When healing is just the beginning......

It makes a great deal of sense that when  you are burdened with a physical/mental/spiritual/social problem......that absolutely no one seems to be able to solve.......that should healing come, should you experience wholeness once again........you will be filled with gratitude.  I expect for days you will find it hard to actually believe that the long wait and all the worry are over.  Before the healing, you could only look down the road one day at a time.  Now a whole future stretches out before you.  There are all kinds of possibilities.  I think this is rightly called HOPE.

Yet let us consider that the gift of healing is only the beginning.  It offers to each of us the opportunity to start again.  Now that the great burden of our broken bodies or spirits is no longer our reality, we have a chance to begin again with a new reality, and to live out that reality in new and different ways.  That is, the gift of healing is also the gift of a new tomorrow......and that tomorrow could and just maybe should be different from today.

Because after today, you will be a person who once was oppressed or imprisoned by a problem that was beyond this world's ability to solve. Now you will be a walking example of the unpredictability of grace, poured out on you and your life.  You might even call this salvation.

And you just might want to tell someone else about this miraculous, life changing, life giving experience.  You just might want to tell someone else about how it all came about.  In the case of the three people healed by Jesus in the 8th chapter of Matthew, each one just might end up telling their story of new life.....and pointing to the Jesus who made it all happen.  Those who were healed would now also be witnesses......to the salvific power of Jesus, to the joy of restoration, to the gift of unexpected healing.

Healing takes many forms:  a broken relationship restored, a disease which disappears, an invitation to an outcast, a meal for the hungry, a mind which is whole again.  Any and all of these can turn our lives in a new direction, one of gratitude but also a life of witness as well.  The verb  sodzo is Greek and is translated as 'to heal' 'to make whole' or 'to save'.  In this one word is wrapped all these notions of release from disease, wholeness of body, mind, spirit and the new life that is discovered in the end.

Healing is the beginning of a journey of salvation: new life that springs up like living water in those who have been made whole through powers unknown by mere humans.  Sure, some of that healing comes to us through modern science and practice.  That doesn't make it any less amazing, or, to think about it, leave us any less thankful.

From healing to witness.  New life springing up.  Salvation lived today.  Forgiveness that takes the broken and makes it whole.   I bet you have a story about how your life has been changed.  If we share that story with others, they just might reach out to the one who wants to heal them as well.

Can't see beyond the border.....

It shouldn't surprise us that there was some kind of competition between Capernaum and Nazareth.  We humans are always comparing ourselves to one another and, of course, wanting to come out on top.  We have this terrible tendency to treat everything in life......even life itself.....as some kind of contest.  (That, in fact, might be a good definition for original sin.  I'll think about it.)

This, often hidden, tendency to want to be the best pops right up when (after an outpouring of the Holy Spirit) Jesus takes on God's mission as his mission - to mend and heal the world, i.e. "to preach good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, release to the captives."

There was amazement that day.  The Gospel of Luke tells us so.  I also think there was that giddy kind of nervous laughter mixed with joy that occurs when something GOOD and TOTALLY UNEXPECTED comes your way.  Wow!

And, just think.  It's Joseph's boy.  One of our own.  From here in Nazareth.  Wow!  This is going to be something.

And it will be something.....something for the entire cosmos.....those who live in Nazareth and those who live in Capernaum.  Those who follow Torah and those who do not.  Those who do dastardly deeds and those who are faithful and obedient.  Jesus' mission is to mend and heal the entire world.  Not just Nazareth. Not just you.  Not just me.

Seems reasonable to you and me, but apparently there were a bunch in the crowd who were truly unhappy with this turn of events.  Jesus was their homeboy.  He owed it to his village to take care of them - if not exclusively, then at least well ahead of everyone else.  Otherwise, how are we going to one-up Capernaum, the next village over?

Healing belongs here, they might say.  Charity begins at home.  Take care of our own people first.  Use your talents and gifts and time right here.  If anything is left over for those other folks, fine.  But us first.

Which of course is another definition for original sin.  Us first; them maybe.

