Sermon for the Twenty-First Sunday after Trinity, 8:00am Holy Communion

admin | 20 October 2013

“Go thy way, thy son liveth”

A miracle story, to be sure. The Trinity season and the season of Epiphany abound in miracles. They teach us something about the nature of God and about the truth of our humanity. But there is something particularly special and important about this gospel story. It is taken from The Gospel according to St. John and there are few gospel readings from John’s Gospel in the long Trinity season. Yet that season runs out in wisdom as we are reminded in the offices of Morning and Evening Prayer today, the twenty-first Sunday after Trinity. For we begin to read from the Apocrypha and, particularly, from the wisdom literature in the Apocrypha on this Sunday. I want to suggest that there is an important connection between Word and Wisdom that is wonderfully illustrated in this Gospel.

It is a miracle, to be sure, a miracle of healing, and so not unlike any number of healing miracles, it might seem. But there is something special about this story and it is not that Jesus is reluctant to make house calls! John tells us that this was “the second sign that Jesus did, when he was come out of Judea into Galilee.” That begs the obvious question about the first sign. What was that? Not a healing miracle per se but the story of the turning of the water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee, a miracle that points us to the meaning of the Incarnation and to the social joys of heaven which God seeks for us in and through the fellowship of the Church here and now as well as in heaven. This second sign, the word sign here is significant, teaches us something profound about the nature of God and about our humanity.

What does it teach us? It teaches us that the Word of God is not confined to the limits of time and space. We are being reminded of the eternal Word of God which cannot be constrained to our experiences and expectations. A certain nobleman beseeches Jesus to come down to Capernaum, another town, to heal his son who was at the point of death. Like so many of us, we want God to do something for us immediately and directly. Here we are reminded of the greater truth of God’s Word and its truer movement in us. Jesus rebukes our presumption about wanting signs and wonders without which we will not believe. For we have forgotten, it seems, what The Letter to the Hebrews wisely teaches, namely, that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” There is a greater power and truth to God’s Word.

In the Gospel passage, the nobleman replies to Jesus’ statement about signs and wonders by beseeching him to “come down, ere my son die.” His concern is twofold. He senses something divine in Jesus and he is genuinely committed to the well-being of his son. Jesus’ response is simple and direct and teaches us volumes about the power and truth of God’s word and its power and truth in our lives. “Go thy way, thy son liveth.”

Now the wonder of this Gospel lies both in what Jesus has said and in the nobleman’s response. We are simply told that “the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him.” Will we?

In other words, Jesus’ word is alive and moving in his heart and soul. He believes and only a little later learns that his son has been healed. What he has believed is the power and the nature of God’s Word which goes forth from God to create and to redeem, to heal and to restore, the Word which is not limited to time and space but rules in and through the whole of creation to do what God seeks for us.

The certain nobleman has believed and learned about the power of God’s Word. That divine Word has its resonance in him. Will it have its resonance in us? Will we be defined by that Word rather than by our own immediate desires and fears and worries? Will we try to take God captive to our demands or will we let God’s Word have its sovereign rule and sway in our hearts.

Ultimately, this Gospel story shows us something of the nature of the wisdom of God’s Word. Jesus is “the Word made flesh,” as John especially teaches, but that Word does not cease to be eternal and divine because of the Incarnation. No. We are being opened out to a larger view of our humanity as found in the Word of God ruling and moving in our hearts, our faith being deepened into understanding about the eternal Word of God. Only so does the Word of God have any resonance in us. Only so do we become the living words of God in our own lives and in our communities, defined by the wisdom of God’s Word.