Concordia Lutheran Church
Easter 6, May 7, 2010
Let Us Rejoice in the God who opens hearts
Acts 16:9-17, John 5:1-9
† In Jesus Name †
May the grace of God our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, open our hearts and pour through – bringing the healing and restoration that can only be accomplished through His love and mercy, leaving us to dwell in His peace!
Intro – Review
Let us Rejoice – Hava Negilah
Have thine own way
But how does that happen?
He opens our hearts
We are entering the sixth week of Easter, the sixth week of celebration, the sixth week of me saying Hava Negilah! For our visitors, this phrase comes from our Old Testament reading from the Book of Isaiah. In that reading – people were to rejoice when the Messiah’s work was accomplished – literally, the phrase means to dance with joy! This incredible prophesy did just encourage us, the people of God to dance, but it described God dancing in celebration, as the Messiah had saved His people!
The Messiah has come, He has accomplished His mission. In the words we use to describe our confidence in God, Jesus “was born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, died and on the third day, rose again from the dead!”
Hallelujah! He is Risen! Hava Negilah – Let us Rejoice!
A moment ago, we prayed as we sang, that in light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that we would trust God enough that we would accept His will, that we want Him to shape and mold us, for He is the potter, and we are the clay. A powerful prayer, indeed, and one that could lead us to all sort of interesting places in our lives.
Let us be honest, how many of us would really pray that, if we knew it would mean a sudden and drastic change in our lives? It can be challenging to trust God here in Cerritos. What if allowing God to be in charge resulted meant trusting in Him and getting on the first direct flight to Philippi? What if the person crying out for help wasn’t our type of people, but the kind that scared us in view of the future of humanity?
How can we trust, how can we find the strength, and the fortitude to actually mean it when we pray, “Father – Thy will be done?”? How do we live a life that would fulfill the desire we have, to live life according to the will of God? The answer is found in the Acts passage today, as we look at Lydia and Paul, and in the gospel, as the man is healed. Our answer is found in the words said of Lydia, “the Lord opened her heart to what was said by Paul. And after she was baptized, and her household as well…”
Let us rejoice, for God opens our hearts!
Hava Negilah! He opens our Hearts – Lydia
Prior to the coming of the Apostle Paul and his companions to Philippi, Lydia and her friends could be well described by Luther’s words in the Large Catechism, “Neither you nor I could ever know anything of Christ, or believe in him and take him as our Lord, unless these were first offered to us and bestowed on our, hearts through the preaching of the Gospel by the Holy Spirit.… “
In another place, Luther discusses that the world grasps that there is a God, and they try in vain to worship Him based in their own projections. But it is because they don’t understand who the Messiah is, and what He has done, they can’t grasp God’s attitude toward them. It is simple – unless you realize that God came down to us, to reveal Himself to us, any searching for Him will be in vain – it will be worthless!
But we can rejoice – for this lady and her household, even the entire province of Macedonia was not forgotten by God. God brought to her, alongside the river, someone whose words would tell of God’s attitude towards her, of His love, His mercy, His desire to make her His. That gospel, by the power of the Holy Spirit would break through and open her heart to the message of His love, it would call her into a relationship with Him. The prophet Ezekiel – looking forward hundreds of years to the coming of the messiah, prophesied,
24 I will gather you from the foreign nations and bring you home. 25 I will sprinkle you with clean water, and you will be clean and acceptable to me. I will wash away everything that makes you unclean, and I will remove your disgusting idols. 26 I will take away your stubborn heart and give you a new heart and a desire to be faithful. You will have only pure thoughts, 27 because I will put my Spirit in you and make you eager to obey my laws and teachings. 28 You will once again live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God. Ezekiel 36:24-28 (CEV)
That is what happened to Lydia, as she heard the gospel, the very news Paul was called to bring to her and her people. She, and her entire household, would be cleansed from their sin, and they would know that they had become new creations, created to be God’s people.
Hava Negilah - Let us rejoice – for God has opened hearts of people, and become their God, even as He washes them clean – that they would be His people.
Hava Negilah! He opens our Hearts – Paul’s vision
We see God working in the same way, in the life of Paul. Paul was sworn to oppose God’s will for man, to work against people sharing Christ’s work in their lives. Yet God would open his heart – on the road and Paul too would be baptized, even as we are baptized.
That isn’t the only time God affects Paul’s heart. In this vision – in this vivid and credible experience, Paul knows a major direction is necessary - that God wants him in a different place. The words of the vision are incredible – the Macedonian man is using the title for the Holy Spirit here – he calls to Paul to be a paraklete – to quickly come alongside and lift those who are unable to stand on their own. To respond to their call for help – and even the word come requires incredible effort. The vision begs for good news, and is so evident that the team with Paul sets aside everything to respond to God’s call…
God calls us alongside them as well, to be their parakletes. We are blessed to see God’s work, it is amazing, and it is so often just being there, that we find ourselves in the midst of the work. For it is not Paul that opened Lydia’s heart – it is the Holy Spirit, working through Paul’s words.
Noted modern theologian Thomas Oden described this work of the Holy Spirit in this way, using Luther’s writings as an example:
Luther resisted the individualistic notion of a direct, unmediated operation of the Spirit, as if apart from written word, sacrament, and community. As the Son comes in the flesh within the historical continuum of a particular people, so does the Spirit meet us in community through bodily signs, water, poured-out wine, the heard words of preaching, and the written word.”
Hava Negilah – Let us rejoice – for God opened Paul’s heart even as He opens our hearts to those who need the gospel.
Have Negilah! He opens our Hearts – the Man at the Pool
We see this in action – this opening of man’s hearts, in the gospel lesson at the pool. The man had lain there for years, in pain, and suffering, without any assistance, unable to call upon any for help, He needed more than just a friend, he needed to be healed, to be made whole. Like Lydia – he didn’t know where to find the help – until the help came to Him.
The question Jesus asks him cuts right to the heart. No excuses, no distractions, no waiting for some other help. “Do you want to be healed?” Jesus doesn’t lift him and help him get to the water. Jesus heals him, even as the man confesses he has neither the strength, nor the help. The heart is opened, the words heard, the healing takes place.
That is what the cross is all about! Jesus doing what is necessary to heal our deepest hurts, our most troubling guilt and shame! The cross is about the scars of our failures, the sins that seem to be unstoppable! It is the answer to the prayer! When we sing “Have Thine own way”, what we need to realize is that He has. We, the clay in the hands of the potter have been made new. The Holy Spirit opens our hearts, cleanses out the sin, makes the heart whole and alive. We are welcome into the presence of our God, knowing He has marked us as His people – and invites us to dine, to commune with Him.
Hava Negilah – Let us rejoice – for God has indeed opened our hearts, and healed them!
Hava Negilah – our opened hearts know His peace!
Our open hearts are transformed – for even as we struggle with sin still, there will be a day when that too will end. When we will see God face to face, and no one- no thing can prevent that – for God is our God, and we are His people.
For what God did in Lydia’s life – bringing to her the word and opening her ears to hear the good news, for what God does in Paul’s life, which resulted in Paul’s salvation and being there with the same news for Lydia’s household, and the healing He brought to the man poolside – He has done in your lives as well. Hear this, through His word and sacraments, God has shown you – He is your God, and you are His people.
May you new hearts, alive and cleansed by God, and your minds rest in Christ Jesus, and may that rest be so peaceful that it is beyond understanding. For that is the Father’s gift to you as well!
AMEN? AMEN!
