Suffer the Innocents

Sermon given at Sydenstricker UMC 8/27/17

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^NRS Genesis 1: ²⁷ So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. ²⁸ God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." ²⁹ God said, "See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. ³⁰ And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so. ³¹ God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Now some of you may be wondering why I choose this scripture to talk about the suffering of the innocents. Well the truth is, we are all sinners and we all have that cross to bear thanks to Adam. I believe, that truth be told, we have more than that we can blame on Adam as well. You see, Adam and Eve were given everything they needed in the Garden of Eden. It was Paradise. All the food they needed, all the things of the world they needed, all the sunshine, the rain, the animals, and everything that was pleasant and good in the sight of God was theirs. All they had to do was love God and love each other with all their hearts. That is all they had to do to have everything they needed and could possibly desire.

God in God’s infinite wisdom knew that perfect love could not have binds or strings so God gave Adam and Eve Free Will to choose to love or not love. Into this blissful world came evil. Evil in the personification of Satan, Lucifer, the morning star as this being is called in certain places in the Bible. Evil came into perfection and offered not something better, but something perverted and twisted. Something from which anger, hate, jealousy and greed came forth. There in that perfect place Adam and Eve were tempted in their ego’s to have something only God could have, the right to decide life and death and full knowledge of all that God knows.

Now the truth is we never get to see outside the garden until it is too late. So we will never know if that place outside the garden was full of evilness, disease and hate. But we do know is that in the garden those things did not exist. So Adam and Eve are tempted and they fall to that temptation. How often do we give up something great for something we think is better only to find out it is less than what we had? Adam and Eve take the fruit from the one tree that was forbidden to them against the will of God. What are the consequences of that sin? Eternal struggle. Sin came into the world not through the grace of God but through the eternal struggle of Free Will. Once that sin was unleashed it could not be contained any more than toothpaste can go back in the tube once it is squirted out. That is a great children’s sermon by the way, what comes out that is hurtful cannot be put back in and taken away, it must be dealt with and there are consequences. So Adam and Eve are banished from Paradise. They are banished from the place where they had everything they needed and could ever want. But the story doesn’t end there, it begins there.

Do you know what the first hurtful thing in the Bible is? Believe it or not it is childbirth. The first place we see pain experienced is in the birthing of a child. I wonder what God intended before that? We will never know. But first comes the pain of childbirth and then comes the story of death. Cain kills Abel. Not over something significant. Not over something Abel did hurtful to Cain. No the very first death in the Bible comes because of jealousy and envy. Evil personified in the world leads to death through jealousy and envy. That one personification of evil continues to this day over and over again. People kill each other for the shoes on their feet or the clothes on their back or the belief they have something better that someone else wants so they take it by force. You want to know the simple answer why bad things happen. Flip Wilson, a comedian from some years back had it right when he created a mantra that the devil made me do it. Evil personified in the world because we human beings are not content to let someone else have more without hateful and evil consequences.

Now maybe, just maybe I am over exaggerating a little. But let us flow this story out further and see where it goes. In the time of Noah people had forgotten God. The age of humans at the time of Noah and shortly thereafter was in the hundreds of years. But shortly after God started over with Noah, the age of human beings decreased significantly so that human beings today live an average of 75-80 years. Some longer and many a lot shorter, but that is the average age. Now why is that? Isn’t that the question today? Why do the innocents suffer?

During war time the powers that wage war has even created a name for the innocent lives who are lost in order to prevail over one another. They call it collateral damage. Collateral Damage! I suggest that in fact bad things happen to all people in part because of the collateral damage that has happened to the world because of free will. Now I am not suggesting mind you, that you and I have created illness, cancer, or great tragedies because of our own design. But I am suggesting that much of the tragedy of the world is created by those who would perpetuate hate, bigotry, racism and war in order that they could somehow receive something greater in their mind than what they currently have.

