The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity

The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity – October 6, 2024

Psalm 78; Genesis 28:10-17; Ephesians 4:22-24

St. Matthew 9:1-8

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The friends of the paralytic are rightly concerned about him. They do not take him to see a physician nor to the Pharisees. It is possible that they’ve already tried these other remedies. Scripture is silent as to whether this is their first course of action or a last-ditch effort on behalf of a sick friend.

Our Lord’s response would suggest they have brought their friend to see Jesus as soon as they heard He was near. He is impressed by their faith. These men heard the Messiah had come back to Capernaum and they knew just what their friend needed.

Remember, this is said to be Jesus’ own city, that is, Capernaum, the city He adopted as a base of operations in His adult life. We can infer that this paralytic and those who brought him were known to Jesus and that they knew Jesus prior to the beginning of His miracles in Cana. These are the good ol’ boys from down the street. They didn’t grow up with Jesus, but they did know Him as an adult.

 Notice their behavior when they bring their paralyzed friend to Jesus. Our text does not record any speech on their behalf. Even the parallel accounts, each giving a few different details, do not give words to the friends. They just lay the paralyzed man before Jesus.

From this, we learn how to pray for our friends, our brothers, and our sisters. Seeing the paralyzed man, Jesus does not ask the diagnosis. He does not ask the opinion of the doctors or how it happened. The friends are not eager to share the details of how this man fell from the roof while patching it or stumbled down a small cliff while carousing. Jesus does not probe for more information regarding the difference between a spinal injury or a neurological disease. The men lay their friend before Jesus, trusting that the Son of Man would heal him in body and soul.

It is this faith that moves Jesus to forgive the man his sins. The paralytic may very well have been disappointed. “My friends went to all this work and there is nothing to show for it. They even impressed this Jesus fella and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”

Or not. Perhaps the paralytic is included in the ones who had faith. Perhaps he is one of the “they” whose faith impressed Jesus. In this case, he is content to have his sins forgiven. There is a very real chance that this man’s conscience is in fact more bothered by his sins than by his sickness. He is content not because it made feeling return to his legs but because he trusts that whatever Jesus was going to do, it was the right thing for him. Faith is trust without verification.

Jesus came into this situation to forgive the paralytic, in effect, telling him that forgiveness is the greater portion and the paralysis is a cross he must bear in this world. This is the purpose behind our Lord’s statement, “Be of good cheer; take heart; be courageous!” He is saying, depart in the forgiveness of sins to bear the cross of your paralysis for you will be greatly rewarded in the life to come.”

This is the response that is most common to our prayers for healing. Rarely are we given relief from the physical ailment. But we are told to receive the peace that is beyond all understanding. This peace is not just regarding our conscience. This Peace, Christ Himself, does provide relief to our flesh. It is beyond our comprehension how this Peace settles our body and soul, but we have the promise that it does. So, pray for healing. Pray for the healing of your neighbor and know that your faith has healed you.

To pray for someone, especially as we do in the Divine Service, it is enough to lay them before Jesus. God knows what he needs. I don’t need to tell God. If it is good enough for God for the person to be laid before Him, then it is also good enough for me.

Why then, might your pastor ask for more information about someone you’ve asked to be put on the prayer list? It is to help him diagnose the state of your soul. He wants to know what kind of care you might require. As for your paralytic friend, it is enough to lay him before Jesus. It is enough to place his name among the sick and the sorrowing, those who mourn and the lonely, those in need and distress, the homebound and the infirm.

It is enough in your prayers to pray for your brothers and sisters in Christ. It is enough to lay them before Jesus for He knows what they need. Demanding more information does nothing but satisfy your curiosity. If the desire for more information is for the sake of helping, that is, actually attending to their needs, then it is best to obtain that information directly from the one in need. Details are a matter of care, not a matter of knowledge.

On the one hand, Jesus already knows the cause of this man’s paralysis. We even see Him peer into the hearts of the scribes, knowing the evil that is going on behind their closed lips. But it is also instructive to us that He does not ask for the details of the sickness. The most important thing to know about paralysis, or any affliction, is that it is caused by sin. The sinful state of man is the root cause of all sickness, distress, and death. Therefore, the treatment most necessary is the forgiveness of sins. That is what matters more than remedies, medications, and surgeries.

Which brings us to a detail of today’s account that is easily overlooked. These men brought to Jesus a paralytic lying on a bed. They did not sit at home and wait for Jesus to drop by. They did not expect Jesus to hear from Sue, who heard from Louise, who heard from Jim that someone had palsy. A man was paralyzed and they took him to Jesus.

