Who Would Jesus Send To Hell?

John 5: 25-30


That is the challenge of the passage.  Jesus has taken over the role of Judge.  He's got the Father's power, blessing, and authority to Judge.  Jesus does a 'third person' point of view about it, the Son of Man will be there to receive everyone coming out of the grave.  But it is plain, resurrection of life or resurrection of condemnation, those are the choices, and Jesus will choose.


Does the idea of Jesus sending somebody to hell, of condemning them in the words of this passage, does that bother you?  I struggle with it.  He died for me.  His was a sentence of capital punishment that, when he judges me, I shall not receive the sentence of capital punishment.  It is liberation in the midst of great harshness.


On the one hand, Jesus stands there with the "get out of hell free" card for all who wish to take hold of it, while being the one who sends the evil to hell.  In American jurisprudence, Jesus would have to recuse himself for taking on such a central role in the defense of and the judgment of a client.  Thank God he is perfect.  Because if Jesus recused himself, that leaves God the Father.  And while God the Father is indeed perfect as well, his Old Testament case history of judgment is a little dark.


Who would Jesus send to hell?  The bible passage speaks of actively doing good and actively doing evil.  Many churches have their own policy statements on what one must do to be 'saved'.  What does the Gospel of John say?  That is what we are working in.  Jesus has dealt with a bunch of different kinds of people so far.  How do they measure up to the resurrection of life versus resurrection of condemnation dichotomy? 


Can the bible help us understand the bible?  More on Sunday.

“Praise God Jesus is in Charge of Judgment”

The Sermon From July 26, 2015, based on John 5: 19-24:


Progression from the Father to the Son

The first part of the John 5 is the story of the healing.  By our reckoning, this Man was an invalid since 1977.  The second part of the story is healing on the Sabbath.  This is what makes the local authorities angry.

The implication that Jesus lays out is as follows: Doing God’s work on God’s Day.  In verse 17 from last week, he says, “The Father is working and I am working.”  Put them together and what have you got?  Bippity boppity boo: Jesus the Son is God the Father.  In our passage today, Jesus develops that argument, step by step.

Point number one: The Son is useless on his own.  However, whatever he sees the Father do, that he does also.  In the case of the invalid, Bethesda was a place where miraculous healings from God took place.  Jesus healed there, taking on the Father’s “miracle powers”

It is not just what the Son sees, but whatever the Father DOES, the Son can do.  It is like a divine apprenticeship.  The Father is passing on to the Son the full divine skill set.  And the Father is doing all of this out of love for the Son.  It is not some divine sense of fate or inevitability.  And, not only will the Father show the Son all thus far, but the Father will show the Son even greater works.  If the people think Jesus has blown their minds thus far…just wait!!

We come to the ultimate power: the Father raises the dead and gives them life.  Now the Son can “life” anyone that he wishes as well. This is the top of the hill.  Now Jesus is raised even higher.

Point number two: The Son will be given powers that the Father will no longer exercise.  The Father is backing off the power to judge the living and the dead.  That power will belong to the Son alone.  That means there is NO going around Jesus.  You want to come to the Father, you come through Him.  So, there are some consequences to these rules.

As the Father in heaven was so honored, now also is the Son honored on the same plain of respect and power.  And we can flip it…that , if you dishonor the Son,  you dishonor the Father as well!!

Point number three:  Jesus says, “Truly truly I say to you…  Verily Verily I saith unto thee…  Very truly I tell you…  Wake up and smell the coffee people, this is the punchline!  Hear Jesus’ Word and you believe the one who sent Jesus.  You are not under judgment.  You are passing from death to life.  And who would rather pick death over life?

To sum it all up, the Son was useless, the Son was empowered by God with life and death and the power of judgment itself, and here is how you avoid getting judged and getting dead.

So what should we take away from this discussion?  First, there is not a two-step process here.  You do not hear Jesus words and then believe in the God behind him.  Jesus is not the gateway to the power of the divine.  Jesus IS the power of the divine.  He is the dude that walks down the street with his disciples and he is the almighty creator being that would fry our brains if we were ever to truly try and wrap our minds around him.

