Two things—or is it three...

Maybe it is four.  Or one.  If it is all Jesus, then it is just one thought to capture before it passes from my compromised mind?

I have left off reading my beloved A Harmony of the Gospels because the parables were starting.  When I read them, I see Law, hear Law, taste Law, become crushed by Law.  My first thought is: Okay, what is this parable telling me that I should be doing?  That is how I learned them.  That is how I learned nearly all of the New Testament:  Jesus, the new and improved Moses.

Because this was going to be a hard day for me anyway and I was struggling to sleep, I cracked open the book.  Immediately, I found myself floundering and worried ... very worried.  What soil am I?  Surely I am either the dirt on the side of the road (because Satan plucks the Word from me so very easily) or I am the thorns (because the cares of my life choke out the Word).  Maybe I am both.  Surely I am both.  Alas, I have failed at being soil, being good soil, being the receiver of the magnificent, powerful, truly awesome gift that is the Word of God.

I emailed my friend Mary, the gentle Gospel giver, my despair.  She emailed me back Jesus.  Jesus is the soil.

Now, why didn't I think of that?

I mean, have I not learned that Christianity is a life of reception, that the very faith I have is that which I have received from Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit as He works in Word and Sacrament?

I actually did not receive her email before my pastor came by to bring me the gifts of Christ.  The gifts I was rather almost certain he should not be bringing me, given the struggles I have been mired in of late.  I mentioned my despair of soil and he asked me what the parable was about.  Without thinking, I answered, "the Word of God being sown."  Jesus.  Again.

The parable is not about soil, but about the Living Word taking root and bearing fruit, which is promised to do and to do so in those who are His sheep.

Which is the second point.  I am actually, in reality, a very good sheep.  I am stupid. I wander off and get lost. And I have no real accomplishment to speak of. Sheep are sheep because they are created as sheep. Sheep are dependent upon others to care for them, to guide them, to guard them, and to rescue them.  So, frankly, I get top marks as a sheep.

But what makes a sheep a part of a flock is the shepherd.  So, the point of talking about sheep is not actually the being stupid or smart, wandering off or being a super follower, or growing really thick, luxurious wool for harvest.  The focus of talking about sheep is actually considering the shepherd.  Jesus.  Again.

I don't know.  Maybe that doesn't really make sense to you, but being a white sheep or a black sheep or a lost sheep or a found sheep does not really matter. It is not the point.  Sheep exist.  They live and breathe and move and have their very being in the shepherd who tends them.

Even as a veritable torrent of tears were pouring down my face, I laughed.  I am a sheep.  I am a sheep of the Good Shepherd.  I can be the muddiest, scrawniest, most lagging behind and most often lost sheep, but I am His sheep.

Then a while later, I took the time to thank a pastor on Facebook for a post he wrote, a honest, raw acknowledgment of one facet of the world in which we live.  And he wrote back.  Jesus.  Again.  [Good stuff that will be published eventually.]

What he wrote made me think of this bit from Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel.  The book had been recommended to me several times and in my distress I thought I would seek some counsel.  I have not, for the large part, found it comforting.  I find it full of accusations of lack of faith and admonishments to live in faith. I find it full of references to suffering and illness and anxiety being God's discipline.  I find it triggers within me a rather frenetic desperation to be the good child of God so I will not be so ill or suffer so much in spirit.  I find myself, again, wanting to figure out what lesson it is that I need to learn that God has been trying to get through my thick skull by beating me with the rod of punishment.

Today, when I read some of the distressing bits to my pastor, what he told me is that he did not hear my name in those letters.  Of course, it took a while and further explanation for me to understand, but what he was saying is that Luther did not write them to me, Myrtle, and that Luther is not Scripture.  I showed him the one part that gave me pause and the one letter I had found that was all consolation of the Gospel and not a prescription for getting better.  He said to stick with those things of Jesus that I saw and that, maybe, later, if I wanted, I could go looking for more. More Jesus.

Our Lord and Saviour Jesus left us with a commandment concerns all Christians alike, namely, that we should preform humanitarian duties or, rather (as the Scriptures call them), works of mercy in behalf of the afflicted and oppressed, visit those who are sick, try to liberate those who are captive, and do other things of this sort for your neighbors, whereby the evils of our time might be somewhat alleviated.  Our Lord Jesus Christ has himself given us a very clear example of this commandment when, out of his great love for humanity, he came down from the bosom of his Father to share our miseries and captivity (that is, our flesh and wretched life) and took upon himself the penalty of our sins in order that we may be saved.  It is as Isaiah wrote in ch. 43, "Thou hast made me to serve with thy sins, thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities."  Whenever remains unmoved by so clear an example, and whoever is not driven by the added authority of the divine commandment to perform such works of charity, will in the Last Judgement deserve to hear the voice of the angry judge saying:  "Depart from me, thou cursed one, into everlasting fire, for I was sick, and thous visitedst me not.  Ungrateful as thou art for all the benefits which I have bestowed on thee and the whole world, thou wouldst not so much as life a little finger to help thy brethren—nay, to help me, thy God and Saviour Christ, in thy brethren."

When, therefore, I learned, most illustrious prince, that Your Lordship has been afflicted with a grave illness and that Christ has at the same time become ill in you, I counted it my duty to visit Your Lordship with a little writing of mine. I cannot pretend that I do not hear the voice of Christ crying out to me from Your Lordship's body and flesh and saying, "Behold, I am sick."  This is so because such evils as illness and the like are not borne by us who are Christians but by Christ himself, our Lord and Saviour, in whom we live, even as Christ plainly testifies in the Gospel when he says, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."  Although it is our duty to visit and comfort in this fashion all those who are of the household of faith, for Saint Paul clearly distinguishes betwen those who are of the household (bound to us by some necessity) and those who are not, Gal., ch. 6. [emphasis mine] (pp 26-27)

Luther goes on to say that he had other reasons for the duty of care, given that he is one of Elector Frederick of Saxony's subjects.  But, for me, the letter was already finished.  What did he mean that Christ was ill in him?

Perhaps this is already crystal clear to you, but it is not to me.  Only it seems as if all these Bible verses are suddenly shifting within me.  The ones Luther quoted, the one I alluded to (Acts 17:28), all of those Paul writes about our lives being in Christ.

I cannot pretend that I do not hear the voice of Christ crying out to me from Your Lordships' body and flesh and saying, "Behold, I am sick.

My pastor read to me from Mark, but I do not remember where.  He read to me about Jesus coming to serve us.  In reading it, he stressed that Jesus did not come to be worshipped.  So, today, Jesus had come to, again, serve me, despite my distress and despair and doubts.

Oh, how I long to be the goodly suffering saint who praises God for each and every moment of misery.  Before, I wanted to be able to do so in order to know that I am saved.  But to know that I have only to ask if I am baptized.  And, when I doubt even so, I have only to ask if God will not recognized His own Son, His Son that is in my body, given for me, shed for me.

I long to be the goodly suffering saint not for assurance of salvation so much as to honor the gifts I have received, to honor the priceless treasure of the Psalter, if nothing else.  But what my pastor was telling me is that Jesus did not come come so that I could honor God.

He came to serve.
To serve me.
Even now.


Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!