Raising the Dead: A Meditation on Mark 5

The story of Jesus raising Jairus’ daughter from the dead serves to teach us many things, not least of which is the relationship between us and Jesus.  Jairus, a leader of the synagogue, had a 12 year old daughter who was sick and dying.  As a father of daughters whom I love greatly, I can appreciate the pain and grief that must have passed through Jairus as he saw his beloved child suffering under the weight of her fatal disease—a sight many parents have had to see over the millennia.  I am thankful beyond words that I have not had to watch the death of my own children, but I know many who have, and their torment is beyond reckoning.  God gives us children, gives us a capacity to love them more than ourselves, and yet sometimes permits us to suffer with them as they die.  No parent wants to bury their own children, but in the greatest of sadness, far too many have had to do so.

Death, especially the death of children, is a lamentable sign of the broken world in which we live.  It is easier, perhaps, for us to countenance the death of heroes who perish in triumphant struggle against evil; the death of horrific villains who finally face justice for their crimes; the death of the aged who have walked many miles in their now failing bodies.  But it is far harder for us to countenance the death of the young, the vulnerable, and the innocent.  We look upon the reports of thousands of children kidnapped by ISIS only to be butchered, tortured, or sold into slavery, and we cannot bear the vision nor the thought of such horror.  We see in the evening news the abuse and murder of children in every city in America, even as we protect in our laws the facilities which have murdered countless millions of unborn children.  We see the insanity of a murderous bigot who steps into a Charleston church, murdering all he can, while a child plays dead at his grandmother’s instruction to avoid the gunman’s gaze.  Death is all around us, but the death of children seems the most garish, the most unsettling.  They seem to us innocent and defenseless, and when they die, we cry out to God in our pain.

As in so many things, we see them much more clearly in children.  Adults confuse everything in their well practiced sins, their convoluted philosophies, and their self serving pride, but children are not nearly so well practiced in evil.  Children show us the promise and hope of the future, the tenderness and gentleness of a life not yet calloused by poor choices with their sometimes brutal consequences.  When children suffer and die, we see the best of our human condition lost, the best hope we have to climb out of the muck and the mire dashed.  When we see children die, something dies inside of us, too, and we weep for them with a special kind of tears—tears for the loss of something beautiful in them, and the hope of something beautiful in us.

Perhaps it is precisely this that we must learn from the death of our children:  they are not their own nor our saviors.  In fact they are sinful and corrupted just like we are, though they have not had opportunity to exercise their fallen nature as well as we have.  They, like all of us, have fallen under the curse of the Law, because they, like all of us, have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  Children may be the best reflection of what our fallen humanity can be in this fallen world, but they are like us, fallen.  As St. Paul reminds us, there is none that is worthy, none that can be saved by their works or their own native righteousness—no, not even one.  Even the child born so tender and sweet has coursing through her veins the poison of Original Sin, which is the only way such children could be subject to death at all.  For if the wages of sin is death, we know that if children die, it is because they are fallen sinners like the rest of our fallen race.

So what can we possibly learn from the incalculable depths of suffering which arise from the death of a child?  Like Jairus, we can learn that their salvation and ours, rests in Jesus Christ alone.  Like Jairus, our eyes can see and our ears can hear as Jesus takes our children by the hand and calls them to arise.  Like Jairus, we can despair of our own merits, our own works of righteousness, our own accolades, power, prestige, or position, and receive the free gift of salvation in Jesus.  Like Jairus, we can learn that Jesus really is the resurrection and the life, and that all who are found in Him by faith will live forever.  Like Jairus, we can trust that just as Jesus takes the hands of all children who die in Him, He will take our hands as well when death’s cold river flows over us.  Like Jairus, we can believe and live in Jesus by His grace through faith in Him and His life-giving Word.

The death of anyone, especially children, is a tragedy.  Our Lord has no pleasure in the death of anyone—not the wicked, nor the virtuous, nor the old, nor the young, nor the erring, nor the wise, nor the poor, nor the wealthy, nor the prosperous, nor the downtrodden.  For all of us, our whole human race, Jesus has come to be our propitiation for sin, that any and all who call upon the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ might be saved from their sin and death.  It is for us all, from the child in the whom whose eyes will not see the light of day because of the abortionist’s deadly tools of dismemberment, to the child who dies from the carelessness of the intoxicated or distracted driver, to the child who dies from disease or accident or atrocity, to the father or mother or sister or brother who dies in any of a myriad of ways, that Jesus has come to be our salvation, our life, and our hope.  It is for us all that He has become the Lamb of God, taking away the sins of the world through His Cross, so that He might be the giver of eternal life to all who abide in Him.

