Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Amen.

           Text: II Corinthians 4:13 – 5:1, but especially these words –

 It is written: “I believed; therefore I have spoken.” With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence…Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Dear Friends in Christ Jesus:

 “’It is written: ‘I believed; therefore I have spoken.’ With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak…” What do you believe? In whom do you believe? What would you give up everything – including your own life – for? The answer to those questions, St. Paul says here, become clear when you look at what you talk about.

 What do you talk about with your family, with your friends, neighbors and people you associate with? What did you talk about at home this morning or when you first greeted your brothers and sisters in Christ here at church? The weather? Your job? Your family? Your golf game? The government? Friends? Sports? Politics? Fashions? Your vacation? Or Jesus Christ as Lord of all? What you talk about is what you believe in, says the apostle Paul.

 For St. Paul held to one thing above everything else. I’m sure he talked about the weather the night his ship was caught in a storm and was in danger of sinking. But he also talked to, and about, his Lord. He probably talked about jobs, fashions, the government, and other things of interest, at various times. But most of all he talked and wrote about Jesus Christ. Because he believed in Him. He really believed that Jesus was Lord. And he believed it so firmly that he gave up everything for him. And he did that because in Jesus Christ he found everything he’d been looking for – the forgiveness of sins, the power and presence of God, the entire purpose for his very existence.

 Because he knew and talked of a living Lord worth giving up everything for, there was excitement and life wherever he went. There were healings, signs, and wonders. There was the sense of the presence of the living God. And people who were sick or troubled or dying came because they found something real there.

 It was the same with Jesus’ ministry – only more so. The Holy Gospel for today tells us – “Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat.” Why? The crowd came not to hear someone talk about a budget or about how to organize to drive out the Romans, or about the weather, or their golf game, or even to give a talk about God. They came because Christ spoke with authority. They came because they knew He knew what He was talking about. They came because they knew He could heal them. They came to Him finally, again, because in Him they found something real. We hear and read a fair amount today about the crisis within the institutional church. People are not really flocking in. Few churches are growing. Most barely stay afloat. A few sink. And we hear many explanations for the crisis. We live in a postChristian era, they say; we live in a day so saturated with materialism, secularism, and science that people cannot hear the Word of God. And so on. But if I hear this word rightly, God would disagree. He would say that if there is a crisis, it is a crisis of faith, of your faith and mine. Because what we believe, we speak. And if we’re speaking God’s Word, as Jesus and St. Paul and many others did, people will come just as they did when our Lord and Paul walked upon the earth.

Not that such speaking is always easy. St. Paul speaks of “outwardly…wasting away,” which is a rather indirect way of describing his life as one of suffering and persecution. That was the story of his life, beginning almost immediately in Damascus and never really changing. You know the long list of sufferings in the 11th chapter of this letter. And the tradition is that he was finally beheaded for his speaking.

It was the same for Jesus. The incident referred to in the Gospel reading this morning happened fairly early in his public ministry. His own family thought he was “out of his mind.” The people officially in charge of religion accused Him of being connected with Satan himself. And you know about the end of His life.

Which is all very strange! Because Paul’s purpose – and surely Christ’s purpose – was in the words of the text – “so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.” Don’t you think people would want that? To feel so great that they couldn’t help but give thanks? To receive grace? For grace is the amazing nature of God – that even when we’re hurting and broken and running as fast as we can to get away from God, He still reaches out to heal us. That’s why Christ came! That’s why the apostle Paul spoke in Jesus’ name. And yet, strangely, even though people flocked to hear Christ, many ended up hating Him. 

And our Lord said we should expect the same.

Imagine! If you found a cure for cancer, which might give people an extra 20, 30, or 40 years of life, you could name your price. People would literally come from the ends of the earth and give you everything they had. But if you tell them about Jesus Christ and His cure, which actually erases death forever, many of them are going to hate you.

The Old Testament Lesson tells you why. Because the Word of God uncovers the sin and nakedness of our souls which we so carefully try to hide. And when that Word gets too close to those tender areas in our lives, we try to defend ourselves, either as in the Old Testament Lesson by blaming someone else – our spouse, our parents, the environment, God, anything…or by turning on the bearer of that Word.

But St. Paul proclaimed it anyway, as have countless numbers since then. Why? Because they knew it was life. Because Paul and all the others knew that in Jesus they had found everything. That’s what we need as well. I know I do. And we need it, not just to find something to talk about or to witness to or to see others come to hear. We need healing ourselves. We need to find that still today Jesus is alive and through His promised Spirit is still giving us everything.

You see, when you know He is alive and can give you everything, you will believe in Him. You will trust in Him. You will be filled with Him and, like St. Paul, you will speak because you believe. Like Peter and John, you’ll find yourself saying to those who might not approve of what you’re saying, “You may not like this, but I simply must talk about what I have seen and heard.” And so we have come full circle. We believe and so we speak. We talk about what we believe in.

But there’s one last very important thing. How do you believe? We need to yet hear St. Paul’s beautiful and simple description of the source of his faith and life. He writes – “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” Now on the face of it, that’s the most logical, the clearest word you’ll ever hear. Don’t look to and trust what won’t last very long – which happens to be everything you can see. Good sense? Certainly. If it doesn’t last, it is a poor place to fix your hopes or to look for meaning.

And what are those things you can see? Anything and everything. Look around you right now. What of anything you can see will be here a hundred years from now? Us? This building? Our cars in the parking lot? None of them! And yet, they can seem so important. People. When you’re around them, they loom so big. “What will they think of me; will they like me?” we ask. But where will they be in a hundred years?

So the first secret of faith – of being whole, of finding what you’re looking for and what you’d give your life for – is not to look at what you can see. Forget it. Leave it behind. But there’s a second thing that really makes the first possible. And that’s to look at what you can’t see. For the apostle Paul that was indeed Jesus Christ. Because it was when Jesus Christ revealed Himself to Paul on the road to Damascus that the apostle’s life began. And so it is for us. It’s in Jesus Christ and only in Him that there is life.

Because, you see, Jesus Christ is the eternal God who became your brother. He loved you so much that He said to the Father – “I’ll become responsible for their sins and I’ll do battle with all their enemies so that they can be free to belong only to You.” And that’s exactly what He did! He took our place to shed His blood and die for us and for our sins. He did battle with our every enemy so that we might be set free. And He rose again as the One who destroyed every enemy, including death – to show us His victory and to share it with us. He lives today to give us everything!

We need to look at Him as that unseen One – see Him as the One for us. And we need to turn our eyes from everything we can see. We need to repent. That’s what it means to repent – to change your direction, to become new and different. In this case, to take your eyes off everything we can see and to give them up – and to look only upon Jesus Christ with the eyes of faith. In that kind of look is the faith that heals and satisfies our own deepest needs and longings. And in that kind of look is the faith which cannot but speak about what it has seen and heard. Amen.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen. 

Authored by Reverend Carl Trosien.