Our society has got rather caught up with the cult of the
individual, and while matters of healing and salvation have been seen as
individual matters, they are best understood as community affairs: what affects
us affects our family, our friends, and community, as we do not live in isolation,
likewise Christ’s healing love is poured out on individuals who are part of a community.
Likewise the church is to be a place of healing
and love, for individuals, and for the community.
Given the events of the last few days it is impossible
for us not to describe our world as one in need of healing. Our human
proclivity for violence seems as strong as ever, which reminds us that when
things are left up to ourselves they don’t always end well. We need some help, and that can only come
from God.
St Antony the
Great once said ‘Our life and our death is with our neighbour. If we win our
brother, we win God. If we cause our brother to stumble, we have sinned against
Christ.’ In the words of Rowan Williams:
‘Winning
the brother or sister isn’t – in the perspective of St Antony – a matter of getting
them signed up to something, getting them on your side, but opening doors for
them to God’s healing. If you open such doors, you ‘win’ God, because you
become a place where God ‘happens’ for someone else, where God comes to life
for someone in a new and life- giving way – not because you are good and
wonderful but because you have allowed the wonder and goodness of God to appear
(and you may have no idea how). When we shift our preoccupations, anxiety and
selfishness out of the way and some space appears for God, we ourselves are brought
in touch with God’s healing. And so, in winning the brother and sister, we win God.’[1]
This morning’s
Gospel is concerned with healing, that of Jairus’ daughter and the woman with a
haemorrhage. They show us the power of God to heal and restore humanity, which
points to the Cross which is the greatest place of healing, where Christ bears
our sins: for by his wounds we are healed, we are washed in his blood, healed
and restored to new life in Him. Christ who was rich, for our sake made himself
poor, so that we might become rich by his poverty. Likewise he gives himself
under the outward forms of bread and wine, so that we can be healed by Him.
Unlike the physicians who have taken all of the woman’s money and not made her
better but worse; Christ’s healing is free. The woman is afraid, but Christ
does not want to single her out, but rather is conscious that someone is in
need of healing, hence his words: ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in
peace, and be healed of your disease.’ She has faith: she believes that
simply by touching his clothes, by being close to Jesus, that she can be
healed. Likewise Jairus, a well-known pillar of the community, who sits at the
front of the synagogue, falls at Jesus’ feet and begs him repeatedly: here is a
desperate man, whose concern is not for his own station, but rather that his
daughter may be made well and live. He comes to Jesus, who raises his daughter,
who restores her to health and life. Jairus is humble; he knows his need of
God.
We, too, know
that we need God’s healing, in our lives and in the world around us. We need to
come to Jesus, so that we can be healed by Him, and restored by Him, to have
life and life in all its fullness. We are given a foretaste of it here, this
morning, in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood, given to us so that we might
be healed, body and soul, and given a foretaste of eternal life in Christ.
Let us come to
him, so that we too might be healed and restored by him, so that we might be
built up in love, and our families and communities too might be healed and
restored, living life in all its fullness – this is what Christ comes to bring
to a world in need of healing. Let us come to him, so that we might be built up
in love, so that the Kingdom may grow, so that we can invite others so share in
God’s gift of his healing love, so that ransomed, healed, restored, and
forgiven by him, through Christ’s saving death, we may sing the praises of God
the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed, as is
most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and
forever.
No comments:
Post a Comment