Where is God in the death of the child?  He is not the author of their suffering and death, anymore than He is the author or instigator of the evil which takes them from us.  But He is there in His Holy Gospel of salvation, saving them unto life everlasting, and teaching us to trust Him as even these little children do.  If our children are the best we can hope to be, we are reminded that even our children need Jesus as their savior from sin, death, hell, and the power of the devil—that the best we could hope to be is never enough to save ourselves.  We see in the death of the saints the precious fruit of their martyrdom, which is the unvarnished and purely proclaimed free Gospel of salvation in Christ alone.  Here Jesus takes their hand even as He reaches to take ours, speaking life into our dead bodies, saying, “Little one, I say unto you, arise.”  Amen.

Fear and Faith: A Meditation on Mark 4

In the last few verses of Mark’s fourth chapter, the story of a sea journey is recounted.  After a day of teaching Jesus teld His disciples that it was time to go, and so they boarded a ship to cross the Sea of Galilee.  While the Sea of Galilee may not seem large and dangerous to those of us who have crossed larger oceans (it’s only about 8 miles across and 13 miles long, smaller than many American lakes) it is worth remembering that sailing in the ancient world was always a dangerous affair.  They didn’t have weather predicting or tracking satellites, GPS, high visibility lighting, or advanced ship building techniques.  Most of the ships were open and low, making them susceptible to wind and waves.

After a long day of teaching the multitude, Jesus and His disciples were now in one of these ships, in the evening hours with the dying of the light, moving across the sea.  A difficult and spooky journey to be taken in the dark, it became absolutely terrifying as up rose a storm that tossed the boat in raging wind and waves.  The small boat was becoming quickly swamped and in fear of sinking, and the disciples panicked.

To be fair to the disciples, who could blame them?  In the dark, out in the middle of a large expanse of water, beaten by a raging storm, they thought they would surely perish.  Even if some of them were solid swimmers, tossed about in the dark wind and waves, who would know which way to swim?  Who would be able to stay afloat in such stormy seas without eventually drowning?  Facing a watery mortality in the howling dark is enough to rattle anyone, and the disciples were no exception.

In the midst of the disciples’ panic, they found yet another unsettling sight:  Jesus asleep on a pillow in the back of the boat.  While everyone else was terrified that they were going to die, Jesus rested comfortably.  Apparently unable to contain themselves, they awoke Jesus with a wild-eyed incredulity, asking, “Master, carest thou not that we perish?”

Of course, the question itself was infinitely ridiculous.  In fact, Jesus so loved the whole world, his disciples included, that He descended from the Father to seek and to save everyone—a work he would accomplish through His own suffering and death.  While Jesus knew precisely the situation His disciples were in (He is the Almighty, Omnipotent God, after all,) He also knew that they had much greater needs that what they were focused on at that moment.

For example, why should a person ever be afraid of death?  For however many billions of people who have come and gone upon this earth since its creation, how many of them have escaped death?  The only thing to fear about death, is the judgment of God to whom we shall give a reckoning after we have left this vale of tears.  Death is the unnatural but fully deserved fate of our fallen race for having embraced evil rather than truth.  But in the end, what is fearful about death isn’t the means by which it comes, be it by wind and waves or the hands of jihadists, but rather the terms upon which we shall meet our Maker.

But the fear which gripped the disciples on that dark and sinking boat, is the same kind of fear that grips each of us.  We fear death for countless irrational reasons, most of which mask our real and deepest fear:  our lack of faith in God.  Some people fear pain and suffering, preferring to die in their sleep rather than in some horrible accident or persecution; some people fear a slow and degenerating death, preferring to go out in a blaze of glory; some people fear dying too young, preferring to crutch along a tormented life as long as possible; some people fear dying without having taken care of their loved ones, preferring to outlive everyone they love for the sake of duty; and the list goes on.  But at root, everyone knows that death comes for us all, just as it has for every generation before us, and as it will for every generation to come after us.  People will die in earthquakes, floods, storms, violence, disease, accidents, persecutions, wars and conspiracies… and we know that we have very little, if any influence over how it will come to us.  Somewhere deep down, in places we don’t like to acknowledge exist, we know that it’s not really the means of our death that we fear, but Him to whom we shall go when our life in this world is finished.