What does this mean for you? If you are sick, if you are injured, if you are grieving, if you are sorrowful, pray to Jesus and call your pastor. Do not expect others to communicate on your behalf. Every child knows the dangers of communicating important information via a game of telephone. Do not wait for the pastor to hear through the grapevine what you need. It doesn’t work. If you were experiencing a heart attack, you wouldn’t lay on the floor and hope the ambulance driver comes by soon, and then blame the ambulance for not arriving soon enough. You would call the ambulance immediately. You wouldn’t call your sister and ask her to tell her friend to get the ER prepped. You would call 911. Why expect the Church to operate any differently?

Jesus is God. He knows all things. For a time, He set aside the use of His divine attributes and yet, in our text, He makes a momentary use of them to know the thoughts of the scribes. Yet even with the all-knowing Son of Man, these men bring the paralytic to Him.

It is true that these men are helping their paralytic friend. They are interceding for him. But what they aren’t doing is seeing a friend in need, then sending a messenger boy to tell someone close to Jesus what is going on. Nor are they standing next to the paralytic and yelling into space what their friend wants. They pick him up and take him to Jesus. They do the thing he is incapable of doing. He can’t move so they move him. They fill his lack, nothing more and nothing less.

After Jesus forgave the sins of the paralytic, He commanded Him to get up, gather his bedding, and go home. The paralytic, immediately healed, obeys Jesus’ commands. He does not groan over needing to carry his ragged bed mat. He does not sigh with being told to get back to daily chores. This healing miracle probably meant more hardship for the paralytic. Now he has to work. Now he has to engage with other people. Now he has to feed himself.

Yet the paralytic doesn’t complain. He doesn’t talk back to Jesus. You might be thinking, “Of course, he’s just happy not to be paralyzed anymore.” I’m sure that’s true. But the concise language suggests that this man arose and set about his new life as one charged by Christ, as a new man, as a new creation of Christ. He does not need years of therapy to overcome the mental anguish of having been paralyzed. He will need to adjust to his new life. He will need to be taught or at least relearn how to do the physical labor that will be required of him. He will be reintroduced to pain in the lower back, something he couldn’t feel when paralyzed.

But the text doesn’t give a single word to these struggles. It is enough for the man that his sins are forgiven. It is enough to obey the words of Christ. It is enough for him to go about his new life in Christ with the knowledge that He is forgiven. It is enough for him to set about his vocation knowing that his identity is found in the God who created, forgave, and recreated him.

In + Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity

 The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity – October 10, 2021

Psalm 78; Genesis 28:10-17; Ephesians 4:22-28

St. Matthew 9:1-8

In the name of the Father, and of the T Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

The simplest definition of prayer is a conversation with God. This conversation always begins with God. He speaks in his Word, and we respond. This is true in the grand theological sense and ought to be true in the daily sense. What I mean by the grand theological sense is that God calls us to faith by his Word. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.[1] The conversation of faith always begins with God calling us to faith, but we then respond by singing God’s praises back to him. The response of the same faith which God bestows is to worship the Creator of that faith.

It is also true that the daily conversation of prayer ought to begin with God’s Word. In the morning and in the evening, as you rise and as you lie down, the Word of God should first be on your lips. Read a psalm. Read a chapter of the Bible. Read them out loud. Read them with your family or by yourself. After reading the Word of God, then pray. Pray for yourself. Pray for your family. Pray for your friends, this congregation, your pastor, your country. By first reading the Word of God you are giving God the first word in the conversation of prayer and conforming your own prayers to that Word. It would even be a worthwhile exercise to pray a psalm and then pray it again in your own words. Then, the word of God will not only form the words on your lips but in your mind and on your heart.

Giving God the first word in prayer will restrain your flesh and teach you what to pray for. “Nothing is so necessary as to call upon God incessantly and to drum into his ears our prayer that he may give, preserve, and increase in us faith and the fulfillment of the Ten Commandments and remove all that stands in our way and hinders us in this regard.”[2] The most vital prayer is, “Lord, have mercy!” which is to say, “Grant me faith and sustain me until the end that I may receive the promise of paradise and glorify your Name forever and ever!”

God has promised to answer this prayer for every Christian. This is to pray in Jesus’ Name. A prayer for spiritual things, that is, life and salvation, has already been answered by God when he sacrificed his Son upon the cross. The benefits of that sacrifice (the forgiveness of sin, a clean conscience, life, salvation) are delivered to you in Word and Sacrament. A prayer for these things is certain to be answered.

