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Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
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Responses to Christ |
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Matthew
9:1-8 Nineteenth
Sunday after Trinity October
10, 2010 It
is a scene typical of the Gospels. Jesus
arrives in a village and the sick are brought to Him for healing.
In this case it is a man "sick of the palsy."
The Greek used in Matthew 9:2 is the word from which we derive our
English word, "paralysis," and the man "sick of the
palsy" had some form of paralysis.
We are not told how extensive this paralysis was, but are told it
was enough to prevent him from walking, for in the dispute with the
Pharisees Jesus said that it was just as easy to say "Thy sins be
forgiven thee" as it is to say, "Arise and walk" (vs. 5).
I notice there is no accusation of a phony miracle here.
Nowhere does the Bible suggest that anyone doubted the reality of
the miracles of Christ. Even
His enemies knew His miracles were real.
Sometimes, they even
brought the sick to Jesus, so He would heal them on the Sabbath and they
would have something to argue about with Him.
We saw this in our reading from Luke 14 on the Seventeenth Sunday
after Trinity. There was
never any doubt about Jesus' miracles because the sick He healed and the
dead He raised were well known by the people around them.
He could not have faked them. Also typical of the Gospel scenes,
there are two responses to Jesus. Some rejected Him, some received Him. Rejection
was the response of the Pharisees. Some
of them did, of course, receive Christ, and some of them are now with Him
in Heaven, but most of the Pharisees blatantly rejected Christ.
Thus, verse 4 of our reading for today says, "And Jesus,
knowing their thoughts said, Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?"
And verse 3 tells us the Pharisees said of Christ, "This man
blasphemeth." In reality
it was they who blasphemed. God
Himself stood before them, the One they claimed to worship and love, the
Messiah they claimed to be waiting and praying for.
Yet they rejected Him. They
accused Him of blasphemy, and, in the name of God, they killed Him. It
is not as though they lacked enough evidence to believe in Jesus.
They were experts in the Old Testament law found in the Books of
Moses. Yet Jesus said if they
had really believed Moses they would believe in Him because Moses wrote of
Him (Jn. 6:46). They had the entire Old Testament, and Jesus said the
Scriptures testify of Him (Jn. 6:39).
We have already considered the unquestioned validity of His
miracles. So there was no
shortage of evidence. Their
problem was not lack of evidence; it was that they did not want to believe
it. They were like the people
spoken of in Romans 1:18 who "hold the truth in
unrighteousness." They
have the truth, but they "hold" it, that is, they hold it
captive. They suppress and restrain it, rather than receiving and
believing it. The
evidence about Christ is available to all.
The Scriptures are open and free.
The life and ministry of Christ are known to the vast majority of
people on this planet. Truly
the "light shineth in darkness" (Jn. 1:5), but people love
darkness rather than light (Jn. 3:19). Tragically,
it is not only "unbelievers" who persist in their darkness.
Many who call themselves Christians live in a state of rebellion
against God. I am not talking
here about committing sins. We
all do that every day. I am
talking about an attitude that keeps God at arms length, even while doing
religious things and thinking religious thoughts. Never forget that the Pharisees were theologians.
They were the pious of the pious.
They were more religious than the vast majority of Jews, and they
knew more of the Scriptures than anyone else of their time.
Yet they were outside of Christ because they never surrendered
themselves to God. They never
really said, "God, I will do it your way."
I know it costs a lot to do things God's way.
It costs a lot to surrender your time, your money, your family,
job, your very life to God. But it costs a lot more not to.
The Reverend Roger Jessup stated this well in a conversation we had
while driving to our denominational convention. He said, "It is not so much that we break the
commandments of God; it is that they break us."
They break us because we ruin our lives when we disobey them.
We can no more build happy, productive lives while ignoring the
laws of God than we can build a working airplane while ignoring the laws
of physics. Others,
seeing the healing of the paralysed man, received Jesus.
They marveled. That means they were shocked.
It means they were amazed and astounded at what they saw.
They knew the sick man. They
knew his illness was real. They
knew only God could raise him up and restore him to health.
He had probably been to many physicians and received many
treatments. He had probably been to many priests and rabbis, and there had
probably been countless prayers sent to the throne of grace on his behalf.
Yet he remained a cripple, until Jesus said, "Arise, take up
thy bed, and go unto thine house." We
are so accustomed to hearing and reading these stories that we become
inured to the shock value of them. We
have to imagine ourselves in the presence of a rotting corpse raised to
life again, or seeing a crippled person rising from the sick bed. Imagine Jesus walking through a hospital healing the sick and
dying. Imagine Him going to
funerals and raising the dead, and imagine yourself being there with Him
and witnessing it all with your own eyes.
Thus you may regain the marvel at what God has done in this passage
of Scripture. These
witnesses were shocked. Their
marveling included a strong dose of holy fear.
They were in reverent awe because they knew they were in the
presence of the Holy One. Thus,
they glorified God. This does
not mean they ran around shouting, "Praise the Lord."
They didn't dance or speak in tongues, or have an ecstatic,
emotional experience. They
did something more profound and much deeper than that.
They acknowledged the glory of God deep in their souls.
We might say, they "received" Him.
They opened their hearts and souls to Him.
The Bible tells us these people marveled, but I marvel at their
faith. They did not have the New Testament to explain Christ to them.
Christ had not yet completed His work of crucifixion, resurrection, and
ascension. They did not have
the Church to help them on their way, yet they glorified God. They received Him. We
have far more light than they. We
live in the age of God's full revelation in Scripture. Ours is the crucifixion, the resurrection and ascension, the
Bible, the Church, the Sacraments, and two thousand years of Christian
history. Therefore, ours
should be the greater marvel, the greater awe, the deeper reverence, the
deeper faith, the more faithful obedience. Let us pray to God to help us. Holy
Father, we have many benefits that, even the people who saw Christ in the
days of His flesh did not have. Grant
unto us a sense of awe when we read of Your miracles. Grant to us a sense of how shocking these miracles really
are. And grant that, seeing
them afresh in the pages of Holy Scripture, we, too, might be moved to
glorify God. Through Christ
our Lord. Amen. "O
God, forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee; Mercifully
grant that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."
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