GRACE, MERCY and PEACE are YOURS this day from GOD our FATHER, through our LORD and SAVIOR, Jesus Christ.  AMEN.

He cried out, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” And Jesus stopped and commanded him to be brought to him. And when he came near, he asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” He said, “Lord, let me recover my sight.”

Let us pray:

Gracious Lord, Son of David, risen and ascended on high, send now the Spirit of Truth to enlighten our hearts and open our eyes of faith to know and believe and trust Your Word, for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  AMEN.

In the most HOLY and BLESSED NAME of JESUS.  Amen.

The blindness of sin and the ignorance of the human heart is on full display in our text.  If you've ever read a passage of Scripture or if you ever have listened to a sermon and been left wondering what it was all about, you are not alone – in fact, you're in good company.

In our Gospel text, we find that, by our standards, Jesus is a horrible preacher.  He speaks words to his disciples that they don't comprehend.  He wastes his breath and their time by telling them the same thing now for the third time – when they have shown time and time again that they just don't get it and can't understand.  You would think that Jesus would get a clue and stop wasting everybody's time.  Certainly He could have kept to things that His disciples would understand and be able to use right away.

But, let's think about that for a minute.  This is Jesus.  God of God, light of light, very God of very God.  The Words He was sent to speak go forth as rain and snow that comes down from heaven and do not return without accomplishing His purposes.

And so it is, whenever and wherever His Word is preached and proclaimed in its truth and purity – it goes forth at His bidding and at His command – to accomplish His purposes.  And problems of comprehension or intelligibility are left to human weakness and human frailty.

Part of our problem as frail and weak human beings is that we very often desire that everything we hear be utterly practical.  And, let's face it, we're lazy.  We don't want to have to work at understanding it.  We don't want to have to strive to make sense of it.  Tell me plainly something that I can put to use right away – or don't bother talking to me, is our general attitude. 

Now, there is no excuse for preachers to be confusing or unclear.  But it is false to presume that it is always the fault of the speaker when you do not understand.

We heard just a couple weeks ago that sometimes, the devil plucks up the seed from the hardened and compacted surface of our heart so the precious seed of God's Word does not take root.  Other times, we find that the seed falls upon the soil and is buried deep and germinates and begins to grow, but the plant doesn't immediately emerge.  In either case, the Word is not immediately practical and useful.  In either case, the hearer may not immediately understand or comprehend the importance of what was said.

And we see this in our text today.  Jesus uses simple words, there is nothing unclear about the sentences.  There is nothing difficult to understand.  There is nothing that cannot be grasped and easily understood.  In fact, it is doubtful that Jesus could have said it more directly, more clearly, or more obviously.  Jesus said, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.” 

What is unclear?  What is incomprehensible?  What isn't plain and obvious in those words?  The answer is, “nothing.”  There is nothing in those words that cannot be grasped easily by the mind.

But we are told, “they understood none of these things.”

They were blind to what was so clear and obvious.  They were unable to make sense of the simple plain words that describe the future events that were about to take place.  We can create all kinds of excuses for them, we can make up all kinds of reasons.  But the Scriptures are clear, “This saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said.”

And the reason was the frailty of their mind and the hardness of their heart.  We see the same problem even after Jesus' resurrection from the dead when He meets up with two of His disciples on the road to Emmaus.  They are shocked and dismayed but don't understand at all the events.  Jesus gently rebukes them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

Notice, it was all there in the Scriptures – even before Jesus was born.  It was all laid out in the books of Moses, in the Psalms and in the Prophets.  It was foretold that all of these things would take place – and yet, when the events unfold just as was foretold, those who witness it do not see or comprehend or know what it is all about – and let's face it, the vast majority of them thought about Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms far far more than we do.  But without Divine help and without the Spirit's enlightenment, their eyes were closed to the truth.  And it is the same for us.  Without the mercy of God's Spirit enlightening our hearts and shining forth in our minds, it is impossible for us to comprehend the things of God as well.

And this is where the struggle and work comes in for us.

It would certainly be nice if God just sent forth His Spirit and fully cleansed us of sin, immediately and fully removed any hardness from our heart, and fully enlightened our minds to know and comprehend His will and His Word.  But we all know from bitter trial and suffering in this life, that just doesn't happen – at least not to many.  More often it is more like the slow and difficult training that God put Abraham through.  You remember – it was 25 years from the time that God called Abram out of Ur of the Chaldees before Sarai finally gave birth to Isaac – and there were lots of misunderstandings and mistakes made by Abraham along the way.  Or, consider David, a man whom God identified as “a man after my own heart.”  His mistakes and missteps are not only numerous but legendary.  In both cases, God spoke clearly and really left very little to chance or misunderstand – but in both cases, they found ways to walk down the wrong path and show the hardness of their heart and prove that they weren't listening and paying attention to God's Word as they ought to have.

Now, it's revealed to us clearly that their obedience was in proportion to their hearing and holding fast to God's Word and promises.  And, when their hearing faltered and their grasp of God's Word became loose, they fell headlong into all sorts of trouble.  

