Luke 18:31-43; 1
Corinthians 13:1-13; 1 Samuel 16:1-13
In the Name of the Father and of the
+ Son and of the Holy Spirit.
The so-called New Atheists of our day
seemingly delight in mocking and ridiculing your Christian faith. Regularly on
social media, television, and talk radio do they refer to your God as your
“Fairy Godfather” or as the “Invisible Man in the Sky,” or they liken your
faith to belief in an absurd Flying Spaghetti Monster. They like to dismiss
your faith as being irrational and groundless, having no bearing in the
natural, material world of empirical, scientific evidence. However, they are
simply wrong. While God may be unobservable, because He is an eternal spirit
who exists outside of and before His creation of the universe, He has,
nevertheless, penetrated and entered this universe and has taken upon Himself
the material stuff of His creation being born, in time, to a human mother, as a
human man, in a particular known place, in a particular known time in history, in
the presence of particular known witnesses who simply would not and could not
keep their mouths shut concerning what they had heard and seen.
And, that is precisely why the
Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ is the beginning of the Gospel, a Greek
word that means “Good News.” The Reformed theologian Michael Horton has written
in his book Christless Christianity:
“The central message of Christianity is not a worldview, a way of life, or a
program for personal or societal change; it is a gospel. From the Greek word
for “good news,” typically used in the context of announcing a military
victory, the gospel is the report of an appointed messenger who arrives from
the battlefield. That is why the New Testament refers to the offices of apostle
(official representative), preacher, and evangelist, describing ministers as
heralds, ambassadors, and witnesses. Their job is to get the story right and
report it, ensuring that the message is delivered by word (preaching) and deed
(sacrament).” Thus, the story of the Gospel, the Good News about Jesus Christ,
is not subjective, it is not an opinion, or even a belief, but “it is about
news, reports of events, [and] phenomena that occurred in real human history.”
It is in this manner that the crowd
following Jesus, including His disciples, were proclaiming the Good News about
Jesus in the same way that a king’s heralds would announce his coming saying,
“Jesus of Nazareth is passing by!” In his book Heaven On Earth, Arthur Just explains that, “In the ancient world,
the king would sometimes visit a village or city. Anticipating his coming,
villagers would line the road waiting for him to appear, and as he entered the
city they would cry, ‘Lord, have mercy!’ Amid their shouts, one could also hear
petitions from the crowd for gifts that reflected the king’s mercy, such as
food, protection, lower taxes, and always and most important, peace. Jesus’
entrance into Jerusalem is an excellent example of this.” Likewise, the blind
beggar in today’s Gospel was just such a one waiting along the roadside to
petition King Jesus as He passed by.
Legend holds that Martin Luther’s dying
words were, “We are all beggars, every one.” This is certainly consistent with
Luther’s teaching throughout his ministry. Like the poor blind beggar along the
roadside, we bring nothing before Jesus our King. We bring nothing to Jesus –
not our works, not our righteousness, not our choice, not even our faith – but
we are truly poor, blind, and deaf beggars in total and complete dependence
upon His mercy, His charity, His compassion, His grace, and His love. If we
think that we come before Him with anything at all, the truth is not in us, we
deceive ourselves, and worse, we will never receive the forgiveness He died to
give us. That is your fault and my fault, our own most grievous fault. For, the
Word is out there. The Lord’s heralds – His apostles, preachers, and
evangelists of the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus’ victory over sin and death and
Satan, which has secured forgiveness and redemption for all who will believe without
exception or distinction – The Lord’s heralds have proclaimed this Good News
throughout the world. But, only beggars can receive it, just as only confessing
sinners can be forgiven, and only the dead can be raised.
Therefore, you must see yourself in that
blind beggar along the roadside, for he is every sinner, and he is every
Christian, a servant of King Jesus and a recipient of His Kingly gifts. His
only plea before the Lord is kyrie
eleison, “Have mercy on me!” But, those in the crowd rebuked him and told
him to be silent. This is what the devil always does. He tries to make you
silent before Jesus. Thus, he will speak to your pride and attempt to get you
to think that you don’t need any forgiveness, that you’re a pretty good person,
better than most. But, this is self-righteousness, and your faith is not in
Jesus but in yourself. Or, Satan will speak to your guilty conscience and
condemn you so that you are silent before Jesus because you consider yourself too
sinful and too guilty to address Him or to receive His forgiveness. This is why
you must always see yourself as the beggar. For, it’s not about you, that is how
good you are, or how bad you are, but it’s only and always about Jesus, that He
loves you and forgives you despite yourself. Believe this, for Jesus’ sake.