Yet Christ also cares for our temporal needs. We are called to pray for our daily bread, not just the Bread of Life but also every we need to support this body and life. We pray for food and drink, clothing and shoes, house and home, money, land, animals, a pious spouse, pious children, pious workers, pious and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, discipline, honor, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like.[3] God is the only source of these temporal goods. He bestows these things on the good and the wicked alike. We, who know where they come from, ought to pray to God that he would bless us with such temporal gifts.

But while God has promised to care for us, and he loves our physical bodies, he has not promised specific temporal blessings. One of the signs of the Messiah is that he would proclaim the Gospel to the poor. He did not raise them out of poverty but preached the Gospel to them. That doesn’t mean Christ cares nothing for their wellbeing. It means Christ prioritizes their eternal fate. In the Resurrection, they will receive an imperishable body. By healing the souls of the poor, he is restoring their bodies for eternity. This promise is certain.

 Our impatience with God’s eternal promise of the Resurrection leads us to think God does not care or cannot effect temporal miracles. If God does not answer our temporal prayers when, where, and how we want them answered, we become discouraged. Worse, we somehow think it was our lack of faith or poorly worded prayers which did not persuade God. Convincing speech and effect based on your power are the definition of pagan prayer. It has no place in the life of a Christian.

To place the efficacy of prayer upon your faith, your effort, or your words is itself blasphemy. Blasphemy is speech that denigrates, defames, disrespects, or maligns God, His Word, or the one who bears that Word.[4] Believing you can convince God by your words or actions denigrates his authority over heaven and earth for it says you have power over his authority. Believing the power of your faith to cause God to answer your prayer disrespects his mercy for it says your strength deserves what God has given to you. Believing God does not care about your temporal prayers maligns the loving God for it says his love is insincere.

In claiming Christ had blasphemed by forgiving the sins of the paralytic, the scribes committed the greatest blasphemy. They claimed that the primary action of God, the salvation of sinners, was contrary to the Will of God. How often do we follow in their wicked footsteps? Notice, the scribes don’t even say it out loud. They speak only within themselves. Jesus knows their thoughts and calls them “evil.” How easy it is to forget to pray until after your wishes are fulfilled. How easy it is to rely on Tylenol and not God. How easy it is to find fulfilment in your work, your retirement, your family and not in the Word of God.  This is blasphemy.

As proof that prayer begins with the Word of God and that God fills both spiritual and temporal needs, Jesus tells the scribes, tells you, “Which is easier to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Arise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins, Arise, take up your bed and go to your house.”[5]

The Son of God descended into our flesh that he might make whole all our ills of flesh and soul.[6] He sees the faith of the paralytic’s friends and hears the prayer of their hearts. Bringing their friend to Christ in prayer and in location, our Lord answers their prayer by forgiving his sins.

Through the Holy Absolution, through the bestowing of faith upon the paralytic, Christ has restored his body for eternity, if not at this exact moment. But his sins are forgiven! This is the greatest miracle! To confirm this great miracle and to confirm that he is working by the Word of God and not blaspheming, Jesus performs the minor miracle of healing him in body. This body, instantly free from paralysis will once again return to dust. The healing miracle has a time limit. The forgiveness of sins lasts forever.

The man arose, took up his bedroll, and immediately departed to his house. Like everyone who receives faith, the man arose from the death into which all mankind is born. The instant the Word of God washed over him, as it did for you in your Holy Baptism, the man is revivified, rejuvenated, made alive.

Then he takes up his bedroll. He gathers up the carriage of his sins and bears it to his home. For you and for me, this is the life of suffering, the crosses which we must all bear. Our bedrolls are born upon our shoulders for seventy years, or by reason of strength, eighty or more.[7] We endure the effects of sin in the world and the sin still clinging to our members. Yet immediately, the Word of God has called us home. We arise from the font, bear our cross, and depart toward our heavenly Jerusalem, our eternal home.

With the paralytic and Jacob, we look to the one on whom angels ascend and descend for our salvation. The Son of God descended into our flesh that he might be raised up upon the cross. This cross is the ladder which connects heaven and earth and by which we may depart toward home. The cross of Christ’s atonement is the way of salvation. We pray that he would sustain us as we each bear our bedroll until the day when we ascend that ladder to our eternal home.

In T Jesus’ name.  Amen.

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[1] Romans 10:17.

[2] LC III 2.

[3] SC III Fourth Petition.

[4] TDNT, Vol 1, 621-623 and BDAG, 178.

[5] Matthew 9:5-6.

[6] Savior of the Nations, Come, st. 6.

[7] Psalm 90:10.