Trinity 12

Mark 7:31-37 - Trinity Twelve - August 14, 2016
 Personal Faith & Christian Love

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Consider those kind people in our Gospel lesson this morning.  There was a man who could not hear and who could not speak – at least he did so with difficulty and unintelligibly.  He was deaf and mute, or as they used to say, dumb.  It’s not like he couldn’t speak at all.  He could make sounds, but his tongue couldn’t move right and his noises made no sense.  That’s why the word dumb eventually came to be synonymous with stupid.  Deaf and mute people, as much as they might groan for what they want, don’t sound very clever.  This man had no way to communicate his need.  He relied on the kindness of others to express his desires and to request the help he hoped for. 

They were his friends, but not friends as we might think of the term.  What relationship would they have had other than that of pity on one end and the desperate need for help on the other?  What conversations would they have had?  What jokes or stories would they have shared?  What common experiences would have bound them together?  And yet they were friends in the truest sense.  True love and compassion drove these kind men to do for him what God had done for them.  His pathetic state only served to remind them of their own pathetic state before they came to know God’s love and forgiveness in Christ. 

As this man was bound by physical infirmities, so they had been bound by spiritual infirmities.  The devil had once also closed their ears and bound their tongue.  Jesus had opened their ears and loosed their tongues.  Jesus had given them true spiritual sight.  If this man heard nothing, they had heard nothing but false promises that if they worked hard enough and faithfully enough, God would accept them.  This was the ministry of the letter – the law, which could only deliver its promises to the perfectly obedient.  This ministry was misused to be sure.  The promises of the law are genuine.  But they were sinners.  So they had no peace.  It was not the law’s fault, which was intended to reveal their sin and need for salvation.  It was their fault that the law condemned them.  But in their spiritual deafness, they were taught to believe that their blessedness was found in their own obedience to it.  Because of this, the devil had made them spiritually dumb as well – and by dumb, I mean in the way we use the word.  They were spiritual idiots.  They trusted in themselves even though they themselves were sinful and unclean.  They groaned to God in their foolish prayers to give them what they had deserved. 

What a stupid prayer for a sinner to pray!  No, they needed the ministry of the Spirit to groan for them and teach them how to groan in faith.  They needed to know that the help Jesus gives he gives for his own sake, and that, by so doing, gives us his worthiness to stand before God in righteousness and purity.  They needed the ministry of reconciliation which surpasses the law in glory.

If this poor man’s words sounded stupid and nonsensical while he was yet deaf and dumb, these men’s prayers and declarations were even more foolish while they had been relying on their own merit to earn God’s favor.  But then the ministry of the Spirit broke their chains and freed them to know the peace that only a forgiving God can give.  Its glory was brighter than the glory of the law, because while the law could make wonderful demands that only a fool would ignore, it gave no power to carry them out.  It could only condemn them for having failed.  The gospel, however, bestowed the very righteousness of another who for their sake, in their place, fulfilled the law and gave himself for their eternal release and peace.  This is the ministry of the Spirit.  As Jesus said, “The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63).  The words he speaks to us give us the very righteousness that the law requires – freely by faith.  But also, as a fruit and token of this righteousness received by faith, Jesus sends his Holy Spirit to work love in our hearts toward others. 

These kind friends, therefore, did for this poor man what the Holy Spirit had done for them through the word they first heard.  They brought him to Jesus so that he might become friends with God.  They begged Jesus to lay his hand on him.  Clearly these fellows had encountered Jesus before.  Otherwise they would not have thought to bring this man to him.  They had heard his gospel and seen his compassion at work.  Because of this, two wonderful things took place.  The first wonderful thing is that they learned to believe in Jesus for themselves.  They themselves had faith.  The second wonderful thing is that they learned to love their neighbor as themselves.  They sought not their own benefit when they brought this man to Jesus, but the benefit of this poor man who was unable to benefit himself.  They fulfilled what St. Paul later wrote by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, “love does not seek its own” (1 Corinthians 13:5), and “Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4). 

These men did not offer help to him by saying that they would hear for him and speak for him.  Their faith could not benefit him in that way.  These men could have had the strongest faith in the world.  They could have had the most glorious works in the world.  Their hearts could have been abounding in holy gratitude toward the Lord and all mankind.  But in no way could either their strong faith or their good works have benefited their neighbor unless they used their faith and love to bring this man to believe in Jesus and receive his love for himself.  This is what they did. 

It’s as it was with the five wise virgins who told the five foolish virgins that they did not have enough oil to share.  They could not share their faith in that way.  Instead they directed them to where they might receive some of their own: “But go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.”  This is as much as if you or I might share our faith not by imagining that we will believe for someone else or even pray in someone else’s stead, but rather by leading one to know Jesus as we do and to have the confidence he needs to pray as we ourselves do.  As Jesus told his disciples, “In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you; for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from God” (John 16:26-27).

This is the goal of love.  Love flows from faith.  True faith desires above all other selfless acts to help others come to know the love of God in Christ. 

