HEALING. Day 23 of Lent. We are sick.
Jesus religious opponents once attacked him for having relationships with the ragamuffin characters like tax collectors and sinners. He was eating and drinking with them, having fellowship and a little too much ‘fun’ with the outsiders of the self-righteous. Instead of going to Jesus directly it seems they used gossip as the vehicle to transfer their outrage questioning the followers of Christ.
While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Mark 2:15-17
On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
We are sick.
Do you hear it? What Christ calls our condition? We are sick of soul and heart and mind, in motive and purpose and action. Sinners. Sick, sick people who need to be healed.
Jesus is the great physician. His role as “physician” and healer is so prevalent in his ministry and so essential to Jesus’ mission that He cannot be understood apart from it. The crowds saw Jesus as a “physician” and it’s a title He deserves. Just skim the gospels and see the intentional attention Jesus gave to healing. He was a healer whose time was consumed with encounters with people who were DIS-EASED-with a particular quality, habit, or disposition regarded as adversely affecting a person. The sick, blind, lame, deaf, leprous, paralyzed or mentally ill were illustrations of the universal sickness we all carry in regard to sin. Unlike Luke the gospel writer who was a physician, Jesus healing ministry was different. He was neither a trained physician or a magician, but healed by divine power and could heal all who were brought to him not just a few people or ones with certain health problems.
The divine healing power from Jesus went beyond curing ailing bodies or troubled minds. His healing was restorative, showing us sickness and therefore healing, is not simply a biological or physical phenomenon. Healing touches every level of human existence: physical, emotional, social, spiritual.
Jesus’ touch did more than send healing power into sick bodies. Jesus’ power cut through barriers of isolation. Jesus’ compassion was a sign of solidarity with suffering people.
When a leper approached Jesus asking to be healed, Jesus reached out past the ritual of impurity of the law and social standards. He was willing to physically touch the disease that forced the leper by law and social custom to live in isolation and misery. Today we might apply this to the AIDS patient or those with Ebola, the mentally ill or the physically deformed. Christ broke down walls of alienation and prejudice by the simple yet powerful gesture of reaching out and touching the untouchable.
Jesus healing methods often encouraged the active involvement of the sick in their own healing. He asked probing questions like ‘what is it you want me to do for you?” Gave clear instructions, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!” Faith was a necessary factor in healing. “Faith,” as expressed in the healing stories in the gospels, involved a believing trust in God’s power and the determination to gain access to Jesus. Healing also involved the compassionate loved ones of the sick. Many times others interceded to bring friends and family to Christ.
Today we follow the same pattern by believing in faith in Christ healing power and gaining access to Jesus through prayer for ourselves or interceding for others. Repeatedly, Jesus praised those He healed for their faith. Yet, a lack of faith from the people of Nazareth limited the healing of his hometown community.
Jesus was often moved by compassion for the sick people and moved into their midst knowing what they needed was more than just physical healing but spiritual healing of the sin problem found in all of us. Jesus never had to prove himself and refused to ‘perform’ healings for the self-righteous who stubbornly refused to accept the divine evidence of his power. But for those who were seeking to know and understand who He was the evidence proved Him as the anointed Christ.
Even if we doubt, Jesus welcomes are seeking questions. When John the Baptist was in prison, he sent two of his disciples to ask Jesus whether he was “the one who was to come.” Jesus responded: “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.” (Luke 7) Christ wants us to believe He has the power to heal.
We are sick people. Sin and this sinful world cause all manner of pain. Pain tells us we have a problem. Jesus, the great physician, calls us to move toward our own pain, so that He can transform it. So often when we have pain, not just physical pain or illness, but a wound from childhood or a loss of some kind, or emotional pain, we try to get away from it instead of leaning into it. We medicate it away. We want to dull it with alcohol or materialism or quick fixes. We deny it or avoid it or sometimes throw a party for it called pity.
We focus on the pain instead of the physician.
What if instead we stopped and switched directs. What if we returned to the Lord, and leaned into the pain instead of pushing back from it. Starting with prayer, can we listen for God’s guidance to hear the method of His divine healing. Maybe the great physician will work through a skilled counselor or traditional medicine. Perhaps he will lead you to change your diet or begin new lifestyle habits. Maybe He will miraculously deliver you from it or systematically empower you to live with it as He did the apostle Paul reminding you “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 cor 12:9)
We are all sick and the sinners healing comes through faith, believing in the Great Physician and in faith determining to gain access to Jesus for the divine power of His healing.
4jlkelly 