We come to church to hear Jesus

Sermon for Trinity 19

Ephesians 4:22-28  +  Matthew 9:1-8

We probably ought to change the message on our church sign. It’s been there for years now, I think. It’s probably time for a change, but not because the message has become at all irrelevant. The message is timeless and true: “Christ is risen. Come and hear Him!” Come and hear Him? Maybe drivers by think we’re crazy. Do you expect us to believe that Christ will be preaching on Sunday? That we’ll hear Him preach, if we come? The truth is, yes, they would! Yes, you do! You hear Him! Not that I have suddenly become Jesus, but still, He is the true Preacher, just as He is the true Baptizer and the true Host (and Food!) of the Lord’s Supper. He who hears you hears Me, Jesus said to His apostles, who were the first called ministers of the New Testament Church. And His words apply, not just to the minister at Emmanuel, but to every Christian minister who is properly called, who preaches the pure word of God and who rightly administers the Sacraments of Christ.

But apparently, our neighbors here in Las Cruces don’t believe it, or else they would be flocking to our parking lot and showing up early to get a good seat. Then again, I’d guess that most Christians don’t even go to hear Jesus anymore. Sure, there are a good number who still go to a church. If you ask them why they go, you might hear something like, “Well, I go to worship God!” And what do they mean by that? Well, to praise Him! To pray to Him! Maybe, to hear what the preacher has to say. And that’s all good. But I wonder how many would say, “I’m going to hear Jesus! I’m going to receive gifts from Jesus—gifts that I desperately need!”

That was what filled up the house where Jesus was in today’s Gospel. Well, for some people. There were also scribes there who went to hear Jesus, but only to critique Him, to judge Him. And then there were the five men we heard about in the Gospel: the four men who carried the fifth on a stretcher. Matthew leaves out the detail that Mark and Luke record, that the house was so full of people there was no way for them to get through to Jesus with the stretcher. So they hoisted the man on the stretcher up to the roof, then dug through the roof and lowered him down in front of Jesus. Now, those men were truly eager to get to where Jesus was!

Why? To praise Him? No, not especially. No offer Him their prayers? No, they didn’t say a word; they didn’t offer anything at all. They went to receive something their paralyzed friend desperately needed: healing.

We have to wonder if Jesus surprised them with the first words He spoke. When he saw their faith, Jesus said to the paralytic, “Take heart, son! Your sins are forgiven you.” Do you think the man and his friends were disappointed by that? “Yeah, OK, whatever, Jesus. On to the more important things, huh?, like healing him of his paralysis!” I don’t think so. That’s what an unbeliever might focus on, might seek from Jesus, merely physical healing. “You can keep all that religious stuff.” But it says here that Jesus saw their faith, and that implies that they trusted in Him for more than just physical healing.

In any case, Jesus saw, Jesus perceived what the paralyzed man needed most of all. He needed to have his troubled spirit lifted up, encouraged, made strong again. “Take heart, son! Your sins are forgiven you.” Because behind paralysis, behind every infirmity, behind every sorrow that we suffer here in this life, our sins are ultimately the cause of it. And the thing we need most, the thing we literally can’t live without, is the forgiveness of our sins before God. Without that, you can have the healthiest body in the world, but still be wretched, wasting away, and dead in sins and trespasses. Without the forgiveness of sins, you have no real life within you, and you will suffer eternal death in hell.

We see here in the Gospel, though, how ready Jesus is to forgive sins. He doesn’t require the paralyzed man to beg or to do a series of good works first. He sees their faith. Faith is what God requires, trust in Jesus, not because it’s such a good work, but because God has chosen to pour all His grace and favor into His beloved Son, so that, where there is faith in Him, and only where there is faith in Him, God is ready, willing, even eager to accept the believer, to forgive the believer in Christ. Whereas, for all who reject Christ and wish to be accepted apart from Him, there is only wrath and judgment for sins.

