straight to your face and tell you that Jesus has no such abilities at all.

At the very least, your personal experiences will suggest that you and your loved ones are not as well loved by Jesus as were these people "Capernaum, a city of Galilee." After all, "Simon’s mother-in-law was ill with a high fever, and they appealed to Him on her behalf" and succeeded in gaining what they desired. Obviously your prayers have not met such stunning success. Then temptation sets in:

Did God not answer your prayers because He is angry with you, because you have committed too many sins in your life, or because you do not believe in Him strongly enough? That is one of the lies your personal experiences will tell you.

Does the Lord Jesus favor some people more than He favors others, opening His hand in one direction while swinging His fist in another? That, too, is lie spoken by experience.

If Jesus is fully capable of healing every disease of body and spirit, as this Gospel suggests, and if He does not heal your diseases of body and spirit, doesn’t this experience suggest the possibility that Jesus is something less than 100% merciful to you and loving toward you and compassionate with you all the time?

This is a hard Gospel. This Gospel is hard because it forces you to choose between God’s revelation in His Word and your personal experiences in life, which are so deeply contrary to what you read.

I cannot tell you why Simon’s mother-in-law rises while your loved ones fall. I cannot tell you because I do not know.

But I do know this, and I can tell you—and I insist upon it in the Lord—that the God who cares for this woman in this Gospel is the same God who cares equally for you and for yours. Guard yourself against your personal experiences, dear saints!

Allow the living Word of God to defy and contradict and negate your personal experiences!

Do not think of this Gospel as something distant from you, based on your experiences. Think of today’s Gospel as the story of your life—the unending life your Lord Jesus has created and given to you despite your experiences!

Do not look at your body and conclude, based on what you can see and experience, "Jesus has not healed me." Instead, look at God’s miracle of Baptism and conclude— not based on what you can see but based on what you have been told by God.

"My Lord Jesus has healed me or my dear loved one already, despite the fact that my body appears to be disintegrating. I will not trust what I am experiencing. I will trust what God says."

Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to Him, and He laid His hands on every one of them and healed them.

Treat your experiences with contempt and force yourself into that crowd which gathered at Jesus’ door!

In the ongoing benefit of your Baptism, in each preaching of the divine Word, in every celebration of Holy Communion, your Lord Jesus does for you every miracle and exorcism spoken about in today’s Gospel.

If it is true that you have forgiveness of your sins, despite whatever guilt you feel (and it IS true that you are forgiven);

if it is true that you have God’s abiding peace, despite whatever upheaval you may be experiencing or whatever discomfort you might feel (and it IS true that you have God’s peace);

if it is true that you have been given a very large and exceedingly loving family in the church, despite what loneliness you might feel (and it is true that you have been given this family);

then it must also be true that you and your loved ones have likewise been given the divine gift of healing of your bodies, even if your body feels as though it is falling apart.

Even while you personally experience illness and death, insistently confess with Isaiah in defiance of your experiences, "By [Jesus’] stripes we have been healed" (Isaiah 53:5).

Christ Is Risen.