Second, everything you have ever heard about Old Testament fire and brimstone is re-imagined.  Because Jesus is now the judge, no longer is it the Father in heaven.  Another way to think about this is in the context of our favorite hymns.  Norm Petersen’s favorite hymn was “What a Friend We Have In Jesus”.  It was not “What a Judge We Have in Dad”

And who is Jesus?  In this passage, he’s the guy who healed the man who’d been an invalid for 38 years, again, since 1977 in our reckoning, just because he could.  He did it on the Sabbath Day to challenge the rules that had been built up around that Holy Day.  He took rules and modes of biblical interpretation and threw them out the window for a bigger rule: that God is love, not judge.  And he did it all for us.

Jesus, as judge, is a new branding of the judgment of God.  Especially considering the case history of God the Father as Judge.

Consider the Father’s judgment history from the Old Testament.  Consider the Flood where God condemned the entire world to destruction because of the evil of their ways.  Or consider the Exodus.  How did God finally pass judgment on the Egyptians to let His people go?  He killed the first born of every family of that nation, irrespective of their opinion or treatment of the Jews.  Consider how he judged His own people.  They were complaining about being in the wilderness for so long.  God sent a plague among them.  Moses had to build the bronze serpent in order to bring about healing once again.  Consider the conquest of the Promised Land, the Canaanites were judged by God and condemned to being exterminated by the Jews.  It was to be a genocide.  Consider how God judged his people for their ongoing disobedience once they’d received the Promised Land, by invasion, via the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and, in the time of Jesus, the Romans.

Now consider the judgment as it comes through Jesus Christ.  Whereas the Father could be termed the Judge, Jury, and the Executioner, Jesus should be termed the Judge, the Jury, and the Executed.  What is so critically important to consider that judgment has passed from Father to Son?

This is because of the judgment that is presumed by so much of the church today.  It is all about the condemnation.  Homosexuals are condemned.  America is condemned, thus the protests at the burials of our soldiers.  Islam is condemned.  Liberals are condemned.  The Poor are condemned.  The President has been condemned, for being a “closet Muslim”, for being foreign born, for the color of his skin.  People who do not believe in Jesus correctly are condemned.  You need the right definitions of “Lord”, of “Savior”.  The theology has to be just so…

Is it any surprise that there is a movement of wholesale rejection of Jesus as Judge?  There is a movement seeking the Historical Jesus, Stripped of all the condemnatory material attached to biblical concepts of judgment.  Unfortunately, this also removes most, if not all, of the divine attributions to Jesus.

I can understand the thinking that has sought to remove the “Old Testament” judgment from any connection to Jesus.  But I do not think rejection of “judgment” is the right alternative.   

Jesus is a unique judge in all of history.  He has suffered the ultimate punishment that can be dealt.  He has received capital punishment, And the uniquely torturous and degrading Roman form called crucifixion.  God has given Jesus the power of life and death, Jesus has undertaken both life and death.  He is now to pass judgment on us all. And he did not receive this punishment because he deserved it, but because we do.

How can anyone be arrogant enough to assume they know what Jesus would condemn someone for?  Perhaps the true task of being a Christian is to stand up and declare whom Jesus would show mercy for.  Perhaps we have spent enough time mixing Christ-like powers with human political power and we take a step back. 

Maybe if we recognized afresh that Jesus is the firstborn of all creation, that he is the firstborn for all  humanity to be adopted as God’s children, That whenever we dare to condemn somebody else, we are daring to condemn a Child of God.   Is it not our job instead to declare the love of God for everyone?  It is a love so strong that God gave His only Son that whoever believes should have everlasting life?  And, at the end of the day, can we not breathe a sigh of relief that Jesus alone will decide what “belief” really is, not us.

Amen.

Whose Judging Now?

Literally, who is judging now?  Our passage in John began with Jesus healing an invalid of 38 years.  He then ran into the authorities who, instead of celebrating the miracle, challenged Jesus for daring to break the Sabbath, at least the Sabbath according to their rules.


Jesus, in response, claimed a higher authority than theirs, the authority of God Above.  Instead of making the authorities happy, this added fuel to the fire of their desire to see Jesus dead.


So now Jesus lays it out for them.  What is the relationship between the Father and the Son?  Step by step, he builds this relationship out, the Father taking the Son to the heavenly heights, finally assigning Jesus the task of the judgment of all humanity.  That is a foundational plank for the right understanding of Scripture in our day and age.


Biblical interpretation splits right and left within the church, it splits conservative and liberal.  The mainline has tried to find its place somewhere in the middle.  The result is that we usually get the mud kicked up on us as groups splinter right and left.  But our voice must remain!


