“The Man for Others” - Matthew 8:1-17

When my grandmother was close to death I remember the profound sympathy I had for her as she sat stationary in her wheelchair for what seemed like entire days at a time, hunched over and slouched, devoid of all energy and purpose. Her physical weakness had overtaken her and through this she had seemed to lose any drive to live. It is to such situations that our text becomes very real in our lives: “He took upon himself our weaknesses and bore our sufferings.” There is someone who has taken upon himself our weakness, our brokenness, our frailty, our loss of purpose and spirit. This “someone” Matthew claims is Jesus. But is this something that is real for us today? If we go back to the beginning of our text maybe we too can see what Matthew saw…

Our text begins with Jesus descending the mountain after giving his famous “Sermon on the Mount.” Up on the mountain Jesus had been preaching to and teaching his disciples and the crowds that he had gathered from the likes of Galilee and Jerusalem. After finishing this sermon Jesus comes down from the mountain and is quickly interrupted by a leper who comes to him and throws himself down before him, begging to be healed. Jesus amazingly, does the unthinkable, he reaches out and touches, yes, touches this untouchable and unclean man, healing and cleansing him of his leprosy.

After this Jesus heads to Capernaum. Just as he gets inside the city a centurion approaches him asking him to heal his paralyzed servant. Jesus patiently and kindly agrees to come and heal the servant. The centurion, however, tells Jesus not to bother with coming to his house for he understands that Jesus is a man of authority, and therefore Jesus’ word is sufficient for the task. Jesus marvels at this—he marvels at the profound faith of the Roman centurion. And then Jesus speaks the word, instantly healing the centurion’s servant.

At this point Jesus proceeds to Peter’s house only to find Peter’s mother-in-law sick in bed with a fever. Without hesitation Jesus touches her hand and she is relieved of her fever. And that very same evening many that were demon possessed and spiritually oppressed were brought to Jesus and once again Jesus patiently helped them. He cast out their evil spirits with a word and healed all who were sick.

It is here at the conclusion of this extended series of healings by Jesus that Matthew tells us what this is all about: “This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: ‘He took upon himself our weaknesses and bore our sufferings.’” Here in this small verse we hear the good news of Jesus, in its simple totality. In his miraculous healings, Jesus was taking upon himself the brokenness of our humanity. He was giving us a foretaste of the restoration of creation by taking our sicknesses, illnesses, and maladies upon himself.

Jesus is here to bear us.
Jesus is here to carry us.
Jesus simply is “for us.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer had a very significant and memorable way to refer to Jesus: “The Man for Others.” And it is here in our text that we see Jesus as “The Man for Others” manifested in a very clear and explicit way.

And this being “The Man for Others”, this being “for us”, is real. These were real healings. The leper walked away with his skin truly free from his sores and leprosy. The paralyzed servant of the centurion was given the full movement of his limbs back. Peter’s mother-in-law’s fever was gone, her body temperature returning to her normal 98.6 degrees. And all those who came to Jesus with demons were rid of the evil spirits that plagued them.

Jesus’ purpose is concrete and tangible—he is here to bear our burdens of all kinds. He bears our spiritual burdens—our demons; and our physical burdens—our sicknesses. The fullness of this bearing is illustrated in our text. Through this bearing we have the promise that in this life Jesus will bear with us in all things. He has promised to give us his actual presence through the members of his Body, the Church. You, yes you, have been brought into the family of Jesus Christ in your baptism and have become a true member of his body. You are now surrounded with a whole company of brothers and sisters who have been united with Christ. In this life, today, right before your very eyes, Jesus Christ is meeting you in these fellow believers. He is here in them bearing your burdens right along side of you, in a very concrete way: The friend who sits with you as your mother lies terminally ill on a hospital bed. The sister who holds you while you cry over the loss of your child. The father who sits up with you all night while you struggle to finish a paper. The random stranger who helps you pick up your groceries that have been scattered across the parking lot. In these very real lives, in these very real people, Jesus is walking with you, living with you, and bearing with you.