We live in a world made up of people who are more concerned with what they can achieve than who gets hurt in their desire to achieve it. I believe with all my heart that those responsible for the violence in places like Charlottesville Virginia come about because of people who desire to bring their sense of right and wrong into the faces of the innocent people trying to live their lives.  The consequences of such actions almost always result in the destruction of property and the loss of lives. Property can be rebuilt. Lives lost can never be reclaimed no matter how much money, legislation or social change occurs. Tell that to the mother of the daughter lost to senseless, do you hear me, senseless violence perpetuated because someone believes something so strongly that they lose their sense of decency and right and wrong. Sounds a lot like the Cain and Abel story doesn’t it?

Illness happens! Weather happens! Earthquakes happen! All of these things happen because sin came into the world. God doesn’t have a plan to kill people just because. No, God lets the world act. Nature acts! It always has since the banishment from the garden and it always will until God recreates it anew.

Illness is a curse to the world. Illness happens to innocent people just because. Sometimes cancer, diabetes, dementia and other illnesses come into our lives just because we happen to have the wrong genes and the wrong timing. We did not do anything to create that illness in our bodies but it happens.   

Sometimes illness happens because of our own choices which is part of free will. When we take illicit drugs, pursue alcoholism and other life altering styles of living then illness is a consequence of that living. I believe that certain kinds of cancer, particularly skin cancers happen because of our pollution of our world. The bubonic plague happened because we did not take of our food stores and our hygiene and childhood diseases are again on the rise because of choices not to vaccinate.

Tragedy is a different story though. Tragedy whether it is an accident brought about by a drunk driver, an inattentive texting person or someone who perpetuates evil to lift their own agenda is in fact a human story. War is a human tragedy that is brought not by some greater good for one side or the other but by powers who have at its core evil concerns of greed, hate, envy and jealousy. Again, sounds like Cain and Abel all over again.

My friends! As we gather in this place today I want to talk about healing. We cannot know what may happen today or tomorrow. We cannot know the effects of the world changing outside or a hurricane bringing havoc on neighbors whose only action in the matter was being born in or moving into the path of that destruction. We cannot foresee zealots bent on promoting their hate and ideology on others through violence and destruction and those who inadvertently find themselves in that path. Bad things will happen to others and maybe even us. Bad things happen! Forest Gump is fictionally credited with coming up with that famous bumper sticker about “it happens.” So when things don’t go as they should, let us not reach out in anger, hate or divide but rather find within that dark place the one light that is meant to shine for all of us.

Jesus came into the world to share with us that death is not the final answer. Jesus came into this world to show us that even though Adam had chosen wrongly, we can choose differently. Jesus came into the world, was tempted by the same Satan that tempted Adam and prevailed. How? By trusting in God and believing that no matter how tired, how hungry, how sore, or how down you are, God’s love is always permeating the space around and in us. Illness and tragedy are going to happen, every day, everywhere. How we deal with it has more to do with faith than the bad thing we face. Most importantly, even death is not the end, rather through a risen Christ it becomes a new beginning.

Each day we live, we have a choice to follow Christ into glory or share in the evil personified in our world. Yes, until Christ returns the innocents will suffer. But I like to believe that I can live my life in the glory of God like the Jewish people being led to their slaughter, in joy and song for a God who is love, especially in the face of evil. As Billy Graham as said many times, I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me because I have read the last chapter and I know how it all turns out. We are called to love God and to love one another. Let us overcome tragedy, illness, hate, bigotry and evil by uniting in love. Can I get an Amen

Naaman

Sermon given at Sydenstricker UMC 8/19/17

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^NRS 2 Kings 5:1 Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the LORD had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy.  ² Now the Aramean’s on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman's wife.  ³ She said to her mistress, "If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy."  ⁴ So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said.  ⁵ And the king of Aram said, "Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel." He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments.  ⁶ He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, "When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy."  ⁷ When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, "Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy?¹ Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me."  ⁸ But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, "Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel."  ⁹ So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha's house.  ¹⁰ Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, "Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean."  ¹¹ But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, "I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!  ¹² Are not Abana¹ and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?" He turned and went away in a rage.  ¹³ But his servants approached and said to him, "Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, 'Wash, and be clean'?"  ¹⁴ So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean. 

