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What Are You Digging For? - Rev. Kevin Jud |
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Seventh Sunday After Epiphany 2006
February 19,2006
Emmanuel Lutheran Church, Asheville, NC
Pastor Kevin Jud
Mark 2:1-12
The text I have chosen is from the Gospel of Mark, chapter 2 verses
1-12. (ESV) 1 And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was
reported that he was at home. 2 And many were gathered together, so
that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching
the word to them. 3 And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried
by four men. 4 And when they could not get near him because of the
crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an
opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay. 5 And when
Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ?¨My son, your sins are
forgiven.?Æ 6 Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in
their hearts, 7 ?¨Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming!
Who can forgive sins but God alone??Æ 8 And immediately Jesus,
perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves,
said to them, ?¨Why do you question these things in your hearts? 9 Which
is easier, to say to the paralytic, ?´Your sins are forgiven,?? or to
say, ?´Rise, take up your bed and walk??? 10 But that you may know that
the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins?Æ??he said to the
paralytic?? 11 ?¨I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.?Æ 12
And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them
all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, ?¨We never
saw anything like this!?Æ
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
The pick-ax grows heavier with each swing. Five more whacks with the
pick and then you switch to the shovel. You fill the bucket with dirt
and signal for your helper to haul it up out of the hole. You??re down
about 25 feet and you wonder, ?¨how much deeper will I have to dig??Æ
This looked like a good spot for a well and your neighbor hit water at
about 30 feet. While the bucket is up you use the long metal rod to try
to breakup a couple of rocks that are in the way. Fortunately you find
an edge to the rocks and are able to pry them out and send them up one
at a time in the bucket.
This is dirty, dark, dangerous work
digging a well. You take your time. You??re careful to shore up the
sides of the well with wooden planks, but you wonder, ?¨how much deeper
will I have to dig? How many more times will I need to swing the pickax
before that swing when I punch through to the water table and water
will fill the well? How many more days until I can stop spending time
hauling water from the creek a mile away??Æ Well?ñless thinking, more
digging.
You swing the pick ax again and again, because you
need water. For homesteaders moving to a place that has no water, you
need to find it, quickly. Water is necessary for life.
In your life
today you need water. On Servant Event there is great emphasis put on
drinking plenty of water. Water is necessary. But not just physical
water, spiritual water is also essential for life.
Have you
had that feeling of being spiritually thirsty? Dry and tired and empty.
Sometimes just watching the evening news can make you hunger and thirst
for righteousness. There is news of war, or threats of war, there is
news of murders and rapes, robberies, drug dealers, riots, disasters.
You just want to make all the evil go away. You want to find some
peace; some meaning to all the chaos of the world. You seek goodness,
but you find so much trouble. You thirst for righteousness but it is
allusive. You desire good and hate evil. But then you find yourself
shunning good and caught up in the evil. You want to be right with God
because you know that God is good and loving, but you also know he is
powerful and dangerous and you know you don??t deserve to be near him
and you thirst to be right with God. You get thirsty because you are
fighting with your parents, your siblings, your spouse, your children.
You get thirsty from all the troubles of life. You get thirsty when you
go out to the mailbox with dread because you know it will be full of
bills you cannot pay. You get thirsty when illness strikes someone you
love and you watch the once strong and vibrant person deteriorate
before your eyes and your cry out, ?¨Why??Æ You get thirsty when your
children stray from the path on which you put them and head off into a
dangerous wilderness of immorality and ungodliness. You get thirsty
when you continue to struggle with a secret weakness, praying that you
can stop, and worried that someone will find out. Knowing God already
knows. You want goodness and love, but so often you are surrounded by
sickness and death and evil and heartache. This is a dry world. People
need spiritual water. They are thirsty, but what do they seek? Do they
look for real refreshement, or are they searching for something else?
People are seeking refreshment and peace but I fear they are digging in
so many of the wrong places and digging for the wrong things. They are
looking for ways to dull the thirst for righteousness, but not to
quench it. People seek refreshment in endless entertainment, in
hoarding money, in substance abuse. Folks try to dull the thirst for
righteousness through the pursuit of power, through illicit sexual
relations, through buying all the latest and greatest gadgets. There
are also those seeking refreshment in their own good behavior and this
can be most dangerous. They believe they can become righteous by
themselves. People can spend years of their life digging for gold,
riches, power, pleasure or self-righteousness. They are looking for
spiritual refreshment but they will never find it.
And they
work hard at it. They dig and dig and dig, hoping that one day the pick
ax will break through and they will receive refreshment. And it is
dangerous, dark and dirty work and futile, they??ll never find
refreshment. Instead they will find they have dug a hole to hell.