Sunday, we take a look at the Jesus of the Gospel of John.  What does it mean to have Jesus as Judge over and against the Father as Judge, given the Father's 'trial history' of the Old Testament?  What does it mean to have Jesus as Judge over and against 'the historical Jesus' with all that 'divine accretion' stripped away?


Somewhere between the fiery furnace of hell eternal and the best selling self-help guru of the last two millennia, we find our Lord Jesus.

Biblical Principles and Patterns Used to Justify Domestic Violence

July 19, 2015                        John 5: 10-18

1. Jesus healed a man who’d been an invalid for 38 years.
   1. That is the introduction to our passage today.
   2. He did an amazing and powerful thing in the power of God.
   3. And Jesus is going to be condemned for it.
2. The Jewish leadership accosts the man Jesus healed.
   1. He is Sabbath-breaking, doing work, carrying his mat.
   2. The man’s response,
      1. "I met 'Miracle Max', he healed me, told me to take my mat and go." 
   3. He didn’t even know who healed him.
3. The scene changes to the Temple, where Jesus catches up with the man.
   1. Now comes the faith-based attachment to the healing.
   2. “Don’t sin any more or worse than 38 years of being an invalid might happen.”
4. The man expresses his gratitude by reporting Jesus to the authorities.
   1. The authorities then start to persecute Jesus for Sabbath-breaking.
   2. Instead of trying to put out the fire, Jesus adds gasoline to the mix.
      1. My Father is still working, and I am working.
   3. Added to Sabbath-breaking is the charge of making himself equal to God-blasphemy.
      1. So the authorities are out all the more to try and kill Jesus.
5. So, Jesus is Sabbath-breaking, that is the charge coming directly from his healing.
   1. That is not really on our radar today as a hanging offense.
   2. Ours is a different time and place.
      1. The Sabbath has a different meaning to us.
   3. It was a defining characteristic of the oppressed Jewish nation.
      1. It was one of the few visible signs they had of their own culture as a conquered people.
6. We take weekends for granted.
   1. Five working days, two days off, one Jewish-Saturday, and one Christian-Sunday.
   2. Many of our lives do not align to that pattern, but that is how we write the calendar.
   3. The Roman calendar, the calendar of the overlords of Jesus’ time, did not work that way.
      1. The Roman year was filled with religious and superstitious observances and rituals.
         1. It wasn’t 5 on and 2 off, or even 6 on and 1 off.
         2. It might be 10 days, 3 off, 15 on, 6 off, 2 on, 1 off-a year filled with random festivals between which you worked without break..
         3. Confusing in the extreme
   4. But the Jews rejected that calendar for their own.
      1. The Sabbath was a sign that they were still God’s people.
7. The importance of the Sabbath is built on five legal and morale and biblical precedents that we still use in deriving truth from Scripture. 
   1. First, there is an eternal principle to the Sabbath, with authority going back to creation itself.
      1. God created the heavens and the earth in six days and on the 7^th he rested, therefore he hallowed that day.
      2. The Sabbath is a tribute to the divine powers of creation.
   2. Secondly, it has made the top Ten Commandments, number 4 to be precise.
      1. Exodus 20:8 Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy.  Six days you shall labor and do all your work.  But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord Your God; you shall not do any work…for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
   3. Thirdly, there are strict enforcement principles to be observed,
      1. Sabbath-breaking is a capital offense.
      2. Exodus 31: 15 “…the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy t the Lord; whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death.”
   4. Fourthly, there are common sense interpretations to be considered.
      1. Jesus uses these common sense exceptions in his debates with the authorities.
      2. Luke 14:5: “If one of you has a child or an ox that has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a Sabbath day?”
         1. They do not respond because the answer is obvious, “YES”
   5. Fifthly, there is the authority of history and tradition.
      1. For over fifteen hundred years, they have been keeping Sabbath. 
8. Now, I would challenge those principles in consideration of how the Bible is used today to justify domestic violence. 
   1. Domestic violence is identified in five forms today,
      1. Physical, sexual, psychological, emotional, and economic.
      2. How is violence defined?
         1. It is the use of force or the threat of force to get your own way.
      3. The vast majority of cases are men violent against women, and that is our focus this morning. 
   2. Now, as we enter into a new era of marriage equality, there will be a whole new set of cases of domestic abuse to consider among same-sex couples.
9. Applying these principles to domestic violence is not an abstract bible exercise.
   1. Men have used these exact rationalizations.
   1. First, there is the eternal principle, going back to creation itself.
