Trinity
24
Mt
9:18-26
11/10/24
Something
new is here. That is what Jesus has just been saying. Our text begins with the words, “While he was
saying these things to them.” This indicates to us that the events in our text are
preceded by a conversation.
In the prior section of the Gospel,
the disciples of John the Baptist came to Jesus and asked, “Why do we
and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” Fasting was a common practice in Judaism, so
the fact that Jesus’ disciples were not fasting stood out in the culture.
We learn that Jesus said to them, “Can
the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days
will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will
fast.” Our Lord describes himself as the
bridegroom. In the Old Testament, Yahweh
was described as the bridegroom to the nation of Israel. Yet here, Jesus says that he is the
bridegroom. He is in the place of Yahweh. He announces that something
completely new was present.
Something new was present, and this
meant you couldn’t take Jesus and try to make him fit into the patterns of
religion that already existed. Our Lord
said, “No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch
tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put
into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and
the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both
are preserved.” In Jesus, something new
was present as God was at work in their midst.
We see this for as he was saying
these things a ruler came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter
has just died, but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” We learn from Mark’s Gospel that this man was
a ruler of the synagogue. He was a
respected individual in the community. However, his daughter had died. The reports about Jesus’ healing ministry had
spread far and wide. So he came to Jesus
and knelt before him. He asked our Lord
to come and lay his hand on the girl. He
had faith that if Jesus did this, the girl would live.
Jesus rose and followed the man,
accompanied by the disciples. However,
there was another person present in need of help. She too had come with the faith that Jesus
could help her. We learn that there was
a woman who had suffered a discharge of blood for twelve years. This chronic problem not only threatened her
health, but also rendered her ritually unclean.
The woman had such great faith in
Jesus’ power that she came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment
as she told herself, “If I only touch his garment, I will be made well.” Our Lord knew what the woman had done. He turned and said to her, “Take heart,
daughter; your faith has made you well.” And the woman was instantly healed.
The event with the woman had not
changed Jesus’ destination. He came to
the ruler’s house and found that the rituals of mourning were already underway.
There were flute players and a crowed making a commotion as they lamented the
death of the girl.
However, Jesus put an end to all
this. He said, “Go away, for the
girl is not dead but sleeping.”
Those present began to laugh at Jesus.
His statement was absurd. The girl was most certainly dead. The people
of the first century world lived at a time of much higher mortality rates.
Death – and the death of those we would consider to be young – was a common
part of life. There were no hospitals,
so when people died, they died at home. Death was a regular part life, and
people knew exactly what it looked like.
There was no doubt that the girl was dead.
However, when the crowd had been put
outside, Jesus went in to where the girl was.
He took her by the hand, and the girl arose. Jesus had raised her from the dead. The crowd had laughed at Jesus’ statement
that the girl was sleeping. Now, the
report about Jesus’ miracle went through all that area.
By healing the woman and raising the
girl from the dead, Jesus demonstrated that something new was here. Our Lord
began his ministry by proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand.” When he cast out demons and was
accused by the Pharisees of being able to do this because he was in league with
Satan, Jesus said, “But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out
demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.”
Our Lord declared that in his person
the kingdom of God – the reign of God was present. This was true because Jesus was more than
just a man. Just as Yahweh the God of
Israel was described as a bridegroom, Jesus said that he was the bridegroom. He could describe himself as playing the same
role as Yahweh, because he was God. The
angel had told Joseph that the child conceived in Mary was from the Holy
Spirit. He was Immanuel – God with us.
In Jesus, the saving reign of God –
God’s end time action – was present. It
was present in the One who was true God and true man. We have two miracles in our text, and they
both involve touch. The ruler
came to Jesus, and asked the Lord to touch his dead daughter. He said, “come and lay your hand on her.” The woman said to herself, “If I only touch
his garment, I will be made well.”
According to the Law of Moses,
touching the woman with a flow of blood and touching the dead girl would make a
person ritually unclean. But in Jesus,
something new was present. He was not
bound by the old rules. He was the
sinless Son of God who could not be made unclean. Instead, in him was the power of life that
brought healing to the woman and a return to life for the girl.