A young couple heads out to grandma’s house for Sunday dinner. When they arrive there the aromas of Grandma’s cooking fill the house and the young son is enchanted and drooling. They all gather round the table and sit down. The young boy’s mother asks him to give the blessing. He replies, “We don’t need to pray.” The young mother says that they always pray before eating their meal at home. The young boy responds, “Well that’s because we are praying for a good meal. At grandma’s we always get a good meal cus she knows how to cook.”

If you believe in miracles you know that God is in control. Miracles happen because God wants them to happen and they always bring with it the glory of God. Someone once said that when something great is about to happen our life takes on chaos and our normal routines are suddenly challenged. Next week I intend to share why bad things happen. But this week I want to focus on if we are ready to be healed. That has been the subject of the last few weeks’ messages, healing, and the grace of God. But in order to be healed often we have to make a decision that we are going to accept whatever life has sent us. Free will means that illness and tragedy are a part of our world whether we like it or not. And so into Naaman’s life comes illness. Now one thing I have learned throughout the years is that illness knows no social or economic boundaries. You can be the poorest of the poor or the richest of the rich and illness can reach in and change your life. Naaman is in that rich category. The story tells us that he is a great warrior and commander of the army. He is used to a life of luxury and wealth and most likely gets what he wants when he wants it. But suddenly he is now a leper.

To truly appreciate what is going on here we need to spend some time understanding leprosy, not from the medical standpoint but rather from the life standpoint. Once you have been diagnosed as a leper, you lose everything. In Naaman’s day he would have been summarily removed as commander, been exiled to a leper colony where only other lepers would have been allowed to interface with him and no longer would he enjoy the comforts of wealth and prestige. So when we view this story make sure you view it with that life changing impact. Anything else and I think we miss the point.

We are presented with this young slave girl who is a Hebrew. She has been captured by Naaman in one of his battles with Israel. This storyline reminds us that Naaman is a person who does not worship God. Naaman is a person who sees Israel as the enemy or at the very least, an inferior country and people. Have you ever looked down on someone just because of where they are from? And yet, in his despair, it is this young slave girl who suggests to him that there is an answer to his despair in a prophet, a holy man in Israel.

So Naaman does what rich people do. He goes to his King and asks for an introduction to the King of Israel. Rich people don’t often understand what the world of the common folk is like. I remember an interview with a John Paul Getty, at the time one of the richest men alive. What’s it like to be rich he was asked. His reply was interesting. He said, imagine wanting something, anything and knowing that you can go out and buy it. But he went on to say that walking down the street, if you wanted a hot dog he did not have the money in his pocket to buy it. So here is Naaman, used to getting anything he wants and he can’t even get it by going to the King of Israel.

But God is listening. So Elisha sends for Naaman. Naaman arrives and Elisha sends his servant out to tell Naaman what to do. An insult of the highest kind! Naaman rages that he demands better. But he is talked into doing what Elisha has insisted he do. And the scripture tells us he is healed. End of story! Well….. not quite.

There are several lessons we need to learn from this story. First is the one I have already told you that illness and tragedy do not conform to our sense of entitlement, class or prestige. Naaman is faced with having to lose everything he holds dear. We need to ask ourselves, what is really important to us. Is it the things we own or the lives we share?

Second, Naaman needs to learn humility. He might be rich, he might be powerful and he might be scary to others, but to God, he is simply a man with an illness. To God Naaman is a man who could come to share in a relationship with God but Naaman is not there yet. How about us? Are we in a place where we love God so intently that we could face any adversity and illness because of that relationship? In this story Naaman has to learn to follow God’s desires and will. How often do we fight that same fight? How often do we go storming off because the message we heard doesn’t fit our sense of the world or our worldview? How often do we need or certainly desire to have a person who would plead with us to listen to God?