      1. God created male and then he created female
         1. To be man’s helper, out of his rib
         2. Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, I will call her woman.
   2. Secondly, domestic violence appeals to the top legal authority of the Bible, the Ten Commandments.
      1. Specifically, it is commandment #7, “Thou shalt not commit adultery”.
         1. Even Jesus forbids divorce except on grounds of adultery.
      2. That commandment locks the door on a violent relationship.
         1. It is not adultery if you beat the living daylights out of your spouse.
         2. It is not adultery if you force yourself upon your spouse.
         3. It is not adultery if you belittle them, insult them, do everything in your power to keep them under your thumb.
         4. It is not adultery if you try and control every penny they come in contact with, every moment they have, every connection that might exist to the outside world to keep them contained.
      3. Bible says domestic violence is not a reason for divorce.
         1. Are you going to break the vow you made before God?
   3. Thirdly, there are strict enforcement principles.
      1. Let’s jump out of the Old Testament and go talk to Paul
         1. A wife shall submit to her husband.
         2. A woman shall not teach a man.
         3. Here is my favorite, the man is the head of the house like Jesus is the head of the church.
      2. You got to listen to me because I have Jesus’ authority.
   4. Fourthly, there are common sense items in the bible to be considered.
      1. The next line after a wife shall submit to her husband is that the husband shall love his wife.
         1. He’s in charge of the household.
         2. He’s in charge of discipline.
      2. Proverbs 13:24, “whoever spares the rod hates their child…”
         1. Not just spoils the child, but hates the child.
      3. Tie that to 1 Corinthians 14:34 and following, “a woman shall keep silent in church…if there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home.”
         1. If the bible treats them like children, how far is it to justify disciplining them like children?
   5. Finally, consider the history and tradition behind these practices.
      1. Who are the greatest heroes of the Bible?  
         1. David and Solomon
            1. Hundreds of wives, hundreds more concubines
            2.  Great example for the next generation
      2. What are the legal principles surrounding women?
         1. Polygamy was okay
         2. They were legal property of fathers and husbands
         3. They were second class citizens at best
         4. Their worth was not built in but relative to the children they bore or the whim of their mate.
10. The importance of domestic violence today, our reactions to it, the need to solve this problem,
    1. This carries the weight of the issue of Sabbath breaking in the time of Jesus.
    2. It carries the weight of how we use the bible to solve problems.
    3. It lays down the principles of what can lead us astray in trying to live as Christians.
11. Jesus did not try to solve the problem of Sabbath-breaking, that wasn’t his purpose.
    1. Because Sabbath breaking was not a problem to be fixed
       1. Neither the Sabbath nor the bible were the problems.
          1. The problem was how the authorities were interpreting both.
       2. He was breaking out to an entirely new way of doing things.
       3. The authority of the Sabbath was God’s.
          1. Jesus assumed that authority for himself.
          2. The result was more reasons to try and kill him.
    2. The authority he was assuming was the authority of love that sought to heal people.  .
    3. It is God’s day, God will do what He wants with it.
12. How do we fix the problem of using the bible to justify domestic violence?
    1. We don’t solve it, we bust out of it.
13. Step One: the single biggest bible principle, God is love.
    1. If what we draw out of Scripture does not come out of that, we are wrong.
    2. Love does not hurt people, for any reason.
       1. Spare the rod?
       2. Proverbs was written 2500 years ago.
       3. We have made some progress in child rearing.
    3. Men are in charge like Jesus is in charge?
       1. Love does NOT put anybody in charge.
       2. Love is language that transcends discussions of authority and power.
       3. Even if we can sideline that, men, remember that Jesus died for the church, he never beat on her.
14. Step Two: What, then, do we do with all that other stuff?  All those verses, all those commandments?
    1. What do we do with all the bad interpretations of our own history?
       1. Keeping people as slaves?
       2. Denying the leadership of women in the church?
       3. Denying equal rights for everyone to be married?
    2. Do we do like Thomas Jefferson?  Cut out all the parts we don’t like?
    3. We have to understand this,
       1. Bible stories are written in the contexts of their own times and cultures.
       2. They are particular interpretations of the eternal principles.
          1. You need the eternal principles, of love, faith, sacrifice, justice, peace, to understand those particular interpretations.
15. Then we are doing what Jesus did, and changing the world for good.
16. Amen.

