Quinquagesima Sunday 2020

Faith and Mercy connect the dots in this little gallery. Carl Heinrich Bloch tells of the Gospel account for this Sunday, Pic #1 is his painting of Jesus healing the blind man on Jericho's road; Pic #2 is the Greek god Opportunity, Caerus (also called Kairos, i.e. Time), reminding people how fleeting time and opportunity really are; whereas, Pic #3 shows John Bunyan's Pilgrim taking the opportunity to enter the wicket gate seeking mercy for his sins that are a great burden on his back; and, Pic #4, shows God's mercy, through faith in His Son, to all who believe.

This brings me to my address for this Quinqagesima Sunday (the Sunday before Ash Wednesday):

“Faith: A Blind Man’s Opportunity for Grace” Luke 18:35-43
35 Then it happened, as He was coming near Jericho, that a certain blind man sat by the road begging. 36 And hearing a multitude passing by, he asked what it meant. 37 So they told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. 38 And he cried out, saying, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" 39 Then those who went before warned him that he should be quiet; but he cried out all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me!" 40 So Jesus stood still and commanded him to be brought to Him. And when he had come near, He asked him, 41 saying, "What do you want Me to do for you?" He said, "Lord, that I may receive my sight." 42 Then Jesus said to him, "Receive your sight; your faith has made you well." 43 And immediately he received his sight, and followed Him, glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God. NKJV

Dear Christian friends: Goethe, the German philosopher and poet, once stated: “Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, and opportunity transient.” The ancient Greeks had a way of expressing the adage that opportunity knocks but once. These Greeks had made a statue of a god named Opportunity (Kairos). This statue stood on its toes with wings on the heals to show how fleeting time is ad how quickly opportunity might pass; it had a wavy long lock of hair in the front so that people might be able to grasp it when opportunity came to them, but it was bald in the back to show that once opportunity passed it could no longer be grasped.

The Gospel text for this Sunday speaks of a certain blind beggar sitting on the side of the road. It would be very hard for any of us to understand the unfortunate qualities that comprised this man; his blindness as well as his poverty. And it is most certainly true that many of us have taken hold of the time when opportunity presented itself to us in education, love, health care, families and friends, laughter and recreational times; opportunities that never once came to this poor, blind beggar. It was only the few coins he daily received from people who took pity on him that gave him some comfort. But opportunity is now going to change his outlook as Jesus relates this story regarding His office as the Christ as well as to instruct us today on important spiritual matters.

Jesus tells us how this man uses his God-given gift of hearing. Scripture says, “And hearing a multitude passing by, he asks what this meant.” The blind man was alert to the opportunity that was coming his way; this was God’s Time for him, otherwise he would have just passed up this “noise” coming his way of being none of his business. Now his faith perceived this great opportunity coming His way and so uses his voice. After people told him that it was Jesus of Nazareth coming on this road, faith causes him to cry out: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” By this manner of addressing the Lord, it was obvious that the man heard of the mighty works Jesus had done. So it was he cried out to Jesus for mercy seeking this great opportunity as it was coming his way.

Others seemed oblivious to this man’s miserable condition and more interested in the passing parade while still others discouraged this man and even told him to shut up and keep quiet! The greater part of the crowd didn’t share the blind man’s faith as he cried out to Jesus or else they, too, would have cried out for mercy if they were to perceive their very own blindness that was worse than the beggar’s, namely, a spiritual blindness. But this blind man, who evidently heard the Word of God that created faith in him, showed a great display of trust as he was being obedient to what the prophet Isaiah said: “Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near.” (Isaiah 55:6) Yet no one, but no one, can call upon God for mercy if his eyes have not yet been opened to the goodness of God’s providential care. It is just as Ephesians 2:1 says, “And you…were dead in trespasses and sins” i.e. dead, spiritually, having no power to either call upon God or grasp at all any opportunity for healing and salvation.

This spiritual blindness is commonplace in our homes, in our schools, and especially in our universities and our government. Spiritual blindness is pervasive as well in the mainline churches in America and institutions that claim to have knowledge of God. What our country really needs is not so much a revival but rather a simple obedience to the truth of God’s Word for the namesake of Jesus Christ. As the Old Testament prophet, Samuel, told King Saul, “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice!”

Many within the Church of Christ rather change the words of Christ’s comfort and grace without God, merely pretending that sickness, infirmities, trials and temptations that come with living life today are somehow not related to the sufferings of all mankind. God understands suffering. Through Christ, God has experienced what we experience: Pain, loss, betrayal, heartache, and persecution. He’s been there; He’s done that. As St. Paul says, Isn’t the whole creation subjected to the futility because of Him who subjected it in hope?

The late Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen related this story in the 1950’s about this same futility that caused a mother and a father to ask their little girl to include her family, with their various afflictions, in her bed-tine prayers one night. And so she obediently prayed: “Dear God, my brother has the mumps; my sister fell off her bike and broke her leg; my older brother has pneumonia; and my daddy just lost his job. So please, Lord, take care of Yourself, because if anything would happen to You we would all be in the soup!” Lord, have mercy.

