healing

There’s none so blind as they that won’t see…

/ JJS / 1 Comment

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Today’s readings (click below to open in new tab/window):
Psalms 116; 147:12-20, Job 16:16-22, 17:1, 17:13-16, Acts 13:1-12, John 9:1-17

Every summer we take our nephews camping. The campground’s many roads loop back on one another, so there are multiple ways to get places. One afternoon the younger nephew insisted we were taking the long way back to camp and kept trying to pull me down another road. I pointed toward our site: “Look, Jack, our tent is right there.” He said: “I don’t see it.” We did this twice more until I looked down and saw he’d shut his eyes tight.

Sight and blindness are important metaphors in the Bible. In today’s passage from John, we encounter a blind man who prompts Jesus to break Mosaic law and perform a healing on the Sabbath – a reminder that faith binds us to mercy, not legalism. In Acts, Saul and Barnabas meet Bar-Jesus, a Jewish magician and false prophet in the city of Paphos. Saul condemns Bar-Jesus for “making crooked the straight paths of the Lord” and the Spirit strikes the magician temporarily blind. His refusal to see the truth – and his attempt to lead others down the wrong road – put him in a debilitated state. If this seems harsh, remember Saul himself was struck blind by the Spirit before he accepted Christ, so what seems like a curse may have been a cure.

We’re all blind to something, especially our own shortcomings. Like the disciples asking whose sin caused the man’s blindness – his own or his parents – we want to point fingers. Certainly neither the man nor his parents were without sin (who is?) but Jesus focused on how God could transform the present situation. Jesus used spit and dirt to begin the healing process, but the man had to walk himself to a pool to wash the mud off. When we want to make ourselves whole, we need to have faith God does not limit us to the darkness of the past, but guides us to a brighter future. We may have to get our hands dirty with therapy, soul-searching, and hard decisions, but as the old hymn promises, the lost will be found and the blind will see.

(for another take on today’s reading from John, see Spit, Mud, and Healing)

Comfort: God is waiting to make you whole.

Challenge: You’re going to have to do some of the work.

Prayer: God of healing, granter of mercies, I seek the wholeness you offer. Amen.

Discussion: The title of today’s post is from Jonathan Swift’s Polite Conversation. What are some things you’ve tried not to see?

Join the discussion! If you enjoyed this post, feel free to join an extended discussion as part of the C+C Facebook group. You’ll be notified of new posts through FB, and have the opportunity to share your thoughts with some lovely people. Or feel free to comment here on WordPress, or even re-blog – the more the merrier!

Made Well

/ JJS / Leave a comment

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Today’s readings (click below to open in new tab/window):
Psalms 104; 149, Judges 16:1-14, Acts 7:30-43, John 5:1-18

If today’s reading from John had happened in the twenty-first century, someone would have captured it on smart-phone video and posted it to the internet with a click-bait title like: “Hundreds of people stepped right over this disabled man, but when a wandering stranger stopped you won’t believe what happened next!”

After arriving in Jerusalem, Jesus encountered a man who had been ill for 38 years. The man was waiting for a chance to immerse himself in a miraculous fountain. When Jesus asked the man if he wanted to be made well, the man talked about all the people who had obstructed him. This wasn’t exactly what he’d been asked, but in the end Jesus commanded him to take up his mat and walk away healed. Even though the man didn’t answer directly, the specifics of the question are important: “Do you want to be made well?”

Circumstances made it obvious the man desired healing. Jesus could easily have made some assumptions and healed him without asking. Instead, Jesus respected the dignity of his ability to choose — possibly the only dignity remaining to him. Only then did he intercede.

Sometimes we want God to just fix someone already. Maybe it’s someone else, or maybe that someone is us. When God doesn’t act on our schedule, we start thinking of ways to fix it ourselves. If Jesus gives us insight to the character of God, it seems God does not impose himself on us, but respects our ability to choose. People have to be willing to change – and that’s not always the same as wanting to. If we want to be made well — physically, emotionally, spiritually — God seems less interested in who we blame than in getting us on our feet. People step over us because they need healing too. Let’s not be so busy pointing fingers at the co-worker who wronged us or the parent who failed us that we don’t get around to saying “yes” to God. We may need God’s coaxing to rise up from our mat, but that first step is all on us.

Comfort: God respects your ability to choose.

Challenge: Say the serenity prayer.

Prayer: Loving God, open my eyes to the possibilities, and my feet will follow. Amen.

