All of us have a lot of aspects to our lives,
right? We all have a lot of titles that could be applied to us.
Take me, for example. I’m a pastor. I’m a husband. I’m a son. I’m a sports fan. I’m a musician, kind of. I’m a public address announcer. Those
and lots of other titles could be used to describe me. And you can think of similar things that
would describe you.
Jesus had a lot of titles, too, when he was on the
earth. We’re going to look at a few of them in these Wednesday night Lent
services. The one we’re going to look at tonight is “Healer”. Jesus was a healer.
The thing is that what we tend to emphasize, when we speak
of Jesus as a healer, is his physical healing. And that seems to be what
people emphasized while he was on earth, too.
In our reading for tonight we’re told that he cured a fever from Simon
Peter’s mother-in-law, and that evening a whole bunch of people brought their
sick relatives and friends to Jesus. A little later we’re told of a man
with leprosy who was brought to Jesus and Jesus healed him. And once again, people started bringing all
their sick to Jesus, so much so that he could not even go into towns because of
the uproar he’d cause. He stayed
outside, out in the wilderness, and yet people still came from all around to
have Jesus heal them.
And when we pray for Jesus to heal someone, that’s usually
what we do, too, right? I’ve done it myself, many times. I’ve done it in hospitals and in homes. I’ve done it here in the pulpit. I’ve
prayed for the physical healing of many, many people over the years. And I’m not saying that’s wrong--I intend to
continue to do that.
But the thing is that even though physical healing is what
we tend to emphasize, and it’s what our reading tonight emphasizes, too, it’s
not the only kind of healing there is. It’s not even necessarily the most
important. And our reading for tonight
recognizes that. It may emphasize the
physical healing, but it also mentions something else. It came pretty fast--you might even have
missed it--but it’s mentioned twice. First, in verse thirty-four, it
says, “he also drove out many demons”. And later, in verse thirty-nine,
it refers to Jesus “preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons”.
Now, I don’t know what you think about the whole idea of
demon-possession. It is in the Bible, and it’s all over the gospels, so I
don’t think we can just dismiss it. My point for tonight, though, is that
when Jesus healed someone, he did not just heal them physically. Jesus
healed them in every way. He healed them
mentally. He healed them
emotionally. He healed them
psychologically. And he healed them spiritually.
And that last kind of healing
is probably the most important kind of healing of all. The old saying, of
course, is that if you have your health, you have just about everything.
But that’s not really true. I could be
in perfect physical condition--I mean, I’m not, obviously, but I could be--but
if I did not know Jesus as the Savior, my great physical condition would do me
no good whatsoever. I could be the most emotionally stable person you
ever met--but if I did not know Jesus as the Savior, it would be
meaningless.
Right now, the big physical
health scare is the coronavirus. And don’t take this the wrong way, I’m
all for people taking reasonable precautions. They say the best thing we
can do is wash our hands regularly and thoroughly, and I’m certainly all for
everyone doing that. And of course, the government should do what it can
to develop cures and vaccines and everything.
I’m not suggesting that we should just ignore the coronavirus and hope
it goes away. I don’t think we need to be in a panic over it, but we do
need to take it seriously.
But I find it
interesting. The last I saw, they were estimating that there have been
around three thousand deaths worldwide from the coronavirus, and yet it seems
to be all anyone’s talking about. But at the same time, surveys show that
nearly thirty percent of the United States population is non-Christian. That’s over ninety-six million people. If we believe what Jesus said, that faith in
Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven, then that’s over ninety-six million
people, just in the United States, who are spiritually dead. We probably
have more spiritual dead people just in the state of South Dakota than have
died all over the world from the coronavirus.
And yet we hardly ever talk about that.
And when we do talk about it, our response usually is just to throw up
our hands and say there’s nothing we can do about it.
Now again, don’t get me wrong
here. I’m at least as guilty of this anyone. But let me ask you--do
you think Jesus is happy with that response? Do you think Jesus is happy
when our response to that many spiritually dead people is to throw up our hands
and say there’s nothing we can do about it? Or do you think, maybe, Jesus
wants and expects a little more from us than that?
Now, I don’t think Jesus
expects you and me to go to those ninety-six million people and bring them to
Christ. I mean, even Jesus did not heal everyone who was sick while he
was on earth. He does not expect us to do
that, either.
But what did Jesus do? He
did what he could. When you look at
Jesus’ healing, for the most part he did not go and seek out sick people and
heal them. But when God gave him the chance to heal someone, he took
it. And again, Jesus did not settle for
just providing physical healing. He provided healing in every way. And he especially provided spiritual healing. After all, remember what he said to people so
many times after healing them? He would say something like, “Your faith
has made you well. Now go and sin no
more.” Jesus did not just want people to
be physically healed. He wanted them to
have faith in him as the Savior and he wanted them to live lives that showed
that faith.
That’s what the Lord expects us to do--take advantage of
the chances we’re given to help people and when we get those chances, we should
not settle for just helping them physically. We need to try to bring them
to faith in Jesus Christ as well.
You hear a lot--and you
especially hear a lot in the United Methodist church--about the church’s role
in bringing about social justice. And the church does have a role in
that, I’m not trying to say it does not.
But if the church stops there, the church has failed. Stopping there would be the same as Jesus
stopping at physical healing. Just as spiritual healing was important to
Jesus, it needs to be equally important to us.
After all, the last words of Jesus on earth, as recorded in the gospel
of Matthew, were not, “Go and bring about social justice”. They were “go
and make disciples.” Again, it’s good to
make people’s lives better on earth. But
if we make people’s lives better on earth, and do not bring them to Jesus
Christ for eternal life, we have failed.
These things do not have to be
an either/or, of course. The church can and should be involved in
both. But we also need to know where our
main emphasis lies, just as Jesus knew where his main emphasis lay.
Jesus could have spent his
entire life on earth bringing physical healing to people. I don’t suppose
he’d ever have run out of people who needed physical healing. After all, we’re told that people came from
everywhere, looking for healing for themselves and their loved ones. If
Jesus had done that, everyone would’ve said that Jesus had done wonderful,
amazing things. Jesus could have spent
his life on earth that way--but if he had, he would not have been doing what
God the Father wanted him to do. Jesus did not come to make people feel
better. Jesus came to offer us a way to
salvation and eternal life. And that’s
still the offer that Jesus makes.
And, if we call ourselves
Christians, that’s the offer Jesus wants us to make, too. Now, you and I
cannot bring someone to salvation. We
cannot give anyone eternal life. None of us is the divine Son of
God. We cannot bring someone to
salvation--but we can lead them to the one who can. We cannot give anyone
eternal life--but we can lead them to the one who can. That’s what Jesus expects us to do.
Helping people with their physical needs was important to
Jesus. It was a major part of his ministry. And helping people with their physical needs
should be important to the church, too. It should be a major part of our
ministry, too.
But Jesus was not sent to earth by God the Father to save
physical lives. He was sent here to offer salvation and eternal
life. The church does not exist
primarily to save physical lives, either. Again, I’m not saying we should
ignore people physical needs--Jesus did not ignore them, and we should not
either. But the primary goal of the
church is to bring people to Jesus Christ, so they can accept his offer of salvation
and eternal life. That offer is worth more than all the physical healing
in the world.
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