Perhaps you’ve noticed that our list of hurting and infirm members is growing longer. There are a number of names that have been included in our corporate prayers for years, as well as some which have only been recently added. But this list isn’t exhaustive. There are several people in our congregation who are suffering silently, who, for whatever reason, want to keep their suffering to themselves and don’t want their names to be included in such a list. And having been here for almost ten years now, it’s sad for me (not to mention you!) to see members who have been so active in the past now deteriorating and living what may turn out to be their final days before the Lord takes them home.
Observing this suffering, we might be tempted to lose hope. After all, we pray for these people on a weekly basis. Some of them recover, but others do not. Even those who do recover will eventually get sick again, joining the rest of us, who will someday deteriorate and die ourselves. Even those whom Jesus healed and raised from the dead during His earthly ministry all eventually died and have been in their graves now for thousands of years. So, what is the point of hearing about all these healings that Jesus performed, if He merely postponed the inevitable for a little while?
We have to recognize, first of all, that these sufferings have a cause, and that cause is our sin. The Apostle Paul writes that the wages of sin is death. Ultimately, all suffering is a precursor to death. All sickness, disease, and infirmity are little reminders that death is on its way; they are death having its way with us even now. And this is just what God had warned Adam and Eve of in the beginning when He told them not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Not only did they die spiritually when they ate of that fruit, but from that time on their bodies began to age and decay until they eventually died. And we have been infected with that same disease. Again, as Paul writes, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, ...so death spread to all men because all sinned...”
According to God’s Word, then, the suffering and death that we experience in this life is justly deserved and is the consequence of our rebellion against God. The man with the withered hand in today’s Gospel text suffered the consequences of sin, just like you and I do. His suffering proves that he was a sinner, just like our suffering proves that we are sinners as well. Jesus would have been justified in leaving this man alone to suffer his affliction for the rest of his life until death finally took him. But Jesus didn’t do that. Instead, He had compassion on the man and healed him of his infirmity. And He did this on the Sabbath.
The fact that Jesus healed this man on the Sabbath, or the seventh day of the week, is very significant, because the Sabbath had been instituted by God in the O.T., in order that His people might be able to rest from their labors and come and hear His Word proclaimed to them at His temple. The Sabbath was the day of worship for the Israelites. Like our Sunday, it was the day when they not only enjoyed rest from physical work, but they also enjoyed the rest that God gave them from their sins, when He lifted that burden from their shoulders and laid it upon the animals that were sacrificed on His altar. In effect, the people were receiving God’s healing for the disease of sin from which they suffered. The antidote was His Word, given out at His temple.
Now, Jesus here enters into a synagogue, a local place of worship where the Word of God would have been proclaimed on the Sabbath, and He heals this man with the withered hand. What is He teaching by this? He’s showing that He, the Word of God in the flesh, is the antidote for sin and its consequences. The fact that He could heal the man of his affliction with His Word shows that He had the power not only to take care of the wages of sin, but their source as well. And so, the Sabbath day was the perfect day for Jesus to perform such a healing. It was the day when the man was not only freed from his physical deformity but also from the thing that had caused it - sin.
The religious rulers, however, didn’t see it this way. Justifying their opposition to Jesus they tried to use God’s commandment in the O.T. against God Himself, maintaining that it went against the Law to do any kind of work on the Sabbath. Because they considered healing somebody to be work, Jesus was therefore desecrating the Sabbath, a sin that was punishable by death in the O.T. So, here these Pharisees were, trying to tell God what He could and could not do based on His own Law! Not only that, but they were taking a gift of God and turning it into a burden instead. The Sabbath had been a day which God instituted in order to apply His healing Word of forgiveness to His people, relieving them of the burden of sin. But while insisting that this day was to be a day of total rest, a day on which not even God was allowed to work, these religious leaders actually turned its observance into a work. Instead of the Sabbath serving man, as God had intended it do, man ended up serving the Sabbath.
But by doing this, these Jewish leaders were hindering the man from receiving the healing that God wanted to give him. And by trying to keep Jesus from doing good to this man and saving his life, they were actually doing him harm and killing him, the very opposite of what God intended to work through the Sabbath. But Jesus would not allow them to keep Him from doing what He had come to do, and that was to deliver the healing for sin and its wages through the application of His Word. And this is just what He did for this man, whose hand He not only healed, but also his heart.
And that’s also what He promises to do for you and me and for all our brothers and sisters who are suffering the effects of sin in their bodies. Already, here in this place on our Sabbath day, where we’re gathered around the Word, Baptism, and the Holy Supper, the antidote for sin, suffering, and death is being applied to you, as you hear God’s words of forgiveness spoken to you on account of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for your sins. It’s because Jesus took the suffering and death that sinners deserve upon Himself, that God’s healing words can be spoken to you. Though not a sinner Himself, Jesus allowed Himself to become infected with your sin, so that He might experience the suffering and death you deserve in your place, in order that through that suffering and death He might overcome it with the shedding of His blood and His resurrection from the dead. With His blood your sins were paid for, and with His resurrection the death that is the wages of sin has been overcome. And so Paul, citing the O.T., writes, “’Death is swallowed up in victory.’ ‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the Law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The healings that Jesus performed, then, during His earthly ministry are little foretastes of the final healing of all harms to come at the resurrection of the dead when He returns for us. That will be an age when not only with there be no more sickness or death, but also one in which there will be no more demonic activity. St. Mark records in today’s text that not only was Jesus healing people of their physical ailments, but also that the demons were subject to Him. The demons know who Jesus is, and they know that He has the power to cast them into hell, which is where He is going to send them on the Last Day, along with the devil and all who are in league with him. But even over these Jesus has triumphed now through His cross, by which He has disarmed them and put them to open shame, as Paul writes.
So now, when we think about those among us who are suffering and dying, we have hope, a sure hope, that clings to Christ our Healer, who delivers us from sin, death, and the power of the devil by way of the Word of His cross. He who healed so many of their diseases and raised the dead when He walked this earth many years ago still applies His healing to you today as we gather together around His Word and Sacraments to enter into His rest. And even if we and our brothers and sisters in Christ should die before He returns, we will enter into that eternal rest in heaven that He promises to all who believe in Him. In the meantime, our bodies will rest in the ground until our souls are reunited with them on the Last Day and we are raised from the dead to live with our Lord face to face in the new heavens and the new earth forever.
There’s a hymn in our new hymnals entitled “This Body in the Grave We Lay.” It’s verses give us hope in the face of suffering and death by confessing what the Lord’s Word says about those who die in the Lord. It goes:
This body in the grave we lay, There to await that solemn day, When God Himself shall bid it rise, To mount triumphant to the skies.
And so to earth we now entrust, What came from dust and turns to dust, And from the dust shall rise that day, In glorious triumph over decay.
The soul forever lives with God, Who freely hath His grace bestowed, And through His Son redeemed it here, From every sin, from every fear.
All trials and all griefs are past, A blessed end has come at last. Christ’s yoke was borne with ready will; Who dieth thus is living still.
We have no cause to mourn or weep; Securely shall this body sleep, Till Christ Himself shall death destroy, And raise the blessed dead to joy.
Amen.