Our Gospel lesson is a “two for one”
this morning. Our one text contains two
miracles. The miracles of Jesus were a
crucial part of his ministry. They
demonstrated that in Jesus the reign of God was present. Matthew tells us in the previous chapter: “That
evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast
out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick. This was to
fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: ‘He took our illnesses and
bore our diseases.’”
Matthew quotes from Isaiah chapter
53. This is the chapter that talks about
the suffering Servant. We learn that
Jesus’ healing ministry was part of his greater work to provide the answer to
sin. Scripture teaches us that sin is
the root cause of all that is wrong in our lives. Sin causes death. Because of our fallen state – our life that
is conceived in sin – we are always in the process of dying. Our illnesses – both great and small – bear
witness to this fact.
Jesus came to overcome sin and all
that it causes. We see this in his
miracles as he brings healing and relief.
But the Son of God had entered into the world to provide the final and
ultimate answer to sin. At his baptism,
Jesus took on the role of the Servant of the Lord. He came to fulfill Isaiah’s words, “But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes
we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned--every
one--to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
Jesus Christ died on the cross in
order to receive God’s judgment against our sin. By his death he won forgiveness for us. He
carried out the Father’s will in order to give us salvation. As Paul says in our epistle lesson, “He has
delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the
kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of
sins.”
Death is the final bodily result of
sin. And so Jesus passed through death
in order to defeat it. On the third day,
God raised Jesus from the dead. Because
Jesus has risen from the dead, we will too.
The risen and ascended Lord will return on the Last Day in order to
raise us up with bodies that can never die again.
When Jesus arrived at the ruler’s
house where the dead girl was, he said to the mourners, “Go away, for the
girl is not dead but sleeping.”
Then he awakened her back into life as he raised her up. Scripture describes death as “sleep.” It does so for the simple fact that sleep is not
permanent. People who fall asleep,
wake up. In the same way, people who die
will live again. They will not remain
dead. Instead on the Last Day the risen
Lord will return in glory and will give us a share in his resurrection.
In our text we see Jesus heal the
woman. We hear about many miracles in
the Gospels as Jesus heals people. But Jesus didn’t heal everyone who was sick
in first century Palestine. His miracles
were a demonstration of who he was, and what he had come to do through his
death and resurrection.
In our own day as we experience
sickness, we pray to the Lord for healing.
Sometimes he answers our prayers in the way we hope. At other times he does not and we must bear
the affliction, or even find that it threatens to bring death. Yet in our Lord’s resurrection we have the
guarantee that he will provide each of us with complete healing. He will do it on the Last Day when he raises
and transforms our bodies to be like his own.
This means that our life as God’s
children is one of faith. In our Gospel
lesson, the woman is identified as an example of faith. She approached Jesus in the confidence that
he could heal her. She had faith in his power and thought “If I only touch his
garment, I will be made well.” When
Jesus saw her, he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.”
We are called to live by faith in
Jesus Christ. We believe and trust that
Jesus Christ died on the cross for us and rose from the dead. We believe in our Lord’s love and care during
this life no matter what happens, because we know what the Lord has already
done for us. And we believe that Jesus
will bring us the final rescue and healing of the Last Day.
In our text, both the woman and the
father had faith in Jesus’ touch. Our
risen Lord may be ascended, but Jesus has not left us without his bodily
presence – his touch. He continues to
give it to us in the Sacrament of the Altar.
Here the true body and blood of the risen Lord touch our mouth. We eat and drink his body and blood as we
receive the forgiveness he won on the cross.
Through this gift the Spirit of God strengthens us in faith. He nourishes the new man in us. And as we receive the body and blood of the
risen Lord into our bodies we have the pledge that our bodies too will know the
complete healing of the resurrection on the Last Day.
Something new had arrived in
Jesus. The incarnate Son of God was in
the world bringing the reign of God. His
miracles pointed to the great miracle of his death on the cross and
resurrection from the dead by which he has won forgiveness for us and defeated
death. Now we believe in the crucified
and risen Lord for the forgiveness of sins.
And we have faith that the Lord will return and raise our bodies so that
they never know illness or death again.
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