Sermon - Pentecost 17 - Mark 9:30-37

 Mark 9:30–37 

“The Greatest”

Muhammed Ali, a championship boxer, was famed for his trash-talk.  Besides claiming to “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee”, he was also known to claim, brazenly, “I am the greatest!”  And after seeing his prowess in the boxing ring, at least for a time, it would be hard to argue with him.

We admire greatness.  We love to see people do well at their craft, their profession, their vocations.  Ask me some time about my favorite chess grandmaster.  There’s a sort of vicarious living that happens when you get caught up in someone else’s greatness.  You feel a part of it.  We do this so much lately we even have a new term, ‘the GOAT’, G-O-A-T, standing for the Greatest Of All Time.  

Mark’s Gospel today calls us to consider a different kind of greatness - true greatness.  Not at boxing or football or computer engineering or investing.  Greatness in the kingdom of God.  And like so many other things, the Christian appraisal of greatness is opposite of what you’d expect, against the grain of the world, and totally backwards from how most people measure greatness.

The disciples who alternate between faith and fear, wisdom and foolishness, great confession and horrible heresy – well we can always relate to those fellas.  Today Jesus catches them, overhears them arguing like petulant children.  Along the road, the bickered about who among them was the greatest.

Imagine what it might have sounded like, “Of course I’m the greatest, I’m Peter – the rock – which one of YOU got to walk on water with Jesus?”  “Yeah, Peter, but then you sank like a stone,” John might have said, “I’m clearly the greatest because I’m the youngest and I’ll probably outlive you all.” But then Matthew says, “I think I’ve got the best story – I mean if Jesus can even call a tax collector like me – I think my turnaround is really the kind of thing people will relate to”  “Yeah, but I’m clearly the greatest since Jesus trusts me to carry the money-bag.” And on and on it might have gone.  

Imagine their sheepishness when Jesus calls them out.  “What were you arguing about on the road?”  The awkward silence.  He knows, of course.  He always knows the answer to questions like this.  He’s caught them red-handed and they had nothing to say for themselves.

The law stops your mouth, and mine, too.  There are no excuses.  We have nothing to say for ourselves.  When the accusations come, and the law always accuses, we are dead to rights caught.  Whether we’ve been exposed as a self-serving and prideful brat, a lying and scheming snake, a greedy glutton or a back-stabbing gossiper.  There’s plenty of ways we sin, and God’s perfect law shines the probing questions on all it.  Have you loved God like you should?  Have you loved your neighbor as yourself?

Ah but we’d rather compare ourselves to others, than to the law.  I love God more than the next guy.  I might not be perfect, but look at you.  Chief of sinners through I be, at least I’m not as bad as thee.  This is really the same thing the disciples were doing – only instead of arguing who’s the greatest, we play the game of who’s not the worst.  As if that gets us off the hook.  

But that’s not the standard God sets.  He doesn’t call us to be better than average, or better than most, or better than your neighbor.  He says love God with ALL your heart, soul, strength and mind.  And love your neighbor as yourself.  

So Jesus takes the occasion to teach them a thing or two about greatness in the kingdom.  He sits them down, gets their attention, and sets forth a principle.  If you to be great in the kingdom, if you want to be first, you must be servant of all.

This flies in the face of what we know and do!  The great people have servants – butlers, maids, nannies, groundskeepers, chauffeurs, even body-guards.  The rich and powerful have servants to tend to their every need, and the mundane tasks they are too busy and important to do.  They can’t be bothered.  They’re more important than all that.  Those menial tasks are for the little people.  Or so the usual worldly thinking goes.

But Jesus says greatness, first-ness, primacy of place in the kingdom is found in servanthood – and in being the servant of all!  Placing yourself lower than all.  He even uses a small child to drive home this point.  The lowest, the least, the humblest – that’s greatness in the kingdom of God.  Exactly opposite of greatness in the world.  

And then we hear from James, this morning, and he makes it even worse for us.  “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

James brings a double barrel of accusations and unloads them on us today.  He calls us to exhibit humility and the wisdom from above – that is “pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”  

Contrast that to the worldliness of earthly wisdom – which has to do with jealousy, coveting, quarrels, murder, the passions, and pride.  These are the things that friendship with the world brings us, but which make us enemies of God.  And that’s not all that great at all.

