When four faithful friends bring a paralytic to Jesus through a hole they create in the roof of the establishment where he is teaching, the first thing Jesus does is forgives the paralytic's sins. It is toward spiritual health and wholeness that Jesus first moves in relation to the paralytic. When members of the crowd begin to balk, it is then that Jesus addresses the man's physical ailments. When the encounter is over, the man has been made physically and spiritually whole.
When Jesus encounters a leper, he touches him and makes him clean. He then instructs the leper to go to the high priest and make the sacrifices that Moses demanded in the law. This was done in order to make the leper completely whole...physically, spiritually, and emotionally. Can you imagine what it would have been like to be ostracized and placed in a colony away from your family and friends; or what it must have been like to wear a bell that warned everyone you were coming; or what it felt like to holler out unclean as you walked in places where people unaffected by leprosy may have been? Can you fathom not being able to join your community in worship? After not being touched by anyone, for who knows how long, Jesus touches the leper, then heals him physically. Jesus then sets in motion all that is needed to reconnect the leper to his community and his faith.
I have spent the last week pondering, writing, and preaching on a text out of Acts (5:12-16) which says (in the NRSV translation):
"Now many signs and wonders were done among the people through the apostles. And they were all together in Solomon's Portico. None of the rest dared to join them, but the people held them in high esteem. Yet more than ever believers were added to the Lord, great numbers of both men and women, so that they even carried out the sick into the streets, and laid them on cots and mats, in order that Peter's shadow might fall on some of them as he came by. A great number of people would also gather from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those tormented by unclean spirits, and they were all cured."
If the church is called to follow in all that the apostles taught and to be co-laborers with Christ in mission and ministry to the world (making disciples, baptizing, etc), then it seems only natural that sozo (wholeness and healing) would be present in our ministry. It was that way for Christ. It was that way for the early church. Is there any reason why it shouldn't be that way for us today?
What would happen if when someone crossed into the shadow of the church or crossed into the shadow of a Christian, they encountered healing and wholeness? I would bet that the world would be radically altered!
I pray that God would use us to be vessels of his mercy and grace. I pray that all that we do points towards Christ; the one who is capable of transforming our brokenness, healing our hurts, and making us anew in the image of God---whole and lacking nothing. Amen.
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