FOUNDATIONS FOR PEACE

July 23, 2006
Mark:1-6
7th Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Timothy Smith

6 Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. 2 When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed. “Where did this man get these things?” they asked. “What’s this wisdom that has been given him, that he even does miracles! 3 Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. 4 Jesus said to them, “Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor.” 5 He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. 6 And he was amazed at their lack of faith. Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village. (Mark 6:1-6, NIV)

HOME. What should a home be? A safe place. A place to rest. A place to recharge, relax, refocus. A home should be a place to live, a place to be happy, to be sad — the writer of Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for everything, and I think you would agree that home is the place for almost all of them.

Jesus had a home as a child. Nazareth was a bigger town, as towns go, in Galilee. It was a market town, a place where there was good business, and it was peaceful during Jesus’ childhood. Our text mentions his family, and although some think that these relatives mentioned in our text could be cousins or some other kind of relative, his mother Mary is mentioned, and it would be very strange and confusing to call his cousins his “brothers and sisters” in the same breath that his mother Mary is mentioned by name. I think there’s no reason not to think that Joseph, James, Simon and Jude were not his very own brothers, and certainly younger brothers, unless they were the older sons of Joseph, if he had been married before he and Jesus’ mother were wed. Jesus was now out preaching, in his early thirties, and his brothers were seeking trades of their own. And his sisters, they’re called “sisters” here so he had at least two and maybe more — were almost certainly married, and since in the text the people say “Aren’t his sisters here with us,” we can say that they were settled right here in Nazareth.

When his hometown folks see Jesus, they ask, “Isn’t this the carpenter?” This is the only place in the Bible where Jesus is called “carpenter,” and not “son of the carpenter.” It’s very likely that Jesus had indeed carried on a trade, making the tables and chairs for these very people. A carpenter would not have made the stone houses common in Nazareth — that would have been carried out by a mason. No, tables and chairs and chests and stools and benches would have been the regular trade for a carpenter in Nazareth. Maybe even some more delicate carving work — spoons and forks and bowls.

And now, here he came back into town, with a dusty rabble of disciples with him. He preached in their synagogue. What were they expecting? Does the text give us a hint?

The story seems simple enough, and even elegant, from a story-telling perspective. He went home to preach the gospel. They were amazed – but they didn’t believe – and he was amazed, and he left home again, to preach the gospel.
The outline of the story is almost confusing — why would the gospel have a different effect here than in Samaria, or Capernaum, or Tyre, or Sidon, or between the graveyard and pigpens in the Gerasenes?

Listen to what his grownup childhood friends had to say about Jesus: “What’s this wisdom that has been given him?”. Or put another way, How did these come from that guy?

You know — I can almost see Philip and Nathanael exchanging glances. Remember when Jesus was first calling his followers, and Philip went and Got Nathanael? He said, “It’s Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph” And Nathanael replied, Nazareth! Can anything good come from there? The same reaction his disciples had about his own town, his townspeople had about Jesus. From his disciples’ point of view at least, it was the pot calling the kettle black.

They had heard about Jesus’ miracles. Maybe, when they heard he was in town, they thought they might get to see something spectacular. Maybe they thought he would look more impressive. Maybe they thought he would bring them a little fame — will some of his greatness shine on me so that people think I’m great, too?

Isn’t that what we do, sometimes? We question and attack Jesus when we question his word. And we do it in two ways: (1) We question God’s Law. No sex outside of marriage? Who does he think he is? Be kind to each other? He doesn’t know my circumstances. Don’t get revenge? I need to get payback. Don’t abuse my body with Meth, or beer, or tobacco, or Caffeine? Come on. Be careful what I put into my eyes, because it gets into my soul? Where does he get this? What right does he have to say that to me? Who does he think he is?

At every turn of our lives, we shove aside God’s law because we think – no, we know, that we know better. “God’s law?” we think, “I’ve known it my whole life. I studied the Catechism. I memorized it. Some of us who were unfortunate enough to be born before 1970 have had to wrestle with at least two different translations of the Catechism. We know, we all know, that there is an undercurrent in God’s law. The Fourth Commandment isn’t just about honoring your father and your mother, it’s about obeying them, and more than that, it’s about giving them love and respect. The Sixth Commandment isn’t just about failing to commit adultery, it’s about leading a pure, chaste and decent life, in our words and actions, and that husband and wife love each other.

Having learned all this, having memorized all this — do we keep extending this out over our whole lives? A man is driving out on a country road, and he comes to a stop sign. There’s no one in sight. He can see a country mile, and there’s no one in sight. He thinks, “If I stop, I’ll put needless wear and tear on my breaks. I know that it’s better, in the long term, to keep the engine of a car going at a uniform speed. It’s better stewardship of my time, he reasons within himself, if I don’t stop. He has almost brought a Biblical reason into running a stop sign. He’s saying to himself, God’s word is telling me to sin.

But the fact is, the stop sign is there. If we so easily question the laws of the land, how much easier will it be to question the laws of God?

