Monday, June 9, 2008

Sunday, June 8, 2008 - Christ the Healer

This week, I attended our Diocesan (Toronto) Clergy Conference in Guelph, ON. There were no big name keynote speakers for the whole conference, with only our own bishops speaking to us in very personal and vulnerable ways. The theme was "Passionate Leadership: from Beleaguered to Beloved". The only exception was one session with former figure skating champion Barbara Underhill, who spoke to us about her life’s ups and downs, triumphs and tragedies. It was a most touching testimony of her passion in skating, through humiliating failures to winning the championships. Her personal life of a perfect family was also shattered by the drowning of her 8 month-old baby girl a day before her baptism at St Peter’s, Erindale. In the end, it is a powerful story of faith and perseverance, a journey of overwhelming grief toward the rediscovery of life’s passion, joy and healing.

As she began her talk, she expressed her fear and intimidation of speaking to a group of clergy, almost 200 of us. Even our own bishops were feeling vulnerable speaking to a group of potentially critical and cynical bunch of clergy. That makes me wonder what if Jesus were our main keynote speaker, how would we react to him? Judging from different Scripture passages, including today’s Gospel from Matthew 9:9-13, he might not have fared too well with a religious group such as our clergy. In fact, he was always in conflict with the religious authority of his days, especially for associating with tax collectors and sinners. They found him offensive, for Jesus was just too radical for their liking.

The calling of Matthew the tax collector becomes a conflict story with the Pharisees. It also begs the larger question of whether the will of God calls for separation from sinners or association with them.

Here in the Gospel of Matthew, the tax collector is named Matthew, not Levi as told by Mark and Luke. In all the lists of the 12 Apostles, a Matthew is named, but no Levi. When Jesus called him, Matthew was sitting at the booth or table near the city gate or in the marketplace. He was collecting taxes for the Romans and for their puppet tetrarch, King Herod. Taxes on the people were many and burdensome: road taxes, bridge taxes, tax on trade goods, plus personal or household tax. The taxes alone were bad enough, not to mention the abuses and dishonesty involved and the fact that the money went to a foreign government. No wonder the collectors were despised by all. No wonder Jesus was challenged by the Pharisees when they found him in the company of one such character. The hostility level was raised when Jesus and his disciples were having a meal in the house, sharing table fellowship with many other tax collectors and sinners.

Who are the others that are labelled “sinners”? One assumption is that they are Matthew’s friends and business associates, perhaps bankers who charged interests and have dealings with the Romans. Therefore, they may have been considered as traitors and ritually unclean, and forced out of the local synagogues.

Besides eating with these “undesirables” with Jesus, the disciples are asked to defend Jesus’ behavior and theirs. Here is a perfect example of triangulation in system theory. The Pharisees, who have a complaint against Jesus, don’t approach him. Rather they tell someone else, the disciples, who presumably will tell Jesus. He will be expected to respond to the disciples, who bring the message back to the Pharisees. Such triangulations happen all the time in our families, churches & any human organizations. However, Jesus destroys the triangle by answering the Pharisees directly, and not involving the third party in the middle.

Jesus’ response has two parts. First, he uses a well known maxim about the physician: his place is not with the well, but with the sick and those who need healing. Jesus comes not as a judge, but as a healer. Secondly, Jesus uses a rabbinic formula, “Go and learn” to send his critics back to the Scriptures and to Hosea 6:6 in particular. “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” The Hebrew word for mercy hesed is an extraordinarily rich and significant term meaning steadfast love, righteousness and loyalty. The Old Testament uses this word to describe God, God’s relation to Israel, and the quality of life expected of Israel. By asking his harsh critics to go back and study this verse, Jesus is asking them to rediscover the will of God in reaching out to the sinners, and not just the righteous. In the nature and the heart of God, do we find a call to distance ourselves from sinners or to reach out to them in love, mercy and forgiveness? Jesus’ words and actions make it very clear!

However, the issue is still alive and well in our churches and the worldwide communion today. Some churches prefer to embark on a “Holiness Movement” of their own and pride themselves as the chosen ones of God, disassociating themselves from the undesirable and questionable characters of the world. They denounce the more liberal churches for abandoning tradition and orthodoxy, especially on the issues of homosexuality. Some have refused Eucharistic table fellowship with others over those controversies. The same Pharisees also accused Jesus for breaking with tradition and orthodoxy.

I guess, there is always a Pharisee within all of us, a self-righteous side in all of us, who looks down upon those whom we deem as sinners and morally inferior than us. How outraged would we be, if Jesus were in our midst showing us how to do outreach and evangelism in our part of the world? Would we welcome a homeless person coming in for money or something to eat? Would we kick out an alcoholic person for disrupting our worship? Can we handle a very needy person asking for help? Would we in the name of Christ turn them away? Indeed, who among us is not in desperate need for healing?

