As I continue to pray about and prepare my sermon for this Sunday, I can't get it out of my head that we will be celebrating a healing liturgy. But I've got to be honest here. When I think healing liturgy or healing service, the first image that comes to mind is of the religious charlatans and hucksters who manipulate the vulnerable with sensational promises of crutches and wheelchairs no longer being needed. That will not happen here on Sunday morning!
When I think of healing, I think of brokenness. The world around us is broken. Those who govern us are willing to put our nation and the world on the edge of financial collapse. Children living in the city of Rochester are more likely to live in poverty than in any other U.S. city. Cancer, heart disease and strokes are overly abundant in our lives and in the lives of those we love. Relationships between spouses and among children crumble before our very eyes. Depression and anxiety crush the lives of so many under their weight. And the list goes on.
In the face of such brokenness, what is often spouted among well-meaning folk is the phrase, "God won't give you more than you can handle." This in fact is a big lie! In fact, this little gem of a phrase isn't even in the Bible. Oh sure, there's something that sounds like it in First Corinthians 10:13, but it's not the same thing. In First Corinthians, Paul says that "God is faithful and will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear". Paul is talking about temptation, not about the amount of suffering you can endure.
Often times life is too much for us to bear. God knows that. Paul even acknowledges this in Second Corinthians. But that's okay, because we don't bear it alone. As Paul says, "we rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead" (2 Corinthians 1:8,9).
Maybe Luke had this in mind when he decided to tell us a story of 10 lepers, who at the end of their ropes and imprisoned by their diseases, were healed by Jesus. At this point in Luke's gospel, Jesus is literally crossing borders between Jewish and Gentile lands on his way to a cross in Jerusalem. He is completely disrupting the expectations and borders of institutions and individuals alike. What Luke tells us is that as insurmountable as they appear to be, God will not be stopped by the borders and brokenness that surround us. In other words, the sufferings that threaten to imprison us are not administered by God in some kind of endurance test, but are overcome by God.
Trite platitudes designed to explain everything away and to make us feel better with bumper-sticker theologies do little in the face of real pain and brokenness. They might sound good, but they don't heal: Only Jesus does that. And who better to heal than the one who suffered the forsakenness of torture and death only to be raised to new life? The gospels don't tell us why suffering happens, they only tell us what God does in the midst of it. God heals. Not sure how. Not sure when. But God heals. Come to worship on Sunday and see for yourself.
Peace and Healing,
Pastor Doug