But it would be wrong for us to conclude that, because these great heroes of the faith faltered and falled so often, we're off the hook when our ignorance of God's Word and His commands, when our lack of knowledge results in our ignorantly falling into temptation and sin.

The fact is, wherever God's word is incomprehensible – wherever it is unclear – wherever we are unable to grasp it – lay hold of it – understand it and take it to heart – where we fail to heed God's will and obey His commands - we cannot claim that there is any fault in the Word spoken or what has been handed over.

St. Paul declares to us, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”  And, “we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.“

And this brings us to the second half of our Gospel lesson – where Jesus brings healing to the blind man.

Notice that the blind man knows something that, seemingly nobody else around him knows, and he's hated and despised for it.  God has granted this blind man to see and know and comprehend the Scriptures and even though he is physically blind, He has the eyes of faith opened by the Spirit to be able to discern that Jesus is the Son of David who had long been promised as the savior of the world.

As He cries out, “Jesus, Son of David, Have mercy on me,” everyone tries to shut him up.  Now, we have seen Jesus silence the demons when they have proclaimed him to be the Son of God.  But here, Jesus allows the man to boldly declare who He is – and Jesus does not silence him.  Jesus accepts this testimony and welcomes the proclamation of the truth.  It is the crowd and the disciples themselves – those who have eyes and have their physical sight – who are blind to the reality of who Jesus is.

But this blind man is given spiritual insight and spiritual wisdom to know that this Jesus of Nazareth is the long promised and long awaited Messiah.

This shows clearly that the fault is not with the Word that God had sent forth.  The fault is not to be found in the fact that the Old Testament is difficult to understand and difficult to grasp.  The problem is not that God has not supplied enough information or that the Word is not practical enough.  The problem is within the heart of the hearer and the ability of the hearer to set aside their own thoughts their own desires.  The problem is that we cannot expect to understand these things by our own reason or strength.  These things are “spiritually discerned” says St. Paul.  And this man was given spiritual eyes to see the truth that He had heard spoken into His ears.

And then, this blind man, shows us the way forward.  He lays hold of what He does know, and grasps tightly to what he already comprehends.  He doesn't let others strip his faith from him.  He doesn't listen to the crowd telling Him to shut up.  He refuses to let the faith in his heart be choked out and he digs in deeper when the heat of persecution comes upon him.  And then, He cries out with the only cry available to us, “Have mercy on me.”

Knowing his frailty, knowing and feeling his weakness, he seeks help from the one who promises every help and every healing of both physical and spiritual defect and deformity.

Because his spiritual eyes were opened to see Jesus, he knew to come to Him for every help and every hope.  He begs Jesus to give mercy to him.

Jesus calls him forward and asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?” And the man says, “Lord, let me recover my sight.”  Jesus replies, “Recover your sight, your faith has saved you.”

It's important to see the two different things going on in Jesus' reply.  Jesus grants this man his sight as an outward sign and proof of the faith of the man which saves him.  The man was not merely calling after Jesus to receive healing.  The man was calling after Jesus to beg Jesus to do for him what He was going to Jerusalem to do for all people – to cleans Him from sin and make Him righteous before God.  The blind man was calling after Jesus for the mercy and forgiveness of God.  And Jesus' reply is a declaration that even though he has a physical defect, the man is not excluded from the Kingdom of God – and the healing of the man's blindness was proof positive that this man would receive the mercy of God in the forgiveness of His sins which Jesus was going to Jerusalem to win.  This man believed that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of David and the savior and messiah.  That was his bold confession which the crowd wanted to silence.  And now, Jesus has given the man proof that His mercy reset upon this man.

And by his action, the man shows us the path to the healing of our spiritual blindness and our ignorance of God's Word.  The answer is not to cast aside the Word.  The answer is not to blame the speaker.  The answer is not to give up trying to understand.  The answer is to call out to God for His mercy and trust that He will make clear and known to you what is needed.

Those things which you do not now grasp or understand are not useless, as we so often suppose.  And, while there is no doubt that fallible human preachers are not going to be as clear as Jesus, that doesn't mean that we should simply ignore and cast aside what they say.

Rather, we should seize and lay hold of those words, wrestle with them, ponder them, consider them, and pray to our Lord for His mercy in removing our sin – breaking through the hardness of our heart – and giving us His Spirit to open our eyes of faith so that we may see and know and understand the rich treasures which He intends.  For He intends that we know and understand His Word and He intends that we lay hold of it and treasure it – keeping it deep within our heart – because as the light of His Spirit shines forth in that Word, we will be more and more convinced and more and more confident in our faith – we will be less likely to give in when the crowds try to shut us down – and we will have the same certainty and confidence and faith that the blind man of Jericho had -  that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of David, who, by going to Jerusalem, by suffering shame and spitting, by being put to death and rising from the dead, has won for us the mercy and grace of God.  By His Mercy, may He also send forth His Spirit to lead us to gain spiritual insight and wisdom so that we would know and understand His Word and promises and be able to hold and treasure them and reveal them to others.

In the HOLY NAME of JESUS.