This blind man had nothing to sacrifice to the Lord and yet he showed a great faith in calling on Jesus while others were telling him to be quiet. In obedience to God’s Word, this man, sitting on Jericho’s road was to seize Opportunity personified. His prayer, cried out loud, was of the same essence of that particular prayer of the tax collector standing afar off in the temple, with his eyes lowered as he beat his chest, saying, “Have mercy on me a sinner!” And who is it that Jesus wishes to see other than the one that admits his guilt of sin? Our text reads: “So Jesus stood still and commanded him (the beggar) to be brought to Him.” In this blind man, our Lord sees the destitute, spiritual blindness of His fallen creation; the same fallen creation that He is on His way to Jerusalem to offer Himself as the pure and holy sacrifice for the world’s sins.

Pertaining to this Gospel, Martin Luther says this about the blind man: ”The spiritually blind, the state of every man born of Adam, who neither sees nor knows the kingdom of God; but it is of grace that he feels and knows his blindness and would gladly be delivered from it. They are saintly sinners who feel their faults and sighs for grace. But he sits by the wayside and begs, that is, he sits among the teachers of the law and desires help; but it is begging, with works he must appear blue and help himself. The people pass him by and let him sit, that is the people of the law make a great noise and are heard among the teachers of good works, they go before Christ and Christ follows them.”

And then Luther says: “But when he heard Christ, that is, when the heart hears the Gospel of faith, it calls and cries, and has no rest until it comes to Christ. Those, however, who would silence and scold him are teachers of works, who wish to quiet and suppress the doctrine and cry of faith; but they stir the heart the more. For the nature of the Gospel is, the more it is restrained the more progress it makes. Afterwards he received his sight, all his work and life are nothing but the praise and honor of God, and he follows Christ with joy, so that the whole world wonders and is thereby made better.”

When the blind man was brought near to Jesus, Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The man saw his opportunity and acted according to faith and said, “Lord, that I may receive my sight.” He took hold of Jesus with his words, knowing that he would not let Jesus go until his prayer was answered. This is how faith reacts when Jesus is near; faith will not let Jesus loose until He has demonstrated His love and mercy that was promised of old. It was through the prophet Isaiah that we have this promise: “Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees” and “the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped; the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb sing…”

Friends, don’t let those of your families and acquaintances dissuade you from your faithful cries to your Lord. Don’t let your lips just sing the Kyrie eleison in the liturgy out of tradition, just another thing to do in our worship services void of meaning without hearing your own cries of “Lord, have mercy upon me; Christ, have mercy upon me; Lord, have mercy upon me!”

The Kyrie itself was a litany prayer of the early church as the business language of the first three centuries was Greek, even in Rome. And even though the Kyrie was not mentioned in the liturgy until the mid-fourth century it nevertheless is the cry of the Church acknowledging the frailty and weakness in need of God’s pity and mercy. It is found in many of the Psalms used even in Old Testament worship; such as Psalm 25:16, “Turn Yourself to me, and have mercy on me for I am desolate and afflicted” and, Psalm 41:4, “Lord, be merciful to me; Heal my soul, for I have sinned against You” and, Psalm 123:3, “Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us! For we are exceedingly filled with contempt.”

There are other Psalms that are a cry for help in times of distress. All cries of Kyrie eleison have one thing in common which the writer to the New Testament book of Hebrews 4:16 tells us: “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” This you can do simply because you have a High Priest, Jesus, who can sympathize with your infirmities as you come to Him by faith that gives you access to His marvelous grace.

Therefore, don’t ever see opportunity as being fleeting because of the many voices of those who try to silence you and stop you from presenting your requests before your Lord. If you feel that Jesus has passed you by, not hearing your cries for mercy, remember this, namely, that traveling through Jericho, Jesus’ eyes were set upon the purpose for which He was born; His face was set toward Jerusalem where He would be tortured and put to a sacrificial death not only for the blind man’s sins but also for the sins of the world. Knowing this, Jesus has not passed you by if you sincerely believe that you are still in this world but not of this world. The road that Jesus was travelling, when the blind man encountered Him, was the road of love; the road that led our Savior to Calvary.

Jesus told the blind man, “Receive your sight; your faith has made you well.” Again, Luther speaks to this point, writing: “Finally, we see how Christ encourages us both by His works and words. In the first place by His works, in that He sympathizes so strongly with the blind man and makes it clear how pleasing faith is to Him, so that Christ is at once absorbed with interest in the man, stops and does what the blind man desires in his faith. In the second place, that Christ praises his faith in words, and says, ‘Thy faith has made thee whole;’ He casts the honor of the miracle vouchsafed what it asks, and it is moreover our great honor before God.” Amen.