Pentecost XIII - C August 26th, AD 2007
Meadowvale Lutheran Church
Pastor
Peter Lisinski
"THE
ULTIMATE HEALING MIRACLE"
Up
to, and during the time of Jesus, people believed that illness, injury or
disease was God's judgment on personal sin.
In today's Gospel, Jesus clearly denies and rejects that belief -- a
belief that survives today in the kind of self-help spirituality which claims
that everything that happens to us is determined either by the positive or
negative vibes we project into the world around us.
In other words, we get what
we deserve, and only what we deserve.
By
calling the afflicted woman in the synagogue “a
daughter of Abraham whom
Satan held in bondage for eighteen long years" Jesus rejects that new age
version of salvation by works -- for that's all it is -- and identifies any and
all human suffering with the age-old demonic forces in the world who oppose
God's will for the health and well-being of all God's children -- indeed, of the
whole creation! “Salvation” is
the theological word for it.
In
the divine humanity of Jesus Christ, the full force of God's healing power has
come into our world to fulfill the divine promise of salvation God gave Abraham
and Sarah. And all Jesus' healing
miracles connect the physical or psychological illness of individuals with the
spiritual illness of the community around them. For Jesus, any and all illnesses have their source in the
spiritual disease, which binds the whole world together in demonic possession.
'Sin' is the theological word for it.
True
to our liturgical confession, all human beings are equally in bondage to sin and
unable to free ourselves. But all
human beings do not suffer the consequences of humanity's collective bondage
equally! Factors like genetics,
access to health care, social status, religious belief, random chance, as well
as personal choices will affect some people more than others.
The
best example I can think of is eating disorders. Illnesses like anorexia or bulimia that afflict certain
individuals in our society, reflect the collective pressure our
spiritually-sick, celebrity-obsessed society exerts on young girls to aspire to
an idealized body image which promises social acceptance, approval, and success!
All illnesses, in some way, reflect a person's distorted relationship
with one's own self, which, in turn, reflects our distorted relationship with
our neighbors, which, ultimately, reflect humanity's collectively distorted
relation-ship with God.
Jesus' healing of one afflicted child of God in the midst of the weekly
worship gathering of all God's children, theoretically and symbolically, if
perhaps not literally -- reveals that the healing of human individuals depends
on the healing of human communities and that both miracles are rooted in the
healing of our personal and communal relationship with God.
And by the power of his cross Jesus Christ accomplishes the ultimate
miracle of healing humanity's distorted relationship with God.
Born into the same spiritually sick world as you and I have been, even
Jesus' relationship with God was broken, and in need of healing. That's why
Jesus was in the synagogue today and, as Luke tells us at the beginning of
Jesus' ministry, in the habit of gathering for weekly worship with and among the
people of God, and in the daily habit of personal prayer and devotion.
Of all the things we might do to further God's will for the healing of the world, the most important thing we can do, and need to do, is gather in weekly worship with and among the people of God, and nurture the fruit of our communal worship in the personal worship of daily prayer and devotion. With the afflicted daughter of Abraham and Sarah Jesus heals in today's Gospel, you and I are healed. Our relationship with God, neighbor and self is restored in the presence, and by the word of God in Jesus Christ. In our weekly communion of Word and sacrament, and in daily communion of prayer and devotion, we are welcome to rest in God's presence; called to hear God's voice; promised renewal of our faith; liberated from the bondage of sin that distorts our relationship with God, neighbor and self; and sent to follow Jesus into the world to invite all God's children to life in the healing, holy communion of God.