But we don’t even stop there, do we? (2) We question God’s Gospel.

The people of Nazareth didn’t put their faith in Jesus. And maybe they had all kinds of different reasons for doing it. He doesn’t look impressive enough. He doesn’t have a big enough following. I expected more of a show, and all he has is words. He didn’t smile at me once, and so I’m not going to like him for the rest of my life. I used to play tag with this guy when we were kids. I’ve seen him with dirty fingernails and skinned knees — and I know that he can bleed. Am I supposed to believe that this man is the Son of God?

De we get overly familiar with the Gospel? I knew about forgiveness when I was a child — a baby, even. I’ve known about Jesus longer than I’ve been able to walk and to talk. My mother read me Arch books and Bible stories while I was still in my cradle — but now I have grown up sins. Now I have adult problems. Now my life is getting so tangled and so messed up — and I’m not the man I thought I was going to be. The reality of growing up and, to my horror, not being as famous as Elvis or as smart as Einstein or as great a preacher as Martin Luther or as great a mother or father as, well, my mother or father. Am I small? Am I really a sinner? Am I really just who I am?

Brother and sister sinners — that Gospel we learned as children is still for us. As long as wine flows and bread breaks, as long as words are words and clocks tick and clouds fly and parents worry about children — forgiveness is ours until beyond the day we die — right down to Judgment Day itself.

Of all the practical jobs in the world, you have to respect the carpenter, the builder, the maker and the crafter, for the basic needs of our lives. But Jesus’ vocation is nothing compared to his true identity — there could yet be a table or chair or spoon in a basement in Nazareth with Yeshua Bar-Yosef, Jesus son of Joseph, scratched on a leg or under the spare leaf. But his work for us on a piece of wood far outweighs, eternally outweighs, any of his work with any piece of wood.

On the cross, Jesus forgave our dismissal of his law, and our belittling of his gospel. His mercy endures forever. His forgiveness is fastened to us with more than nails and dovetail joints and mortar and tendons — his forgiveness is fixed in us with love and by grace through faith.

Faith in Jesus, who happened to have grown up in Nazareth, who happened to have labored as a carpenter with Joseph for a time, but who took our sins, and nailed them, with himself, to the crossed pieces of wood — and he forgave us.

He forgave us. And we live in that forgiveness, knowing that we have, for all eternity, a home.

Amen

July 16, 2006
Mark 5:21-24a; 35-43
6th Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Thomas Henning
Seventy years ago a Kindergarten teacher walked with her class to the home of a classmate who had died. There they sang the song we sang during the offering last Sunday, “I’m but a stranger here; Heav’n is my home.” Four year old cousins looked at the casket of their great grandmother, one said, “That’s only a doll, grandma’s in heaven.” The other said, “She’s not dead but sleeping.”

We all face death. A friend, a neighbor, a parent, a spouse, a child or grandchild dies. As one three year old remarked after the death of his little cousin, “Even flowers die.” “In the midst of earthly life snares of death surround us,” as we just sang and today we enter with Jesus into the home where death has preceded us. We observe and we hear him speak the words the little girl repeated about her great grandmother

SHE IS NOT DEAD BUT ASLEEP
I. Spoken in tragic sadness
II. Spoken by the Lord of life and deathMark tells us: “When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. Then one of the synagogue rulers, named Jairus, came there. Seeing Jesus he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him, ‘My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.’ So Jesus went with him.” The little daughter of this synagogue ruler was dying. She was breathing her last. That’s not what God intended when he created the first human beings. They lived in a perfect world—oh, that we were there. Man and woman were the crown of God’s creation, given control of fall of creation. They were to live in harmony with God. God also gave Adam and Eve the opportunity to show their love and respect for their Creator. He said to them: “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”We know what happened. Satan assumed the form of a snake and confronted Eve with the temptation to take some of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She ate it and gave some to Adam and he also ate it. They had done what God forbid them to do. They listened to the Tempter and followed him rather than their gracious benefactor. They sinned. ”Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.” “The wages of sin is death.” The history and biographies of succeeding generations illustrate this tragic, sorrowful fact. Chapter 5 of Genesis sounds the repeated refrain, “and then he died.” Throughout history people have lived and then died. Now death had entered the home of Jairus. “While Jesus was still speaking, some men came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue ruler. ‘Your daughter is dead,’ they said. ‘Why bother the teacher any more?’” As death came to the home of Jairus, so it comes to our homes and lives. We follow one steady procession to the cemetery again and again.Death brings sadness and grief. People in different cultures all have their individual customs of reacting to death. The Jews bury their dead on the day of the death or the next day. The process had already begun in the home of Jairus. At the report that the daughter was dead Jesus said, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.” “He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the brother of James. When they came to the home of the synagogue ruler, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. He went in and said to them, ‘Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.’ But they laughed at him.” The professional mourners were already there. They were doing their usual thing, weeping and wailing. Indeed, death brings sadness. Some try to be stoic in the face of death and say, “Dead is dead. We’re all going to die so grin and bear it.”