But what happens after this life? If Jesus’ story stops with our text isn’t our hope short-lived and fleeting? Indeed, it is. If our hope of having Jesus on our side is only for this life, then we are ultimately hopeless like the rest of the world. But the story of Jesus doesn’t stop with our text. Matthew is setting us up for the climax, he is setting is up for the cross. Jesus’ bearing of our burdens climaxes on the cross. In this dread moment of hopelessness the fullness of his standing “for us” comes through. The final enemy, death itself, Jesus confronts head-on and bears in its fullness. Broken under the burden of death that looms over our very own lives, Jesus cries out to His Father, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

And once again, the story becomes nothing but a hollow tale if it stops here. But death does not hold Jesus. The Father raises Jesus from the dead and declares once and for all the plan that he has for his children. Because we have been made members of Christ’s Body, this journey through the cross and out of the grave becomes our own journey. In Jesus Christ we share in these realities in a very real way. God has promised to completely fix the creation when Jesus comes again—and if we are members of Jesus Christ then we will partake in that same resurrection and new life. In that day we will no longer need to bear with the brokenness of this creation. God will finally step in and put the creation where he wants it to be. Your broken down and decaying body will be resurrected. You, yourself, will stand with your brothers and sisters in Christ in the new world that is bursting with life and goodness.

Therefore, as members of Christ’s Body we now take on the responsibility of Jesus Christ before the world. We ourselves have become “a man or woman for others” in his Body. Paul told the Galatians that this was the fulfillment of their purpose and life as Christians: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” The burdens around us in life are unavoidable and can only be ignored for so long. The death, the sickness, the broken relationships, the addictions, the lack of meaning and purpose, and all else that plagues us. Jesus Christ has taken these burdens off our shoulders in order that we may now turn around and help those around us with their burdens. We are here to be Christ to others.

The reality of this calling was shown to me in a very unexpected way… As I was attempting to write this sermon and was struggling with getting my thoughts together and moving in a coherent direction, I was sitting in my room, staring blankly at my computer. Suddenly my phone rang. “Ugh,” I thought, “just what I need at a moment like this. Another distraction.” Frustrated, I walked over to the phone and answered it. “Who now? Who is calling now?” I thought. It was my sister. My thoughts ran off: “Ugh—what do you want now, didn’t we just talk yesterday? Do you not remember I am really swamped this week?”

As she began to say “hi” it was revealed that she was just calling on her way home from work—she had had a long day and wanted to talk, she wanted a listening ear and she wanted to see how I was doing. I was in no mood for this—I had a sermon that needed to be written. Grumpily I grunted along for a bit, wondering if she would sense my impatience and remember my workload, letting me go on my disgruntled way.

And then it hit me—like a wall of water. In this moment of selfishness I was in fact a living example of how we fail at bearing one another. I had been sitting there wondering what to say about bearing our fellow man and then—boom!—there I was, so selfishly turned in on my own agenda that I was missing the opportunity to bear my sister in a very simple and yet important way. I was so concerned with my own burdens that I was neglecting hers. I was putting my own burdens as a higher priority than hers. Instead of giving my burdens over to God and graciously helping my sister with hers, I was stubbornly living in an isolated world trying to bear my burdens alone.

Jesus, however, handled himself radically different. He allowed himself to be interrupted by countless individuals who needed his help. Even in our text alone he was interrupted by a leper, a centurion with a paralyzed servant, Peter’s mother-in-law, and many possessed by demons. Every single time Jesus stopped and helped. Every time he allowed his schedule to be interrupted by the people God the Father put onto his path. As members of Jesus Christ, we are now a part of this work for others. Jesus is actively bearing us and all our burdens. Therefore Jesus is alive and at work in our very lives, loving others through us. Dietrich Bonhoeffer recognized what this reality of God’s grace calls us to in his book Life Together:

“We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God, who will thwart our plans and frustrate our ways time and again, even daily, by sending people across our path with their demands and requests. We can, then, pass them by, preoccupied with our more important tasks, just as the priest—perhaps reading the Bible [or writing his sermon!]—passed by the man who had fallen among robbers. When we do that, we pass by the visible sign of the cross raised in our lives to show us that God’s way, and not our own, is what counts.”

And so we are challenged today to understand our Christian calling, and then, to get beyond idle understanding and actually step out and live it. The works of love that God has prepared for you are not hard to find. He is so gracious that he actually puts them into your life himself. The problem is that we have become so selfish and jaded that we have forgotten what these works of love look like. But through his bearing of us on the cross, God has graciously opened our eyes to see once again countless opportunities he places before us as he interrupts our lives with the needs and problems of those around us. May he continue to uphold us and bear us as we lovingly bear all the people he has placed into our lives. Amen.