Redeemer Lutheran Church
1084 W. Bullard Ave.
Fresno, CA   93711
Phone: (559) 439-8500
Fax: (559) 439-8585
office@redeemerfresno.com

The Reverend Clarence Eisberg
Phone: (209) 725-9082
Cell:  (209) 631-3108
pastor@redeemerfresno.com

Worship ~ 8:30 a.m. & 10:00 a.m.
Family Ministries ~ 10:00 a.m.
Holy Communion ~ 2nd & 4th Sundays
Connecting People to Jesus
and to One Another!
www.lcms.org








The Reverend
Clarence Eisberg

August 26, 2007

“When God Sighed ”

Jesus arrived at the tomb of Lazarus John tells us Jesus wept.  Did you ever ask yourself
why?  Did his tears fall because a dear friend had died?  He felt the loss.  Did his tears fall
because death is an alien intrusion into a perfect world God created.  Death was never
intended to be our experience.

Reading in the Gospel of Mark I stumbled across another unusual word.  This simple word
has caused me to think deeply about the over whelming love that God has for me, for
you.  It’s an interesting word that I never would have ascribed to God.  It might change
your mind about God.  

Let’s read the passage together.  Mark 7:31-35

Jesus is presented with a man who is deaf and has a speech impediment.  Perhaps he
stammered.  Maybe, because of his deafness, he never learned to articulate words
properly.

Jesus, refusing to exploit the situation, took the man aside.  He looked him in the face.  
Knowing it would be useless to talk, he explained what he was about to do.  He spat and
touched the man’s tongue, telling him that whatever restricted his speech was about to be
removed.  He touched his ears.  They, for the first time, were about to hear.

But before the man said a word or heard a sound, Jesus did something I never would
have expected.  He sighed.

I might have expected a clap, or a song or a prayer.  Instead the Son of God paused,
looked up to heaven, and sighed.  This is a deep emotion that says more than words.
\He sighed.  It seems out of place. I never though of God as one who sighs.  I have
thought of God as one who commands light out of darkness.  One who speaks, and fish
fill the sea, birds fill the sky.  I have thought of the scene in Bethany and see a God who
weeps.  I’ve thought of God as one who calls forth the dead with a command….but a God
who sighs?  

We all do I share of sighing.

I sighed this week when I visited those in the hospital… whose illness has placed him on
machines.  I have sighed when dirty-faced, runny nose children, dressed with torn clothes,
begged for money so more glue could be breathed into his lungs on the streets of
Nakuru, Kenya.

I sighed this week when individuals shared their emotional pain from the experiences of
life and sleepless nights.  No doubt you’ve had your share of sighing.

If you have teenagers, you’ve probably sighed.  If you’ve tried to resist temptation, you’ve
probably sighed.  If you’ve had your motives and reputation questioned or your best acts
of love rejected, you have been forced to take a deep breath and let escape a painful
sigh.

I realize there does exist a sigh of relief, a sigh of joy.  But that isn’t the sigh described in
Mark 7.  This sigh of Jesus lies somewhere between frustration and a burst of tears.

The apostle Paul spoke of this sighing.  Twice he said that Christians will sigh as long as
we are on earth and long for heaven.  The creation sighs as if she were giving birth.  
Even the Holy Spirit sighs with groans that are deep as he interprets our prayers.
(Romans 8:22-26) read

(read Mark 8:11-13)  He sighed deeply.  Such disappointment.  Why?  Remember the
gospel lesson last week?  Luke 12:54  about their ability to interpret the signs of the
weather…. (read)  How can you not interpret the present signs….It’s as if he said…  
Isaiah told you!!!!   when you see the lame walk, the eyes of the blind opened…the mute
tongue shout for joy… the Messiah is in your midst.

Jesus sighed.  Jesus recognized a pain that was never intended.  Mankind was not
created to be separated from our creator; and so he sighs.  Creation was never intended
to be inhabited by evil.  His tears fall at the tomb of Lazarus because death was never to
be part of our experience.  All creation groans under the strain of evil….longing for a
return to the “Garden”, how life once was.  

Conversations with God were always meant to be personal, face to face, in the “cool of
the evening, in the garden”, but now we need the Spirit to intercede on our behalf….
looking forward to the day when we will see God face to face.

When Jesus looked into the eyes of this man, the victim of Satan, He knew that God never
intended life to be this way.  He sighed. “Your ears weren’t made to be deaf, your tongue
wasn’t made to stumble.”  The Master sighed.  He came to set things right.  

Had Jesus not felt the burden of what was not intended; if Jesus had not sighed…we
would still be in our sins, life would have no hope.  What if Jesus had simply said… “well,
that’s life,” washed his hands and went away. He didn’t.  He saw our condition and went to
the cross.  

When Jesus sighed….his sigh tells us that God knows our condition.  God cares and
offers comfort for those hurting from the difficulties, the illnesses that come our way.  

God uses the “church”.  God uses you and me.  We are the body of Christ to one
another.  Paul writes: “The Spirit is given for the common good…. Some have the gift of
healing, to others miraculous powers, (we met families in Kenya who had been delivered
by a miracle from alcoholism.  We met a man who left the Muslim faith for the joy of
knowing Jesus and having hope for the first time in his life.    Paul writes that the Spirit of
the living God gave (I Cor. 12) to some the gift of serving… to others,  the gift of
encouragement. (Romans 12) Encouragement brings comfort. For our God is a God of
comfort. We are to be imitators of God. (Ephesians 5:1)  We are to live lives of unselfish
love, serving those in need.  It is not easy, we do not always do it well, but if we are
disciples of Jesus, living out our discipleship at Redeemer, then it is what we do.  

We tell little children, here, and in Solian, Kenya, or Thailand, or Hong Kong, about the
love of Jesus has for them.  We help families come out of gangs by offering care, by
helping with jobs and mentoring.  We help families by building homes with Habitat with
Humanity.  We provide families who only have dirt floors, and tin roofs a way to provide
milk for their children and provide a way to have income,  then by the grace of God their
children can have hope, not swallowed in hopelessness by poverty.

David wrote these words in Psalm 34.
I will extol the Lord at all times;
His praise will always be on my lips.
Let the afflicted hear his voice and rejoice.
This poor man called, and the Lord heard him.
He saved him out of all his troubles.
Taste and see that the Lord is good.
Blest are those who take refuge in Him.  
He is close to the broken hearted,
And saves those who are crushed in spirit.

Our God sighed.  He calls each of us be his “comfort” against the hopelessness we see
around us. It was not meant to be so.