Third, Naaman needs to trust God. Naaman reluctantly goes down to the river Jordan and obediently dunks himself in the waters seven times. I love the number seven in the Bible. It is a complete number, meaning that whatever happens in that number is all that needs to happen. Seven days to create the world, seven times seventy to forgive, etc. So Naaman completes his dunking with the seventh dunk and the scripture tells us that he is healed. But even better, that his skin is restored to that of a young boy. I think there are a great number of people who would love to have that kind of dunking. Of course it would cost the healthcare industry billions if it could be bottled. So the message for you and I is not to question the way of God but to trust that God knows what needs to happen.

But there is another part of this story. It comes when Naaman is healed and has an epiphany about God. God has been working all along to get Naaman, a great and powerful man, to have a change of heart. Naaman goes back to his country not just healed physically, but healed spiritually and sharing the glory of God to others will cause others to be healed as well. Naaman begins to worship the one true God as the only God.

So what is the important lesson about healing here? That our own pride, our own sense of self-worth and our focus on ourselves is not going to provide us any usable answer when the world crashes down around us. Only our faith and trust in God will bring the kind of healing, joy and comfort that we seek. Naaman was healed but more importantly, Naaman’s heart and eyes were opened. Do you want to get well? Maybe each of us needs to open our eyes and hearts to the life-giving water of God. Will you? Can you? Won’t you?

My Blood, My Body

Sermon given at Sydenstricker UMC August 13th, 2017

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^NIVLuke 9:23-27 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. ²⁴ For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. ²⁵ What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? ²⁶ Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. ²⁷ “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”

A man named Charlie Moore moved into a new community with his family. He wanted to make friends, so he joined the local softball league. In the opening game Charlie took his family to the park and he went to join his team. Charlie got up to bat, set his feet, squared his shoulders… and as the ball came across the plate, he missed it by a mile. The crowd groaned. But one voice could be heard over the den of people: “You can do it, Mr. Moore!” The second pitch came and again he swung wildly and missed, and again the voice could be heard. “You can do it Mr. Moore!” The third pitch – swung again and the voice cried: “That’s OK Mr. Moore!” When the game was over, the family got into their car, and as the made their way down the road, the dad turned to his son and said: “Was that you that yelled out ‘You can do it Mr. Moore’?” When his son admitted that it was indeed his voice the dad said he appreciated his son’s encouragement, but he wondered “But, why did you call Mr. Moore?” “Well,” the boy said, “I didn't want anyone to know I was related to you.”

I wonder if that is how we want others to know our relationship with Jesus. We spend our time in church with those who come but outside of church we’re hollering Jesus name as if it were someone we did not truly know. This scripture is a watered down version of John 6: 54. In it Jesus tells those who are following Him that if they really, really, really, want eternal life, then they must eat His flesh and drink His blood and only those that do get a ticket to salvation. Strong words but it makes me ponder, who among us is really saved. I preach the promise of eternal life week after week and at funerals, but do we really have that promise to provide comfort and peace at the end of our physical lives? I mean to hear these words of Jesus is difficult and profound. I mean in order to have life we must lose our lives. Death becomes life! How can that be!

In some ways I think the message of the cross has been reduced and subjugated to make us believe that Jesus died so that we can live. In some ways that statement is true but in other ways it is so false that we find comfort in a lie. Jesus went to the cross for the sins of the world and if you buy into the whole atonement thing, we are free by that simple act of sacrifice. But I wonder if Jesus intended an even more profound message through the cross. In this scripture He clearly tells us that in order to be a part of the Kingdom of God, one must give up their lives in order to receive the life He is offering. Did He go to the cross then to show us how that looks? His whole life here on earth is about allowing us to see in human flesh what God the creator intended with Adam. God clearly understands that we human beings are not the brightest LED’s on the planet. So God came into the world so that we could see what perfection looks like. Jesus personifies the gift of God in creation. Jesus faces temptation and stays faithful to God and does not sin. Jesus sacrifices self over and over to bring healing and restoration to the people of His world. Jesus gives Himself ultimately on the cross so that we can see what form of death we all must share so that the tomb can be empty for all of us.

