Sermon Archives

February 24, 2010
Pastor Jim Bangsund

"Vital Signs Leading to Life:
Jesus Heals the Official's Son"
John 4:45-54

A young farmer was out plowing his field when he looked up in the sky and saw the clouds forming the letters GPC. As he pondered, it became clear to him that God was affirming a call he had sensed for many years. For a long time, he had felt that God was calling him to be an evangelist, not a farmer. GPC. Clearly, the letters stood for "Go Preach Christ." And so he set out to do so.

He enrolled in seminary, intending to become a pastor. But as the weeks and months went by, he just seemed unable to get the hang of it all. Finally, in total frustration, he went in to talk with his favorite faculty member. This professor had always encouraged him, but he could see that the young man was having great difficulty. He asked him how it was that he had felt called to come to seminary.

The young man told him ... told him about the day when he was out plowing the field, told him about the letters GPC formed by clouds in the sky. The professor thought long and hard about this and then replied, "My friend, I have no doubt what you are telling me is true. And the conclusions you drew from those letters was a reasonable one. But having heard what you have shared, and having seen the struggles you are going through, it is my considered opinion that what those letters GPC stood for was 'Go plant corn.'" And so the young man did.

Signs. How often, when the going is murky, don't we find ourselves looking for signs. A sign, a proof, an indicator that I should go this way and not that. John is a Gospel of signs - but not of signs like clouds forming letters in the sky. Not of proofs and dazzling demonstrations. John's "Vital Signs Leading to Life" are something else.

Let me tell you another story of a sign. It was Sunday afternoon, December 10, 1972, on the campus of California Lutheran College in Thousand Oaks, California. I had just attended the Victory Memorial Service of Naomi Benson who had passed away three days before. Our families were close; my brother and sister and I grew up alongside Naomi's children, and I had come to know Naomi as really good and wonderful person who died far too young. So there I was with the family, after all had been said and done, It was late afternoon and we decided to take a hike up the gentle slopes of Mount Clef behind the college. A bunch of Js, we were. Jim, JoAnn, Joe, Jon, Judy and Jackie.

Did I mention Judy? Yes, that Judy. A week or so before I had made what turned out to be a last visit to see Naomi before she died, and it was at that time that I noticed that one of her daughters, six years my junior, had ... grown up. And that day, Judy and I sat down and talked for the first time. Now it was a couple of weeks later. Naomi had passed away and I had come back to Thousand Oaks for the service. The service was now behind us, and it was late afternoon and the sun was setting. And as the group of us started up the slopes of Mount Clef I started walking alongside Judy. We began to talk again. And then, as we went, I took all the courage I had ... and I took her hand in mine. What would happen? Would she pull her hand away? I asked if it was OK, and she looked up and smiled and said yes, it was OK. And that was how it all began, in December of 1972 on the slopes of Mount Clef.

There are two kinds of signs. Some signs are spectacular: the miracle, the pointer we take as indicating what we should do - GPC in the clouds - the thing that gets people to cry out, "It's a sign!" But there's another kind of sign that's different, quieter: this is the sign that shows meaning, significance - a held hand that is not withdrawn. This kind of sign gets people to say, "Ah..., this is a significant moment, an event filled with meaning."

And that's what you find when you read John - who, like Jesus himself, is actually a bit cautious about miracles. Oh, John agrees that Jesus does miracles, but he sees the danger of them becoming a sugar high for people. Something that gets them all excited one day, but then a day or a month later you find them crying something else - perhaps "Crucify him."

Earlier in the Gospel, the people are dazzled by what Jesus does; but it's not a healthy dazzling, and in chapter 2 (vv. 24-25) we read, "Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. He did not need man's testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man." And so it is that John often talks instead about signs, not just miracles. Vital signs. Signs that show who Jesus is and what his presence means, rather than just dazzling us. John brings us vital signs that lead to life.

One of these signs in John is Jesus healing the son of a royal official. This is the only time someone royal comes to Jesus. We aren't given his name; we just read that he was a royal official and someone, we would assume, who was accustomed to getting his way. And in this short encounter, we find a rebuke, a request, a response and a relationship.

First, a rebuke. When he approaches, Jesus says, "Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders you will never believe." We're taken aback until we realize that Jesus is speaking to the people and not to him - "Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders...." And, again, it's the problem of miracles and sugar highs. These people want GPC in the sky but they're blind and deaf to the meaning of it all - to things that really point to who Jesus is and what he's all about.