Each person who would be saved must have faith in Christ.  This is often called personal faith.  And that’s what it is.  Each person must believe for himself.  Not even Christ who lived and died and accomplished every good work towards mankind and for mankind can believe in the place of another.  Hi work was not to believe for us, but to obey the law for us and to suffer the wrath of God for us.  Each individual must personally receive and hold fast to the gospel, and trust in the forgiveness of sins and eternal life freely offered for the sake of God’s Son, Jesus Christ.  Each sinner who is born of flesh and blood is personally guilty of sin.  And so each sinner must personally be born again by water and the word in Holy Baptism. 

And yet, even though faith is personal, it is not personally devised or tailored.  Each person does not decide for himself what he needs from God.  The one Baptism which we all acknowledge joins us to the one Lord who saves us all together and to the one faith by which we are joined to him.  The personal faith that each must have is also the catholic faith that all Christians have in common, or in communion, with each other. 

Catholic means universal.  Hijacked as it may be by the papists, it is not a dirty word.  The catholic faith is that faith that is taught by our Lord, who, by teaching, delivers the salvation he has won.  To call it catholic is to confess that it is the only faith that saves.  To call it catholic is to confess that all who are saved likewise hold to it and confess it.  This is why we confess in the Athanasian Creed, “Whoever desires to be saved must, above all, hold the catholic faith.”  Yes, it is catholic, or universal.  But if one will be saved, he must personally learn it and believe it. 

Apart from the Holy Spirit, our groanings are unintelligible and dumb.  At best, we seek justice for ourselves and rely on our own merits.  But with the Holy Spirit, we learn to groan as children of God.  We learn to repent of our sin and appeal to God’s mercy for the sake of Christ who died for our sin. 

Faith is given by the Holy Spirit who works through the word of God.  An infant is able to obtain faith, since faith does not depend on a child’s intellect, but upon the power of God.  If anything, man’s intellect gets in the way.  He learns to rationalize away his sin and presume to subject God to his own scrutiny.  That is why it is so important that a baptized child, as his ability to reason increases, learn the faith that defies human reason and that puts reason in its proper place, forcing it to serve God rather than judge him.  The catholic faith, therefore – the faith that saves – is the faith that is taught.  It is not merely an unidentifiable confidence toward God, but a divinely wrought trust that can be articulated quite plainly in the words that God himself gives us.  Faith comes by hearing.  This is not to exclude the deaf.  It is to say that this is the intended means by which the Holy Spirit desires to work faith in you.  “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”  In other words, he who has the ability to receive and consider intelligible words, take heed and believe the doctrine of God.  He teaches you in order to make you wise unto salvation. 

The Holy Spirit is the Lord and giver of life.  Not only does the Holy Spirit create faith in our hearts through the good news of our redemption by Christ Jesus, he also works the love that flows forth from this faith.  He does not convert us and abandon us.  He regenerates us and then dwells within us.  And as surely as we confess our sins, as an exercise and instinct of Christian faith … as surely as we look to Christ who loved us as himself and gave himself for us … so surely, the same Holy Spirit who works such repentance and faith in us is the Holy Spirit who works in us the will and the wherewithal to love others.  As he teaches us repentance by exposing our love of self, so he teaches us to look to God for the mercy we have not deserved by expositing the love of God in Jesus.  Since this is the love that saves us, it is the love that we express even as we express our thanks to God for the forgiveness of our sins.  

Our Gospel lesson gives us such a beautiful picture of Christian love.  These men begged Jesus.  This word for beg is παρακαλοῦσιν.  This is the verb form of the title which Jesus gives the Holy Spirit: Παράκλητος.  It means to advocate or intercede.  Just as the Holy Spirit gives form to our dumb groanings by teaching us to ask God as children ask their dear father, so also he teaches us to give form to the groanings of others.  Are they hurt?  Are they in pain?  Are they abandoned, abused, imprisoned by addiction, lost in a sea of guilt?  Intercede for them – not just by praying on their behalf, but as these kind men did in our Gospel lesson who brought him to Jesus.  This is what the Spirit does for us.  He brings us to Jesus. 

The ministry of the letter, that is, the law, brings us to an awareness of our sin.  It brings us to an awareness of what is right and pleasing to God.  It teaches us how to love our neighbor.  It teaches us how we have failed.  What is good and noble and holy makes sinners afraid.  But this ministry is passing away.  Its days are numbered.  Its glory finds its end where Christ fulfills it for us.  Its glory passes away when it is written in our hearts and our minds and bodies are perfected in heaven.  But the glory of the Spirit’s ministry endures forever.  God’s mercy never ceases.  The ministry of the Spirit begins today where the Spirit teaches us to confess our sins and to all the more boldly confess our Savior.  In Christ, what is good and holy does not terrify.  Through his Spirit, it brings joy even as we apply ourselves to it in grateful obedience. 

Our Savior takes us aside.  He deals with us personally just as he did in our Gospel lesson.  He who knows our sins personally teaches us to trust him by communicating to us what he intends to do for us, just as in our Gospel lesson.  He groans within himself and so takes all our groanings into himself.  He pays our price.  He lays down his life.  He takes it again.  He opens our ears by divine command and so loosens our tongues to speak his praises.  By giving his love to us, he teaches us love. He teaches us to speak plainly and correctly concerning both the law and the gospel.  He does not condemn us, but forgives us and promises us eternal life in his name.  Amen.