240630 Sermon on God working contrary to expectations (Pentecost 6) June 30, 2024

Rev. Michael Holmen's Sermons

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Jesus said, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”

A person might feel jealous hearing our Gospel reading today. There was a lot of healing. Jesus was told about Jairus’s little girl who was extremely sick. While he was on his way to heal her, a woman who had a flow of blood was healed. By the time that Jesus got to the house the little girl had died, and Jesus raised her from the dead. Jesus showed his great powers of healing. Some of you might like some healing for yourself, or for someone you know and love. Why can’t Jesus heal some more?

In my sermon last week I spoke of fighting or wrestling with God. Our reason is skeptical of there being any benefit for ourselves from engaging in this. How could we ever win? God is much stronger than us. And in a way our reason is correct. In the examples of the fighters and the wrestlers with God that I spoke about with you last week, the people didn’t come out of the contest stronger. They came out weaker. But, as Paul says, “When I am weak, then I am strong.” The bones that God has broken rejoice. These fighters were humbled, but they believed that God would exalt them. They came into the fight with an idea of what they would like God to do for them, they came out the other end with God having done something that was different from what they expected, but also something that was more.

What I’ve just described is what some people have called “the theology of the cross.” The cross that is being referred to is Jesus’s cross as well as our cross as Christians that Jesus talks about when he says, “If you want to be my disciple, then take up your cross and follow me.” The term “theology of the cross” is a way to summarize the strange way that God works.

Think of how God worked when the Father sent his Son to be the Christ. You might expect God to have sent him with great power and glory. Jesus is God after all. But you know what God does. He causes Jesus to be born in a stable. Away in a manger, no crib for a bed. Those are humbler circumstandes than you were born into. Even if you were born in a house, that’s nothing compared to Jesus’s birth. And the humility continued. He gave and gave.

Finally the Father had his Son nailed to the cross. To all outward appearances, from the perspective of reason, it was no longer possible to believe in this man was God’s Christ. It looked like it was impossible that he could be or remain king. He just became weaker and weaker until he died.

We, of course, know that God was accomplishing the most glorious and beautiful things through the bloody, gory cross. We know that God made peace between himself and sinners. Although God humbled Jesus to the point of death, even death on the cross, God has raised him from the dead. God has highly exalted Jesus so that his name is above every name. At the name of Jesus every knee will bow in heaven, and on earth, and those under the earth. Jesus Christ is Lord!

But who’d have thought it while seeing him gasping and crying out from the cross? Nobody! Not even his disciples could continue to believe in him. They thought it was all over and done with. Thomas, one of the twelve, wouldn’t even take his fellow disciples’ word for it. He was never going to believe in Jesus again unless he saw the marks and felt the wounds. So it goes. Such is the power of reason. Reason rises up against what God says and does, declaring him to be unacceptable.

Reason can strike out at the cross—the very core of our faith. To my mind there is no more direct way to disagree with Christianity than to say that what God did to Jesus was wrong. Perhaps you’ve heard this referred to as “divine child abuse.” It can have a ring of truth to it. Why did God do it like that? Why didn’t God just snap his fingers and make everything all better? Maybe you’ve wondered that before. If we were God we wouldn’t use that nasty cross.

So it is that reason and faith go their separate ways. Reason says that the cross is crude, ugly, unnecessary. Faith accepts and loves the cross because faith trusts in the God who put Jesus on that cross. Faith waits for the salvation that God has promised even if that salvation may tarry for a time.

Now let’s go back to the thought with which I began. I mentioned how some of you might be jealous upon hearing how Jesus did all this healing. You or someone you love needs healing. Our reason can be the enemy to our faith here. Our reason might ask, “Why doesn’t Jesus heal right here, right now, in the way that I want him to?” What’s his problem? Why doesn’t he do what I want?

To be a human being means that we have our reason. It is not strange that our reason should act this way. What makes a Christian a Christian, however, is believing that Jesus Christ is Lord. Jesus Christ is Lord with all his forgiveness. Jesus Christ is Lord with all his resurrected power and glory. Jesus Christ is Lord with his cross, with his testing, with his waiting, with his wrestling, with his humbling, with his exalting. Jesus is who Jesus is. We can’t pull him apart and take those things that we like best about him and dump the rest in the garbage.

Maybe one of the things that you don’t really like about Jesus is that he hasn’t healed you, or that he hasn’t healed someone that you love. If you could, you’d dump that part of him into the garbage. Well, my advice is that if you feel that way, then you should say that to him! We talked about this last week as well. Your prayers don’t need to be polite. God already knows how you feel, so you might as well be honest about it. More prayers are better, not less. Tell him what you want. God will hear your prayer.

However—and this is a big however—he might not answer your prayers the way you want or expect. He might not answer your prayers the way that you would want to require of him. “If I’m going to pray to you, then you better do what I want.”

This is true even in the cases of healing that we heard about in our Gospel reading. I doubt very much that that woman with the flow of blood prayed that she would suffer from her condition for twelve years, that she would spend all her money on doctors, that she would be the victim of medical malpractice. When she touched the hem of Jesus’s robe, that was when the time was right.

I doubt that the father and mother of that sick little girl prayed that they wouldn’t get their request to Jesus on time, that Jesus wouldn’t get there in time, and that their little girl would die. They didn’t pray that their little girl would lose all the color in her cheeks so that mother and father would cry rivers of tears. I’m sure they prayed, “O God! Save our daughter!” And he did—just not in the way that they were expecting.

Nevertheless, at the end of all of this, despite their tears and sorrows, I am sure that all of these people whom Jesus blessed were better off than if they had been healed in the way that they were expecting. God does better to us that we would ever do for ourselves. But to believe that requires faith. Our reason might have all kinds of things to say to the contrary.

We can easily apply this to ourselves and our desires. All of us have things we want from God. We should make our requests known to him, firmly believing that he will answer our prayers. If, for no other reason, we should be confident because we know that God has given us Jesus. Jesus is God’s most precious treasure. If God has given us Jesus, then he has to give us every good thing.

But here’s the thing: We don’t know how he will do it. We don’t know if it will take twelve years. We don’t know if we will lose all our money. We don’t know if we or that person you love will have to die first before the healing will take place. But it will take place. And it will be glorious. You will be better off on the other end than if God would do everything exactly the way you want him to do. But to believe that takes faith. May God grant you such faith! Amen.

Jesus said, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”