But eating His body and drinking His blood? Ugggh! Maybe if we understood what He meant rather than focusing on what He said it might help. But I have to tell you that my understanding and opinion is not the end all of understandings. But let me take a stab at it for a moment. What Jesus wants us to envision with His statement is that we need to receive Him the same way we receive food and drink. We consume it into our bodies where it begins to bring change. The food begins to break down and the nutrients replenish the cells in our body so that we might live. We take the food inside of us, allow it to fill us and then to change us. Every day we eat and every day hundreds of thousands of cells are transformed by the life giving properties of that food. What if we began to view discipleship as the same thing? You have heard me say that Discipleship should be as important as eating.

Paul speaks of belonging to Christ, of being possessed by Christ, captured by Christ and apprehended by Christ. Paul certainly believes that to be a follower of Christ transforms us in some important way and we become a new creation in that transformation. What if we realized that following Christ is not a salvation scheme to get us into heaven, but a life transforming process that makes us literally a part of the Kingdom here on earth. To be a Christian means we share the identity of Jesus not just in a sense of what comes next, but in a “this is the way we live our lives” sense. In other words, each morning you awake determined to carry and love what God loves in the world, the good and bad of it. It means that we change our self-image to not see something new but to become something new. We allow ourselves to become Jesus. To do that requires a major dying to self of our ego.

Maybe we need to look upon the cross as the only way Jesus could make us see that we need to stop living selfish lives for our own importance and ego. Maybe we need to look upon the cross as the only way Jesus could project us into a new reality where we can then see that through the empty tomb there is a different kind of reality that we can live into. We cannot see it because we constantly look at it in the terms of our world where individual is above community and success is achieved regardless of who got crushed for it. Jesus asks us to lead a life of simplicity, humility and descent. He became a servant to the Disciples so that they might see how to become servants to the world

This is all hard I know. The truth is religion has become that thing that makes people more comfortable and allows them to feel good about themselves. Why else can we explain that the religious leaders today that are highly successful are preaching a prosperity message that people latch onto. But it is not the message of Jesus! God wants us to feel the weight of oppression, poverty, and illness so that we can reach people there. If we cannot feel their pain, feel their oppression and feel the consequences of poverty we will never understand what it takes to break the cycle and lead people to a place where community means something and success is for the whole world, not just the chosen few.

I want to give you an illustration that hopefully will show you what I mean. Railroads run back and forth throughout our country. Rail cars connect with trains and travel from Maine to Florida and Virginia to California. But it was not always so. Each railroad that came along had its own set of tracks and each set of tracks had different spacing between the rails called gauge which today is standardized at 4 foot 8.5 inches. So it was impossible to get a rail car designed for a railroad on the east coast to ride the rail on the west coast. Until they standardized rail travel, it was get on a train, get off a train to get on another train, etc. And if the gauge is off even a ¼ of an inch, the train derails and great catastrophe can happen.

So what if we viewed our life with Jesus in the same way. Jesus set the standard. Not you or I or any Pastor along the way, Jesus did it. And Jesus demands that we travel within the gauge of His definition, not our own. So whether you are on the East coast or the west, the standard by which we follow Jesus is the same. Not even a ¼ of inch variance is allowed or we derail. So what is the standard? That we learn to love one another. I mean really love one another. Not just “like” each other but find ways when we dislike each other to still love one another. I have a picture on my bulletin board downstairs that shows a man holding an umbrella over his wife while he gets wet with the expression, even when we dislike someone we still love them. In order to become true disciples, it is not something we can talk about, rather it something we must do. We must become Jesus in the world around us. That means that we find ways to love one another unconditionally. It means that we love God with all our heart and do only what God wants us to do.

