• "The Heroic Work of Redemption"
• Sermon for the Twelfth Sunday in Trinity
• August 29, 2004
• The Reverend David A. Brounstein

This morning's gospel reports on a portion of the ministry of Jesus across the border in Gentile territory. A man was brought to Jesus who was deaf and suffered from a speech impediment. These two maladies are often linked. Deafness can be congenital, or from illness or injury. Deafness impacts our ability to speak. We learn to speak correctly by hearing others do so. We incorporate their pronunciation, inflexion, idiomatic expressions, cadence and soon, unconsciously, make them our own.

To a Twenty-first Century mindset, using spittle medicinally on a deaf person's tongue and ear is less than appealing. My wife, Diane, often teaches this healing account to elementary school children when it appears in the lectionary cycle. The younger boys' ears prick up and they listen intently when they hear that Jesus actually spit. Soon, they begin to slump in their seats, distort their faces, and moan and grown at its application. Adults in a parish setting usually exhibit a greater degree of self-discipline. In the First Century, saliva was popularly thought to have healing power. Jesus treated this deaf person in the manner his contemporaries expected.

Perhaps this is the key point we are to learn from this mission narrative. Jesus could have healed the man in any number of ways. He could have prayed to the Father. He could have spoken the healing into existence by divine command. He could have accomplished the healing in any one of a million different ways and they would all have been classified as a miracle. Instead, Jesus meets people where they are and with what they believe. This is the place where the work of salvation begins in each of our lives.

It is no different with the church. The first message of both John the Baptist and Jesus revealed throughout the Gospels is both simple and consistent. They preached and taught on the theme of repentance. It mirrors the image presented by the Old Testament prophets. As we read the Gospels, it is present in most of the discourses and illustrations. In Hebrew, the word for repentance is teshuvah. It means 'to turn around', to change direction from following one's own desire to following God's.

The secular Greek culture of the New Testament era related myths of what was necessary to please their gods. There were always monsters to be destroyed or items to be valiantly found and retrieved so that they would prove themselves worthy of favor by their local deity. These themes are cultural staples that continually reappear throughout history. There were classic romantic tales of knights rescuing damsels in distress. Movies such as The Wizard of OZ, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, to name but a few, embrace elements of an heroic quest. Similar themes abound in video games for our children and grandchildren. Invariably, there is a princess to be saved or a galaxy to be restored from the latest Darth Vader type.

Christianity is counter-cultural. It tacitly acknowledges the reality that there are very few heroes in real life. None can obtain acceptance with God by means of their own efforts and accomplishments. We cannot redeem ourselves in the eyes of God but the Good News proclaimed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that God has chosen to redeem us. This story is decidedly different from that of the prevailing culture. Revealed in both the New and Old Testaments is the God who loves his creation and works to redeem it. He covenants himself to humanity unilaterally. God is faithful and able to keep his promises to us far better than we can hope to keep our promises to Him.

Rather than relying upon ourselves to perform a feat worthy of God's love, God performed a feat worthy of our love. He has done for us that which we could not do for ourselves. We summarize these truths in the Comfortable Words that follow the Confession and Absolution at each Eucharist:

"So God loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. This is a true saying, and worthy of all men to be received, That Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; an he is the Propitiation for our sins."

The heroic work of redemption has been graciously done for us. Our work is to believe in God's provision and live lives that reflect the gratitude for what has been done for us.

We all have a different journey, a story unique to ourselves, all worked out through the sovereign work of the Holy Ghost. There are fits and starts in all relationships. The lessons this morning remind us that we are not only to turn to God but that he will meet us wherever and whenever we turn to him and he will take it from there.

The Jewish sages often taught by method of question and answer. They posed the question, "Where is God?" The answer is "Wherever you let him in."

Let us remember all that God has done, turn to him in faith, and leave no area of our lives off-limits to his work of transformation in us.