Ninth Sunday After Pentecost (B) 2018

+ In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti + Amen.

Text: Mark 6:56
Theme: Man On The Edge
Christ In The Centre


Dear friends in Christ Jesus,

Unbelief always leads one to the edge of disaster, but Christ always holds the faithful in the centre of God’s love. Sin pushes us to the brink. Forgiveness draws us to the middle. God is compassionate but He never indulges our sinful cravings. The task of faith is to distinguish between God’s blessings and His chastisements. God also disciplines those He loves. As sinners we often mistake God’s blessings for discipline and His chastisements for vengeance. Only in Christ can we understand that both His blessings and His chastisements are for our good. We can’t have our pardon and keep our vices too. The two are mutually contradictory. That’s exactly the struggle isn’t it?

Today we are told Jesus had mercy on the crowds who were drawn to Him. The evangelist informs us that Jesus had compassion on these people because they were like lost sheep. “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”1 And so what was His immediate response to aide them? He begins to teach them. This is remarkable. And what is the nature of His teaching? It wasn’t irrelevant, trivial or merely academic information. They needed guidance and direction. They were lost in a spiritual wilderness. Jesus catechized them in the way of the kingdom. He taught them the faith.

Teaching and salvation have always gone hand in hand. For when the Scriptures are taught it is not simply the mind that is enlightened. The heart is converted, and the will is transformed. The Holy Spirit teaches the truth of Christ and that creates faith. Thus, Jeremiah could describe the resurrected state of believers in this way, “‘No longer will a man teach his neighbour, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest,’ declares the Lord. ‘For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.’”2 In heaven teaching will be unnecessary and the forgiveness of sins will be obsolete. Sin does not exist where the risen and ascended Christ reigns in glory.

When the crowds catch up to Jesus again they come to Him for healing. Those who were sick needed to touch only the edge of His garment. They probably touched one of the four tassels sewn to the corners of His cloak- assuming Jesus dressed according to the Jewish custom handed down from Moses.3 You did not have to be intimate with Christ to benefit from His mercy. Even the weakest at the periphery of His ministry were not forsaken. “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.”4
And what exactly needs healing? Most urgently, the soul! The Bible says, “Your whole head is injured, your whole heart is afflicted. From the sole of your foot to the top of your head there is no soundness- only wounds and welts and open sores, not cleansed or bandaged or soothed with oil.”5 You cannot disconnect your emotional and physical well-being from your spiritual well-being. If your heart is grieving, your body will feel it. If your body is injured, your emotional state will be more anxious. Sin breaks down our constitutions. If we think there is no brokenness in our lives than we are living either in denial or ignorance- perhaps a combination of both.

Spiritual sickness is not necessarily psychological depression, anxiety disorder or low self-esteem-though these may be symptoms- at the core it involves the power of sin to break down peoples’ relationships. Firstly, with God, then also with others. Repentant hearts often still struggle with uncertainty and guilt. A spiritually sick person- and that includes us all- needs healing that comes with the forgiveness of sins! Mortal medicine cannot cure the immortal soul! But Christ sucks the poison from our souls and destroys it in His wounds.

Here the sacrament of Holy Communion has special meaning for us. It is medicine for the sin-sick soul. It is an antidote for the virulent falsehoods of the world. It lifts the repentant soul out of the darkness of guilt and despair. And even if the unbeliever should partake of it, the medicine doesn’t lose its potency. It then becomes an agent to make one’s condition (unrepentant sinfulness) more acute. Holy Communion is a foray into the holy presence of the Holy Trinity through the body of the Son. And to have interaction with God can never be a neutral event.

God is not neutral towards anything. He either avenges evil and condemns unrighteousness, or He extends grace, mercy and love. There is no middle ground. He loves His only begotten Son and through Christ is gracious to us. But in His Son He also condemns sin and punishes it. These truths are the crux of the atonement. God is not content to be idle. That does not mean that God is impatient. God is inexplicably patient. But patience is not idleness, nor is it neutrality. His patience is a compassionate forbearance so that sinners may know a gracious God. The Scripture says that “God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things…by making peace through His blood, shed on the cross.”6 So apathy is not the same thing as peace and indifference is not the same thing as reconciliation.

Dear friends, that God will bring you to a complete healing and restoration in body and soul is part of the anticipation of perfect glory. It will happen. But, because we cannot comprehend this manner of wellness the Bible more often describes heaven by what will be absent. “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.”7 You may have been on the edge of collapse, the brink of despair or the fringe of chaos. You may feel your nerves are balanced on a knife’s edge or your sanity hangs by a thread. You may think your place in God’s kingdom is too far outside the borders to be significant. But remember, all who touched even the edge of His cloak were healed. Where were they at that moment?

Jesus Christ takes you to the centre of God’s eternal love. None of His baptized, redeemed, and forgiven children are relegated to some far-off corner of the kingdom. All are held equally in the Father’s embrace. All bask fully in the Spirit’s light. At the centre of Eden’s Garden was the tree of life.8 At the centre of heaven’s throne is the Lamb who was slain.9 The two have become one and in that union, you have eternal healing. His tree of death is your tree of life. His Calvary opens your Paradise. Amen.

+ In nomine Jesu +

Ninth Sunday After Pentecost
22 July 2018 (19 July 2009)
Reverend Darrin L. Kohrt

1 Isaiah 53:6
2 Jeremiah 31:34
3 See Deuteronomy 22:12
4 Matthew 9:12
5 Isaiah 1:5-6
6 Colossians 1:19-20
7 Revelation 21:4
8 See Genesis 2:9
9 See Revelation 5:6