Too often we believe discipleship is doing good in the world around us without having to witness our faith or identify ourselves as followers of Jesus. But the truth is when we allow the Holy Spirit to transform us we become Jesus to the world around us. Discipleship is about who we are and how other people view us in our everyday walk. It is not about who you are sitting here in the pew if you walk out of here as someone different. It is about believing that God has called you to love one another and then going out in the world and loving. Your soul is who you are in God and who God is in you. We awaken our souls when we become transformed. Jesus said, this is my body given for you and my blood shed for you. Unless you are willing to eat this body and drink this blood, the Kingdom is out of reach. My prayer this morning is My Blood, My Body, let me be Jesus in the world around me. Will you join me in the journey? 

Do you want to be made well?

^{Sermon given at Sydenstricker UMC on 8/6/17}

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^NRS John 5:1 After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ² Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. ³ In these lay many invalids-- blind, lame, and paralyzed. ^{4  5} One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be made well?" ⁷ The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me." ⁸ Jesus said to him, "Stand up, take your mat and walk." ⁹ At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.

Legend has it that in Jesus day there was a pool that sat at one of the gates where you would enter into Jerusalem. As the story goes those who were sick and injured would surround the pool waiting for a ripple to appear within the waters of the pool. Their belief was that when a ripple appeared, an angel of God had touched the water and those who entered at that moment would be healed. God’s presence was felt greatly in those days and this story came to be believed by those who lived at that time. But the interesting thing about this story to me is that the man had been ill for thirty-eight years. I wonder how many of those years he lay beside the waters of the pool praying to be healed. Jesus comes upon him and asks him, “Do you want to be made well?” The first response is expected I guess, but sir, it’s not my fault, someone always gets in ahead of me. It wasn’t an answer to the question that was asked, mind you. So Jesus ignores the response if you will and then tells him, get up and walk. Now part of the telling of this story has to do with the day that it happened but that is another sermon for another day. Jesus calls the man to stand up and walk. 

This is an interesting story of the miracle of Jesus and another one of the 40 miracle stories in the bible, 31 of which are healing stories. When Jesus healed someone in the bible, he clearly did so with two intents, that the person would be physically healed and two that there would be the opportunity for restoration into the family and society of the person. In this case, there also appears to be a third reason that appears in several of the healing services, to make a point of God’s power and God’s rule in the world of human rules and prohibitions. There are two parts to this story today, the healing of the wounded and the proclamation of God’s Kingdom. But I have a question for you today, are you ready to be well?

I visited with an older woman who was confined to her wheelchair and had lost her mobility. We provided tapes of the worship service every week and brought communion once a month to her there in her home and I brought communion at least once a quarter. I am so thankful for the members of the church who chose to take on the ministry of visitation and communion each week. But I had the pleasure of being there with her on that day and we had a wonderful discussion.

In the course of talking to her I noticed that she winced every time that she moved. So I asked her about it. She tried to shrug it off as nothing and I asked her if she had been to see a doctor. She told me no, that she had faith in Jesus to heal her. Well I had to take a moment. You see, I have great faith in what Jesus can do, but I wondered if she had faith in the right kind of things. So I asked her again whether she intended to see a doctor and she told me no, that Jesus would heal her. It was at that moment that I knew we needed to have a serious discussion about faith. I shared with her the creation story and the story of Noah and the story of Moses and the exodus. She told me she knew all of those things, what did they have to do with her. I asked her if she believed that God had reconciled the world through Noah and healed the oppression of the Hebrew people through Moses. She told me she most assuredly did with her voice rising. I could read her mind. It said something like, “what does this young man think that he is going to tell me about God that I don’t already know and what does it have to do with my condition.” In a way, sort of like the response that the man gave Jesus when Jesus asked him the question about healing. So then in a soft voice I asked her, if you believe that God called Noah to save the world and called Moses to lead the people out of exile, then why don’t you believe that he called the doctors to make you well? Do you want to get well?