Know why I call it original sin?  Because we all do it.  Perhaps not all the time; but we all do it.  We all secretly believe that there is only a limited amount of Jesus to go around.  Forgiveness is limited.  Healing is limited.  Reconciliation is limited.  Heaven is limited.

So we will build walls, put up fences, set up check points, have secret passwords, stare down the outsiders, stand our ground when a stranger appears at our pew, never wear our name tag (because everyone knows us) nor introduce ourselves to new people (because it is their job to get to know us)....and a thousand, thousand other things to keep US and THEM separate.

Of course, Jesus gets lost in all of this.  The Jesus who loved all in the face of hate and forgave all in the face of death.  The Jesus who died at our hands yet blesses our hands again and again.  The Jesus who invites YOU to the table as he moves in this world, mending and healing and loving.  The Jesus who is Good News for us.

I can't decide if I should cry at my own stupidity or rejoice at Jesus' overwhelming love.  Or maybe both.

That, and try to refrain from building walls.

To heal and mend the world..........

We are knee deep in politics here in America as a dozen men and women press their agendas as potential candidates for the office of President.

What we get to hear is each potential 'next president'  candidate's vision for America.  Their political agenda, and if they are doing it right, their 'call to arms' to the voting public to join them in making America great.

Jesus had an agenda too, and we get to hear it in the 4th chapter of Luke when he quotes from the prophet Isaiah 60.
   

'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to bring good news to the poor,

 release to the captives, sight to the blind

 and freedom to the oppressed.  

To announce the year of the Lord's favor.'

Jesus is talking about turning this world upside down, inside out.....and in the end....upside right.  Jesus is setting out to heal and mend the world.

It's what we've all dreamed of......a world of mutuality, of peace, of fellowship.....a place where the world sings in 'perfect harmony.'  We have a dream; Jesus has a mission.

The healing of the nations is God's great design and desire for this creation.  So through the Son, God acts in this world....in our world....to heal and mend the nations.

And it will start with those who have found themselves at the bottom of the pile:  those imprisoned by ruling authority gone mad, those whose bodies have been broken from the very beginning and whose lives have always been a struggle, and those who are pressed down by the structures humans have created.  But it will not stop there.

Jesus will stand in the midst of all who are held captive by the demons of drugs or mental illness; all those whose spirits have been broken by the brokenness of another; all those who are blind to the truth and those unable to see any possibility beyond today.  Jesus will stand with those oppressed by poverty and those oppressed by others.  Jesus will stand with those who have been wrongly imprisoned and those who are defined by the crimes that put them in prison in the first place.

Jesus will also stand right next to the one who does the oppressing, is guilty of blinding a neighbor, has broken the spirit of another human being.

Jesus will stand right in the midst of the gang wars and abusive homes, the killing fields and depraved indifference.....so that God might be at work in him....healing and mending the world.  Both the do-ers and the receivers.  Nothing less will accomplish God's plan: the whole creation singing in perfect harmony.

For us it is no more than a dream.  For God, it is the future that comes to us in Jesus and at the same time is waiting for us.  Jesus is that tomorrow; Jesus leads us to that tomorrow.  Thanks be to God.

Let's start with forgiveness.........

"God, I want some of that healing and mending.  How about you fix those others who are causing all the wounds of this world?  I want a kinder, gentler world."

"I can work with that," Jesus says.  "You are forgiven."


"I don't want to be forgiven.  I want peace and quiet."

"Well, you can't get peace and quiet unless you get a handle of how loud you are yourself.  You contribute to the noise you know.  You have bruised a few people in your time."

"But those were little things.  Not important.  I'm talking about all the big things:  oppressive economic systems, racism, those foreigners who want to live in my neighborhood, criminals.  Those kinds of things."


"All those big things start with very little things.  Decisions and choices made day by day.  By people just like you.  I remember that little nastiness with the check out clerk when she got the change wrong."

"She should have been paying more attention to me, and less to her 'friend.'"

"Yes, lack of attention is indeed an on-going problem.  And blindness.  Folks cannot see themselves in the mirror.  It's an epidemic.  Still I forgive you."

"I'm not in need of forgiveness.  I need a kinder, gentler world."

"Well, how about we start with forgiveness and see where it goes from there?"