This week, I am very aware of the healing stories of Jesus in the second half of today’s Gospel (Matthew 9:18-26), as I went around for my pastoral visits. I went to see a dying man in the palliative care unit wanting to reaffirm his faith; a blind woman still adjusting to a new nursing home after almost a year; another man blind from his diabetic condition awaiting surgery in anxiety, and a woman in total confusion and delirium from her treatment with a persistent infection. I pray for healing in all of those situations, but in what forms will God’s healing come? I honestly do not know, but I believe God will heal them, just as Jesus healed the woman and the young girl in today’s stories. It is not up to me to decide, and it is a good thing, but we leave it up to God, by faith. Jesus asks us to trust in God’s mercy, his faithfulness and steadfast love. Without God’s grace, we all live under judgment and condemnation.

Let me finish with a story from the Internet:

A minister passing through his church
in the middle of the day,
Decided to pause by the altar

and see who had come to pray.

Just then the back door opened,
a man came down the aisle,
The minister frowned as he saw
the man hadn’t shaved in a while.

His shirt was kind of shabby
and his coat was worn and frayed,
the man knelt, he bowed his head,
Then rose and walked away.

In the days that followed,
each noon time came this chap,
each time he knelt just for a moment,
A lunch pail in his lap.

Well, the minister’s suspicions grew,
with robbery a main fear,
He decided to stop the man and ask him,
“What are you doing here?”

The old man said, he worked down the road.
Lunch was half an hour.
Lunchtime was his prayer time,
For finding strength and power.

“I stay only moments, see,
because the factory is so far away;
as I kneel here talking to the Lord,
This is kind of what I say:


“I JUST CAME AGAIN TO TELL YOU, LORD,
HOW HAPPY I'VE BEEN,
SINCE WE FOUND EACH OTHER’S FRIENDSHIP
AND YOU TOOK AWAY MY SIN.
DON’T KNOW MUCH OF HOW TO PRAY,
BUT I THINK ABOUT YOU EVERYDAY.
SO, JESUS, THIS IS JIM
CHECKING IN TODAY.”

The minister feeling foolish,
told Jim that was fine.
He told the man he was welcome
To come and pray just anytime.

Time to go, Jim smiled, said “Thanks.”
He hurried to the door.
The minister knelt at the altar,
he’d never done it before.
His cold heart melted, warmed with love,
and met with Jesus there.
As the tears flowed, in his heart,
he repeated old Jim’s prayer:


“I JUST CAME AGAIN TO TELL YOU, LORD,
HOW HAPPY I’VE BEEN,
SINCE WE FOUND EACH OTHER’S FRIENDSHIP
AND YOU TOOK AWAY MY SIN.
I DON’T KNOW MUCH OF HOW TO PRAY, BUT

I THINK ABOUT YOU EVERYDAY.
SO, JESUS, THIS IS ME CHECKING IN TODAY”

Past noon one day, the minister noticed
that old Jim hadn’t come.
As more days passed without Jim,
he began to worry some.

At the factory, he asked about him,
learning he was ill.
The hospital staff was worried,
But he’d given them a thrill.

The week that Jim was with them,
Brought changes in the ward.
His smiles, a joy contagious,
Changed people, were his reward.

The head nurse couldn’t understand
why Jim was so glad,
when no flowers, calls or cards came,
Not a visitor he had.

The minister stayed by his bed,
He voiced the nurse’s concern:
No friends came to show they cared.
He had nowhere to turn.

Looking surprised, old Jim spoke
up and with a winsome smile;
“the nurse is wrong, she couldn’t know,
that in here all the while

Every day at noon He’s here,
a dear friend of mine, you see,
He sits right down, takes my hand,
Leans over and says to me:

“I JUST CAME AGAIN TO TELL YOU, JIM,
HOW HAPPY I HAVE BEEN,
SINCE WE FOUND THIS FRIENDSHIP,
AND I TOOK AWAY YOUR SIN.
ALWAYS LOVE TO HEAR YOU PRAY,
I THINK ABOUT YOU EACH DAY,
AND SO JIM, THIS IS JESUS
CHECKING IN TODAY.”


What would be your prayers today?

How do you want to check in and pray?

Whatever is in your hearts and minds,

Healing and forgiveness God is ready to offer all the time.

To which we will always say:

Thanks be to God, forever and today.

Amen.

Fr. Victor+
www.stjd.ca