It is this deepest, darkest fear that Jesus comes to dispel.  Indeed, apart from Jesus, the fear of meeting God face to face is the only rational fear we have.  We know that we are sinful creatures, having lived our lives in broken and selfish ways, squandering the riches of His gifts.  We know that we do not deserve to live even now, let alone for eternity.  We know that we deserve death and hell for the mess we have made not only of our own lives, but of the whole creation.  Apart from Jesus the Natural Law which God has written into the very fabric of the universe condemns us, and it cries out in terror from within our own breast.  It is a fear which cannot love and trust God, because it knows we do not deserve His love.  It is a fear born of sin, born apart from the faith we were made to have in the beginning.

Into this fear, Jesus comes as our sacrifice and our salvation.  The Lord of Life, the Eternal Word of the Father, Jesus descends into our flesh to bear our sin and to be our savior.  Upon His own shoulders He takes our wretchedness and death, our own hell and despair.  Through His Cross He becomes for us the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world—even our sin, our death, our hell.  Jesus becomes for us our reconciliation with God, so that no one might fear death or the grave, because we no longer have anything to fear from our Maker.  For everyone who is baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus is already reconciled to God the Father by the blood of God the Son, sealed in faith by God the Holy Spirit.  In Jesus, all who face the terrors of death now face them unafraid.  By the perfect love of Jesus Christ poured out for us through His Cross, our fear is replaced by faith.

This is what Jesus’ disciples were to learn in time, and what His disciples in every age are led by His Spirit to understand through His Holy Gospel.  As you look at your life today, where do you find fear?  It is there that the Law has convicted you of your shortcomings, of your insufficiency, and your failure, ultimately leading you to despair before the Almighty God in whose presence you shall someday stand.  But into your fears, every single one of them, Jesus still speaks His Word of forgiveness and life, of mercy and grace.  Having done all things necessary to secure your life forever through the sacrifice of His Cross, He calls to you, asking you the same question He asked His disciples on that dark and sinking ship:  “Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?”

Turn from your unbelief and its ever tortuous fear.  Hear the Gospel of salvation which is the free gift of His incalculable grace, given to you by Him who endured all things for you.  Trust in the mercy of your God, whose love overwhelms your sin, your sorrow, and your fear.  Live in the new life Jesus gives to you, leaving fear behind that you may walk in His Spirit by faith.  Amen.

Blessed is the Man: A Meditation on Psalm 1 and Mark 4

There is no lack of both secular and religious opinion on how to be blessed.  Usually these systems or programs are broken down into pursuits of wealth, prosperity, fame, intellect, power, prestige, sex appeal, or some derivation of the same.  Blessing, to the minds of many people as demonstrated by their authors and their spending patterns, reflect a very self centered understanding.  For far too many, the idea of being blessed is to live in opulence or satiety in this world, devoid of cares and calamities.  And while blessing from a Biblical perspective certainly includes physical applications, a purely self centered and materialistic understanding of blessing is woefully short of what God describes in His Word.

Blessed is the man who 

walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,

nor standeth in the way of sinners, 

nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

But his delight is in the Law of the LORD,

and in His Law doth he meditate day and night.

The blessed man, from God's perspective, is the one who chooses the path of His Word over the sinful proclivities of the world.  He turns from the counsel of the ungodly, not allowing those who reject God and His Word to shape his thinking.  He doesn't stand among sinners, refusing to throw his lot in with those who have rejected the Law of God.  He doesn't take his seat among the scornful, and does not lend his voice or support to those who blaspheme what is good and true.  But rather, he delights in God's Word, meditating upon it throughout every day, so that God's Word in its fulness becomes his own word reverberating through him.  The blessed man is not defined by his wealth, prosperity, health, charisma, political power or social standing, but rather by his fellowship with God through faith in His Word.

Such fellowship seems such a small and insignificant thing by the measures of this world.  Living by the Word of God might give you, for a time, a more comfortable life (the Proverbs and other wisdom literature are full of general principles by which to live better) but of course, it might also make of you a persecuted martyr.  While the principles of Scripture may in fact bring a better life in this world, our own sinful inability to live perfectly by the Law of God means that we're not guaranteed any promise of earthly prosperity thereby-- in fact, we know that to fail in even one aspect of the Law even once, makes us culpable of the whole Law, worthy of immediate and eternal judgment.  By our own works of the Law, or by our own keeping of the Word of God, no one is worthy of a prosperous life in this world or the next.  Any prosperity or blessing we receive from God is not by the merit of our successfully keeping His Word, but rather by His grace and mercy extended to us through the merit and works of Jesus Christ.

But of what consequence is this fellowship or this Word of God?  If I cannot depend on it to bring me fortune and favor, why should I count it for anything?  It is a Word that speaks Law and Gospel, righteousness, faith, and repentance.  In the face of grand scientific theories, proud political speeches, beautiful pontificating celebrities, of what consequence is this little Word of God, and the little fellowship of those who both hear and keep it?