When The Bible Is Used To Justify Domestic Violence

Jesus healed a man who'd been invalid for 38 years.  It was a remarkable demonstration of the power of God.  But he did it on a Saturday.  He did it on the Sabbath.  The man, in our Scripture for Sunday, is discovered walking with his mat-by Jesus' command-and is accused of Sabbath-breaking by the religious leadership.  The man said Jesus told him to do it.  So they come after Jesus.


Sabbath-breaking is a Ten Commandment thing, pretty high up in the Legal Code of the Bible.  Today, it is practically irrelevant.  "Blue laws" are pretty much extinct except for a few locations around the nation.  Their real impact on the lives and faith of people is questionable at best.  This is NOT an issue that will pack the pews of our churches today.


But while the issue is not overly relevant to this day's culture, the legal principles, the principles of applying the bible to life situations, that is absolutely relevant.  Because the way the Jewish leadership is applying the Bible to that situation is a way that continues today, with the same damaging effects to the lives of the faithful.


This Sunday, we are going to look at those principles of biblical application and apply them to an issue of extreme, deadly relevance today, that of domestic violence.  The kinds of arguments made in that passage are the same kinds of arguments that are made today.  We need to be able to identify them, understand where they come from, and make the case when the bible is being used as a tool of oppression and not liberation, where the love of God is presumed to carry the stick of punishment, not the freedom of relationship.


We worship at 10am, 45 Market Street in Perth Amboy.  Come and join us.

“Can We Heal Like Jesus?”

Sermon: July 12, 2015   John 5: 1-9a

        What were you doing in 1977?  What have you been doing with your lives for the past 38 years?  Because the man Jesus heals in our passage today, he has been in invalid care for the last 38 years.  He’s been waiting, in our frame of reference, since 1977.

He meets Jesus when Jesus returns from Galilee.  To sum up Jesus’ movements; he was in Jerusalem for a festival; he was a little too much in the public eye; he retreated to Galilee, his home base; he did so thru Samaria, not along the main route.  Normally, the Galileans would dismiss him, he was a local boy, but he received praise because a lot of the locals had seen him at work at the Festival.  He healed the man’s child from afar.  Now, John records, Jesus has gone back to Jerusalem for another festival.

We get a very interesting glimpse into the Social Service structure of ancient Israel.  Jesus goes into Jerusalem through the Sheep Gate.  It is so named for the flocks that enter that way for temple sacrifice.  Down there is the pool of Bethesda-“The House of Outpouring”-where the US Military Hospital gets its name.  There were five roofed colonnades.  “In these lay a multitude of invalids-blind, lame, and paralyzed.”  It is supposed to be a healing place.  When there is a disturbance in the water, the first one there gets healed.

That is the testimony of the man Jesus meets.  It is a bitter testimony.  Jesus asked him if he wants to be healed.  The man’s response is that he’s been trying for 38 years but, first, no one will help him to the pool, and, second, someone always cuts him off.

The man’s response strikes me as a sharp one, between the lines, he’s saying something like, “Do you truly think I want to be here?”

I have heard that comment in various forms throughout my career from people I have gone to visit in nursing home.  Bethesda seems to be a nursing home.  In other places in Scripture, the blind, lame, and paralyzed are also described.  Jesus and his disciples heal any number of them.  Their gainful employment is begging by the side of the road.  Unless, like the man who was lowered through the roof by his friends, they have private means of support.

Do you know what the single greatest fear I have encountered as a pastor in the years of my ministry?  It is not the fear of death.  It is the fear of ‘ending up’ in a nursing home.  It has been known by various names; “The People Warehouse” or “The Land of the Forgotten”.

I live with that.  My mother has ‘ended up’ in a nursing home and she isn’t going to come out.

What is Jesus’ response?  He heals the man.  There is no statement of faith that Jesus has power, there is no mention of a post-healing belief  in Jesus, like with the man whose son Jesus healed.  Jesus told him, “Get up and go.” and the man got up and went.

What is our response?  “Praise the Lord, Jesus healed that man?”  He certainly did.  My response is more like “Why didn’t he heal them all?”  Why didn’t Jesus walk around the pool of Bethesda, leaving a trail of recovered bodies in his wake?

Why didn’t he give all those blind their sight?

Why didn’t all the lame get to walk?

Why didn’t all the paralyzed get unparalyzed?

Why didn’t Jesus just walk on through and empty out the nursing home?

Who here has visited a hospital or an assisted living facility or a nursing home and not come away with the despair that there are far too many people in there for you to help?  Who has had the despair that even your own people, friends or family, are beyond your ability to help?  Except that is exactly the mission that we have chosen for this congregation, the pursuit and provision of pastoral and spiritual care.