Discussion: What do you want to change about yourself? What do you want to change about someone else?

For further thoughts on today’s reading from John 5, visit Stepping Stone.

Join the discussion! If you enjoyed this post, feel free to join an extended discussion as part of the C+C Facebook group. You’ll be notified of new posts through FB, and have the opportunity to share your thoughts with some lovely people. Or feel free to comment here on WordPress, or even re-blog – the more the merrier!

Invitation: Helicopter

/ JJS / 1 Comment

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We live right across the street from a hospital with a helipad. Several times a week – or maybe several times a day on long summer holiday weekends – we can hear the emergency helicopter landing and taking off. From inside the house it sounds no louder than a leaf blower, but outside the protection of our thick walls, on the front porch or in the yard, the deafening sound is a physical presence pushing against your sense of safety.

Every time I hear the helicopter, I am conflicted. The choppy roar of its rotors means someone has been injured severely. But that sound also means there’s a chance that person can be saved, a chance that didn’t exist before air ambulances were available.

This is not unlike the conflict I feel at the communion table.

The Eucharist exists because we, as individuals and a species, suffer from severe spiritual injuries. It is a weekly reminder that we are broken in ways that need serious attention. It is also a reminder that we can be saved. There was a time, the time before Christ offered to love us into wholeness, when we were offered no hope for such injuries. I’m sad it is necessary but so grateful for its presence. What a bittersweet balance.

Inside the walls of the church, the Words of Institution are more comfort than disturbance: “Before Jesus was given up to death, a death he freely accepted, he gave You thanks…” Outside the walls of the church, these words can seem threatening to the injured. Imagine being hurt so badly you need to be airlifted to a hospital. Imagine the overwhelming sound and chaos and immensity of a helicopter descending onto your broken body. That doesn’t feel like hope – that feels like disaster.

When we invite someone to the table for the first time, we need to understand a lifeline sometimes looks like a noose. Where we appreciate the helicopter because it’s already saved us, they may just hear a confusing, even frightening, noise. We don’t fix that by speaking more loudly (or more frequently, or more insistently). We fix it by offering to ride with them, to hold their hand, and to stay by their side until the fear and pain have passed. Until it sounds like hope.

If you are a frequent guest of the table, extend your hand. If you have never come to the table, please accept that hand and try to believe the fear does not outweigh the promise. Our pilot has only your salvation at heart.

May the peace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

Out of Thin Air

/ JJS / 2 Comments

Today’s readings: Psalms 93; 147:1-11, 1 Kings 17:17-24, 3 John 1-15, John 4:46-54

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Why do miracles happen? American Christianity often portrays them as rewards for diligent prayer and great faith. The Gospel of John tells a different story. Jesus performed seven miracles – John called them “signs”- before he was crucified. The second was the healing of a royal official’s son. The official met Jesus in Cana, about 25 miles southwest from where his son lay dying in Capernaum, and asked Jesus to save him. While Jesus did heal the official’s son, his initial response seems almost perturbed: “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” Jesus was coerced by his mother into the first sign at the wedding in Cana, grumbled about the second, and things didn’t improve much for the next five.  When he raised Lazarus, he wept over his friends’ lack of faith. According to John, signs were performed for the unfaithful.

For some people, faith in God rests on miracles. Jesus, on the other hand, treated miracles as necessary disturbances to the natural order used to persuade people.  God’s presence is not extraordinary, but an ongoing relationship during ordinary life. Like air, it is a life-sustaining presence constantly surrounding us and within us. We don’t normally think about air unless we can’t breathe. John’s Jesus delivers miracles like he’s performing spiritual CPR on those who can no longer inhale God’s presence on their own.

Isn’t it better not to need it in the first place? Like air or water, our spiritual environment can become polluted. Sometimes we trash it ourselves, and sometimes we are downwind from the spiritually toxic. When our faith feels choked off, it may be time to start cleaning up and preventing more damage. This could be a slow process: anger, hate, greed, fear, and poisons like them take time to remove. They are dangerous and unpleasant to handle, but with God’s help handle them we must. The alternative is spiritual suffocation.

Still prefer to wait on a miracle? Neither miracles nor CPR are a permanent fix: if our habits don’t change, our old problems will return. God is always present; live clean and breathe deep.

Comfort: God is as close as the air we breathe.

Challenge: Take an inventory of what’s polluting your spiritual environment.