Twelfth Sunday After Trinity

Good morning.

Welcome to our Redeemer.

When good things happen to others, how do you respond?

Our gospel today invites us to see those as opportunities to give praise to our God.

We'll be focused on that in our service today, and we begin begin now with our opening hymn, number 633.

Grace, mercy, and peace are yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

Amen.

If anyone had the right to say, My life stinks, certainly the man at the center of the action in today's gospel did.

But of course, he couldn't say that because he couldn't speak.

And the fact that he had this speech impediment seems to me to be an indicator that his deafness was not of the variety that developed in midlife due to attending too many loud rock concerts, but rather that it was a condition with which he was born.

We don't know that for sure, but we know that without being able to hear and without being able to speak, being cut off from easy communication with others, these are ingredients that do not make for an easy life.

His life was hard and lonely.

And even if he couldn't say it, he could think it, my life stinks.

And the people around him recognized how difficult this man's walk was.

For they wasted no time upon hearing that Jesus had returned to their region, there in the region of the Decapolis, the place where earlier Jesus had driven out a legion of demons from a man who was living among the tombs.

But now that he returned, we are told that they brought this man to Jesus.

It seems as if they were bringing him to Jesus as a sort of test case, saying, Look, if Jesus could handle that legion of demons, well, let's see what he can do with someone who can't hear or speak.

And Jesus did not disappoint their expectations.

He took the man aside, he opened his ears so that he could hear, he loosed his tongue, and speech poured out of him.

Marvelous speech.

Let me tell you what Jesus has done for me, kind of speech.

So that with that one Aramaic word, afhthetha, try saying that three times fast.

With that one word, Jesus takes this man from my life stinks to now everything has changed unbelievably because Jesus has come.

And no matter how much our Lord tried to play whack-a-mole with it, news of what he had done for this man was no more containable than a wildfire.

They just couldn't help themselves.

They had to say it.

He has done all things well.

Now, if you stop and think about it, that line, he has done all things well, is a tripping hazard for you and me.

You see, it expresses a truth that we believe and something that we confess.

Of course, with Jesus, we say, Jesus gets everything right.

He does everything well.

And we say that and we mean it until the circumstances in our lives turn us more towards those lines of thinking that end in the words, my life stinks.

And you know what?

It doesn't take the double punch of losing hearing and speech to get you to that point.

In our impatient world, in fact, it seems to me that even an illness that lasts more than 24 hours can be enough.

Because if you've been laid up on your couch to the point where you have grown entirely sick of watching those formulaic and repetitive house-hunting TV shows, you can't handle another one.

Surely the thought crosses your mind that maybe just maybe the Lord wasn't handling circumstances in your life all that well when he chose to give you an illness that did not have a snappy resolution to it.

Or consider God's governance in your life as it pertains to your relationships with others when they break down, when friendships fray.

I mean, we say that God joins people together in marriage.

But what if you got a spouse who betrayed you and walked out on you?

Did God handle that well?

Or if you find yourself unable to land a job that really makes use of the talents you know that you have?

When all around you, it seems like your friends have nailed it.

They've got careers that fill them with satisfaction, they're thriving, and you just seem to be spinning your tires.

Or when the debts are piling up and the income isn't coming in fast enough?

Or when there are losses of loved ones that you know that you will grieve and mourn for the rest of your life.

Well, in such circumstances like that, are you prepared to say that God does all things well?

It seems to me that when we train our eyes on our lives and see all of those things that are not the way we want them to be, it's far easier for us to say, man, this stinks.

And hiding behind that statement is a finger pointed at God, saying, You didn't quite do right by me.

So if we want to be more honest about it, it's really what we think and say should go like this.

Jesus has done some things well.

I will acknowledge that he did very well indeed when he made that deaf man here and gave him his speech back.

But there are more than a few opportunities that have come up in my life where Jesus has missed the chance to do something for me.

Theodore Roosevelt's daughter once said that Teddy wanted to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral, and the baby at every christening.

A humorous way of describing somebody who is always the center of attention.

And I wonder if we don't do something similar when we come across these accounts of our great physician Jesus at work.

It seems to me that when we hear an account like this one, it's only but natural that we would imagine that if we were going to slot ourselves into the story anywhere, surely we would be taking center stage.

We would be the one right at the center of the action.

So that when we hear of Jesus opening this man's ears and loosing his tongue, we say, well, okay, it's clear.

So I should be right there in the center, and Jesus should be putting his finger on whatever is ailing me, and he should be making it go away just like that.

Seems to me that that is oftentimes the way that we think these stories are supposed to work.

But what if we zoomed out a little bit and did some statistical analysis and imagined if we had been there on the day when this event occurred, where would it be most likely that we would have been?

If you can hear and speak, and if the odds are what they are, then it seems to me that had you been there on that day, it would be far more likely that you would have been among the crowd, the they that brought this deaf and mute man to Jesus in the first place.

And now think about this.