The T-shirt for such a ministry might be “Healers Like Jesus”.  Can this passage provide us inspiration?

Let me add fuel to the fire of the impossibility of the task.  The first question was “How on earth could we help everybody in need?”  The second question might be, “Jesus had God’s power to really make a difference.  The lame guy got up and walked away. What on earth do I have to offer that comes close to that? 

There is a powerful sentiment in the faith ‘to be imitators of Christ’.  Sure, that’s great with the small stuff; good morales; loving the neighbor; being polite; saying grace before meals.  But how on earth are we supposed to imitate the phenomenal, cosmic powers being displayed in this passage?

I am not denying the power of miracles here brothers and sisters, I have seen too many in my own life.  But I do not believe I can approach a random individual in the nursing home and tell them to “Rise up and Walk” that will not end with them rising up and falling down.

There are too many people to help and I can’t really help them anyway.  Those are two of the largest stumbling blocks to any healing ministry.  To truly understand, I think we have to take apart this healing of Jesus to see just what he gave to this man.

This man was an invalid on three levels.

The most obvious was on the physical level.  He’d been lying there, an invalid, for 38 years.  In terms of our lives, lying there since 1977.

Again, what were you doing in 1977?

But I would argue that the most superficial damage to him was on the physical level.  What would we do with that today?  Physiological medicine is incredible.  We can fix more things now in the human body than ever before.  And even if he was ‘unfixable’, we live in a culture that does more than ever in the past to make life accessible to even the most broken.  I am thinking Christopher Reeves.  And this man does not seem to be as injured as Christopher Reeves.  He could, by his own means, start the process of getting to the pool.

What psychological damage has been done?  He’s been at the Bethesda Invalid Nursing Pool for 38 years.  No one has ever helped him to the pool.  Makes me think he’s never had a visitor, makes me think that he is alone, makes me think that the staffing levels at the pool are grossly understrength.

He has been forgotten and he knows it.  He is waiting there to die and 38 years is a very long time to wait for death.  At that time, he could only wait.  What can we do now?  First line, call in the Social Worker.  If need be, get a psyche eval., get the patient on medication, monitor and follow up.  This man is awake and aware.  I have come out of a nursing home, silently thankful to the Lord that so many of those people are unaware of their surroundings.

This is today.  Then, that man did not have doctors to care for him, he certainly did not have a therapist, he had nothing, he was not even a number in a ledger or a name on a chart.  His very humanity no longer existed.  He was forgotten, tucked into this little corner of Jerusalem to watch every miracle pass him by.

Now, a brief sidebar.  That is one thing Jesus is never explicitly recorded as healing.  He never explicitly healed someone of Alzheimer’s or some other kind of mental incapacitation.  I think the closest we can come is to provide a close reading of the exorcisms and casting out of demons.  In that time and place, there was no language for mental illness.  Language and explanations from the supernatural were the closest they had.

But this man was completely aware of every slight, of every failed attempt to get the pool, of every day when nobody came to him, until the day Jesus came.  And Jesus restored his humanity.  “Take up your mat and walk” was not simply a physical miracle.  It was not simply the solution to the mental fatigue of enduring for 38 years.  That man was recognized once again as a person.

There is the healing we bring.  Because to recognize someone as a human unleashes tremendous possibility.  First via the Love of God:

A person is created by God

A person is precious to God

A person is protected by God

Second, via the Love of Neighbor

A person is a member of the community of God

They are valuable as creations of our God

They are never, ever alone

Note what we are not doing. 

We are not promising physical healing.  That is not our specialty; And that may not happen.  People are going to die, all of them.  And some of the most peaceful, together people I have ever met are ready to step through that doorway.

We are not promising mental healing.  That is not our specialty.  It may not happen.  Alzheimer’s may take our most precious; depression kills; addiction warps good people into creatures of unfulfillable need.

We are not even promising emotional healing.  You might argue Jesus provided the man with hope.  I would argue the man was not without hope.  After 38 years, he was still trying.  

We might not make people ‘happy’.  Because they may need to grieve.  They may need to rage.

The only thing we are promising is to treat them as humans.  We will offer dignity; we will offer caring; we will offer the sure and certain power of Jesus that embraces all of humanity.  And it may be rejected

But at the end of the day, they will know we have cared.  And that can be the foundation of their healing.  It is us being in imitation of Christ.  Amen