Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost: A Touch from Jesus

Unedited Transcript Follows:

The name of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy. Amen. I was doing some reflecting this week. I've been ministering in Utah for just over six years now. So, it's interesting um, as I shared with you guys, Uh, two weeks ago, I celebrated 12 years.

As an ordained priest. Um so it means as of this month over half my time as a priest has been spent in the state of Utah, so I I spent more than half of my priesthood here in the state of Utah. And our church looks totally different than when we can't than when our family came out here.

Many of you have joined the church in the last year, or so, Uh, but I'll tell you, six years in. I still feel like a newbie. Like Utah is, uh, such a wonderful place to do ministry. It's gorgeous, it's interesting, it's I awe inspiring. Um, the beauty is partially found in the starkness of the landscape.

We get the, we get pretty extreme heat and cold. We experience being at the foot of the Rockies, the Wasatch Front. And we get, we deal with the very Swift changes in temperature and weather that comes from being in the high desert, right? A Ministry here has these Stark changes too quick changes, right?

It's unlike anywhere else. It feels a bit like waves that rise and crash hard. Momentum builds and attacks. Come really swiftly. And um I think this is season that we're in as a church right now is one that leads me to a lot of excitement and gratitude. We're building something really cool here guys.

As we're coming together to build a church, that's centered on the Gospel of Jesus, that's grounded in ancient liturgy, and it's reaching people of multi-generations. I mean, it's a beautiful thing that we're building. I love being a part of it. As the kingdom of God extends, it puts us in contact and in un like inevitably into conflict.

With the power structures of the world. And I'm trying to learn to see this quickly and to call it out. Now next week's gospel reading is going to put us into more direct contact with conflict with demonic forces. So I won't, I'll do my best not to preach Deacon Andy's sermon this week.

But today's Gospel reading puts us in contact with the type of conflict that maybe seems more. Down to earth more fleshly, less, obviously spiritual. That being said, I'm what I'm learning. Is that there's little separation between those things? As Heaven and Earth come together in the Kingdom of Jesus.

We're confronted with how broken sin has left things. Both in the physical and in the spiritual Realms. This week, I've been perceiving, some spiritual attack, we dealt with three sicknesses in a row in the family, it was which was weird. So like we had coveted, then we had some cold, then we had a stomach bug and like we were sick for the month of August and even as I was resting and preparing for worship last night, Malachi woke up at about 10, 30 scouting, my name and puking all over his bed.

So, uh, yeah and we had, we had been this was after a day where we've been running around playing soccer games, and he seemed fine. So, yeah. And I was like, okay, here we go again. Long gone and in these moments, I'm just trying to be an example. To the people in my flock but also just learn for myself.

Just had a call out to God sooner I we in the west are so late to call out to God. We'll come up with everything else. Like I got, I'll get out the essential oils and we'll run the little and we'll run the humidifier and we'll come up with everything that we can and all that's fine.

But with like, I'm trying to learn to call out to God sooner. And today, we're going to see that the Kingdom's extension always leads us in conflict with the power structures of this world. And with the Brokenness of God's creation, And we'll look at why we have in the midst of it as we're building.

Something really cool here. Hope for great Victory, like we and expectation of Victory. So first of all, the conflict, I mean, the Brokenness of the Fallen World puts us in direct conflict as the people of God with the kingdom of God. We don't know very much about the man that encounters Jesus In this passage We really only know about his ailments.

We know that he's deaf in mute. We don't know how long he's been deaf in mute. We don't, uh, we we don't know really anything else except that. He's deaf and mute. And he was sinsic. He was sin sick. We're confronted with Brokenness as as bad as it gets here.

And what do I mean by that? He's sin, sick do? I mean that he's responsible for his ailment I don't know. Um, we don't like I said we don't know much about him, sin sickness is always twofold. So like like when we talk about sin like the effects of sin in our life, it's always a two-fold reality.

We receive it And we walk into it and participate in it, this is always the case with sin and the way that it's impacted the world. It's received and it's participating. So what do I mean by? It's received, like all of us because we're born in a fallen world and we have a fallen nature that we get from our parents.

All of us receive sin sickness, we all receive it. We didn't vote on it. We didn't say like, hey, I choose this, okay? We didn't, like, we didn't vote Adam to be our representative when he rebelled against God, like, none of that happened and because of that, we receive sin sickness.

When he, you sinned, we recognize this is the Christian doctrine of original sin again. We talk about that last week too, but we see it coming up again. This Christian doctrine of original sentiment, when Adam sinned, he wasn't like his nature wasn't left unchanged. He passed on that problem to his children and Children's children and all of us receive it.

