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Saturday, March 7, 2020

The Main Thing

This is the message from the Wednesday night Lent service in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on March 4, 2020.  The Bible verses used are Mark 1:  29-45.


            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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