Seen through the lens of our Gospel text in Mark 4, we see how little a thing the Kingdom of God appears when it comes to us.  He does not descend from glory to smash us into His Kingdom, but rather He comes to us through His simple, small, yet penetrating Word.  He holds up the mirror of His Law, revealing to us what is true righteousness while showing us the depth of our fall into sin.  He holds up the Cross of His Only Begotten Son to show us the price He has paid to forgive us our sins, and the saving love He offers to us freely by His grace.  Such a small thing in the eyes of the world that it seems foolishness to the intellectual, and a stumbling block to the self-righteous.  But to those who are being saved by His grace through faith in His Name, it is the power of God unto eternal life.  This little seed of His Word, sown in the world by the power of His Holy Spirit while the world looks on with scorn, is the Seed which will grow into a Kingdom beyond human measure and comprehension-- a Kingdom which shelters all who seek it in humble faith and repentance, giving unto them life and peace and joy everlasting.

While the treasures, pleasures, and accolades of this world are passing away, together with all their painted glamor like a sad and aging strumpet, the Kingdom of our God endures holy and pure forever.  The fellowship of God through His Word, the one holy church knit together by His one Spirit, His one faith, His one baptism, is the one fellowship of life and beauty that shall never end.  Though small and insignificant in the eyes of a dying world, it is grand beyond reckoning to the eyes of those who abide within it.

Blessed indeed is the man who prefers the pure and simple fellowship of God Almighty to the doomed and tortured fellowship of the wicked.  For those who abide in the fellowship of God's grace through faith in Jesus and His Word, be their life in this world one of pleasantries or sorrows, riches or poverty, have a life of wonders which shall never cease, and a font of joy which shall never be exhausted.

If the Word of God has lost its luster to you, o Christian, look once again upon the greatness of its treasure, and hear your Lord speak to you His words of incalculable worth:  your sins be forgiven, and eternal life and peace and joy be yours for Christ's sake.

If you have never known this Word of God, nor this fellowship which His people hold so dear, I invite you to survey the countless trifles of this passing life, and open your eyes to treasures surpassing every human comprehension.  Let go the trinkets whose luster fades so quickly in the noonday sun, and receive the true and imperishable riches of the God who loves and made you:  Christ Jesus, your forgiveness, life, and salvation-- your faith which sees beyond this world, your hope more sure than a thousand suns, your love more deep than the expanses of the cosmos.

Amen.

Rescue from the Fall: A Meditation on Genesis 3 and Mark 3

From the readings for this week, Genesis 3 and Mark 3 make an interesting distinction.  In Genesis 3, we have the sad and familiar story of mankind’s Fall into sin.  Not merely a transgression against the Word of God which forbade Adam and Eve to eat from that Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but a horrible new slavery to which their newly opened eyes could not turn away.  The devil, guised as a serpent, deceived Eve into lusting after divine prerogatives, and she having succumbed to the devil’s temptation, led her husband into the same.  The consequences of their Fall extended not only to themselves, but to the whole human race which would descend from them, so that every male and female child ever to be born would be infected with their sin and death, slaves to the devil who had deceived them.  The Fall of mankind is not just an ancient tale to be allegorized, but a real and penetrating horror that no person can escape.  The Fall of mankind is the advent of death, where the devil, a murderer from the beginning, becomes a master of mankind’s new weakness toward sin, and his natural inclination away from his Maker.

This fallen state into which we are born is evidenced in every human breast:  that heart which first beats in the mother’s womb, shall stop beating someday.  Be they old or young, wealthy or poor, male or female, powerful or weak, that heart will someday stop beating and their breath will leave them.  There is no mythical age of accountability to soften the blow—even babies in their mother’s wombs die before they are born, and children of tender years perish in both accidents and disease, or at the hands of wicked men.  The problem of the Fall persists in every human person, such that we have become twisted from our original design.  We no longer yearn with all of our being toward the good and the beautiful and the true, but rather our hearts become captivated by the ugly, the perverse, the tortured, and the evil.  No longer content with our identity created in the image of the only true God, we are enamored with titles and honors heaped back and forth between sinful men and their corrupted institutions.  No longer at peace in the love of God, we prefer the taste of twisted lust.  Succumbed to the deadly poison of sin, there is no level of our being which is uncorrupted, no passion or talent or intellect devoid of its putrescence.  Dead and dying inheritors of hell, we fall not only from our vaunted position as the crown of God’s good creation, but we fall under the lesser power and manipulation of the devil, who having tricked our race into imbibing his poison, now uses it to both allure, to accuse, and to destroy us.  The devil, with his legions of fallen angels, fearfully mighty even in their great wickedness, become not only our irresistible slave masters, but the ceaseless voice of accusation which calls for our eternal condemnation before a just and holy God.