But the royal official persists. Following the rebuke he comes back with a request. "Sir, come before my child dies." Here was a man accustomed to having what he wanted in life, but he was at wit's end. The health of his dying son was something he could neither command nor control. But more. There was something about Jesus that inspired faith in this man. We don't read anything about him being pious or religious; he wasn't a priest or a Pharisee or a Sadducee - actually, Jesus had more difficulty with them than with secular people. (Which often gives me pause as a pastor.) This royal official lived in Capernaum, on the edge of the Sea of Galilee. He had heard about Jesus and had come a day's journey inland to find him at Cana. "Sir, come before my child dies."

And Jesus hears him. And so, after the rebuke and the request, comes the response. Two responses actually. Jesus, having pity upon him, responds, "Go your way; your son will live;" and then we read of the response of the royal official - simple and yet profound. "The man," we read, "took Jesus at his word and departed." The man - a royal official - one who was certainly used to having his way and seeing things done immediately, right before his eyes, when he asked - simply takes Jesus at his word. He had traveled for a day, from Capernaum to Cana, in order to see Jesus, and now, without seeing anything happen, he just takes Jesus at his word, perhaps nods, and heads for home - another day's travel back down the road to Capernaum.

And his son was healed. At that moment. When Jesus spoke the words. But there was no buzz of a cell phone in his pocket to tell him, no texting of the glad message,"Your son's fever has broken! He is well again!" The sign was still hidden from him. At least for a time. He had to travel for a day, trusting that what Jesus had said would indeed prove to be the case.

But the sign hidden became a sign revealed a day later when he reached home. The sign? Not merely the news that his son was well, but that his healing had taken place at precisely the time that Jesus - 20 miles away - had said,"Your son will live." After a rebuke and a request, and after the response, a sign revealed now brings about a relationship. A relationship. The sign of his son's healing - healing at a distance, healing by simply a word - is a sign of who this Jesus is. No mere man but God on the loose in a world needing healing. A sign for the royal official and, through John's Gospel, a sign for us. And so the account concludes by telling us that "he and all his household believed." By this sign, they were brought into a relationship with God in the flesh, with Jesus. From rebuke to request through response to relationship.

And that's the point, you see. John talks about signs - vital signs that lead to life - because he, like Jesus, is interested in bringing you into the relationship, and then taking that relationship to the next level. Not merely to a sugar high of GPC in the clouds, but rather to the significance of a hand offered, a hand not withdrawn, to the significance of God's reaching out to us and offering himself in the person of Jesus.

For when all is said and done - when we come to the end of John's Gospel - we read in John 20:30-31, "Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name."

"These are written that you may believe." Keep this in mind in weeks ahead as we hear of other "Vital Signs Leading to Life" in the Gospel of John. Jesus worked miracles; he works miracles today. But not everyone was healed in his day, and not everyone is healed today ... because Jesus' miracles are signs, you see - signs given not to dazzle you but to draw you - to draw you to God's Son, to the Cross, and then to what God has in mind in particular for you.

John knows that signs are given to make clear, to you and to me and to the world, just who this Jesus is. God doesn't want you on a sugar high - that's why John is so cautious, and calls what Jesus does "signs," and why he notes Jesus' caution when it came to the reaction of the crowds. In all this, God is first and foremost working to build and strengthen his relationship with you because you are more than just a cipher. You are more than just one more mouth to feed among 6.8 billion others. You are one for whom Christ died; you are one through whom God now has things to accomplish and lives to touch.

Vital signs leading to life. We come here tonight with many and various expectations. Maybe you were just hoping for a good bowl of soup, and that we have aplenty on Lenten Wednesday evening at St Timothy's. But maybe you are one who comes, like the royal official, bearing a burden that presses you down. God is here to meet you in that.

Here in this place we don't often find GPC in the clouds - though such things do happen, even to Lutherans on occasion. But more likely God is going to meet you - and lift your burden, or perhaps share in your joy - in ways less dazzling but more lasting. In a reading from his word, in a conversation with a fellow struggling saint, in a quiet but deeply sensed conviction that God is saying, "Go your way; your need will be met. Go your way, your grief will be healed. Go your way; your life is in my hands and I will not let you go."

Vital signs leading to life. Given "that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life" - and hope, and healing and wholeness - "in his name."

Amen.