This might not seem fair but we know it's the way it is. Right. We know it's the way it is. That like if I'm if I'm born into a family where my parents are drunks and abusive I didn't vote for that. But I experienced that, right? I received the results of sin, right?

And so, all of us receive Some aspect of our sin sickness, we didn't vote on it, we didn't choose, but also, all of us, every one of us walked into that. And we make decisions that contribute to that Brokenness and we we make decisions. We make decisions to Harbor anger.

Bitterness lust infidelity Uh, you name it. I mean the the host of it sloth laziness. We we make we make choices, various addictions that To participate in what we received and we and we and we do that by our own. Will we do that on purpose and we do and we walk into this.

Sin sickness. So yes this man's ailment was a result of sin, we don't know when it started for him. We don't know how responsible he was for it. We don't know the relationship between The evil spirits and what he has. We don't know any of it, we don't know.

How if it's a result of like how responsible he is based on some act, he's committed for this, but we know it's a result of sin because in a world that's not broken. People talk. And people here, In a world that's not broken by sin.

And ultimately, like all of us, this man was impacted by a world. That's not how it's supposed to be. In a world that is broken.

And the Kingdom of Heaven is meant to set every bit of that, right? Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is meant to make what's broken unbroken. The Kingdom of Heaven, is meant to set it, all right? The Isaiah reading we read is so instructive here, it was short, right? But when Isaiah encourages God's people to take heart because God is coming to save them and recompense them, right?

Look at the signs of God saving. All of them are physical. All of them have to do with the physical world that we live in. Deaf people here. Lame. People dance. Blind people. See and mute people. Sing praises to God. That's what it looks like when the Kingdom of Heaven extends when Heaven and Earth meet, when, when Heaven and Earth come together in a collision.

Deaf people here. Lame. People dance. Blind people. See and mute people. Sing praises to God. That's what Isaiah tells us. Everything broken is not broken anymore. Wholeness comes. That's the kingdom. And this man because of the sinful fallenness of creation was experiencing all the Brokenness and his very presence and his ailments were shouting loudly.

Can the kingdom of God really be here as Jesus said, and as John, the Baptist proclaimed. Can the kingdom of God, really? Be here. There aren't supposed to be mute, and deaf people walking around when Heaven and Earth meet.

His very presence. Is evidence that hey maybe things aren't working how they're supposed to be yet or maybe of the not yet that goes along with it already. We don't have it all yet, right? But what we see here by his presence, and what we see here in this miracle, is we see The conflict that comes but the route to Victory and why we should have an expectation of Victory, the route to victory over overall, that is broken in the world over demonic forces and all, that is a result of sin in the world.

Is a touch from Jesus. It's a touch from Jesus. Every time I read this passage, I'm struck by verse 32. They begged him to lay his hands on them on this man. They begged him to lay his hand on him. That's interesting. They begged him. Hey, touch this guy.

Jesus touched this guy. They all knew something that I attempted to forget. All this man needed was to touch Jesus. All this man needed was to touch Jesus and all could be right. It's not the last time that Mark's going to emphasize touching. Two chapters later in chapter nine, a woman is going to be instantly healed from an unceasing flow of blood when she just touches the Hem of His Garment.

She's healed. So this man who's experiencing all the result of Brokenness in the world needed a touch from Jesus and that's all he needed. And this was this touch. Um I know we can speak like really metaphorically like I need to be touched. I was touched by something and we could use language that way and that's fine, but this touch was physical.

This touch was physical. Jesus goes all in on physical here. He spits in his hand and grabs the guy's tongue. And then he like sticks his fingers in his ears, like he's touching this guy like so they asked him to lay a hand on him and he's like, no, that's not gonna do it like we're.

We're gonna spit on our hand and grab this guy's tongue. Like he's all in on the touching like and uh and Mark in, in a very short, passage does a lot of description of all the touching that's going on. And it's enough touching to make all of us feel uncomfortable.

Right. Uh, it's a lot and uh, and so and here's the deal. He's, he's, it's a physical touch. We need like, we need to touch Jesus. We need to actually touch him. Remember what had just happened earlier in chapter 7? Jesus has challenged some of the extracurricular. Purity codes that it had just come out.

You didn't wash your hands. Properly before you ate and that will make you unclean. And now he's spitting on his hand and grabbing a guy's tongue. He's saying hey this is like it's really important that we're we're going to make you really squeamish with all like bodily fluids. We're not something that we're shared.