So who can keep such laws?  Who can exhibit such purity?  Who can be so great?  Who, after all, can succeed at making everyone else greater than self?  It’s just so extreme.  Who can attain to such greatness?  Who can truly be or become the servant of all?

Only Jesus can.  Jesus is the greatest among us.  Jesus is the greatest of all time.  For only Jesus is the servant of all.  Jesus, who by his perfect life, does all that James could ask and more.  Jesus, who keeps the commandments perfectly, earns righteousness by his own greatness in keeping the law.  And then gives that righteousness to us, freely.

Jesus, who by his humble, sacrificial death on the cross came to destroy sin and death – for all.  Jesus, who not only faces his mission head on – but even teaches his disciples about it beforehand, again and again, though they couldn’t grasp it.  Look at the first paragraph in our text, where he shows them plainly:

“The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.”

That’s greatness.  That’s the Gospel.  The cross.  There Jesus took the lowest place, crushed under the burden of our infinite sins.  There Jesus became the servant of all, dying for ever scoundrel, reprobate and rebel that ever was or would be.  Suffering all for every lying, cheating, stealing, murdering, gossiping, greedy and jealous coveter of someone else’s greatness.  He who washed even their feet now washes them clean body and soul, inside and out, by his holy precious blood.  

And he does it for all.  No sin is too great for him to take on.  And no sinner is too great at sinning to be served by Jesus.  Whatever your deepest, darkest sin – and we all have them – whatever your most embarrassing and shameful deed.  Repent. Jesus forgives.  He is that much greater than your greatest failing, that he takes it himself, takes it away, and makes you whole and clean and new.

So, who is the greatest?  It’s Jesus, of course.  As St. Paul says in Philipians 2:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,  who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,  but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.  Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,  so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Even his exaltation is yours.  His resurrection guarantees your own.  His greatness is good for you, great for you.  For in him, God, in Christ, has received you as his own dear child, his little one.

Or to put it another way, Christ, the greatest of all, makes himself least of all, servant of all, to exalt the humble and lowly in his kingdom.  Therefore rejoice, and therefore follow him and trust in him.  Humble yourself, and he will lift you up.

In Jesus’ Name.  Amen.

Sermon - Mark 7:31-37 - Pentecost 15

 

Mark 7:31–37

“Ephatha!”

Only a few times in the New Testament do we get to hear the actual words of Jesus in the Aramaic language.  In these cases our English Bibles don’t translate, but give us the actual sounds of the words Jesus made – and we have one of these today.  Some others – well one was when he said to the little girl who had died, “Talitha Cumi”, that is, “Little Girl, arise”.  And of course his quotation of Psalm 22 from the cross, “Eli, Eli, Lema Sabachthani”, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Today we hear a third example from our Savior’s own lips, the simple command, “Ephatha!”, “be opened!”

Now, there’s plenty to say about this one little word.  In opening the ears of a deaf man, Jesus drops yet another calling card of the Messiah.  As Isaiah prophesied,

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,

and the ears of the deaf unstopped;

then shall the lame man leap like a deer,

and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.

 

But more than that, Jesus illustrates again for us, as he so often does, the power of his word.  The same word which created all things – let there be light, let there be birds and fish, let us make man in our image…. Now the creative and restorative word brings a new physical reality.  The same word which casts out demons and all manner of diseases.  The same living word, himself made flesh, which comes that we might hear and believe.

 

Now, of course, this Ephatha had to be spoken to the deaf man, because he was suffering under one of the many effects of sin.  And while he himself didn’t cause his deafness by his own sin – at least not directly – he was no doubt a sinner living in the broken sinful world.  So, too, for us – though we do cause many of our own problems by our own sin, sometimes we are simply the victims of the brokenness of the world, and either some other sinner affects us, or even nature itself inflicts on us some disease or accident.

On one level this story is so simple.  Jesus sees a man who has a need, and he helps him.  He’s the only one who can help him.  And he makes it right.  He heals the man’s ears and loosens his tongue.  He restores him completely, giving him the full functionality of his members that the rest of us take for granted.  Jesus does nothing half-way.

 

Now, you and I are also in a predicament, and it’s not too unlike the deaf-mute man.  Although it is in a way far worse.  According to our sin, the Bible tells us, we are helpless and lost.  We are blind, dead, and enemies of God.  But another biblical picture of our fallen condition is that of deafness.  Jesus often remarks, “he who has ears to hear, let him hear”.

