"Fulfilled in Your Hearing"
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from
God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
What
would it hurt? They’re clamoring for
one. They all know He can do it. He did a few in Capernaum, so why not in His
hometown among His friends and relatives?
They want to see a miracle but Jesus won’t do it. He has something else for them, something
better, something that produces faith… He’s there to preach.
Jesus
goes to church, to the synagogue, opens the scroll, and reads Isaiah 61, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has
anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim
liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty
those who are oppressed, to
proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”
He sits down, with all eyes upon Him.
You can just imagine it. He reads
the scroll, not as one who simply reads the words on the page, but as one who
inspired the words in the first place. “And he began to say to them, ‘Today this
Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’”
They marveled at His preaching.
They’d never heard anything like it before. The Scripture has been fulfilled in their
ears? But then the crowd turns as if
they’re thinking, “Wait a minute. Is He
saying that He’s the one who Isaiah was prophesying about? But this is Joseph’s kid. He’s the one who played tag in the street
with our children. We watched Him grow
up here in this very city. Is He
actually saying that He’s the anointed one, the one we’ve been long
expecting? Impossible!” The crowd quickly turns.
Jesus, knowing their thoughts,
responds, “Doubtless you will quote to
me this proverb, ‘Physician, heal yourself.’ What we have heard you did at
Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.”
Can you blame them? Wouldn’t
it be easy to have faith if Jesus just did a little miracle? Why can’t miracles happen all the time among
us Christians, then we could really bring them in. Why doesn’t Jesus empower us to heal the
sick, make the lame walk, raise the dead, turn water into wine, then we’d be
full every week! But that’s not how God
rules in His Kingdom. He rules by His
Word. His simple, plain-Jane Word.
The Old Adam, the sinful nature, is
a glory junkie. It’s attracted to the
flashy, the shiny, the spectacular, the charismatic. It loves miracles, but words? What can words do? Why not do a miracle or two and then everyone
would believe? Well, because miracles
don’t create faith, but God’s Word does.
Miracles can only confirm faith that’s already there.
The Nazareth synagogue had the Word. They had just heard the
prophetic Word spoken to them by the Word Incarnate. What more could they
possibly have needed? What more do we need than the Word in all its marvelous
forms? Oh, we think we need more. Remember, the old Adam is a glory junkie of
the first order. It loves those signs and wonders, which as Jesus Himself
reminds us, can even deceive the elect. Jesus knows. Yes, He did miracles for
the fringes, for those on the outskirts, for those dwelling in darkness, for
those who didn’t have Moses and the prophets. Yes, Jesus did miracles for His
fellow Israelites – healing the sick, cleansing the leprous, raising the dead.
But these were
pointers, signposts to something greater. Miracles aren’t an end in themselves,
and when they become that, they become a kind of idolatry, a false religion.
The greatest thing that could be said was said in the synagogue at Nazareth.
The Scripture had been fulfilled in the ears of the people. The Word of God had
hit its target. The Spirit of was seeking to create faith through their ears.
And so it is
for you. This is why you’re here. To the eye, there’s nothing flashy going on
here. There’s no emotional out bursts,
no making the lame walk, there’s no restoring sight to the blind. Here we get out of the way so that Christ can
speak and be heard. His Word of the
Gospel, here, rings out like a finely tuned bell. The Scriptures and fulfilled in your
hearing. “Faith comes by hearing, ” Paul
writes; ears are the organ of faith.
The Old Adam is
addicted to the flashy, but faith looks at what Jesus does on the cross and the
Old Adam passes over it. He dies on a cross.
For you. For your sins. It looks ordinary, it’s beyond reason, but
this Jesus who preaches in the midst of His towns people, the Son of God,
dies. For you. The greatest miracle that Jesus carries in
Himself the sins of the world, your sins and mine. He takes what the Old Adam sinfully desires
for itself and dies on a cross.
You have the Word, as surely as that synagogue in Nazareth that
day Jesus preached to them. You have the Word in your Baptism, God’s signature
seal upon you that you are His and He is yours. You have the Word in the word
of forgiveness, that absolving Word preached into your own ears, fulfilled in
your hearing. You have the Word of Christ in His Supper, speaking to you, “My
Body given for you; my Blood shed for you.” You have the Word in greater
richness and abundance than any generation before in the history of God’s
people. And it’s the singular evidence of our sinful condition and the old Adam
in us that we value God’s Word so little; that we don’t flock to hear and
receive, that we, like the Nazareth synagogue, would throw Jesus over a cliff
rather than deal with His Word.
Faith comes by hearing the Word. Your faith comes by your
hearing the Word of Jesus. And that Word is, here today for you, seeking its
fulfillment in your hearing. By the Word of Jesus, you are forgiven. By the
Word of Jesus, you are fed. By the Word of Jesus, your faith is created and
sustained. By the Word of Jesus, you have freedom from sin, from death, from
the devil, from the damning sentence of the Law. All in the Word of Jesus,
delivered to you, which, today is fulfilled in your hearing and your believing. Amen.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your
hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