In the passage from the Gospel of Mark, we find four men digging in the
hot, Middle Eastern sun. They dig with their hands, with rocks, with
whatever they can find. It is hot, dirty work as they pull out the
vegetation, dig down through some dirt and find buried logs. As they
dig out the buried logs and lift them up they hit water. They uncover a
spring of living water. The four men are with their helpless friend
curled up with paralysis on a mat. They tie ropes to the corners of his
mat and lower him down into the well of living water. Inside is Jesus,
the Christ; the source of refreshment. Seeing the faith of the four men
who dug through the Middle Eastern roof of logs, soil and vegetation to
get their friend close to Him, Jesus declares, ?¨Son, your sins are
forgiven.?Æ It is a well of living water.
But even in this well
of living water there are those who are digging a hole to nowhere.
Teachers of the law sit and judge Jesus in their minds, ?¨Why does this
fellow talk like that? He??s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God
alone??Æ
Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what
they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, ?¨Why are you
thinking these things? Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, ?´Your
sins are forgiven,?? or to say, ?´Get up, take your mat and walk??? But
that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive
sins....?Æ He said to the paralytic, ?¨I tell you, get up, take your mat
and go home.?Æ He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of
them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, ?¨We have
never seen anything like this!?Æ
Jesus is letting the teachers of
the law know that he has the authority to forgive sins. He is indeed
the source of forgiveness. He healed a helpless paralytic and the man
got up and walked out. But sadly, the teachers of the law are looking
for spiritual refreshment in their obedience to the law.
So, where
should you dig in this desert world to find living water? You don??t
need a shovel or pick ax. In fact, you don??t need to dig. You don??t
even need a well to find the water. As we learn from God through the
prophet Isaiah,
God tells Isaiah, ?¨I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.
In
John Chapter 4 Jesus says to the woman at the well, ?¨Everyone who
drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I
give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in
him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.?Æ
Jesus is
the spring of living water. You don??t have to dig for it. He pours it
out for you. In his word, in Baptism, and in Holy Communion. Jesus
takes the forgiveness he won for you on the cross and pours it out for
each of you. He makes you righteous. He makes you right with God. He
takes you, paralyzed by sin, and lifts you up to walk in his way. In
the Lord??s Supper you become one with Jesus and one with each other as
you eat and drink his body and blood. Each Sunday morning there is a
flood of living water as Jesus pours out forgiveness here. The love of
Christ fills you to overflowing. Love your neighbor; you have found the
spring of living water. And you didn??t even have to dig a hole in the
roof. The doors are open. And yet the pews are not always full. People
are out digging holes trying to find refreshment. Bring them to the
river of life. The river of forgiveness and love. This is a place of
living water. This servant event is a spring head of the living water
of Jesus Christ. The love of Jesus is present here.
Twenty
three years ago tomorrow, July 17, 1983, I arrived in Waynesville,
North Carolina with Stephanie, Holly, and Detlaf from my youth group at
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Reston, Virginia. I was 17 years old
between my junior and senior year in high school. Stephanie and
Detlaf??s mothers dropped us off at the Pastor Budke??s church, the
Lutheran Church of Our Savior. They picked us up again on the 29th of
July. Those 12 days changed me.
Working at the Rathbone??s was
hard work, painting, nailing, digging, We dug a hole for a small spring
house and piped the water down the hill and across the road so they
could have running water near their house. Not a spring of living water
but vital to life. Being here I was in a spring of living water. Being
here got into my blood, into my heart and mind. I dreamt about being
there for years after. Being with Pastor Don and Pastor John made me
see that the ministry was a definite possibility although it would take
14 years before I went to seminary.
In 2002 as a new youth
pastor in Hamilton, Ohio I was reading the servant event listing and
saw an event in North Carolina with a contact person Mary Webb listed
from Michigan. When I was on servant event in 1983 there was a Mary
from Michigan who had been one of the adults. It couldn??t be the same
person? But it was and I returned to North Carolina that summer and
youth from our church have been coming ever since. Returning each year
is like coming home. This is a wonderful group and the love shown each
year is amazing. This year I brought my oldest son, Caleb. I am honored
to be a part of the 25th anniversary of this servant event. This event
is indeed a spring head of living water. It is a part of the great
river of life that is the church here and throughout the world.
But as great as this river is, it is only a river in the desert of this
world. It??s still pretty dry here. We long for the day to come. We
thirst for the great day of the Lord when we will be brought to the
heavenly city. There will be a great river that flows down the center
of the city. There are lush trees there that you can simply pick and
eat all year round. There will be no evil, no wickedness, no sickness
or death. We will be together in the presence of God forever.
Amen.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 10 April 2007 )
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