There are not many ‘special interest groups’ mentioned by name in the Gospels, but lepers, the blind, the lame, the poor are certainly there along with the well-known Pharisees, scribes, Levites and Zealots. In Jesus’ healing ministry the link between physical healing and spiritual healing (through forgiveness) is very strong. So it is that in Mark 2:1 – 12, when a paralytic is lowered into the room where Jesus is preaching, that Jesus’ first response is to the faith of those who presented him, and secondly to the paralytic himself, ‘My child, your sins are forgiven.’
It is probable that many Jews saw disability as some kind of divine punishment for one’s sins, or even the sins of one’s forebears. As a consequence, Jesus shocked his audience by forgiving the paralytic’s sins first before healing him. This course of events challenged the Jew’s understandings – Jesus was empowered to forgive sins, and that the Mosaic ordering of healing followed by reconciliation and forgiveness was within the gift of Jesus. Jesus has the authority to do so.
Many of those with illnesses and disabilities were, as a consequence, shunned from the religious and social life of the community – they were literally outcasts. For some, their illness denied them even salvation.
Despite the passage of 2000 years, many in our community still possess attitudes to the disabled that have not advanced. Disabilities are described as being a result of maternal smoking or alcohol intake, genetics, bad driving or plain bad luck. Jesus models the compassion, openness and love in the way we receive and welcome the disabled, but it is not pity, although it may well be anger (at the way they are treated) - in the end Jesus is concerned with the person, and not the disability.
Our church too, needs to look at itself in the way it provides for the disabled in our worship, gaining access to our church buildings, finding suitable places to be seated. If they have been called to a liturgical ministry, how can they serve at the altar or read from the lectern, give communion or provide music?
The invitation for us to be ‘lowered into place’ where the Gospel is being proclaimed and heard is before us everyday, and we too ask that the Lord will open his heart to us saying, ‘My child, your sins are forgiven.’
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Healing the helpless
Platitudes are wasted breath. There is no scale to the pain of those whose children will not begin school in 2009, whose children lost their lives in Australia’s worst natural disaster, whose children – still living – will be ever scarred with the terror of lost, burning breath, whose childhood memories of places, rooms and cubbyholes are now erased in the ashes of this solemn and unforgiving tragedy.
The tears that fall from our eyes as we hear the pained stories of heroic and panicked escape; the recounted miracles of being saved by the urgent and frantic aid of the brave all count for little, if all hope is lost.
And for those whose lives lie buried in this national trauma, it may well seem that it is all indeed hope-less. But I cannot believe in this hope-lessness, though I cannot deny the depth of their despair. The stories of Jesus might well not assuage these bereaved and victims, yet there is a power which only the Gospel can offer.
Mark (1:40 – 45) tells of the leper who came to Jesus pleading to be cured. Feeling great compassion, perhaps anger, Jesus touched him and he is healed. Jesus ordered him to say nothing, but to present himself before the priests and make the appropriate offering according to the Law of Moses, yet the man went off and freely told his story everywhere. The consequence was that Jesus could no longer go openly into the townships.
The key to this story is not the leper’s physical recovery, but that Jesus has the power to save even those who are excluded from Israel by the Law of Moses, the helpless, the hopeless. Secondly, despite Jesus’ injunction to say nothing, the healed man is compelled to proclaim the Gospel.
There is always hope, for Jesus has the capacity and desire to touch each of us, and most specially those left bereft and in suffering. His compassion and touch is extended to each and every one of us. As each person is healed, in time and grace, their healing will be a true proclamation of Jesus’ presence and saving power among us.
We pray earnestly for the survivors’ safety, their health and the strength to carry on. This is not some banal, empty platitude. It is at the heart of our faith.
The tears that fall from our eyes as we hear the pained stories of heroic and panicked escape; the recounted miracles of being saved by the urgent and frantic aid of the brave all count for little, if all hope is lost.
And for those whose lives lie buried in this national trauma, it may well seem that it is all indeed hope-less. But I cannot believe in this hope-lessness, though I cannot deny the depth of their despair. The stories of Jesus might well not assuage these bereaved and victims, yet there is a power which only the Gospel can offer.
Mark (1:40 – 45) tells of the leper who came to Jesus pleading to be cured. Feeling great compassion, perhaps anger, Jesus touched him and he is healed. Jesus ordered him to say nothing, but to present himself before the priests and make the appropriate offering according to the Law of Moses, yet the man went off and freely told his story everywhere. The consequence was that Jesus could no longer go openly into the townships.
