Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝

When Jesus was baptized, the Father’s voice declared, You are my Son, whom I love. With You I am well pleased. At this point all the world began to find out that the Son of God who came in human flesh to bear the sin of the world, now at last got to work to save us. Long ago the prophet Jeremiah recorded that God’s plans and tender love were not reserved only for Jesus but for you, for all of us, long before He formed us and gave us life in the womb. Our Lord and Savior arrived on the scene in long ago and far away Galilee to say, Remember what the prophets for centuries have been saying about a Messiah? Here I am, to proclaim good news to you and to heal you.

Today, St. Luke records for us here in this portion of his Gospel a summary of all the preaching and healing that Jesus did during His Ministry. This is the same preaching and healing ministry which would continue in the work of the Apostles, and which continues also to this very day – here in this place, in fact, and wherever the Word of God is purely preached and taught, and the Sacraments are rightly administered according to Christ’s institution. I’ll say it again: Jesus’ Words and works back then are the same that He continues to do even now for you here in this place. He gave three important points as we consider what it is we are doing when we gather to hear God’s Word and receive from this Altar the soothing, healing medicine of immortality which is given and poured out for us – the very body and blood of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

The first thing we need to look at is the Divine necessity of the preaching and healing ministry of Jesus. What I mean by that is, it was just as necessary that our Lord preach and heal as it was that He needed to go to the cross, suffer, die and rise from the dead. He emphasized this Himself on the day of His Ascension when He commissioned His Apostles to go into all the world and make disciples – first by Baptizing, and then teach these new disciples everything Jesus Himself had taught. And this was most certainly not necessary for God’s benefit, or to help Him do something as if He couldn’t do it without you, but rather it was for you and for your salvation – so that you might receive the forgiveness of your sins and be delivered from sin, death and the devil. This is God’s good and gracious will, for apart from this salvation – which is to say, apart from this preaching and healing of Jesus – you and I would be lost forever in our sin, subject to eternal death and the devil, and doomed to spend eternity in hell. God would then only be joking with us or leading us on when He said, Before I formed you in the womb I knew you. Without Jesus, those words would be absolutely worthless to us.

Think about the man who was possessed by an unclean spirit, yet still he was there, evidently there to worship at the synagogue. If Jesus had never spoken to him, what use would it have been for him to set foot in that sacred place? He would not have been healed. And what about Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, who was possessed by a fever that was threatening to take her life? Would we not consider her to be a member of the Church because of her connection to Peter and Jesus? At least the Scriptures don’t ever say that she didn’t believe.

And so the same thing is true for you. Not only was it necessary for our Lord Christ to purchase and obtain the gift of salvation for you by His sacrificial death on the cross, but it was just as necessary that He wrap up that gift and hand it out to you. What Christ Jesus, the beloved Son of God, accomplished in His own flesh, He bestows upon His creation through His created gifts, in order that He might thereby recreate you and all creatures as a new creation in His Resurrection from the dead – all of which is given to you, and is accomplished for you, by the preaching of Jesus and the healing power of His body and blood.

Now at this point if we were able to ask the question of the crowds in this Gospel: “What is this Word,” and also: “How can this be?” – it sounds like the familiar “What Does This Mean” from the Catechism – that would bring us to the second point: namely, the Divine authority of the preaching and healing of Christ Jesus. We could of course say that Jesus has the authority by Divine right as the almighty, eternal Son of the living God. To be sure, even the demons recognize and acknowledge this with fear and trembling. Yet for us, that is a good thing. It’s not only because Jesus is the Almighty Son of God, for that alone would make us tremble, too. For us sinners, we need to hear that Jesus is the Almighty Son of God, sent to suffer in our place to earn our complete forgiveness. For apart from His Cross, His Divine authority would have to bring upon all of us nothing other than His Law, His wrath and His hot condemnation – and all without forgiveness, salvation, or any hope at all!

But thanks be to God for the Divine authority Jesus has been given as the Son of Man – that is to say, as the true God who has also become true Man for us men and for our salvation – He voluntarily took upon Himself the past, present and future sins of the entire world and borne them in His own body to the Cross – He has been vindicated in His Resurrection from the dead, and appointed as Judge of all mankind – but at the same time has also been endowed by our Heavenly Father with the authority to forgive sinners and give them eternal life. Life that began and was already infected with sin right from the womb now has been restored and the precious promise has come true.

It is with that Divine authority to forgive sins and give life in a place of death, that Jesus preaches the Gospel, heals people so that their sin doesn’t destroy them, and drives out both demons and fevers alike. And that authority is not just locked up in ancient Bible history, far away from us today. No, it’s with this very same authority He received from His Father that Jesus sent His holy Apostles – and that He continues to this very day to call and send His ministers out into this world to carry on what He began during His time here among us.

And that is the third point, what Jesus actually did and said, as we hear it in the Gospels for which we stand and praise Him singing our Alleluias. The modern-day world doesn’t want to admit that any of these events happened. That God created the world and then sent Jesus to rescue it and bring forgiveness. None of that will accomplish what sinful people want to do with their self-centered, works-oriented agenda. According to Jesus Himself – His preaching and healing is the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. And what I mean when I say the Gospel of the Kingdom of God is His reign and work by His grace, in our hearts through faith of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who has rescued us from the tyranny of the devil, thereby making us citizens of His heavenly Kingdom.

The preaching and healing of Jesus is what hands out these gifts and brings sinners into this Kingdom of God. Today you hear Jesus’ Words, and the miracle is, you are receiving Christ Himself – along with all His gifts and benefits. This is where Christ Jesus enters into you and Satan is cast out of you – and where God’s good creation is once and for all resurrected, restored and renewed. This is your Creator working right now in your midst to raise and restore creation to the perfect goodness that it had before the fall. He is coming through on the promise He made to you before you were the size of a single cell. Before you were formed in the womb, I knew you.

Today your hearing the Word is not reminding you or making you imagine what it would have been like if you were there listening to Jesus. No, that very same forgiveness and healing touch is right here. Both your soul and your body stand here today to be healed by the touch of His divine, life-giving flesh which comes to you not only by hearing, but also through water, bread and wine – even as the Scriptures teach all over. Thus, when you hear the Minister of the Word preaching His Gospel and eat Christ’s Body and Blood here in this place, and wherever God ordains it, He heals you and all people of their sins, and bestows eternal life and salvation just like He did when He first got to work, beginning His visible ministry.

You have been gathered together in this New Testament “synagogue” of the Christian Church, and on this holy “Sabbath Day” that you know as the Divine Service. Yes, odd as it may sound, Yucaipa turns out to be one of those “other cities” to which Jesus was also divinely sent to preach the Kingdom of God! It happened when He called a pastor to preach and bestow gifts in His name and stead, so that by His Divine authority the loving approval of the Heavenly Father might be preached into your ears and heart, and you might thereby be healed of the diseases of your soul with the precious medicine of immortality received here, at this Altar.

God grant you His grace, His Holy, precious Word, and the working of the Holy Spirit, so that you, too, would have the same zeal to hear and receive Christ’s preaching and healing just as the crowds did long ago, that you would cling to Jesus by faith in His Word, and that you would never push Him away from you. May this report of Him as our only Lord and Savior be spread far and wide from this place by means of your mouths, even “into every locality in this surrounding district,” so that all who are sick with sin and death may also be brought to Him and be healed.

In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Readings:
Jer. 1:4–10; 17–19 Before I formed you in the womb I knew you
Psalm 71:1–11 You are my rock and my fortress.
1 Cor. 12:31b—13:13 and yet I show you a more excellent way
Luke 4:31–44 at the synagogue in Capernaum