Yes, the devil wants to silence you
before Jesus. However, your faith makes you cry out all the louder still. Thus,
when confronted by those who sought to silence him, the blind beggar cried out
all the more saying, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” This is what faith does:
it clings to what it knows of Jesus and ignores everything else. The blind
man’s kyrie literally stopped our
Lord in His tracks. King Jesus stopped His procession and He stood before the
man and asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” Likewise, when you pray
your kyries before the Lord, “Lord,
have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy,” the Lord stops before you
and asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” “Whatever you ask in My Name My
Father will give you.” “Ask, and you shall receive,” “Knock, and the door will
be opened.” However, don’t ask from your need, but ask from what you know about
Jesus – His goodness, His kindness, His compassion, mercy, and grace, His Name
that is above all names, His righteousness and holiness, His Sonship with the
Father. Yes, when you say your kyries
before the Lord, you, like the blind beggar and so many others, are confessing
Him to be the Son of David, the King of heaven and earth, the only-begotten Son
of the Father, Emmanuel, God with us.
“Lord, let me recover my sight,” the
beggar pleaded with Jesus. “Recover your sight; your faith has made you well,”
Jesus answered. What’s important here is not that the man’s faith made him
physically see again. It wont be long and his eyes will sleep the sleep of
death. What’s important is that his faith made him well, saved him, that his
eyes will open again on the Last Day and behold the same Lord who stands before
him now. It is this faith that we desire: saving faith that sees Jesus.
Immediately the man recovered his sight and he followed Jesus in His procession
towards the cross, for if anyone would follow King Jesus as His subject and
disciple, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Him through
humility, meekness, selflessness, sacrifice, and death unto resurrection and
life that will never end. And, as he went his way following Jesus to the cross,
he glorified God. This is what beggars do: “This one here, He did this for me.”
This is the briefest definition of what it means to glorify or praise God:
simply recount what He has done.
We are all beggars before our merciful
King. While our Alleluias have gone
away for a time, our Kyrie never
does. Jesus’ ears remain continually open to our cries for mercy. We receive
our wages according to His desire to give, we receive the Word according to His
reckless love, and we cry to Him as beggars who have nothing, but expect to
gain all good things from His nail-pierced hands. This is the Gospel, this is the
Good News that Jesus’ heralds – His apostles, preachers, and evangelists – proclaim
to you. May the Holy Spirit open your ears to hear and your eyes to see the
Lord who is active in the world and in the lives of the men and the women He
has created and redeemed, who are simply incapable of keeping their mouths shut
concerning what they have heard and seen. Ours is not a God who is far off, but
a God and King and Lord who is very near. He is flesh of our flesh and bone of
our bones, having become one of us as our Brother, our Husband, our Savior, our
Lord, and our God.
Therefore, do not be like those who
judge only by what their physical eyes see and by what their physical ears hear,
for there is more to life and to creation than that. For, the supernatural has
penetrated and has entered the natural, and the spiritual has taken up the
physical – The Word of God has become flesh and made His dwelling amongst us.
Those who can physically see and hear are often blind and deaf to the God who
is with us as one of us. In contrast, the spiritually poor, impoverished,
hungry and thirsty, humble, persecuted, and even the blind and the deaf can
receive the Gospel, the Good News, about Jesus. The deaf can hear, and the
blind can see. Blessed be the Name of the Lord! Even now, hearken to the words
of Jesus’ heralds: “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by!” Where? Here, amongst you,
in Word and water, bread and wine, to forgive you, to strengthen you, to
sustain you, and to keep you in Him for life and salvation evermore. Blessed
are the eyes that see what you see.
In
the + Name of Jesus. Amen.
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