If you put yourself in that position in the story, if you join that crowd watching the action, well, that changes the way that you think about how the events unfold.

I mean, surely you will not tell me that every single last person in that crowd had lives that were perfect, 100% exactly the way that they wanted them to be.

In fact, you know as well as I do that there was not one single person there on that day who could say, my life could not be better than that.

Of course not.

They were people like us.

They had problems like we do.

In that crowd, there were those who had bad backs and bum knees.

There were those who endured chronic pain and suffered from periodic bouts of deep depression.

They knew broken marriages and financial hardships.

They had graves that they also went to visit.

And yet, when they saw this man healed, I don't see a whiff of envy among them.

I don't see people in the crowd saying, okay, Jesus, you took care of that, so now let's get that guy out of the way because I've got some problems and I'd like you to handle them right now.

That's not the reaction that they have at all.

They see the great thing that Jesus did and it causes them to overflow with praise.

He has done all things well.

And I wonder if the lesson that we need to learn from them has to do with this tendency we have to envy?

How do you react when you see somebody else who has life going really well for them?

How does it make you feel when you see somebody who's got cancer but the cancer marvelously clears up and their health is restored?

How do you react when you can see that marriage that's perfect and thriving?

Not quite like yours.

How does it make you feel when you can detect that money is spilling out of a person's pockets or your friend is really hitting it out of the park in his job?

I wonder if more often than not, when we see the good things that happen to others, if the feeling we get is resentment.

If the feeling we get is how come good things like that don't seem to land in my lap?

And you know what envy does?

It gnaws at the heart in such a way that it completely and totally blinds you.

Not only from appreciating the good things that happen to other people, but even from seeing the good things that God does give to you in your life.

Because once you go down that path of envy and resentment, then you start accruing all of the evidence from your own life of how poorly God has handled circumstances for you.

All of the things that are wrong.

And when you're looking at that, then instead of a mouthful of praise, you get that grumbling complaint of how stinky life is.

But what if instead of letting resentment breed and grow in our hearts, we would learn, like this crowd, to see the good things that God places in the lives of others and recognize them as just that, as good gifts from a good and gracious God, as reason to praise Him.

Do you know what I think?

Not only would that remove an awful lot of gall and bitterness from your own heart, I think it would also open up your eyes to recognize the good gifts that God gives to you.

It would tear the blinders off.

It would lead you to be able to say truthfully, God does do everything well.

And in fact, it will even lead you to believe that when well means that He has allows suffering that will not be removed, but must be endured, so that through it he can bring forth in you the good fruits of faith and hope and patience and endurance and character.

Does it not qualify as doing all things well if your Lord should lay upon you a cross and say, This you are going to carry, so that through it I will drive you to depend all the more on me, to enrich and deepen your faith, to grow your hope, to make it so that you cast your entire life upon me.

That seems to me to be doing all things well indeed.

Or to put it another way, to make it so that truly all things in your life will turn out for good, just as he has promised.

And even when there are many things in our lives that we must suffer and endure that don't have quick remedies or easy fixes or disappear overnight, still these accounts of what Jesus did for others always give us a little glimpse of what our God has in store for us.

When Jesus heals someone, there we get a little picture of that glorious restoration that He came to bring about through His own death and resurrection.

For this Jesus has promised that there is a day and an hour that has been appointed when once again that great word Ephthetha will be on his lips, and he will speak it over your tomb, over whatever casket or urn contains you.

And your grave will be opened, and this body of yours will be raised from the dead, and it will be glorified on that day, so that all of the causes of grief and pain will be gone.

There will be no more mourning, no more tears, no more death.

And on that day, when he raises us from the dead, then without hesitation, we will raise our voices in one great eternal He has done all things well.

And until then, wherever we are in life, we will have eyes that recognize the good and gracious hand of our God.

We will accept what he gives us from his hand, trusting that he knows best.

We will see the good blessings and the hard times alike as evidence that our God knows and does just what will be truly for our good.

So that we too will not be able to contain it.

But the speech will overflow from us.

We know it without a doubt that He has done all things well.

Amen.

Good morning and welcome once again.

A special welcome to our guests who are with us today.

We're glad you could be here with us at Our Redeemer.

Three things I want to highlight, all of them in the blue sheet.

Uh, first, know that coming up uh next Sunday, August 30th, there will be a parish music information session after both services.

Um, you know, of course, that music is an important part of our ministry here at Our Redeemer.

And so this is an opportunity to learn more about participation in that ministry, whether you have musical gifts with an instrument or your voice.

So please make plans to visit uh next Sunday after the services, members of our parish music team will be there for that.

Also, there is a new intro to Our Redeemer class coming up in September.

There are details and a link in the blue sheet.

Um, so please give some of that or that some of your attention.

Also in the community room today are the sign-ups for our next session of groups at Our Redeemer, the autumn session coming up.

So something else to take a look at as well.

You're invited to stay for coffee, refreshments, and also our Bible study in the community room here between services.

I wish you God's blessings now on the rest of your Sunday and the week to come.