Death is unavoidable. Yet, it is so unnatural and at the same time so natural. It’s so unnatural because God did not make us to die, but to live. And still, because of sin, everyone has lost the right to life. Death comes and death is so final. Death enters our homes. Usually the older members die first, grandpa and grandma, or even the great grandparents. We kind of expect that. But, occasionally a child, or even a baby, dies. That’s more tragic. The grief and pain are deep.

We ourselves must face death. We confess our sins and we know that we deserve the wages of sin—death, not only death at the end of this life, but an eternity in the fires of hell, where their worm does not die nor is the fire quenched. We feel the results of sin as we live in this world. Pain and suffering enter our lives. We suffer physical aches from disease and aging. We feel the stress of emotion and sorrow. We are afflicted with various conditions in life that remind us that we are sinful human beings living in a world corrupted by sin. We know that we will die. Some receive a special notice that death is at the door. Others die suddenly in an unexpected illness or accident. One after the other of us dies.

In face of death we look for release and rescue. Jairus was the ruler of a synagogue, the leader, responsible for the worship there. He was a Jew, attended the synagogue services where the Old Testament scriptures were regularly read. He was waiting for the fulfillment of the prophecies concerning the Savior. Now that promised Messiah had appeared. He was traveling about teaching the people. Jairus came looking for Jesus when his daughter was dying.

So as we approach death we turn to Jesus also. We’ve seen Jesus meet death here in the events in the home of Jairus. We’ve been there on the road leading out of the village of Nain when Jesus stopped the funeral procession carrying the dead body of the only son of a widow. We’ve heard him say, “Young man, I say to you, get up!” We’ve gone with him to the home of his friends Mary and Martha whose brother had died. Even though Lazarus had been dead for four days at the call of Jesus he came out of the grave. Annually we celebrate Easter and we go with the women to the tomb where Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus had laid the dead body of Jesus on Friday afternoon. The grave was empty. Jesus had risen. He has control over death. Like Jairus we listen and believe what Jesus says. He says: SHE IS NOT DEAD BUT ASLEEP. These are words spoken by the Lord of life and death. He came according to the promises God had given in the Old Testament. Immediately after our first parents fell into sin, even before God pronounced the cursed of sin on them, he spoke to Satan. He said: “I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers; he will crush you head and you will strike his heel.” God placed enmity, hatred, between Satan and the human race. The offspring of a woman would crush Satan and free sinners from his control. This offspring of a woman, a true human being, would be none other than the God-man, the Messiah, the Redeemer, who had the power to defeat Satan and free those who were ensnared by him.

This message rings out through the Old Testament. God chose a special people and rescued them from the horrible slavery in Egypt. He established an elaborate form of worship with many different sacrifices for this people. These all pointed to the coming great sacrifice that God would make through the sacrifice of his one and only Son. The message filled the Old Testament believers with hope and confidence as Job shows us when we hear him say: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another.” The message revealed a Redeemer who would make the ultimate sacrifice for sins and then return at the end of the world to take all who believe in him to their glorious home in heaven.

The promise of his return still is in the future, but annually we celebrate the fact that “when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.” “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.”

Jesus, the Messiah, that Savior, came to conquer death. He came face to face with death in the home of Jairus. He said, SHE IS NOT DEAD BUT ASLEEP, and they laughed at him. He has described the meaning of death and the unbelieving world snickers and doubts. It’s contrary to the facts. Dead is dead. There is no hope and the person has died. The soul has left the body which does not respond to any kind of stimulation. But, Jesus calls this a sleep and this is what death really is. When we Christians speak of death as a sleep we are not trying to play down the harsh reality of death and smooth over its tragic grief. We firmly believe on the basis of our Savior’s own words that the dead will rise. He has said: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” In view of the resurrection of the body, death is but a sleep for we will rise from death even as we rise from sleep each morning.

We observe Jesus raise the twelve year old daughter of Jairus. “After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha koum!’ (which means, ‘Little girl, I say to you, get up!’) Immediately the girl stood up and walked around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished.” By the power of his word Jesus raises the dead. What joy and happiness filled the astonished parents! What joy and happiness fills our hearts as we look to the resurrection with the words of Jesus ringing in our ears: “Because I live, you also will live.” This is our hope and comfort. When we face death we look beyond death and the grave to the glorious resurrection assured to us by Jesus. There once was a terrible auto accident. A college student was killed. Her friend was engaged to a seminary student preparing for the work of the ministry. She realized the importance of the message that her fiancé was preparing to deliver and said, “That’s what it’s all about.” As believers we hold to the promise of our Lord who sacrificed himself for us. We look to heaven. We sing with those Kindergarten children 70 years ago, “I’m but a Stranger here, heav’n is my home.” At the death of a loved one we declare: SHE IS NOT DEAD BUT ASLEEP. Amen.