The key to this story is not the leper’s physical recovery, but that Jesus has the power to save even those who are excluded from Israel by the Law of Moses, the helpless, the hopeless. Secondly, despite Jesus’ injunction to say nothing, the healed man is compelled to proclaim the Gospel.
There is always hope, for Jesus has the capacity and desire to touch each of us, and most specially those left bereft and in suffering. His compassion and touch is extended to each and every one of us. As each person is healed, in time and grace, their healing will be a true proclamation of Jesus’ presence and saving power among us.
We pray earnestly for the survivors’ safety, their health and the strength to carry on. This is not some banal, empty platitude. It is at the heart of our faith.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
LIsten to your deeper self
Hugh Lunn recorded his childhood adventures in Brisbane of the 1950s in Over the top with Jim. I have delighted in his remembrances for they struck many chords with the childhood I shared with my brothers and sisters. But for all the hype attributed by 50 year olds to their idyllic childhoods, our lives were not lacking in tragedy. Many families had fathers who never returned from war, or who returned as shadows of their former selves, strangers to their families. The ravages of polio were not uncommon still. There was (often public) condemnation for unwed mothers, divorcés/divorcées, living outside of marriage.
A room full of rocket scientists could argue that childhood is the same – but they would all be wrong. Quite wrong. There are some aspects to childhood today that should give us genuine anxiety. Some of these are touted in the newspapers and on television on an ongoing basis: lack of exercise, poor gross and fine motor skills, obesity, struggling literacy and numeracy, poor self-esteem, lack of resilience – and there are clear links to long hours of television viewing, repetitive violent and sexually implicit videos (and occasionally explicit) and video games. Children are overindulged because of parent guilt about work and the little quality time spent with them. Children’s rooms resemble toy shops: they are overstimulated; children do few jobs about the house and often lack the capacity to accept responsibility for their actions. Children expect to be treated as small adults, so much so that many forget to distance their emotions and behaviour in the presence of other adults, showing a lack of deference for age and of respect for others in the loss of self-control.
And we adults have changed radically too. The easy-going, Australian way of life that we dream of, exists less and less. We are constantly anxious about our children’s achievements (sleeping, speaking, walking, playing soccer/piano/tennis, learning to read/write/dance/sing/do maths/ride a bike/make a bed), make their lives busy, plan you-beaut holidays that keep everyone on their toes. We suffer from road rage, sports rage …
The more that our world becomes fractured, the more we seek to understand who and what we are called to be. In a word, we seek integrity. In the search for truth we need to align ourselves with God’s divine will. How do we discern what that will is for us? The key is to listen – to our deeper selves, to each other, in prayerfulness and reflection. In this way we can inform ourselves what our children most need, not what we most want to give.
A room full of rocket scientists could argue that childhood is the same – but they would all be wrong. Quite wrong. There are some aspects to childhood today that should give us genuine anxiety. Some of these are touted in the newspapers and on television on an ongoing basis: lack of exercise, poor gross and fine motor skills, obesity, struggling literacy and numeracy, poor self-esteem, lack of resilience – and there are clear links to long hours of television viewing, repetitive violent and sexually implicit videos (and occasionally explicit) and video games. Children are overindulged because of parent guilt about work and the little quality time spent with them. Children’s rooms resemble toy shops: they are overstimulated; children do few jobs about the house and often lack the capacity to accept responsibility for their actions. Children expect to be treated as small adults, so much so that many forget to distance their emotions and behaviour in the presence of other adults, showing a lack of deference for age and of respect for others in the loss of self-control.
And we adults have changed radically too. The easy-going, Australian way of life that we dream of, exists less and less. We are constantly anxious about our children’s achievements (sleeping, speaking, walking, playing soccer/piano/tennis, learning to read/write/dance/sing/do maths/ride a bike/make a bed), make their lives busy, plan you-beaut holidays that keep everyone on their toes. We suffer from road rage, sports rage …
The more that our world becomes fractured, the more we seek to understand who and what we are called to be. In a word, we seek integrity. In the search for truth we need to align ourselves with God’s divine will. How do we discern what that will is for us? The key is to listen – to our deeper selves, to each other, in prayerfulness and reflection. In this way we can inform ourselves what our children most need, not what we most want to give.
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