The sermon for February 10 was based on Luke 18:31-43.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

This morning's Gospel begins with the disciples' inability (or perhaps unwillingness) to understand what Jesus had come to do and ends with a poor blind beggar (Bartimaeus by name) having his eyes opened and his faith proclaimed. There are different kinds of blindness.

We all want to be able to control what we see and experience. Blind Bartimaeus wanted to be able to see the things he couldn't. The disciples preferred to turn a blind eye to the things they could see. They were like kids who beg to watch a monster movie and then sit through the whole picture with their hands over their eyes. The disciples were afraid to know too much about God.

They wanted to know about victory and triumph and glory. They had no interest in suffering or sacrifice or scorn. Then again, their motives may have been more like our own. We're afraid to learn about God because we're afraid to know ourselves. We are, to say the least, causal about our use of the Bible. Most of us avoid Bible Class, even the extremely important class we're currently offering, because we imagine that our absence will somehow "excuse" us from having to face the hard realities of life as creatures obligated by the Law and the will of God.

The disciples didn't want to hear about Jesus being betrayed and suffering any more than we want to hear that in this place we worship a God who openly slaughtered the firstborn of Egypt or commanded the total extermination of the Canaanite people or forbade New Testament Christians to even eat with people who claim to be faithful yet live otherwise. The God that saved faithful Noah and his family killed every other person on earth. Our Lord has prepared mansions for us in the heavenly places but he has also prepared a place of eternal torment for unbelievers.

These are all things that we'd just as soon forget about. After all, what would a God who could kill the children of Egypt for their unbelief do to sinners such as ourselves? A God who punishes unbelief and hypocrisy is bound to take a dim view of our daily conduct. But even more frightening to us than a potentially wrathful God is the correct understanding of ourselves that comes from knowing Him. We are more afraid of our true selves than we are of the one true God. We can avoid people who tell us the truth about Him but it's much harder to avoid ourselves.

We are more afraid of ourselves than we are of one another. We fear ourselves more than circumstance or even the Almighty. We are afraid of our own weaknesses, mortality and potential for evil as well as our strengths, longevity and potential for service. You can see it in the way the crowd treated blind Bartimaeus. They wanted him to shut-up, to fade away, to not remind them that it is possible to be blind or lame or sick. They wanted to ignore him the way we are tempted to ignore the people in prisons and hospitals and nursing homes. They were afraid for themselves.
3B But not Jesus. He has mercy on Bartimaeus. He has pity. The sight of blind Bartimaeus doesn't fill Him with a dread of losing His own eyesight. He isn't afraid of becoming sick or weak or crippled. In fact, He comes among us in His Incarnation to take on just those very burdens. He doesn't shy away from the obviously mortal because He has become mortal for us. He doesn't flee the poor because He has impoverished Himself for our sakes. Nor does He run from the guilty because He has come to take our guilt on Himself and then atone for our foolishness.

It's difficult for us to understand how we look to our Lord. We're afraid of disease and snakes and speaking in public. We throw-up on roller coasters and faint at the sigh of blood but nothing that overpowers us with either dread or emotion holds even a tiny fraction of the absolute revulsion that our Holy and Righteous God has for our sinful behavior. So repugnant is our sin that it moves the very source of all love and mercy to kill us. And yet so great are His love and mercy that he would rather die than see us damned. Jesus knows the Father.

Jesus knows the children. Jesus leads the children to know that Father, through Himself. In the process He teaches us to know ourselves and He dispels our fears. The fear of anything but God comes from the devil. Consider the 1st Commandment, We should fear, love and trust in God above all things. And then recall these words of St. John. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love Him because He first loved us. These are baptismal words and they give us strength.

Christ, who is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit, invites us to know the Godhead by becoming one with Him. To those of us estranged by sin and frightened by the Law, Jesus offers His Body and Blood for the forgiveness of our sins. When we eat His Body and drink His Blood, we become one with Him. We share a common flesh and common blood. We collectively become His Bride and He is recognized by the faithful as our Lord and Master, our divine Bridegroom. Holy Communion is deeply intimate and for something so intimate, also radically public.

No one, who Communes, communes alone... by definition. To be joined to Christ is to be joined to all others who are united to Him in Body and Blood. The Lord's Supper is intimate but it is not at all private. It is absolutely never just you and Jesus. Those who would share Christ's Body and Blood must be united in their confession and understanding of His Word. It is the Word in our ears that first opens our eyes. Like the disciples on the Emmaus road, we first learn about Jesus through the proclamation of the Word whether by Baptism or by hearing the Scriptures.

We should be afraid of God. We should fear Him. But we shouldn't fear anything else, not even ourselves. Christians don't deny their faults. They confess them and trust Jesus to absolve them. That's what we're gearing up to do again this season. Lent is a time for honesty and trust, for confession and absolution, for repentance and rejoicing.

The parts of Jesus' life that we are least likely to want to see are, in fact, the very best and most glorious parts. The parts of ourselves that we are least likely to want to recognize are the ones we most sorely need to confess. Don't be afraid. Don't be blind. Your faith has made you well. Amen.

The Peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Last Updated: 7/15/2008