There were some of those people there in the house that day. Those scribes, those Jewish leaders who had taken up some of that precious room in that house, weren’t there to receive God’s favor through Jesus. They were there to see what outrageous thing He would say so that they could criticize Him for it. And they did. “This man blasphemes,” they thought within themselves or mumbled among themselves. “This man is speaking against God!” Why? Because only God can forgive sins. Only God, the Judge, holds the keys, has the right to release a guilty person from his or her guilt. And according to the Law of Moses, there has to be blood in order to pay for that forgiveness. Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. Why? Because God Himself requires payment, requires atonement for sin, and the payment He requires is a life (the life of an innocent animal in the Old Testament). And the mediators of the forgiveness of sins were the priests, who offered up the sacrifices of the people and then pronounced forgiveness. There has to be a mediator between God and man if there is to be forgiveness That’s what all those Old Testament sacrifices and sin offerings and the priesthood pointed to. That’s what God Himself had taught Israel in the Old Testament. So how does Jesus dare to step in and claim to be able to forgive sins without a sacrifice and without being a priest?

Well, they should have asked. They should have put that question to Jesus instead of angrily assuming blasphemy. Because He might have explained it to them. The fact is, Jesus was no mere man. He was also the eternal Son of God, begotten of His Father before all the ages. He had come into the world to be the true sacrifice for sins, to offer the blood, to offer the only life that truly makes atonement for sins. He was the one sacrifice that all sinners need. He was also the true High Priest from heaven and the one Mediator between God and Man. He would offer up that sacrifice on the cross in a few short years. But He didn’t have to wait until then to pronounce forgiveness to the paralyzed man. Faith in Christ is what connects sinners to His sacrifice, and it’s just as effective beforehand as it is after the fact. By faith in the coming Christ Abraham was justified. David was forgiven. By faith in the Christ who was standing right in front of him, the paralyzed man was forgiven. And by faith in the Christ who has now died, risen again, and ascended into heaven, sinners today are still justified and forgiven.

This isn’t a deviation from the pattern God established in the Old Testament. It’s what the Old Testament was pointing to all along. But to prove that He, Jesus, had divine authority to forgive sins, He performed a miracle that only God could do. That you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—then he said to the paralytic, “Arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.” So he arose and departed to his house. When the multitudes saw it, they marveled and glorified God, who had given such authority to men.

What good does this do for you? Even if you believe that Jesus had authority on earth to forgive sins, Jesus isn’t on earth anymore—at least, not as He was 2,000 years ago. He can’t lift up anyone’s spirit by pronouncing the forgiveness of sins as He did with the paralytic. But this is what He has done! This is what most of the Evangelical Christians out there refuse to accept or fail to understand, who run around claiming, “I don’t need a minister. God alone can forgive sins. It’s between me and God!” This same Jesus, who alone, as the all-atoning sacrifice and as the one Mediator between God and man—who alone has the authority to forgive sins, has given this authority to men. What does He say in the last chapter of Matthew? All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And what does Peter say about this baptism on the Day of Pentecost? Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins. Even before His crucifixion, Jesus said to His disciples in Matthew’s Gospel: I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. And again, in the Gospel of John, He said to His apostles: If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.

The fact is, Jesus has delegated to His Church His own authority to forgive sins by calling ministers to pronounce forgiveness according to His Word. And so, ministers are to act, first, as diagnosticians. We are to evaluate a person, to see if he recognizes his sins, is sorry for them, has faith in Christ for forgiveness, and intends to amend his sinful ways. If so, then we are to be the very mouthpieces of Jesus, to forgive the penitent sinner, to absolve him, release him from his sins, and so to lift his spirit. “Take heart, son! Your sins are forgiven.” If not, then we are to bind his sins to him, assuring him that he is not forgiven before God as long as he refuses to repent.

So, do you see now how different Lutheran worship is from the worship of so many others? They go to church to praise God, to pray, to offer God the obedience of their attendance, or for lesser reasons, like to feel the Spirit or enjoy the music. We praise God here. We pray to God here. But most of all, we gather here to receive gifts from God, above all, the gift of the forgiveness of sins. We come to hear Christ, who has given the holy ministry as His own mouthpiece on earth. We come to receive the atoning price for our forgiveness, Christ’s very body and blood—see! Here it is! The price that was paid for your forgiveness! We receive it from Christ’s own hand, as it were, from the hand of the minister whom He has sent to act on His behalf, to give His people exactly what they need, on any given Sunday, starting with the most important thing every one of us needs: the forgiveness of sins, spoken by Christ through His minister. Since that’s true, maybe our church sign is just fine as it is. Christ is risen! Come and hear Him! Amen.