There is another story of a woman who had reached a point in her life where it was difficult to walk, spending most of her days in the bed, without the energy to move. The doctors told her that only half of her heart was working. That in the course of her diseases which included cancer and diabetes, much of her body had shut down and she faced a grave decision. As the family gathered outside her room much discussion took place about what the right thing was to do. The doctors informed the family that she needed to have an operation to clear the blockage in the good side of the heart. But he warned the family that there was a 60% chance that she would not survive the operation. The family talked it over with each other and then with the woman and her answer was to go ahead with the operation. “If this is what living the rest of my life is like, then I do not want to continue. I want to put my faith in Jesus. Let them operate.” The family began to argue with one another and the one son continued to struggle with them over the fact that this was not their decision to make but hers. In the end the operation on Mom was successful and because of it she lived another ten years. Her faith in Jesus was that it was in his hands and he had chosen to work through the efforts of the doctors.

Two different stories and two women of faith who chose to believe two different versions of Christ healing power in the world. What do you believe? Do you want to be made well?

In this story the man is waiting by the pool that is reported to have healing properties. In this story the oral tradition handed down tells us that God would look favorably upon the water, and angel would stir it and the first to get into the pool would be made well. An interesting selection system that doesn’t sound much like the God I know. But here is this man who has been ill for thirty-eight years. And Jesus asked him a simple question, “do you want to made well?” The man begins to answer him but never directly says yes. Instead he offers excuses in why he has not been healed. Jesus says to him, pick up your mat and walk. The power of healing is always God’s to give.

Do you want to get well? Isn’t that the question we all ask at times of trouble and illness? Isn’t that the prayer that is on every breath when a loved one is struggling? But what kind of faith would allow us to embrace it and acknowledge it? What does well mean? I guess one of the fundamental questions that we would need to answer is the last one, what does it mean to be well? I believe when Jesus asked that question He intended that we would respond with a desire to be in a better relationship with God and community. I have said before over and over that Jesus heals not to bring physical healing, though that is the blessing side effect, but to bring restoration of relationship with God and community. What would our world look like if we restored relationship in the way that God intended, love first, love for God and then love for neighbor.

We have forgotten who God is. In the 60’s there was a popular expression that said “God is dead”. I think there may be some who remember that. It wasn’t that God was dead; it was that our sense of who we are and whose we are was gone. We have lost our way in the 60’s and forty years later we still haven’t figured out a lot about life and health and wellness. The psychiatric boom of the 80’s and 90’s is now a multibillion dollar business in the world. The significance of the story today is that God and God alone decides the rules. When we humans get involved, we mess it up. And it is God who provides the healing, but only when we are ready. I think we have lost our way. We have forgotten the healing power of the Word. We have forgotten the promises of God who is always active in restoring relationships and bringing forgiveness into our lives. When we look to the stories of the Old testament, we see the power of God in the world restoring and shaping and directing. In the New Testament we have continuing stories of God working in the world in the body of Jesus and then in the spirit after Pentecost. What is truly interesting to me is how we view healing and wellness in our world. We focus on the physical restoration but we should always focus on the relationship restoration.

I want to leave you with a thought from Flora Wuellner's book, Forgiveness the Passionate Journey. “We stay in our self-made hell as long as we choose, as long as we ignore God’s hand stretched out to help us. One of the books written by the Christian author C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, describes in fictional form how the souls in hell may take a bus to heaven whenever they choose. The spirits of the blessed meet them and plead with them to stay in heaven, but most of those from hell choose to return to their self-made hell because they are more comfortable in their glumness, self-pity, resentments, and because they are frightened at the bigness and solid realness of heaven and the painful growth required to become real and full of light.” Do you want to be made well? Then get up, pick up your mat of human rules and lies and deceit, and follow the healer. God is calling, will you listen?