And they're not today. Um, without the people very close. We don't share our bodily fluids with each other. Like that's not really something we do, right? And here he is doing and he's pushing hard on this Purity culture. That's like, hey, what it's all about. Is keeping the outside impure, influences away.

Keeping ourselves pure. And what he's doing here is he's flipping the script on their entire world view. Something. We're so tempted. To walk into is the belief that it's impurity. That's contagious. Rather than Purity and Holiness. They walk their lives and we do too. Believing like hey, um, if I can keep away from the wrong influences, if I can, if I can just keep the wrong influences out because like Their impurity, I can catch it, I can catch their lack of Holiness.

I can. If I touch these people, I can catch their Brokenness and that's and what Jesus is telling them. No, it's not the unclean that's contagious, it's the clean. If my people will go out and touch people, it's the Purity, it's the Holiness, it's the cleanliness, it's it's all that's the part that's contagious.

So like the part that passes on The good part. So there is contain like contagions happen when when the people of God touch people are when Jesus touches people. But it's past Purity passes to the unclean. Holiness passes to the Unholy to the secular. And God starts making all things, right.

And holy So again, I have perceived spiritual attack both in our family and in our church, It's true but understand this it's not discouraging to me. It's not discouraging to me. Because I know that as we come in contact with Jesus and we touch Jesus, he will win the victory.

GK Chesterton as a quote that I I love in his in his book Orthodoxy He says, fairy tales, do not tell children. The dragons exist children, already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales. Tell children, the dragons can be killed. That's it. That's how the kingdom works. So when my kids, um this week, um, one of my children, Called me in the room and said, I need you to pray in my room because every time I lay in my bed, I feel like there are monsters under it or I think there's monsters under the bed, you know what I've learned to do.

I you know what, I don't do in that moment I don't say. Hey look there's no monsters under the bed. There are monsters under the bed. I just assume it. There's monsters under the bed. There's monsters everywhere. There's all sorts of evil, spiritual forces and people starting. So like she already knows there's monsters in the bed.

What I tell her is Jesus is stronger than any monster. Let's kick out that monster Let's kick out out. He can't stay. If Jesus tells him to go, and I'm teaching her to find the one who kills the dragons. That's all I want to teach you. I don't teach her, there's no dragons.

What a waste of time there are, there are all sorts of things in our lives that are scary and hard and also and and broken and messed up and some of those are Physical or more part of the physical world. Some of them are spiritual and unseen but they're all over the place.

They're everywhere. The world's Enchanted. It's a scary place but I'll tell you what Jesus is mighty. And he can slay the dragons. And it's not even hard for him. So what I want to teach my kids is not hey there's no monster stop it. There's no Boogeyman. No. All right.

Yeah, it's all real. And God's bigger and mightier and stronger and you can trust him. To win the battle. The effects of fallenness are everywhere we go. There are monsters under the bed. Don't tell them, there's not they're not under the bed. Of course they are. But I'll tell you this, Jesus is bigger than the monsters.

Jesus is mightier than them. Jesus can crush them with just a snap of his finger. And a touch of Jesus is all they need. A touch of Jesus is all they need.

Because when Jesus touches us, the lame dance for Joy, the blind sea, the deaf here, and the mute sing praises to God. That's what it looks like when the kingdom of God extends. What's really cool about all this? Is at the table, We Touch Jesus. We're about to come to the Lord's table.

And at the table, we will touch Jesus. Jesus will grab our tongue. He'll grab a hold of our tongue. As we, as we, as we eat the body of Jesus, eat his flesh and drink his blood, right? He'll grab onto our tongue and he'll, he'll heal the sin sickness that we all have.

Whether we've, whether we've it's sin sickness, we've received or sin sickness, we participated in, or as it always is. Both Jesus is gonna come and bring healing. Do you need a touch from Jesus today? Because he means to touch you. He means to grab your tongue and hold on to you.

And he means to make all of us who are broken by the world in all these various ways sing praises to God. As he heals us and makes us new. So Ministry is a battle. A Ministry in Utah is a particular battle there, arises and Falls. The enemy is on the prowl.

And he does look to devour us. He can't win though. He can't win. He can't destroy the work that God is up to. To set all things, right? And to set the world right from everything that is broken. So be encouraged Saint John's. The enemy will take his shot.

The monsters will crawl under the beds. But God is so much stronger than any monster and he is ready to touch you today at the table. And whatever he touches, he heals, so come to the table. Let's ask Jesus to touch us. And empowered by him. Let us touch others with his love.

Amen.