To read Mark 3 in its proper poignancy, one must first grasp Genesis 3 in all its terror.  It is far too easy to forget that the world is fallen, and we along with it are fallen slaves of the evil one.  We have given ourselves the wonders of modern technology, and with it, cocooned our pride into believing we are our own saviors—that there is no real God, at least not of any significance, and that the devil is a myth of the dark age nincompoops.  We watch rockets blast off for other worlds, fight diseases with chemicals, administer nations with philosophy, and build our own Babel to show forth our presumptuous divinization.  But amidst all the wonders and baubles which distract and delude our intellect, the evil one still lurks, still deceives, still manipulates.  And when we have exhausted ourselves in endless pursuits of pride, lust, envy, avarice, greed, gluttony, perversion, sloth, and their innumerable variations, the dark voice of the accuser whispers our condemnation into our terrified shell of a body, even as that last flicker of life passes from us.  The devil, content to destroy as many as he may by whatever means are most convenient, cheers us along in our impotent self idolatry, then speaks the word of the Law’s condemnation before the Holy Judge.  It is only we who are fooled—God is not mocked, and whatever we sow, we shall reap.

What hope can there be for anyone?  With Almighty God as our Judge, and the devil as our accuser, what hope can mankind ever have of escaping death and hell?  Ah, but this is the beauty of Mark 3.  Who is it that shall come and offer life in the place of death?  Who will come to exchange healing for disease?  Who will break into the devil’s house to bind him, and then pillage the people he has taken for his own stolen goods?  It is Jesus Christ.  Jesus comes to set the captives free, to heal the sick, to raise the dead.  Jesus, the very Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, and yet conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Blessed Virgin Mary, comes forth as the champion of all mankind.  Before Him, the prince of darkness shrieks in terror, and his demons flee in hysteria.  Before Jesus every knee bows and every tongue confesses that He is Lord of All, to the glory of God the Father.  Jesus is the one who comes in all divine power and authority to deliver mankind and all creation from their just condemnation:  from their slavery to the devil, and their destiny of death and hell.

But how does He accomplish this for us?  The power of death is sin, and this is the power the devil has used to enslave us.  And so Jesus must take our sins upon Himself, together with the fullness of our condemnation.  To preserve the holiness and righteousness of our God, Jesus could not unjustly absolve sin without paying for it first—and so Jesus goes to the Cross to pay the debt we could not pay.  It is not a debt owed to the devil (he is as guilty, if not more so, than we are,) but a debt owed to divine justice, because the Word of the Lord’s Law cannot be broken.  There must be a new Word, a Word of Peace, Mercy, and Redemption:  A Word of Gospel. 

This Gospel is the power of God unto salvation for all who will repent and believe.  It is the Word who is Jesus, who makes satisfaction for our sins, thereby rescuing us from death, hell, and the power of the devil.  This Word of Gospel is born out in the world by the power of the Holy Spirit, who creates faith in all who hear.  This Gospel, this Good News, is that whoever believes and is baptized, shall be saved through the Vicarious Atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ.  This Gospel gives to us the very Name that is above every Name, who was crushed for our transgressions, and by whose stripes we have been healed.  Jesus has become our salvation, and there is no demonic power of hell that can stand before Him, no accuser of the brethren whose voice shall be heard.  Washed in the most holy blood of Jesus, our sins are forgiven, and there is no longer any condemnation for those who abide in Him and His Word.

To know our Fall and our Salvation, to hear the Holy Spirit speak to us the terrors of the Law and the sweetness of the Gospel, is to be at the divergence of two paths.  The path that would receive the grace of salvation by faith in Christ alone, is the path of life which abides in His Word forever.  The path which rejects the Gospel, which blasphemes the work of the Holy Spirit who declares our salvation in Christ alone, is the path of eternal damnation enslaved forever to sin, death, hell, and the devil.  At root there are only two paths, and two Words of God.  The Word of the Law reveals God’s holiness and condemns us because of our wickedness, sentencing us to the hell we and the devil deserve.  The Word of the Gospel heals and forgives us, seals us in Jesus’ sacrificial death and resurrection life forever.  These are the two great paths:  one of faith in Jesus’ Gospel which leads unto life, and one of unbelief which blasphemes the Holy Spirit and leads to death.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, working through the Word of Christ’s Gospel:  Choose life.  Amen.