 

The problem is that in our sin, we don’t have ears to hear.  Or to put it another way, we are deaf to God’s word.  We don’t want to hear the law.  We don’t want to hear how sinful we are.  We certainly don’t want to hear the punishments we deserve.  That’s why Scripture warns us about those with “itching ears”, and the preachers who only preach to scratch that itch, to say what unrepentant sinners want to hear, not what we all need to hear.  Without Jesus we are lost in so many ways – and pick your metaphor – we can’t help ourselves.

 

And so it stands as a reminder that Jesus helps us, too.  He sees us in our condition, and he has compassion.  He sees our suffering, our inability, our brokenness, and he comes to heal.  But it’s far more than just physical healing.  Jesus goes to the root of the problem.  He opens the spiritual ears that are cemented shut by sin.  He gives us ears to hear the very Gospel of his free forgiveness.  He frees the tongue from its blasphemies and loosens in us the prayers and praises of one who has now come to faith.  Faith comes by hearing, after all.  And what we believe in our heart we confess with our lips.

 

But think about it.  If the man is deaf, can he even hear the “Ephatha”?  Well not if I say it.  No mere man could.  But the divine word gives what it expects.  It provides what it commands.  It creates a new reality.  And this is a hint of something far greater to come.

 

The ear of a deaf man is not the only thing Jesus has come to make open.  The seal of deafness is not the only one he comes to break.  For on the third day, after he had done all his suffering and rested in his borrowed tomb, Jesus had a new and better Ephatha to complete.  He opened the grave.  His angels rolled back the stone, and he rolled back death in a glorious resurrection.  He opened the grave with the ease that your dad opens the pickle jar.  And life broke forth.

 

But not just for himself.  His ephatha is your ephatha.  His empty tomb foreshadows your own.  When he comes again in glory with all his angels, with the final trumpet call and the glorious shout of victory, then the dead in Christ will rise.  He will say the greater ephatha to all the graves of his people.  He will call us to the same life that he stole back from death and hell.  And we will be fully restored, not just spiritually, but also physically, and even eternally.  What a day that will be!

 

Heaven itself is opened to us in Jesus Christ.  And this, even now.  For every time the word of absolution is spoken to you, the gates of heaven are opened.  Every time we repent and return to our baptismal grace, we are restored.  Every time we humbly approach his table and receive the body and blood of our Lord, our invitation to the heavenly banquet is renewed – for where there is forgiveness, there is also life and salvation.

What will be ours one day in full – is ours already, even now, by promise.  And the Holy Spirit is the deposit, the guarantee of the greater blessings to come.  Now we see dimly, but then we shall see fully.  Now we suffer in a body of death, but we know who will save us, and restore not just our ears and tongues, but also eyes, heart, hands, yes our whole selves.  That’s the promise of the resurrection.  That’s our hope.

And take comfort in this, too, Christians.  While we wait for his salvation to appear, while we finish our course of days upon this earth, he has not left us alone.  Our God in with us, even to the end of the age.  Jesus also reigns on his throne, a benevolent king who hears our prayers, brings our prayers to the Father, and even sends his Spirit to teach us to pray and to pray on our behalf.

In Jesus, the very ears of God are “Ephatha” for us.  God’s ear is inclined to our prayers, he desires them and wants to answer them.  He regards our prayers favorably.  Not because of us, but because of Christ.  He hears our prayers only through Christ.  This is why we pray in Jesus’ name.

Now let’s take this last statement from the crowd, “He has done all things well”.  This is far more than just a cheer for another good work of Jesus, a sort of “for he’s a jolly good fellow” type thing. It confesses that by healing the deaf man, Jesus sort of ticks the last box on the list of Messianic signs of healing. 

But like many who comment in the pages of Scripture, their words mean more than they intend.  Jesus has done all things well.  He completes everything he set out to do, everything the Father asked of him – a perfect life fulfilling the law.  A perfect fulfillment of all messianic prophecies.  A perfect suffering and death to atone for all sin.  A perfect resurrection.  A perfect ascension and reign and he will return at the perfect time to bring history to its close.  He has done all things well, and done them for you, dear Christian.

So keep your ears open to his word, which will continue to instruct and forgive you, direct and strengthen you this whole life through.  Pray without ceasing to the one whose ear is inclined to you, to answer for your good.  And look forward to the day when he says his final ephatha to your grave, calling you forth to the eternal reward Christ has won for us all.  For he has done all things well, for you.